How Executive Coaching Helps Business Owners Grow

Coaching works because it highlights your blind spots, a good coach lets you borrow experience from someone else and use it to your advantage. Instead of learning everything the hard way, you can accelerate your growth with less effort. Bonus? You get a confidential place to share your biggest fears, frustrations and challenges that come with running your business. That allows you to keep things at home and with your friends focused on them vs bringing your business problems home.

You're smart and very capable. So, why pay someone to help you grow your business? Here's why the smartest business owners do it.

Key Takeaways

• You don't know what you don't know. It's impossible to see your own blind spots, so an outside perspective helps you avoid critical mistakes.
• You can move faster. Someone who can match the patterns they see for success to your business helps you grow faster.
• You can do it with less effort. Grit works until it doesn't, so learning to work more efficiently keeps you from burning out.
• You get support. It's a lonely place at the top, and having someone you trust to share your fears and challenges with makes it easier.

You don't know what you don't know

Every business owner has blind spots. There are weaknesses we all have that, at worst, keep us from ever reaching the level of success we want. At best, it makes the road to success much more challenging. And it's already very challenging!

There's no hidden insult here, this is just how being inside your own business works. You can be too close to see the path out or the risks that lie ahead. Most business owners leverage their many strengths to solve business problems, but that isn't always enough.

A good coach will bring an outside view and put a spotlight on your blind spots so that you can catch problems before they show up.

You can move faster

Avoiding mistakes is only half the battle. There's a component of speed in business that most business owners desire.

A great coach allows you to lean on their experience with other businesses to match patterns of business that exist, avoid those mistakes and find solutions faster. Not only will you find that you move through challenges faster, but you'll avoid some roadblocks altogether because you can now see them coming.

Instead of relying on trial and error to solve your challenges you can get results a lot faster.

You can do it with less effort

Most business owners grow their business on grit. You are the one willing to grind through the tough periods, burn the candle at both ends and push on with sheer willpower. And that works, until it doesn't. Eventually you will burn out.

At some point you can't out hustle your way to the next stage of business. You need to find ways to be more effective and efficient so that you can apply your energy to the right areas of the business. A coach will help you find the moves that get you more without grinding it out all the time.

You Get Support

It's lonely at the top. There are challenges you face most people can't understand. There are fears that you feel need to stay hidden so your team has the confidence to do the hard things required to grow. You are the one laying awake at 3am worried about the next big thing ahead of you.

Your spouse, friends and team can't relate to what you are carrying. They can be supportive and empathize, but they can't relate (unless they are in a similar spot).

A good coach will give you somewhere to put all of those fears, worries and challenges without judgement so that you aren't holding it alone or dumping it on those you care most about. That allows you to show up your best outside of work, which will ultimately recharge you to do the work you love more effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does an executive coach actually do for a business owner?
The short answer is ask the right questions. A great coach will act as an outside set of eyes on your business. They will ask questions to help you understand, identify blind spots and help shortcut your learning curve.

Isn't hiring a coach an admission that something's wrong or I can't do it by myself?
No. The business owners who use a coach aren't the ones who are struggling, they are usually the ones who are already doing well and want to grow faster without wasting time, effort and money. Professional athletes at the top of their sport all have coaches. Running a business is no different.

How is a coach different from just talking to a mentor or a friend?
A mentor will give you their opinion based on their own experience. Which is great, but a coach is trained to ask the right questions, spot patterns across many businesses, and hold you accountable to the commitments you say you will make. It's a different level of structure and relationship than any informal chat with a friend or mentor.