When you decide to go ahead with small business coaching it is incredibly important that you do not go into the process with ‘gold coloured spectacles.’

When you are about to enter into a process you need to remember that your potential coach has a business just like you and will be wanting to make a good impression on you. You will likely hear about all the other people he / she has worked with and how incredible that has been for them.

And remember that you will normally be looking for help when appointing a coach so you can often be vulnerable to a sub standard decision.

When you’re buying anything, it will not be the logical part of the decision that drives the process but the emotional elements will drive the decision.

That’s why disappointment can quickly enter into your world because it’s also an emotion.

Going through a decision making process is really important when deciding to hire a small business coach. One of the most common reasons for getting a coach is that it is lonely being the business owner.

There’s only so much you can discuss with your employees and of course when you have issues with your employees then you’ll want someone outside the business to discuss these issues with.

Disappointment can only occur when you get something you weren’t expecting or fail to get something you were expecting.

When you’re lonely and wanting some encouragement you’re wide open to be taken advantage of with some coaching that isn’t going to really help your business go forward.

So before you appoint a small business coach you need to have a list of the logical reasons why you would want one.

The process you go through to appoint a coach should be as rigorous as appointing a new employee into your business.

You need to interview them, make sure that they have a track record in assisting in the specific areas that are an issue for you.

For example: If you have significant cash flow issues then hiring someone who is really good with people may not suit you.

Make sure you hire the right small business coach who understands the specific issues you’re facing and then you both have the same expectations and this will avoid disappointment through the coaching process.

What’s your experience on this?

Many business owners fail to get the most out of small business coaching because they doubt themselves and think that they’re paying a coach to do everything for them or that the coach has all the answers to their problems.

Remember that although many coaches have vast experience the person who should know the most about your business is YOU. With this in mind below are three tips which will really help you get more benefit from your investment in small business coaching.

TIP 1
Make sure you do work yourself between coaching sessions.

As a small business coach I see a vast number of different business owners and the ones who manage to get the most benefit from me make sure they ‘road test’ everything that we talk about in our sessions.

The coach is not a baby sitter on the one hand nor the CEO of your company on the other. You are the business owner and must do the work between sessions to extract and implement the learning into your business.

TIP 2
Have a list of topics that you want answers to.

When a business owner comes to a session with specific questions about their business I know we’re dealing with relevant issues for them. It usually means that they are thinking about the sessions and applying the knowledge to their situation.

Often in our sessions we will change the whole direction of a session to address the most pressing issues in a business because that’s where the questions always come from.

TIP 3
Don’t get caught in generalised concepts and fixed systems.

I personally like it when a business owner interrupts the session with questions about how the knowledge applies to their individual business.

There are some really great coaching systems which apply generalised business principles. Whilst these are great in theory, my experience is that the specific and unique information really helps the business owner.

If you want generalised information there are many educational facilities that can give you this. One on One coaching must address your specific needs to give you the value from your investment.

What’s your experience with small business coaching?

As a Business Owner are you :

Trying to become more self sufficient?

Longing for the day when you no longer need to rely on any one and you’re free to run your business without any worries?

Doing the best you can to be self sustaining?

Well…. All of these desires will potentially be taking you away from the benefit and help of small business coaching!

I come across many business owners who are very self reliant. While this is a real strength it can also be a significant impediment to them being able to take on fresh ideas.

It can be a struggle for them to realise that they don’t have the answer personally to every problem that they encounter.

Is it easy for you to be sceptical and questioning rather than welcoming and trusting when it comes to taking advice on your business.

Many times of course this is completely justified because the so called advisor knows less than you do! But when it comes to small business coaching it is difficult to get any real benefit without having an open mind to learning from someone who probably sees the world a little differently to you.

Now let’s jump on the other side of the fence for a moment and think about this issue from the coach’s point of view.

What’s their biggest nightmare? Remember they are in business too and have many of the same hang ups that any business owner would have!

Their biggest hang up is that clients are always trying to get to the point where they don’t need them any more and as a result they try and make themselves critical to the business. A great place for the coach is where the business owner can not do without them

BUT…

This will never satisfy the business owner because they inherently do not want to be reliant on any one. They want to call the shots and be their own boss.

While this is not often verbalised between the coach and the business owner, this clash of needs is often what brings about a low level of satisfaction in small business coaching.

The coach is trying to hang on and control the situation and the business owner is trying to get free and run their own show.

So what should they do?

How could they get better value from each other?

Firstly the coach should realise the aspirations of the business owner and set about trying to help them be self reliant.

What does this look like?

Having a focus on freedom rather than control.

Making sure they focus on what they can do rather than what they can’t do.

Focus on strengths rather than struggles.

What will happen to the business owner?

My experience with business owners is that when they like something and value it, they have no problem coming back for more and more.

The funny thing is that the minute you try and set them free to do their own thing they want to come back and get more of that freedom ‘potion’ because they like it.

It makes them feel good and they can’t get that feeling from anyone else.

Customers can’t give it to them, suppliers can’t give it to them and employees certainly can’t give them that felling of being set free by a coach who is cheering them on to do the very best they can.

What’s your experience of small business coaching?

Do you wish you had more people to help you in your business?

Do you wish that the employees you do have would do more for you?

What would happen if somehow everyone in your business started to pull in the same direction?

All these questions point towards an issue in your business with YOU(the business owner) not being able to multiply your effect through your business.

One of the things that many business owners suffer from is a lack of time because they’re probably trying to DO too much in their business rather than making sure things are done.

When I was the Finance Director of BTR Nylex, (a 7 billion dollar manufacturing business) my son came to me one day and said,

“Dad, you don’t actually do anything do you. All you do is go to meetings and more meetings but everyone does the stuff, you just go to the meetings.”

When I first heard that I was quite taken aback because I was sure that I was doing a lot but it made me realise in a business that size, if I was going to be effective, my influence had to get way beyond my physical presence.

This is the same for a business owner. Your influence must get way beyond your physical presence or else everyone will be trying to figure out what to do next and often it will happen in a very uncoordinated fashion!

So how can you make this all happen?

I like to call this ‘bottling the business owner.’

If we could take the essence of who you are, what you stand for, and the vision for your business and package that up into a bottle we could take that anywhere in your business, pour it out and people would be able to know what to do.

You might think by this I mean turn your business into a series of processes and procedures and everything will be right. If you thought that, then you would be about half right.

Processes and procedures are very important but they contain no emotion and in my experience people find energy and passion from their emotions.

The most important part in my business is accessing the energy from each of the unique people in my business and them finding and accessing the unique energy in me.

So bottling the business owner is much more than a boring set of processes and procedures. It must also contain the essence of who you are and how you tick.

So how can you get this from small business coaching?

Your small business coach must be able to help you find the uniqueness in you. What is it about you that is different to other people and how is this expressed in your business.

For example, are you a reserved person or an outgoing person?

Do you travel at a fast pace or are you more patient?

Are you ambitious or quietly content?

These and many other characteristics will determine the type of person that you are and how you are perceived in your business.

This is what people will experience and hear as you travel personally through the business. It is not so much about what you DO but for most business owners their effect is felt by others more from who you ARE.

The unfortunate thing is that many people think that everyone is basically the same or they will be when they grow up.

They spend all their life waiting for people to grow up and wondering why they can’t get the best out of their people unless they are on top of them all the time.

Does you small business coach help you with accessing who you are or simply deal with what you do?

Have you ever wondered why your business is not growing bigger?

Have you ever wondered why ‘the buck always stops’ with you?

Do you wish you could find a way to increase your effect in your business without having to do it all personally?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then the likely issue you are facing is YOU.

Many business owners I meet spend so much time trying to get things done they never stand back and have an objective look at what THEY are doing. And when I ask them ‘why?’ – the answer is simple. They don’t have time to!!

Now that may sound quite stupid to you but it is a fact that many people are so caught up in their own world they rarely move outside it to see what other people are seeing when they look in. That’s another way of saying that they fail to get a second objective opinion from someone else.

Now this can be quite scary for a business owner who is supposed to know everything about their business and be successful. It can be quite confronting to realise that you don’t know everything and even worse that other people might see it.

How would your employees feel if they saw it?

What would a customer think if they had any idea that you might be struggling?

Suppliers might look to take advantage of you if you opened up to them!

So you’re stuck in your own little world trying the best you can and never quite getting as far as you wanted.

Do you worry about getting tired and losing the energy required to keep your business going? Some people I know are too frightened to stop because they wouldn’t know what to do if they stopped.

There is a simple answer to your issues and that is to discover an objective view of yourself and someone who can help you manage yourself better and help you find the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re doing well.

Ever heard this?

The answer to all your problems is more sales. If you got better sales and higher prices then everything would work.

This has been the catch cry of many practitioners of small business coaching and while it is partly true it fails to deal with the any of the behavioural issues of a business owner.
Small business coaching is about a person as well as what they do.

Let’s look at a sports coaching environment for a moment. Do you think there is a single answer for every type of sport and every type of person involved in sport? You’re right!! There isn’t.

Everything starts with the uniqueness of the individual. Are they tall or short for example. This will determine the type of sport in which they are most capable of being successful.

Most business owners start with a dream and then have real difficulty in realising that dream. Many are wired to go out and do something before ever thinking about themselves or how they might need other people around them to help. As a result they don’t look for help and continually struggle. And most likely they struggle with themselves more than others.

This is a big hole in the world of small business coaching. Many business owners would get far better results if they understood themselves before DOING anything like trying to increase sales.

In order to be more effective small business coaching must assist the BEING of a small business owner as well as the DOING of a small business owner if a coach wants to unlock the potential in each unique individual.

What are your thoughts on this?