How do you coach start-ups and entrepreneurs?

Learn them NOT to give up ?? Coaching startups requires a combination of business knowledge, leadership skills, and a deep understanding of the startup ecosystem. To effectively coach them, start by understanding their goals and challenges. Assess their strengths and weaknesses to determine where to focus our coaching efforts. Share expertise and provide guidance on relevant areas such as business strategy, marketing, finance, and team building. Help them set achievable milestones and develop an action plan. Hold them accountable, offer support and encouragement, and connect them with resources. Continuously learn and adapt to meet their evolving needs. Celebrate their successes to motivate them to keep moving forward.

Understanding your niche is paramount for any coach working with startups and entrepreneurs. By diving deep into a specific area, you position yourself not only as a general advisor but also as an expert in a field that resonates with your target audience. This expertise allows for tailored strategies, insights, and solutions that address specific challenges faced by your clientele. Moreover, by aligning with a niche, your messaging becomes more potent, ensuring that your coaching aligns perfectly with the aspirations and concerns of your ideal clients.

In my experience, one of the most important ways of coaching startups and entrepreneurs is to 1. Build rapport- This ensures that they share their difficulties, achievements, working styles openly with you, which then helps you to guide them accordingly. 2. Ask the right questions and give feedback- Feedback is super important because most entrepreneurs want to be mentored, want to get feedback but don’t end up getting it.

While coaching startup entrepreneurs it is important to uncover the real challenges faced by them today and the ones they may encounter in the near to mid term. This will help the coaches and the coachee to stay focused on the real issues and not digress from the growth path. It is critical for success that the issues where support is needed are identified and agreed upon by the stake holders. Once the basics are aligned, entrepreneur is at liberty to work with the best available Coach.

Prior to embarking on coaching endeavors for startups and entrepreneurs, it is crucial to thoroughly understand your niche and possess comprehensive knowledge of relevant data. Demonstrating a willingness to take risks and exhibiting unwavering persistence in the face of challenges is essential. Offer your expertise by providing guidance in key areas such as business strategy, marketing, finance, and team building. Assist in establishing realistic milestones and collaborate on developing actionable plans to ensure success.

As we listen and really learn about them and their business, it's important to also listen to see if they are a good fit for us. Is this someone we are excited about helping, do we believe in their mission, are they going to show up and do the work, will we be able to help them succeed. In The Prosperous Coach, Steve Chandler and Rich Litvin recommend giving potential clients a complimentary in-depth coaching session so they experience what it's like to work with you (and you with them). They recommend 2-hours. I'm doing Business Operations Coaching and have found 90-minutes works well.

Trust in a coaching relationship is key. The client is more likely to share critical and confidential information with the coach when there is mutual trust. A silent client is un-coachable. They can sometimes say a lot without saying anything and this can make coaching of the client difficult. A discovery call is important to build rapport before starting the coaching journey with the client. This helps to build trust.

When coaches prioritize building rapport and trust, they pave the way for open communication, allowing clients to freely share their fears, ambitions, and uncertainties. This deep connection facilitates a more profound understanding of the entrepreneur's journey, ensuring that the guidance provided is relevant and impactful. A strong foundation of trust also empowers entrepreneurs to take bold steps, knowing they have a reliable partner by their side.

Coaching start-ups and entrepreneurs require a deep understanding of the individual: their mindset, capabilities, and perspective. By tailoring your approach to their unique needs and challenges, you can better guide them towards their goals. This personalized method not only simplifies the coaching process but also fosters trust, ensuring a more productive and effective partnership.

Establishing rapport and trust is the crucial first step for the coaching process to take place. It involves a person-to-person encounter, on an equal level, without any power dynamics or influence over the other. It’s a distinct posture that the professional coach must effortlessly embody. Also in the coaching of entrepreneurs and start-ups, there can often be confusion in the client’s mind about the coach’s true role. Providing clarity is then essential to build trust. This is why an initial exploratory coaching session is essential to lay the foundation for supporting the entrepreneur by clarifying expectations and responsibilities on both sides.

The art of asking powerful questions serves as a mirror and map for entrepreneurs. It's more than eliciting responses; it's about evoking a self-awareness that can be transformative. The questions you pose shouldn't merely dig for answers but should unearth new questions within your client. This meta-questioning approach helps entrepreneurs confront uncertainties they weren't aware of, serving as a catalyst for change. Rather than being a directional sign saying, "Go this way," think of your questions as a compass, aiding entrepreneurs in navigating their own internal landscapes. Thus, they become not only problem solvers but also architects of their destiny.

Enabling clients to introspect and unearth their own insights is invaluable. By posing impactful questions, a coach can ignite curiosity, challenge existing paradigms, and stimulate out-of-the-box thinking. Such questions can pave the way for breakthroughs, as entrepreneurs are led to view their challenges through new lenses, discover untapped potentials, and architect their unique pathways forward.

Founders are people just like you and me—sensitive and rightfully proud. However, some probing is necessary, and founders may sometimes find it awkward. They understand the need to answer delicate questions, but most don't enjoy it. For instance, questions like "Are all the founders pulling their weight?" or "Does your significant other support you in this endeavor?" might make them uncomfortable, and that's understandable. So, be gentle, tactful, and always remember that they are just like us—people.

Their responses to our powerful questions help us identify for opportunities for mini-wins that we can help them achieve early in our relationship. These smaller achievements help them see how our services add value and gets them in the habit of looking for success and being prepared to win. Which really helps as we go deeper and help them uncover their dreams and achieve bigger goals.

- Build a smart support group. - Be adaptable. - Trust your Gut. - Praise achievement and growth. - Identify any performance issues they are facing. - Explain why this change and development is important. - Identify barriers to improvement. - Set SMART goals with them. -Collaborate on solutions. - Write out the action plan.

During the discovery call and initial complementary coaching session, it's important to listen for clues on how they handle feedback and whether or not they are ready to put in the work to grow and advance their lives and businesses. It's also important during that initial time to give them a feel for our style...like how some people like a boot camp style workout and others like a cheerleader style. Both are effective, just very different experiences.

Accountability is the bedrock of coaching. A great coach leverages accountability to transform their client's identity into the type of person who accomplishes what they dreamed of doing. Accomplishing what they dream if is a byproduct of who they’ve become. This is the only sustainable way of creating real, fundamental change that lasts… You become the type of person that earns what you wish. It’s like a weed… You can cut off just the top but the weed grows back. We have to go to the roots and pull that out. Only then will you have sustained success. Accountability is the art of tying a desire to results.

As a business coach with ActionCOACH, a crucial skill is delivering feedback and ensuring accountability. Feedback involves giving clients clear insights into their performance, behavior, and results, while accountability means helping them take responsibility for their actions and outcomes. To achieve this, use a structured coaching model like the GROW model during sessions. Provide evidence-based, constructive feedback, set SMART goals and milestones, follow up regularly, and celebrate successes while learning from setbacks. This approach keeps clients focused, motivated, and continually improving.

Coaching is not just about solving problems; it’s about building a pathway for sustained growth and success. The ICF core competency of “Managing Progress and Accountability” focuses on helping the client set and manage achievable goals, and keeping them accountable for their commitments. It also encourages recognizing and celebrating achievements and progress, no matter how small, which is where the “acknowledgment” part comes in. Overall, the idea is to give a clients authority and responsibility for their actions while also appreciating the efforts and milestones along the journey.

Startup founders and entrepreneurs often don’t have anyone to give them feedback on and hold them to account for their everyday performance and behaviour. Investors usually aren’t close enough to see beyond strategic metrics, and founders may feel under pressure to present them a rose-tinted view. Employees, if they have any, are often wary of giving founders direct feedback – especially if there’s no formal process in place. A coach can have a strategic impact on a founder’s performance by giving them frank feedback, good and crucially bad, and holding them to account for working consistently towards their stated goals.

I often recommend to start-ups and entrepreneurs to map out their end-to-end process. The purpose of this exercise is to help answer the following questions and align the thought process across their team : - What value are they adding through their product or service to customers? - What are the touch points between departments or people across the value chain? - What systems or tools are being used to capture conversations, create orders, generate invoices etc. - Are there possible bottlenecks or actions that create waste in the process? Having a clear end-to-end process that brings about clear alignment and the value they are delivering to their customers sets a strong foundation for success!

Gosto de sugerir 4 passos: 1. Mapeamento dos processos: entender como e se funciona, gargalos e trabalhar eficiência (velocidade) 2. Automa??o inteligentemente aplicada (fazer as coisas simples): em um mar de ERPs e outros SaaS_Titanic disponíveis, frequentemente encontramos startups afogadas em uma infinidade de assinaturas de baixa utilidade. As vezes um excel resolve melhor (n?o será sexy como o Monday ou o ClickUp, mas vai resolver). 3. Humaniza??o de processos: nem sempre o chatbot ou seu SDR automatizado no LinkedIn ir?o trazer o prospect na velocidade que precisa. As vezes tentamos vestir o Outbound de Inbound, mas a roupa nem sempre cabe. Como est?o os processos com os clientes? 4. Do the basics right!

Two fantastic tools for working with entrepreneurs and early stage businesses are the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and Catipult.ai. EOS has amazing tools for defining accountabilities within the organization, determining if the right people are in the right seats, and improving meetings. Catipult gets everyone focused on metrics faster than EOS. It uses AI to generate an industry-specific business plan with key performance indicators and associated action items that is fully customizable. It also helps entrepreneurs/owners understand the high-level KPIs they are responsible for and what to delegate to their leadership team. My favorite assessment is the Core Values Index. It's inexpensive, takes 10 min, and is incredibly accurate.

Je trouve essentiel de faire réfléchir les entrepreneurs sur leur posture, notamment leur agilité émotionnelle. En effet, l'ascenseur émotionnel est une étape obligée du lancement de projet. Je propose un outil de diagnostic d'intelligence émotionnelle, qui permet à chacun de la comprendre et d'identifier ses points forts.

Coaching entrepreneurs requires you to have some basic understanding of the tools your clients are already using. Primarily, the financial reports that inform both coach and client how the business is actually performing. Accounting Coach is a great resource for coaches to learn financial basics. Systems Business Coach? has developed tools for coaches to support business owner clients in hiring, product pricing, getting out of debt, along with identifying a clients target market and company values and promise to name a few.

Entrepreneurs stressors include financial instability, long working hours, uncertainty, constant need to make critical decisions. Coaches/mentors need to address the psychological aspects of risk management, helping founders cope with the fear of failure, manage the emotional toll of taking risks, build resilience, bounce back from disappointments & setbacks, foster a growth mindset, adaptability, build a support eco-system and create financial well-being. Mindfulness, meditation, exercises and self-care practices need to be integrated in their daily schedules in such a way that they are simple yet powerful, short yet effective. This will help them stay centered in the chaos and be more effective, efficient and productive.

The demand for small business coaching is growing. While only 3% of International Coaching Federation Coaches identify as a small business coach, 87% say they have small business owner clients. For coaches to really make a difference in reducing small business failure, training and developing skills as a business coach is needed.

Learning to lead one's self the prudent place to start if you're investing time money and energy into project. Leaders need a method to create order in the mind. Understand how to continually improve applying the creative process. Manage their attitude. It's ever a straight line from start to goal achieved. Entrepreneurs need to manage their attitude towards themself, others and the project. Recognise fear for what it is. To create order in the mind one must be a student of the mind, everyday. The paradigm is powerful and may limit assumptions and expectations. Left to it's own devices the paradigm defaults to caution and the safety of what's known. Growth comes through knowledge, it's application creates understanding & builds confidence.

As a startup coach, your success and the success of the startups you are coaching is not dependent on your past experience. That is, what worked in the past may not necessarily work for the present and future. The world is constantly changing. Keeping up to date with what’s happening now and especially what is likely to happen in the future is of paramount importance. Clayton Christensen used to say, “Skate to where the money will be.” The only way to achieve this is to keenly pay attention to the direction the world is moving not where it has been in the past.

It is. The constant learning. Because nothing will remain stagnant in PEST environment - Political Economical, Social-Cultural and Technological environment. Apart from, being aware that more and more people are entering the coaching industry, which means more competition. Therefore, what will the coach do to stay relevant in the industry, and still maintain their their position in the market. I usually join online talks, and seminars. I also ensure, at least once a year, attend coaching training, whereby we exchange ideas, opinion and views from other coaches. The growing part and where as a coach, we should be receptive to feedback instead of being defensive. Remember, to constantly grow as a coach, it is the attitude, character too.

Choose your clients carefully, ideally over 35. While we may love and be inspired by Millennial energy, most aren’t psychologically and emotionally equipped to be good clients. And I really mean GREAT clients, as in why take a project if you can’t at least aspire to greatness? Not uncommon to see an unchecked lack of self-awareness + self-aggrandizement as they’ve been showered as the next Steve Jobs. You’re not, and you shouldn’t be. Be yourself. Also personally, I only work with high-functioning original thinkers. If I see their service/personality as highly derivative (listicles anyone?) and they see that as a positive, I’m out.??

Help them where they need it most. You can do this by first taking stock of their strengths as individuals and as a team (Producing vs Stabilizing vs Innovating vs Unifying), thereby identifying where they need to grow, and coach them in those areas. If a startup founding team of 3 are all Producers and Innovators, who can't stop themselves from pivoting and finding new ways to do ... everything, the coaching needed is helping the team introduce MVP-level processes that are "safe enough to try", while creating some/any kind of swim lanes of responsibility, where the most frequently asked question moves from "Is that the best way" to "How can I help?".

"Done is better than perfect." 80% is good enough to start testing and start moving forward. Paralysis comes from the need for perfection!

Coaching founder CEOs or entrepreneurs, first and foremost, requires coaches to set the scene of what it means to start a business. Begin an ongoing conversation of the complexities involved which go beyond having a great product to sell. Complexities which demand the entrepreneur or the founder CEO to scale and upskill themselves as leaders in every sense of the word. This conversation must always remain a conversation parallel to the 'business' side of starting, running and scaling an organisation.

Go deeper! Don't always accept the first answer as what is truly going on. Be curious and keep asking questions. They may not even be aware of what's truly going on until we help them get there.