What is a Business Coach?
Everyone, no matter how successful he or she is, can benefit from having a coach who helps push them to the next level. This is true for athletes, students, and even business owners.
Put simply: a business coach is exactly as the name implies: a coach who helps their clients achieve their business goals. Business coaches help their clients define their goals more clearly, implement plans to reach these goals, and modify these plans as things change over time.
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably wondering whether or not hiring a business coach is the right choice for you and your company. In the following sections, we will outline all of the different considerations that should be made when deciding whether or not to hire a business coach.
Related: How to Start a Business
What Does a Business Coach Cost?
According to Noomi, a large, professional coaching directory, business coaches charge in the range of $175.00 and $250.00 per hour for their one-on-one coaching services.
If this price is too far beyond your means, many coaches offer group coaching sessions as a lower-priced alternative. However, each participant in a group setting will obviously receive less individualized advice.
What is the Role of Business Coach?
As was hinted at in the beginning of this article, business coaches are responsible for helping business owners achieve their professional goals. Every coach will have a slightly different approach, but most of them will implement a system consisting of:
- Goal Setting – Arguably the most important step of any venture is setting realistic, achievable goals. Business coaches are experts at consolidating a client’s desires into one or more well-defined goals. If the client’s goals are unrealistic, they may never achieve them and become frustrated quickly. Business coaches prevent this from happening during the goal-setting phase.
- Defining Actionable Plans to Achieve Goals – Once a specific goal has been set by the client with the help of the business coach, the next step is creating a plan to reach those goals. This usually involves implementing short-term and long-term plans that will all lead toward the client’s overall goals. All of these plans tend to involve “action”, so that the client is actively doing something to bring themselves closer to the end goal.
- Providing Feedback and Modifying Goals as Needed – Because many clients will have lofty goals that may take years to achieve, it’s often the case that business coaches will need to help clients modify or redefine goals as time goes by. Business coaches are extremely adaptable to change and can help clients navigate tricky situations where they may need to slightly tweak a goal or plan based on previously unforeseen stumbling blocks.
What are the Benefits of Having a Business Coach?
Business coaches provide tons of value to clients. Specifically:
- Business Coaches Encourage Their Clients to be Accountable. If a client doesn’t have anyone to whom they are accountable, they often fail in their goals. Clients who hire business coaches, on the other hand, feel as if they have a partner in their corner who knows exactly what they want to achieve and can celebrate their successes alongside them.
- Business Coaches Provide Perspective to Clients. Clients will have a certain view of their business that will be very different from that of an outsider, such as a business coach. Because a business coach has a different perspective of a client’s company than the client does, they can help the client look at these issues from a different point of view and create stronger goals and plans than they would without the help of a coach.
- Business Coaches Improve the Confidence of Clients. Without a coach, business owners are on their own. They may not have anyone who will give them unbiased feedback on their business plans and their confidence level may be very low. Business coaches can act as a sounding board for their clients, allowing them to bounce ideas off of them and give feedback on whether these are good plans that will help them reach their goals or not.
Examples of Famous Entrepreneurs and Business Owners Who Have Used Business Coaches
Many of the famous entrepreneurs, who have become household names, have used a business coach at one time or another. The list is long, but includes:
- Oprah Winfrey. The incredible success of Oprah Winfrey belongs primarily to the woman herself. However, she is the first to admit that she owes so much to those who helped her along the way. Specifically, her coach Martha Beck has been cited by Oprah as one of the biggest influences on her career.
- Eric Schmidt. Schmidt was the former Chief Executive Officer of Google. As the CEO of one of the largest companies of the world, clearly Eric Schmidt knows what it takes to be successful. He has talked frequently about the importance of using a coach for the many benefits these individuals bring to those in the business world.
- Leonardo DiCaprio. Perhaps one of the most famous actors in Hollywood today, Leo has attributed some of his success to coaches he has worked with in the past.
- Steve Bennett. Another former CEO of an extremely large and important company, Intuit, Steve Bennett insists that coaches are an absolute necessity in the business world.
Should I Hire a Business Coach?
No one can or should answer this question for you. When considering hiring a business coach, it’s vitally important that you examine your business with a few important questions in mind:
- Can You Afford a Coach? When it comes down to it, you need to have the necessary funds if you plan to hire a business coach. If it is important that you retain a coach immediately, it may be a good idea to move some funds around to ensure that you can afford a coach.
- What are Your General Business Goals? While your coach will help you define your goals, you need to know what you want in general.
- Do You Understand What a Business Coach Does? At the end of the day, you need to understand that while a coach will help guide, encourage, and motivate you; you have to do the work yourself.
