It’s tough at the top, but unlike the big hitters of the corporate world, most talented young entrepreneurs don’t commonly use business coaches. However, the consensus is growing that if you want to make the right decisions, manage your team effectively and sustainably grow your business, you should definitely consider a coach as an essential part of your organisation.
Sir Richard Branson puts it better on his own blog, saying that “most novice entrepreneurs need the kind of guidance only a trusted mentor can provide.” So why specifically would you hire a business mentor or ‘entrepreneur coach’?
See your business objectively
First, as an entrepreneur, you’re often isolated. Even if you’re constantly coming up with great ideas and growing profitable new enterprises, in the long-term you’re only as good as your group growth strategy and the team around you.
One of the benefits of a good business coach is that they will make sure you meet your commitments, behave responsibly and question your own decisions. It’s amazing how often the biggest stumbling block in a business is its owner’s perceptions. In this context, an experienced ‘entrepreneur coach’ can help you see your business in a truly objective light, something you’d be hard pushed to achieve on your own.
Heading in the right direction
Much like a sports coach, a great mentor can provide entrepreneurs with the structural framework, strategic thinking and people skills needed to build a sustainable business.
Writing for Entrepreneur.com, career management counsellor Roy Blitzer identifies five clear areas where a good coach can assist entrepreneurs, helping them to “recalibrate their success metrics, polish their leadership styles, realign their priorities, lead teams more powerfully and navigate for (an) uncertain future.”
Further than this perhaps, an entrepreneur coach can also be there for good old-fashioned moral support. As accountability expert Dries Cronje outlines on ProductiveEntreprenuer.com, young entrepreneurs “need people who have achieved what they’re trying to achieve to give them advice and feedback, and to keep them heading in the right direction.” If you’re honest, are you currently on the right road – and can you even see it?
Reaching your potential
In conclusion, it seems there is agreement amongst the business community (and entrepreneurs themselves) that hiring a mentor or coach to help you achieve your goals isn’t a sign of failure, but a sign of professionalism found only in successful empire builders.
Whilst entrepreneurs still need to take ultimate responsibility for their actions in creating enterprise and sparking innovation, and in bringing their vision to life as a viable long-term business model – it appears more now than ever that coaches are a necessity to help gifted entrepreneurs become even more successful.
As a former panellist on the popular BBC series ‘Dragons’ Den’, millionaire businessman Doug Richard has seen the value of coaching proved many times. “It is impossible to make a bad product good,” says Richard, “but it is quite possible to coach and mentor young entrepreneurs to become great.”