Do You Need A Business Coach?

09/24/2015 | Roger and Susie Engelau

It’s estimated that 12% of business owners use a business coach—and they make up the top 90% in earnings. Could you use a business coach? There are 3 reasons business owners don’t use a business coach.

 

 

Ego and fear of failure

 

Letting someone else in on your decisions, mistakes, financials, successes and failures is tough for some of us.  Who hasn’t made bad decisions? It’s called “failing forward” and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, we business owners are entrepreneurs, risk-takers by definition. Business owners wouldn’t be owning their own businesses without having more guts than the general population… so don’t be so hard on yourself.

 

Yeah, coach, by definition, implies a relationship where one’s more knowledgeable than another. Can we change this perception? Probably not.  But think of it this way. Tiger Woods has a coach. Do you think Jack Welch did it all by himself? He had many advisors.  We have trusted accountants, bankers, and lawyers… so why not a business expert?

 

Using a business coach makes sense. It’s what successful business owners do, naturally. It’s a logical, necessary phase to get to a certain level in your business. The business owners who’re failing are the ones not considering a business coach.  If you join the 12%, you’ll be in an elite group.

 

 

Lack of time

 

The first few months using a business coach will be the hardest. I work quickly to find ways to reorganize, re-prioritize, and eliminate so you can carve out 5 hours to work ON the business rather than IN the business. For instance, you might be creating weekly reports that we can offload to a lower-paid employee. We may create or enhance your org chart to refine roles and identify delegation opportunities. At each session I help you implement and assist you in breaking through the roadblocks. By about the 4th month, you start seeing that you’ve got extra time and we use that time to work on higher value, customer-centric priorities, to develop systems/processes to handle 80% of the tasks in the business. This’ll significantly reduce your costs as you can hire lower-paid employees to handle structured, systemized tasks!

 

 

Affordability

 

Using a business coach willcost you nothing. I’m serious. The annual amount you pay to your business advisor you’ll recoup within the first 2 – 3 months. That’s quite a claim, I know but my clients get a 300% to 700% return on their investment in my coaching fee within the 1st year… and most see that return in the first few months.  And get this—that doesn’t include any “non-financial” savings they enjoy.

 

 

Two Real Life Examples

 

One client, a service company owner, suspected that a longtime employee was undermining him. When we put some controls in place, not only did we find out the employee was trying to turn the rest of the staff against him, she was stealing. My client replaced the employee with one making $20K/yr less and the average cash on hand increased $10k/yr. A $30K savings/yr plus a much happier staff and work environment… all within the first few months of coaching.

 

A manufacturing client was frustrated by the inability to produce consistent profits. We walked through an “Ideal Client exercise” and he realized that 90% of his profit came from the top 6% of his customers. He began to raise prices on “D” customers expecting to lose them. But they stayed and within 6 months his firm was producing consistent profit—a 400% return on his annual coaching fees…

 

Click here to see more about how I help business owners and to schedule a hassle-free phone conversation to see what business coaching can do for you.

 

You can’t afford NOT to engage a business coach. You’ll walk away with immediate gains in profit plus a long-term entrepreneurial education.