What is business coaching, and what does a business coach do? Those are great questions and when I started in the business coaching industry some 12, 13 years ago, it wasn’t very clear. A lot of people were very unsure about what a coach did. These days it’s getting much more prevalent. There’s more and more people using a business coach to help them grow their business, so more and more people are starting to hear about it and learn about them. But there are still a lot of people that are still unsure of why would you get a business coach? What does a business coach do? And how will they help me grow my business? So they’re all really, really good questions.
Now first of all, an individual business coach will work with you one-on-one to help you achieve your goals. They do that through working with you in the beginning, setting up a bit of a plan. They’ll talk to you about where it is you are now and where it is you want to be. Then they’ll help you put a plan together to close that gap and they’ll coach you through making that happen.
Now, I’m using the word “coach” but essentially what that means is that they’re going to hold you accountable. Now I want you to forget about business for a second because I’m going to talk about something you can probably relate to more than business coaching, and that is personal training. Because my business in particular here in Sydney, which is MaxMyProfit, is not just one coach, we’ve got a team of coaches here, we don’t just do business coaching. We run all sorts of additional training workshops, we’ve got group programs and we have one-on-one programs.
So it’s interesting to think that I can relate my business to something like a gym, which you’ll be able to relate to. If you think about it; you can get a gym membership where you just go along and you use the equipment. It’s there to use whenever their opening times are available, they have group programs where you can engage in that. Then there is also group classes where you can go into the gym and you can be in a spin class or an aerobicize class or something like that. Here you’re in a group with one instructor to many. Then you can go to the gym and you can get a personal trainer who works one-on-one with you, and they talk about your specific goals and help you put a plan together to achieve those goals.
Well our business is exactly the same. It works the exactly same way. So you can say I want a little bit or I want a lot. I want some group time, or I want some one-on-one time. And that’s really what coaching is all about.
Now why would you need a personal trainer? Because sometimes you get lazy, sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed. I know. I’m not the fittest bloke on the planet and I’ve got gym equipment at home and I don’t’ use it every day. Why? Because there’s no one there holding me accountable to doing it. Now the reality is that, people have a personal trainer because they know that a personal trainer is going to push them to work out harder than they would have if they didn’t have that trainer. And the same thing is very true with a business coach. A business coach is going to work you, get you to work harder than you ever thought you’d imagined you would.
What does a Business Coach Do?
A business coach is there to be your confidant, your mentor, they will be a shoulder to cry on if you need to have a cry, they’ll empathize with you, but they’re going to be an unreasonable friend. This is because they’re not there to tell you that everything’s going to be alright if you’re not doing what you need to be doing.
They’re going to be there to hold you accountable to what you said you were going to do. They’re not going to make you do stuff you don’t want to do. If you agree you want to do X, Y and Z though and you say to the coach, “this is my plan, here’s what I want to achieve.” Then that business coach will hold you accountable to doing those things.
So that’s essentially what a business coach does and why would you have a business coach. Because as human beings we can be a little bit lazy, we can do avoidance behaviour, we can get a little bit frightened. Or maybe you just lack the knowledge that you need to be able to get the confidence and have the tools that you need to make it all happen.
The Wrap Up
So there you go. Hopefully that helped you then understand a bit more about what a business coach does and why even you might need your own business coach.
About the Author
Ben Fewtrell is a sought-after Business Coach, Keynote Speaker and trainer who has featured in Virgin’s Inflight Magazine and Entertainment Portal, SKY Business and “Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed”. He is also the host of the popular Business Brain Food Podcast where he interviews leading experts on anything and everything business.
