5 Reasons Why You Need a Business Coach
Hiring a business coach is great way to improve the quality of your life and the life of your business. As a small business owner, you are required to go above and beyond everyone in the business. In fact, the rest of the business depends on a strong leader. Strong leaders aren’t born that way, they are created. It will take more than self-will to do that. Any great leader will tell you it takes a team to make a strong business. Every great team has a coach behind the scenes, and here are 5 reasons why your team should have one.
- You can’t fix something you’re in the middle of
Let’s face it, running a small business isn’t the easiest thing to do. As a small business owner, you have to have your hands in almost every single part of the day-to-day operations. Even doing your best sometimes isn’t good enough as things can always slip by you without you knowing. Managing your business from the vortex of the daily chaos isn’t the best option, but many small business owners do this for many reasons. These reasons can be things like:
- Having no money in the budget to hire a professional.
- Thinking that everything is fine the way it is.
- Having too much pride to take advice from another person.
- Being comfortable right where things are.
- Fear of change or the unknown.
- Just too busy to notice the problems or to make the time to manage them.
Addressing the issues
Nothing stays the same. In fact, everything is in a constant state of motion. Change is a universal law of nature. When someone says “I like things exactly as they are.” That person is showing their ignorance. You are either moving forward or backward. The businesses that are moving forward are learning about the tools and technology available to them in the modern times. Those that continue to do business like they did 5 years ago or longer are actually falling behind and will eventually fail.
False Sense of Pride and Security
Just being in business for many years doesn’t mean you are doing good. Take a look at Sears. Sears, Roebuck and company was founded in 1892. Sears became a successful chain of department stores all across America. 131 years later, they are near bankruptcy. Look at K-Mart, Toys-R-Us, Montgomery Wards, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Blockbuster Video… these weren’t small businesses. Businesses typically fail due to poor management practices. This is usually centered around a closed-minded mentality by those in control at the highest levels. If you want to learn more about why businesses fail, click here and read this article.
- Another perspective is always good
Seeing things form only one perspective (yours) leaves a lot of ground in the blind spots. If you’re making your decisions based on things that you are missing, your decisions aren’t going to serve you well. Getting another perspective view will fill in those blind areas and give you a better picture of what you may not be seeing. Your business coach will work with you to improve your perspective and also offer another one or more to consider.
As you become more comfortable looking at things from different perspectives, you will also become more open to new ideas and viewpoints from your employees and customers. This is where huge improvements are made to your process. Your employees are the best resource you have. If you treat them with respect and show them you value their feedback, they will most likely treat your customers the same. The major changes that benefit every business that is struggling or on the verge of failure come from the very top. Even a small change will show its effects in little time.
- Your employees usually won’t tell you the details
If you are the kind of leader who doesn’t care about what your employees or customers think or say behind your back, you are leading blindly into your own demise. Your best employees (those who do care), will eventually burn out and lose their interest in making things better. Their job will become only a source for a paycheck. They will do only the bare minimum to keep their job.
Benefits of Putting Your Employees First
Having a strong relationship with your staff has many benefits that any smart business person should know. The most important is that morale will always maintain all-time highs. Good company morale will never allow room for negativity to flourish into a cancer. Disgruntled employees become a cancer and their negative energy will flow through your labor pool and onto your customers. Stopping this becomes very challenging, and if not stopped quickly, it will sink your ship.
Common Misconceptions
If your concerned about safety, and your actions contradict your words and demands, your employees aren’t going to take you seriously. Ignoring complaints from your staff on issues of safety will also turn them against you silently. They will see you as being a hypocrite and lose their ambition to talk to you further. The same is true if your concern is quality and your actions prove otherwise. When your staff comes to you with an idea to improve your process and you show no interest, they will lose their passion to do more than the bare minimum. They will also not inform you of anything further that could potentially save you thousands …or the business itself!
Reading the Writing on the Wall
Your employees and customers are both there to help you if you let them. Not making the time to read the signs isn’t an excuse, nor will it save you from failure. Your best customers are those who take the time to leave you reviews. Their feedback, most often will show you where you are lacking. Sometimes it’s only a lack of communication from your end. Everyone knows that you can’t satisfy everyone all of the time, but if you genuinely care about your customer’s experience, you would at least look into what part of every issue is yours and respond respectfully. These are just a few areas that working with a business coach can remedy.
- Self-improvement will also improve your small business
The small business structure is designed in a way to catch and correct problems easily and swiftly. Large corporations don’t have this luxury. Making changes to improve a small business begins with the owner. Improvements usually need to go through the owner for approval anyway. So, the best way to get things done is to go straight to the source. As the owner, you are the most important element of the business. Having someone to work with you one-on-one will open doors to making monumental changes. Your staff can help you through some issues, but you may not want to share everything with them. A coach becomes a trusted confidant you can talk to regarding personal issues that can affect your business.
You are the Greatest Investment You Will Make
Investing back in your business is a good rule to follow if you want to keep it running strong. Without doing this, everything eventually wears out over time. Since you are the most important element of your business, investing in you is always going to be a great investment. Now I’m not saying go out and buy a new watch or a new boat for yourself. Investing in self-improvement is not the same as spending money on material objects. Every small business owner should set aside some time and earmark a budget for making self-improvements. Your business depends on it!
- Growth requires a broader scope of thought
It’s very naive to think that only one train of thought is enough to come to the best conclusions. A broader scope of vision will always yield more options and better decisions. It’s near impossible to fix problems you can’t see, and even harder to fix problems you don’t acknowledge. When your perspective is from inside the vortex of the daily chaos, you are blind to the true nature of issues you are dealing with.
You Can’t Change What You Don’t Acknowledge.
The first step towards growth is becoming open to another point of view. This requires an objective mindset. You have to be willing to let go of your own perspective for a deeper understanding of the bigger picture. Business owners that think in this way achieve much higher levels of success and enjoy the rewards that go with that. Quality help is hard to find, but you can be sure that those who work hard for you want something better for themselves too.
Keeping quality employees happy requires you, as the owner of the business to constantly be looking for ways to improve your business. Providing a better work environment is one way to do that. Another way is to invest back into your business to make it more efficient. Those savings can go towards bonuses and pay raises for your best employees. Incentives like that will create better employees, and attract more quality customers to your business.
The Hard Facts
Everything is in a constant state of change…that much is science. Nothing stays the same. If you think it does, you are either blind or delusional. Either way, you are moving forward or backwards. Growth comes from a broader scope of thought. As we become aware of other perspectives than our own, and we are receptive to them, we grow as individuals. As leaders, we can teach our staff of our new findings and make them more useful to the company. Having people who care more about your business than just that weekly paycheck is beneficial to both you and your customers.
Hire A Business Coach
A business coach can help you with things you cannot see. Also having one that understands the science behind marketing, branding and advertising is a bonus. The inner workings of your business are a crucial element that must be kept in tune for everything else to work efficiently. If you have the right people but your process is broken or flawed, your people will look somewhere else for a better situation for themselves…remember that they aren’t as invested into your business as you are.
If you think your people and process are both in peak performance, but your image or reputation online is weak or poor, you aren’t seeing the whole picture. Results always tell the truth. Results are your scorecard. Use it to your gain, or ignore it and prepare to fail. As a leader, you determine your own fate and the fate of your ship.
