Coach at Business Is My Religion and French real-estate investor. My mission is to enable people to have access to financial security.
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The business world, especially when you are just starting out, can be a very complex adventure. Any entrepreneur knows it and will tell you that a good business doesn't build itself. If it is essential to call for help, your collaborators may not always be enough. Sometimes, outside advice can be extremely precious.
So let's talk about business coaching. The task of a business coach is to get an outside look at the company by working on all the blocking points, but also to accompany the manager or the employees on a behavioral journey, which also has an impact.
Here are the main reasons a coach is invaluable in today's business world.
1. Get a detailed analysis of the company.
To start the coaching work as efficiently as possible, the coach you have called upon will have the task of carrying out an in-depth analysis of the company's situation. It is through this detailed audit that the coach can help pinpoint what needs to be improved, reworked or even completely rethought at its root.
This analysis is very precise and should be done on all levels. In this initial step, the goal for the coach is to know your business as well as you do. As they have an external view, they can have a broader sense that you do not and then be in the perfect position to propose effective solutions. It is therefore important not to be afraid to hear hard truths because your coach's perspective can breathe new life into your business.
2. Work on yourself.
Business coaching is obviously not just about numbers, profitability, how to sell more and attract more customers. It is certainly a purpose—the primary goal for which you have called on a business coach—but to get there, you need to do a lot of work on yourself. A good business coach knows how to accomplish this and will propose a personalized path adapted to your personality, values and qualities as well as your areas of improvement.
The nature of this work will depend on your state of mind at this stage of your business. Whether you are discouraged, have your head underwater or feel like you are losing control, the coach will first try to put you back in a calm state of mind to allow you to see things more clearly.
3. Know where you want to go.
An entrepreneur normally has one word—only one—constantly in mind: goals. This is the primordial key point, the impalpable idea that will finally turn out to be the engine of your business. These goals depend on the entrepreneur's values and on what he wants to achieve as a mission through his business. They must already be clearly defined at the genesis of the project.
However, these goals are not immutable, and they may evolve. Entrepreneurship is a road often marked by the unexpected. In this case, the role of the coach will be to accompany you to redefine these goals, depending on where you want to conduct your business. Feel free to allow yourself to rethink the way you envision the future of your business, and let your coach help you to expand your horizons.
4. Focus on the people around you.
What draws the line that separates a mere business manager from a leader? It is the team that accompanies you. The power of a leader is found in the choice of the collaborators who walk with you. The team with which you collaborate will be one of the main angles of attack for the business coach.
If it turns out that you are encountering difficulties in your business in terms of team management, particularly due to the occurrence of dysfunctions in this same team, your coach will help you surround yourself with new, trustworthy people. He will also take the time to talk with each of your employees in order to identify the problems and try to reinstate a good work dynamic within the company.
5. Take advantage of valuable expertise and experience.
Maybe you think that you don't need a coach after all, that it is useless to burden yourself with an outside accompaniment when you can manage on your own. And maybe you have the capacity to do this. If you had the courage to launch yourself into the entrepreneurship world, it is because you are an autonomous and determined person.
However, if the question of calling on a business coach arises, know that an experienced coach has likely already gone through the phases you are going through, already been where you are now and probably even met and overcome the obstacles you're facing. It would, therefore, be beneficial to take advantage of such precious help, which can literally allow you to breathe new life into your business, even more so in the turbulent phases. Business coaches can bring you this wind of change. To be able to take even more advantage of their expertise, the ego must be put aside. Humility is one of the virtues of a leader.
6. Boost profitability.
Once you have reviewed all these different aspects with your coach, you can be more conducive to value creation for your customers. It is when you can finally breathe that you can get back on track and think about the numbers. This final stage of coaching requires no one other than you and your collaborators. The coaching work has been done upstream to reach this precise moment—the one where you have all the cards in hand to boost the profitability of your business.
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