Growing your business: Work with a business coach & mentor

Failure is an inevitable part of life for business owners, we must consistently take decisions to enable growth and they cannot all work out. This makes mentoring a far clearer and more valuable proposition than most give it credit for.

We know this because of the heart-breaking failure rate of businesses; 50% in two years, 80% within five (95% within ten!). However, an impressive 70% of ‘mentored’ small-business owners survive for five or more years (a survey by The UPS Store).

As is normal, when I think back to my successes and failures I have learnt far more from the failures. We continue to learn from new, often daunting, challenges.

Unlike most things we do that become easier over time, growing a business requires a new set of skills and experience at each stage.

So, how can we reduce the risks we take?

One answer lies in mentoring.

What is the role of the mentor?

Mentoring, as a concept, is a simple one “an individual sharing their knowledge, skills and/or experience to help others to progress”.

No (wo)man is an island and even the most successful business people surround themselves with a support network. Even Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com has lauded the value of mentoring.

Winning is a team game and in my experience those that continue to always feel the need to be the cleverest person in the room, because they own the firm, eventually learn this the hard way.

Why we need mentors.

Regardless of how prepared an owner feels they are for their changing business and market, an array of problems is bound to arise. And, far from knowing how to combat them, we may never have considered them before.

A top mentor will also be hugely valuable through their ability to leverage an established network (their own winning team, usually having taken a significant time investment to develop it).

Mentoring enables us to learn from other’s experience, accelerating progress, improving decisions, and reducing risk.

Keith J Cunningham nails this in his must read (and then reference) book The Road Less Stupid. 

So how about coaching?

The most successful business people already have mentors in place, often informally. They pick up the phone and call other trusted business leaders to get their opinions. However, I believe to grow a business you have to grow the owner.

In my experience mentoring alone will not achieve this. Really successful people in all walks of life have coaches, someone to support their development with an outside view for the long haul.

What is coaching?

I like the definition from one of my own educators, Myles Downey.

Coaching is the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another.

It is not advising or consulting.

Why we need a coach.

It starts with enabling clarity, for example the real root cause of a problem. Mentoring alone could well offer experience and advice to surface level issues when the real issue lies with the owner.

It’s enabling people to set and achieve clear goals. With the trust that the person being coached typically has the best answer if they have help finding it.

In addition, coaching challenges thinking and approach, helping you to generate fresh insights. For example, other options to consider leading to better decision-making.

Progression through coaching is invariably personal as well as professional. If you develop how you think, speak with others, lead…this impacts every aspect of life.

In fact, this ability to shake things up is where coaches shine. Instead of helping owners put out the daily fires, coaching can bring the outsiders view of the business and the owner. Helping him or her see it from a broader perspective, illuminating the bigger patterns likely to have been missed.

What else does coaching achieve?

Crucially with clarity of goals, coaching then ensures the accountability we all need to achieve them, a mix of challenge and support. It invariably requires us to push out of our comfort zone and build new habits. This is easier in any pursuit in life with external accountability.

I love the equation Performance = Potential – Interference (Tim Gallwey). Coaching ensures the interference is reduced in a way that mentoring and education alone do not. 

Can you use both together?

Yes, although when ‘coaching’ it’s important to be clear, even offer the option, of whether coaching, mentoring or both is needed on a topic. Increasingly over time it is coaching that has the greatest impact to personal development.

It’s no surprise that owners who focus on identifying and utilising a coach and mentor(s) will likely find themselves in much better positions for success, achieving it faster at less expense.

To experience this with help on your current focus or challenge, book a complimentary ‘blind spot’ call via the link in my contact details or message me. There’s no sales or obligation on either of us to take it any further, you’ll simply receive some help.