Much like a fighter, an entrepreneur becomes better after taking a couple of hits and a couple of losses. This is because getting your butt kicked is a blessing in disguise that allows you to see where your weaknesses are.
And also, much like a fighter, those losses can happen less frequently if you have a good coach. This is because a good coach can spot your weaknesses by looking from the outside in and help you improve on them in practice before you get your butt kicked in the real world.
A good entrepreneur coach can help you accelerate your growth by years by helping you avoid having to learn from your own mistakes and helping you identify those mistakes sooner.
That being said, you may be wondering if an entrepreneurship coach is right for you.
In this article, let’s get into the following:
– What Does an Entrepreneur Coach Do?
– What are Some Entrepreneur Coaching Services?
– What Makes a Good Entrepreneur Coach?
– How to Know if You Need One?
What Doesn’t an Entrepreneur Coach Do?
What you get out of an entrepreneur coach depends on the level of experience the coach has as an entrepreneur.
A good entrepreneur coach should be a savvy businessperson, not just a therapist who understands psychology. While emotional and mental support is important to an entrepreneur, the most important thing is being able to make good business decisions and get guidance on how to grow the business efficiently.
You may want someone to talk to through the tough times, but the tough times will be few and far between if you get the business position right.
So, a good entrepreneur coach will coach you on all aspects of business, including sales, marketing, management, and more.
An entrepreneur coach is much like a consultant, but a bit more personal and one-on-one. You don’t want your coach to just be someone sending you digital files of resources. Instead, a good entrepreneur coach will listen to your specific situation and give you advice based on your unique business and personality.
They should be able to assess where you’re weak, where you’re strong, and where you want to go.
From there, there should be open communication to help guide you to your destination.
A good entrepreneur coach understands business as much as they understand people.
That being said, here are some services you can expect from entrepreneur coaching:
Entrepreneur Coaching Services
The entrepreneur coaching services will vary from coach to coach, but this is what an entrepreneur coach should be able to offer:
Sales Training
Every single entrepreneur needs to know how to sell, without exception. Whether you’re selling your products or services, whether you’re selling people on your vision, or selling an audience to engage with your brand, you need to know how to present your offer to the world. Sure, there are many successful tech entrepreneurs who don’t know a thing about sales. They have either successfully partnered with a salesperson or have a product so good they don’t need to sell. That being said, they would’ve been infinitely more successful if they knew how to go out and sell themselves and their brand to the world.
A good entrepreneur coach can help you craft a sales pitch around various aspects of you or your business and craft one for your employees as well.
People Management
Speaking of employees, a good coach should have leadership experience. Entrepreneurship usually starts off as self-employment, but that is not where it ends. If you’re a true entrepreneur, you will be or already are in a leadership position. Leading and managing people can be a difficult task and that is why leadership coaching exists as a service on its own.
If you have a good coach, they’ve been a leader before and can help you with this portion of the business.
Time Management
Where many entrepreneurs drop the ball is time management. Unlike most jobs, entrepreneurship requires you to do many jobs at once; you are always wearing multiple hats. Because of this, it’s hard to do everything right. Experienced entrepreneurs know that it becomes not just about using your time wisely, but also your energy, and there are techniques you can use to make your days more efficient.
Most entrepreneurs struggle with overestimating how much they can do in a day, and this leads to a lot of stress and self-loathing. Getting coaching can help you identify what your capacity is.
Finances
Managing cash flow is usually the biggest reason entrepreneurs can’t grow, whether they are bootstrapping or raising capital. You have to have a precise idea of what’s going out and what’s coming in. If you don’t, you will end up in trouble. It’s hard to out-earn a lack of financial discipline. There are entrepreneurs who make 7 to 8 figures that are broke by year’s end. That is a sure sign they are doing something wrong.
Marketing & Business Growth
One of the most important things an entrepreneur coach should be good at is business growth, which is largely centered around marketing.
They must have a good understanding of your business and product and provide you with a path to get to market. Each business needs to be present in all channels, but not all channels provide equal ROI, so you have to figure out which channel is going to be most effective. A good coach will guide you on how to test different channels and figure out whether you need to focus more on paid ads, organic, search, social, or some mix of all of the above.
Marketing is a tough thing to get right because it’s not about the channel, but about the execution.
I’ve consulted with many entrepreneurs who thought a channel didn’t work for them, only to make a couple of tweaks and later determine that it was the best channel available to them.
A good coach can also help you assess your marketing team, whether it’s an agency or an in-house team.
Emotional Support
One of the biggest reasons entrepreneurs reach for a coach is because entrepreneurship is such a lonely sport. Your friends don’t understand you, your family doesn’t understand you either, and you’re just steering the ship into what seems like the abyss while hoping for the best. Having a coach can help you navigate the waters with a bit more confidence and a bit more sanity.
A coach doesn’t have to replace your therapy, but having someone who has been there and done that can lift a lot of the weight off your shoulders.
Self Development
Coaches can also assess how you spend your days and make sure you’re spending time on not only developing yourself but also the business. The entrepreneurship journey is much more about you than it is about the business. You will have to spend a lot of time doing internal work and acquiring new skills as you go.
You will have to go from a jack of all trades to an exceptional leader, and there are a lot of other roles that you will play in the in-between path.
Coaches can also help you identify if you’re overdoing it. As much as you want to be a hard worker and spend every day being better, there is a time to work and a time to rest. If you want to win at this game, you have to run it like a marathon.
What Makes a Good Entrepreneur Coach?
While we touched on most of what a coach should do, let’s talk about some of the key things that you should look for in an entrepreneur coach:
1. Experience
A good coach should have experience. Not just in coaching entrepreneurs, but in being an entrepreneur. It’s one thing to read a lot of books and teach people what’s in those books; it’s a whole other thing to have been on the frontlines. You can’t learn about war by reading books about war; one can only truly know the fight by being in one. A good coach has been through the mental and emotional turmoil that comes with this game.
2. Balance of Skills
You want a coach that has multiple skills that have to do with running a business. You want them to be a business coach as much as you want them to be an entrepreneur coach. They should be able to help you with sales, marketing, organization, self-development, and overall support.
3. Availability
The biggest downfall with coaches these days is they give you worksheets and courses, rather than one-on-one time. A good coach should be able to meet with you one-on-one and help you get the support that you need, unique to you.
Finding a Good Coach
Finding a good coach can be hard; the most important thing will be to go with your gut. Whether you find them on social media or through a Google search, interview the coach first and make sure they can help you with your specific needs and can fit your budget.
Closing Thoughts
Should you hire a coach? Whether you’re early in the game or already established, why you hire a coach might be for different reasons. Those that are early might be seeking more of a mentor, while those that are established might be seeking more guidance on growth and support.
Whatever the reason, a coach can save you a lot of time and the pain of trying to figure it out on your own.
