Why you need to use a Business Coach/Consultant

When you are a small business owner, you wear all the hats. You’re the accountant, the HR person, Sales Director, Chief Marketing Officer, and CEO. It can be lonely at times and difficult to know how to improve your business or if there is even anything you can do to improve it. I know this because I am a small business owner myself.

Hi, I’m Phil Duncan and together with my wife Kirsten Duncan, we own and operate Pendragon Solutions Ltd, an award-winning Business Development Consultancy that focuses on helping small businesses. We are based in Alberta, Canada and have many clients from Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer but we also have numerous national and international clients too and we love helping them!

So why is it a really clever idea to make a Business Consultant/Coach one of your key outsourced go-to’s and what do they bring to the party?

A Business Consultant or Coach will provide a sounding board for ideas and act as your accountability partner/cheerleader on new projects/initiatives. Business Coaches and Consultants often also have relevant experience with what works and what doesn’t and why, so they can help guide you in areas where they have knowledge that may be outside of your wheelhouse. They delve into areas like strategic planning, client demographics, marketing, budgeting and staffing. They also have contacts within their network that provide outsourcing services that might be relevant to your needs. Someone who could help you setup your website, provide VA services, Bookkeeping services, Social Media assistance etc.

They make great sounding boards.

A sounding board is someone from whom you can get honest, objective feedback. They can be your best friend, a family member, or a professional. It's important that the person has enough knowledge about business and entrepreneurship in general so that their opinion will be helpful to you (and not just some random person who happens to have an opinion).

The goal of this sounding board is to provide an external perspective on your business — not one based on emotion or personal feelings, but rather based on facts alone. The idea behind it is that by having someone outside of your organization provide feedback and suggestions for improvements, they'll give them from an unbiased place with no hidden agendas or ulterior motives. This helps ensure that all ideas are given equal consideration without being dismissed as "silly."

Creative ideas.

A Business Consultant or Coach will help you think outside the box. They bring fresh ideas to the table, which means you’ll be able to think more creatively and strategically about your business. They also provide a new perspective on problem-solving that can be very effective. They can ask the right questions in the right way to help you see the elusive answers you were looking for and were struggling to find.

Different perspectives.

A Business Coach or Consultant will have a different perspective. They will see things from the outside in, not from the inside out like you do. They have different background, set of skills, and contacts. This means that they may be able to spot problems in your business that you can’t see because of their unique perspective on things.

Learning to recognize what is normal for your industry/business is something that takes time but being able to identify trends early on can help prevent major issues down the road or at least minimize their impact if they do occur.

Market partner contacts.

A Business Coach or Consultant is more than just someone who can help you with your marketing. A Business Consultant or Coach can also be the person that finds market partners, suppliers and customers for you. A good Business Consultant or Coach will have a network of people they know in their industry that they can introduce you to. They might even be able to set up meetings with them in order to help you expand your company’s reach.

Experience of what has worked and what hasn’t.

You will learn from those who have been there and done it, who have the experience of what has worked and what hasn’t, what to watch out for and learn from. This can be in the form of advice about specific strategies or business practices. They might also be able to show you how they applied these lessons in their own businesses or to similar businesses they have worked with. Whilst maintaining discretion and integrity of course and not producing cookie cutter solutions.

Prevent wasted time, effort, money and resource.

There are many benefits to hiring a business Coach/Consultant but one of the most important is that they can prevent you doing the wrong things in the wrong way at the wrong time which sees you wasting serious time, money, effort and resource. Small business owners often prioritize the wrong things based on what they enjoy doing most or feel comfortable doing or perceive is important. And inversely they put off the things that they don’t like or can’t do even when their business should definitely be prioritizing those tasks. Investing time and money working with a Business Consultant or Coach up front, will easily pay for itself not only in the added benefits it brings but also in avoiding that wasted time, effort, resource and money caused by bad decision making.

We hope that this post has given you some insight into why hiring a good, reputable and experienced Business Coach or Consultant is a great move for your company to keep it moving forward in the best direction for you and it. If you have any questions or thoughts, please leave them in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you.

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