Online Business Coach: Helping You Grow as a Leader
Our business is helping you. Our success is tied to how well we can help you succeed.
The Importance of an Online Business Coach for Growth
When you’ve reached a certain level of success in your business, you start to come across new problems. They’re not necessarily roadblocks, more like being in slow-moving traffic.
You can start to feel like you have to just keep your head down, nose to the grindstone. While that’s admirable, that’s not all that’s needed if you really want to grow your business.
Here’s where an online business coach can guide you to navigate more efficiently and see the broader horizon ahead.
Deciphering Online Business Coaching
The Distinction: Coach vs. Consultant
Now, we need to clarify the difference between an ‘online business consultant and an online business coaching. Both serve specific purposes but try to achieve different goals.
An online business consultant is someone who specializes in the micro; they take a hands-on approach and aim to give you solutions for very specific problems that your business might be facing.
While a business coach can do that as well, their approach is about helping you become a better leader and/or business owners.
Basically, a consultant is more like an employee, and a coach is more like a mentor or partner. A partner that you don’t have to split ownership with. If you’re a small to medium business owner, then you probably have a pretty good handle on what it is your company can do for others.
The Complexities of Business Growth
You know what problems you solve, how you solve them, and what gives you the competitive advantage. But if you’re like many other business owners out there, then you might struggle with balancing function, operation, and future planning.
Maybe you’re great at executing in the immediate, but as you get your business off the ground and try to scale up your business, it can be tough to know which direction to go in first. All of a sudden, you find yourself having to search and hire the right talent, manage the day-to-day operations, and come up with a road map for the future.
Now, you probably pride yourself on building a business that is successful enough to start having these problems. These are good problems to have, after all. But it can be lonely at the top. Your employees are all looking to you to lead them in the right direction. You can easily start to feel like you’re getting in over your head.
If these words resonate, you might be in need of an online business coach.
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What can an online business coach do for you?
In our opinion, good business coaching is more about asking the right questions than it is about telling you what to do. Of course, we have tried and true strategies that are ready to implement, but we don’t run a cookie-cutter operation. We’ve seen some of the best results come from just being a good partner to bounce ideas off of, and then providing the prompts and questions that make the right choice clear in your mind.
You know your business better than we do; this is a fundamental truth. What we bring to the table is our experience business coaching others who have faced similar obstacles in their growth process. Not only that, but we’ve faced them ourselves. As business coaches, we are the owners of our businesses. We have felt the same growing pains firsthand—in this industry and others.
Our most valuable expertise is leadership skills development. A good business coach is going to challenge you, is going to make you grow as a leader. That is the catalyst. When you grow as a leader, you become the rising tide that lifts all boats. When you improve as a leader, it makes it that much easier for you and your employees to scale your business.
The Role of an Online Business Coach
While the job of the business consultant is to help find the root of the problem and then how to make corrections, the job of a business coach is to aid in your development as the head of the company, to provide insight on pain points, to show you pros and cons of moving in various directions, and to hold you accountable. The last one may be the most important because, as the head of your company, your employees are most likely not going to actively, or at least verbally, hold you to your goals or deadlines. A partner will hold you accountable, to make sure you’re making the moves that are aligned with your goals.
How Can an Online Business Coach Benefit You?
With a business coach, during your coaching session, you get unbiased feedback and honest answers. Sometimes you’re just too close to the puzzle to see the picture that is forming. An outside point of view can help shine a light on areas that you know you could improve on but have purposefully not been focusing on. It’s only natural, to spend most of your time and energy doing the things you feel you’re good at. When everything seems to be running smoothly enough, people justify avoiding those areas that make them uncomfortable. We’ll help push you outside of your comfort zone, face your business fears, and then help you keep yourself accountable. Doing something once will help, but real growth comes from the power of compounding.
Our Commitment as Business Coaches
We want to: help you get proactive, give you a clear path to follow using our proven ActionCOACH tools, support you as a leader, work with you to set SMART goals, provide insight from our past experiences in situations you might not have encountered yet, help you manage your schedule, expand your network, build your confidence, increase your profitability and revenue, be a sounding board, provide honest feedback, and help make your vision for your company a reality.
If you’re interested in having a one-on-one conversation about your business, get in touch with us today. Our experienced business coaches are ready to listen and ready to help.
FAQs
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What do online business coaches do?
AFirst, we have a discovery call where we try to get a sense of the kind of help that you’re looking for, your pain points, and if we think our services are a good fit for your situation. Then, if we choose to proceed, then we’ll have a standing appointment with you—usually weekly—to create specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals and check in on them. We believe coaching offers and helps you build a path to being a better leader, with concrete checkpoints along the way. At one point, you created a vision for your business. But with growth and time, that vision may have changed, or you may feel that it’s ready to change. We help you realize that vision or help mold the new one. One part support, one part teacher, one part motivator.
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How much do online business coaches charge?
AWe don’t believe in a price range and it’s not how we work. Our approach is focused on ROI and once we have a better understanding of your overall business, we can give you an understanding of what a coaching investment will look like.
We believe business coaching should be an investment that creates an identifiable return.
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As in many industries, there are (unfortunately) a lot of people out there who call themselves business coaches, build a website and attract clients, all without having gone through real training or ever building any kind of business themselves beforehand. So, what should you look for in a business coach? Well, you should look for proof of tangible results. Statistics from other businesses that the coach has worked with. In some cases, it may be worth looking into the industries that the coach’s past or current clients are in. Client testimonials are a good starting point when considering an online business coach. And ask around your network. Does anyone you know work with a business coach? What have they said about their experience? This could be telling one way or another. But the coach who is right or wrong for one person may be the inverse for you. So, to go further, you want to ask the right questions of a prospective business coach when having the initial phone call or meeting. Ask about results and methodology and past industry experience, but make sure they are asking the right questions of you as well. Then what it will come down to is personal fit. Is this someone you would be excited to partner with? If you’ve checked all of those boxes, then you’ll have your answer.
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Do you need a business coach?
AIn the end, only you can answer that, but here are some things to ask yourself when considering the decision. Are you feeling stuck, indecisive, or without good sources of advice? Are you nervous that you’ll take the wrong step when trying to bring your company to the next level? Would you value an outside unbiased point of view? Do you feel yourself getting sucked into an unchallenging routine of comfort? Are you seeking accountability? Would your business benefit from your expanded network? Do you know your weaknesses? If so, are you actively doing something to combat them? Are you looking for clarity? Are you a small business? Medium business? If any or all of those sound like you, then it’s worth looking into. Not saying you must need a business coach if you answered yes, but it’s worth having some initial conversations.
Ask yourself this question, why do the most elite athletes in the world have a coach? Because no matter where you are, having someone looking in can always make you better.
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Is it worth investing in a business coach?
AThe statistics seem to agree. The firm Korn Ferry International researched just that question and found that after introducing business coaching, 96% of organizations reported individual performance improvements, and 92% said they believed that their leadership effectiveness and management skills improved. Similarly, Merill C. Anderson, a Ph.D. at MerixGlobal performed a case study and found that executive coaching produced a 788% return on investment. Of course, some of the biggest returns can be on the intangibles – such as life and business balance. We guarantee to find our fee inside the first 17 weeks and will only work with you if we see a 3x return on your investment in the first year. That’s just the minimum though, we are confident that if we are a good fit for you and your business, then we can achieve much more than that. But again, the return is good, but the shift in how you feel about the status of you’re business—that’s unquantifiable.
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How long should you work with a business coach?
AThe rate of return most people see usually comes after 6 months or more. Business owners typically report that within the first 3 months, they are feeling better about their business, leadership, and management skills. But if you are looking for compounding results, then most successfully grown small to medium businesses have been working with their coach for more than 12 months. The important thing is: are you getting the results you were after. Creating Key Performance Indicators with your business coach is an important first step at the beginning of the process. Each client’s will vary, and it is important to be able to draw correlation to your KPI’s from the work you are doing with your business coach. A good business coach with years of experience will be able to give you an idea if what you think is realistic actually is.
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What questions should I ask a prospective business coach?
A- How much experience do you have?
- What is your vision of success for a client?
- What are your top three values?
- Do you have plans that will fit my needs?
- What timeline do you think I’m looking at in terms of what I want to achieve?
- What certifications do you have?
- Why are you a business coach?
- What separates you from other business coaches?
- What is your preferred method of communication?
- What are some of your previous results?
