Being a business owner comes with many challenges.

  • You have to plan and strategize
  • You have to market and promote
  • You have to wrap your head around finances
  • You have to train and manage staff

All this alongside the day-to-day operations can feel overwhelming. Right?

With a business coach, you can overcome these challenges and better manage your time and resources to make your business function more efficiently.

In today’s day and age, every great entrepreneur is surrounded by coaches and advisors. According to a study conducted by Manchester Inc., businesses who employed a coach saw an average return on their investment of 5.7 times the amount they paid for the coaching service.

Business coaches are typically expert entrepreneurs who know how to drive success. Using their vast experience growing businesses, they can arm you with the tools needed to set and hit the right business goals. Here’s how…

1) Help Facilitate Business Development

Any coach worth their salt will start with the very basics. I always begin by developing a strategy with my clients that focuses on the growth and development of a business. This strategy is always designed with specific business goals in mind.

To facilitate business development, a coach will assist in decision making and, as I do with my clients, will frequently encourage you to think outside the box to devise innovative solutions. Having worked with a multitude of businesses, an experienced coach should know what works well and what to avoid. They will then use this to provide insights and ideas that you may not have previously considered, driving meaningful development.

‘But I don’t need a coach. I know my business better than anybody.’

It’s true that you are an expert in your own business and it’s only natural to feel reluctant to bring a coach into the mix, especially if the company is currently doing well. However, a business coach can help you turn your business from one that is merely surviving to one that is thriving, and we do this by encouraging you to aim higher.

In fact, the Personnel Management Association conducted a study and found that, when executives were given a coach and training, their productivity increased by 86%. When they received training alone, their productivity only saw a 22% increase.

Much like a personal trainer in the gym, a good business coach will instil a passion for never-ending improvement and innovation. And the best part? Once you have adopted this coaching culture, it will implement lasting change.

2) Track Progress and Encourage Accountability

These next two go hand in hand. Most people won’t hold themselves accountable, and this makes it hard to accurately measure progress on your own.

It’s all too easy to make promises, set goals, and then break them if we don’t ‘feel like it’, or if they become ‘too hard’. We’re only human after all. Without a business coach, these occurrences can go unnoticed, which often means no consequences and certainly no growth.

I always say that a business coach should act as an ‘unreasonable friend’. One who will hold you accountable for everything you do. Together, you can set goals with your business coach, assign a realistic deadline and then, on the deadline, reflect.

If you achieved your goal, congratulations! Your coach will start brainstorming with you on how you can continue on this upwards trajectory. If you didn’t achieve the goal, your business coach will make sure you’re responsible. They’ll work with you to understand exactly why this goal wasn’t achieved and will make suggestions on how it can be more easily achieved in the future.

Better yet, this accountability and goal setting will mean you have a record of progress. When setting goals alone, it’s common to only look forward. A quality business coach will ensure you take time to reflect on the progress you have made so far, increasing motivation and inspiring more great results.

 

3) Improve Profitability

Facilitating growth and encouraging accountability is essential, but it’s all for nothing unless the business is profitable.

22% of companies report that business coaching increased their profitability, and this boost can be encouraged in many ways.

Firstly, coaches can make suggestions on your current practices and infrastructure, providing a much-needed external perspective on how to save time, resources, and general costs. They can also help to develop a realistic budget, set prices for new services, and advise on new investments.

In 2020, businesses had to be extremely proactive in response to the changing demands of the market. Having a coach can make you quicker and more responsive to these unexpected changes, helping you to make timely (and appropriate) decisions. Think of them as a second set of eyes constantly on the look out for any market changes that might affect ‘business as usual’.

How Bill Squires Business Coaching can help you

Having a business coach is essentially like having a highly skilled partner who is there to help you seek real change.

Whether you’re stuck and wanting your business to grow, or you want to work more efficiently, it’s never a bad time to invest in a business coach.

My client Bill Barton from Barton Legal kindly summarised it for me: “You have a belief – ‘I’ve been running my business for 10 years plus, so I don’t need a coach, I am doing everything right, making a profit, growing etc’.

But it was only when I started to talk and have regular sessions with Bill that I began to understand all the things that I didn’t know, basically, the earlier you start with coaching the better!”

So, if you’re ready to adopt successful tactics, get great results and start driving profits, click here for your FREE 90-minute business review.