Finding the right Business Coach

I want to talk about Business Coaches. We hear this term thrown around a lot and often it seems quite saturated in the marketplace.

However, finding the right Business Coach or somebody who can really be in your corner as a support system for your business, is invaluable..

Outsourcing is one of those things that we often do for all the obvious stuff. I need a HR expert so I’ll get a HR expert in or I need someone to run pay roll so I’ll get them to do that or I need a bookkeeper. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s tapping into a resource that actually is an expert in a particular area.

Just another form of outsourcing, a Business Coach is there to provide a level of support as a sounding board to you as a business owner because often as business owners it can be a very lonely world when you’re trying to tackle particular tasks on your own. Whether that be making decisions about areas of your business that you may not necessarily have expertise in, like financial matters, product matters, certain service offering matters. It’s always great to think about having someone on board that might actually be the right person to help you through it.

Now I’m not saying there’s that one size fits all model, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. What I am saying is that you need to find that right person for what it is that you’re doing at the time and what you need at the time.

Whilst many will claim to be the right business coach for you, ask them some really specific questions around how they think they can actually help you. This is not to criticise them but it’s to understand whether or not you can find the right person for what it is that you need.

If you need some assistance financially to get your records in order, you would need a book keeper to come and do your bookkeeping, but you’d spend the time getting the right person that’s actually going to tick all the boxes for what you need. Availability, cost, experience with a particular program. It’s exactly the same as a business coach.

If you’re going through a restructure, a re-engineer process or if you just need some guidance to get back on track why not tap into a resource that’s been there before. Find a Business Coach expert who is good at re-engineering processes. Review their resumes, understand what they do and what they've done prior. It’s better than textbook knowledge and it’s better than just getting a generic coach. So ask the right questions, understand what it is that you need and don’t take no for an answer.

Remember, it's about your needs! You’re paying this person after all, therefore they should provide you with exactly what you need. Further to that and I maintain this in everything that I say and do, every single person that’s in your business whether it be an employee or a contractor, you should be able to measure their worth to your business. You should be able to measure what work they do for your business because after all they’re there to perform a particular task. So it shouldn't be any different for a Business Coach. Make sure they have provisions in place to be able to measure everything that they do or say with you.

Finally, you should have the same sort of repertoire with your Business Coach as you would with a partner, because that’s what they’re doing, they’re partnering with you, to examine certain aspects of your business and assist you in providing you with their expertise and support to take your business to where you want it to be.

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