Why a Good Business Coach is an Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon

Many successful entrepreneurs say their business coach has been their secret weapon in driving business growth. 

These entrepreneurs include famous founders like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Logan Green (LYFT) and Evan Sharp (Pinterest,) and CEOs Eric Schmidt (Google,) and Steve Bennett (Intuit).

If you want to grow beyond a certain size you can’t afford not to hire a business coach. 

In the next section, we’ll go through the reasons why a business coach for entrepreneurs is a valuable investment, and then look at how a coach can help you build a fulfilling and successful business. 

Why would an Entrepreneur Hire a Business Coach?

#1 The Growth Trap

Growing a business means outgrowing your limits. Most business owners start their company from an inner drive – the desire to be independent, to plot their own path, to do things their way. And this drive can take them a long way. 

However, at a certain stage of business growth (and this varies from person to person, and company to company,) you’ll discover you’ve become the bottleneck that’s keeping your business the size it is. 

The quickest way to break through this barrier is to hire a coach who’s already taken businesses past your current level. 

#2 The Frankenstein Business 

The classic Frankenstein story is about an inventor who sets out to create something wonderful: the perfect human. But instead, he creates a monster. 

Almost every entrepreneur has at one time in their business looked around and thought: ‘*$#@! How did I end up here? This business is eating me alive.’

A coach can help you steer clear of creating a business that doesn’t suit your temperament. And if you find you have created a monster, they can help you change your business so that it feeds you instead of eating you. 

#3 Specific Challenges

You might also want a coach for a specific reason, like: 

• building your team
• upskilling in leadership
• resolving conflict
• growing an online business
• De-stressing
• regaining work-life balance
• doing business overseas
• going into partnership
• preparing your business for sale 

In each case, the key is to find a coach with extensive experience in that area, who’s helped others do what you want to do.  

How Business Coaching can Help Entrepreneurs

Blind Spots

Everyone has blind spots. These are things you don’t know you don’t know. As a business leader, it’s often the case that people won’t point these out to you, either because they’re on your payroll, or they have competing interests. 

Your coach is the one who’s qualified and motivated to point out to you where your blindspots are. This can save you enormous amounts of time, money, stress, and missed opportunities. 

High Performance

Like pro athletes, successful business owners use coaches to reach the top levels of performance. When elite performers like Roger Federer & Steph Curry have coaches, it’s clear they bring real value even to those at the top of their game. 

In a business sense, this value includes helping entrepreneurs with mindset and limiting beliefs.

Levelling Up

Regardless of the industry you’re in, the same challenges apply at different stages of your business’s growth. A coach can help you navigate challenges like:

• Managing your time with competing priorities
• Putting systems and SOP’s in place
• Hiring staff
• Creating a more profitable business
• Building a management team
• Taking on investors
• Preparing to sell your business 

Independent Feedback (aka hard truths)

As an entrepreneur at the head of your company, you’re used to being the one who makes decisions and solves problems. Employees look to you to have a plan and all the answers. 

The problem with this is that the entrepreneurial journey is like flying cross country without a map. Entrepreneurs don’t have all the answers, they just feel like they’re expected to know what to do in every situation. 

This is where a business coach is invaluable. The fact they’re not a stakeholder in your business means you can be honest & vulnerable without repercussions. They’re someone you can open up about things you wouldn’t disclose to employees or investors. 

Because a business coach has inside information, but is outside your company, they can give you honest and accurate feedback on how to improve as an entrepreneur and a leader.  

Accountability

A business coach can function as your compass, keeping you on track through ups & downs. Some entrepreneurs can get distracted by bright & shiny objects, or overwhelmed by emergencies and crises. 

Working with a business coach is a great way to build good habits, make mindset shifts, and establish and stick to clear goals. 

Business Design & Mindset

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle

Businesses are not one-size-fits all. What may be an ideal business for one person can be a nightmare for another. 

All too often, though, entrepreneurs end up creating the business they believe they ‘should’ create, rather than the one that actually works for them.

The right business coach can first help an entrepreneur understand their own leadership style, then work with them to design their business to play to their strengths. This can help entrepreneurs: 

• Reduce stress
• Remove self-imposed limitations 
• Remove resistance

• Make their business more fulfilling
• Make their business more profitable

Upskilling

Entrepreneurs wanting to grow their company cannot ignore communication and leadership skills. These represent the best hidden investment (and hidden cost) in growing a great team and company culture, which in turn results in a thriving business. 

It’s easy to assume our communication skills are fine, because we communicate every day. In reality, most people commit communication missteps on a regular basis. This results in disengaged employees, conflict, stunted business growth. 

A coach can help you massively upskill your leadership & communication abilities. These areas are often a blind spot, and it’s only once they’re improved that you notice how much more productive and enjoyable your company is to work in. 

Eventually, an entrepreneur who’s an effective leader becomes the coach to their employees, helping them become better leaders and more fulfilled in their roles. 

Insights & Personal Growth

“A lot of times the question is harder than the answer. If you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part.” – Elon Musk 

An experienced business coach can dramatically speed up your ability to learn. This comes from two things: an outside perspective, and the ability to ask the right questions.

Often, knowing what to do is even more important than knowing how to do it, and a skilled coach will help you figure out the ‘what.’ 

Finding Balance

When you’re shooting for the moon, focusing on growth, and building a great company, you may end up sacrificing everything on the altar of business achievement. 

In these circumstances, it’s easy to let relationships go, have your health suffer, and forget why you got into business in the first place. 

Even if you build an amazing business, if you end up with a failed marriage and ill health, your quality of life would be sunk. The way you spend your time while you’re growing your company is as important as the goal – and time is the one currency you can never get back once it’s spent. 

A business coach can help you win in all three spheres: business, relationships, and health. Without keeping balance in all three of these areas, any business successes you achieve won’t bring lasting happiness. 

Why Mike?

For over 20 years, Mike has built businesses himself, and coached entrepreneurs to great success. 

Mike’s unique approach to business coaching is based on what he was missing after he achieved a high level of success in his own business. 

He’d pushed hard to create what was at one stage the largest salesforce in Australia, but having done this, Mike wanted to find success that didn’t require force and burnout.

That’s when he stumbled upon an approach that focuses on removing resistance, rather than pushing through obstacles. It’s a data-driven path, where entrepreneurs identify and then remove the barriers (both internal and external,) that create friction in their lives. 

When you remove resistance, tasks become easier, work becomes more fulfilling, and you and your business become dramatically more productive. 

Results 

Here are some of the results Mike’s clients have experienced. If you’d like to experience Mike’s coaching, use the link below to schedule a no-obligation free session.

Book a Free Session: https://advancedbusinessabilities.com/free-discovery-session/