Finding the right advisor to help scale your business
Also published in ILLUMINATION on Medium
Starting a business takes courage, persistence, determination, and faith. Pat yourself on the back, entrepreneur. You’ve done it.
Entrepreneurship has excellent benefits — maybe you went into it to pursue your vision. To be your own boss. For a more flexible schedule.
And it can be hard work. As you seek to take your business to the next level, you may find yourself faced with one of the following questions.
- Do you have so much to do you wish you could clone yourself?
- Are you ready for growth but need to figure out what the next steps are?
- You have a good understanding of business principles and specific goals. What’s preventing you from taking action?
One thing is true — we all need support. Starting a business is simple but not easy. For example, if you’re in professional services, you’re selling your intellect, which means that you can fulfill promises with the power of your mind and acquired skills.
This might make you feel chained to your desk, with scaling being next to impossible. But when you’re fulfilling customer orders as well as managing all of the other aspects of the business like sales, marketing, and billing, you know that you need to f. another way.
You recognize that you need to scale, but determining the best advice to take the business to the next level is challenging. Many people approach you with sales pitches promising to 10x your revenue, reduce your hours, or build a better lifestyle. So where do you start? Do you need a contractor, a consultant, or a coach, and what are the differences?
Extra Hands?
You can hire a contractor to share (or take over) some of the client work that you’re currently doing. They can manage some of the clients, and so can you. As you split the responsibilities, you can easily increase the number of clients you serve. If you hire the right person with ample expertise, you can confidently share your vision with them and trust them to execute while you simply follow up. It’s a quick path to growth. You cannot scale effectively if you are providing all of the client fulfillment.
But what are the downsides?
- Taking on a less-experienced contractor doesn’t exactly double your work capacity as you will need to train and manage them and monitor administrative capabilities.
- Taking on additional expense, especially for a well-qualified person.
- Making sure that your vision stays intact without dilution.
How a Consultant Adds Value
A consultant can help you to define the process of scaling your business prior to your taking action. They can give you guidance and create a specific plan of action for you to follow. They can analyze the current state of your business, find issues to fix, and recommend specific corrective action.
By developing a roadmap and offering specific direction, the consultant can add significant value.
What are the cons?
Some consultants might have a one-size-fits-all approach to helping clients, and if their canned methodology doesn’t align with your style, it might not be easy to implement their recommendations.
Similarly, you could agree with their recommendations, but the requirements are arduous, and you don’t make time to take action on them. In this instance, it might be a good idea to employ a coach to help you to overcome the obstacles.
How can a coach help?
You’ve read all of the great books and know all of the principles to implement, but when you go to take action, something stalls.
You revert to your old narratives and fail to follow through on your good intentions. What gives?
This is where a coach comes in.
A coach can provide you with a customized approach to help you discover breakthroughs, develop new stories, and create new habits. With a coach, you will define and work toward specific agreed-upon goals and be held accountable.
Coaches recognize that you are the expert on yourself, and they are the expert on listening curiously, asking powerful questions, and providing insights that help you to challenge and question assumptions that may no longer be serving your growth.
An underlying assumption in the coaching space is that clients are more willing to implement solutions that they develop themselves, because they are bought into its effectiveness.
Coaching provides an objective sounding board to help spark ideas and identify patterns and resources so that you can together create the path to growth.
What are the cons of coaching?
Coaching requires preparation and willingness to participate on the part of the client to explore alternative perspectives. It is not designed to assist a client who is seeking an advisor to provide direct answers.
The act of coaching develops the client more than it solves a specific business problem. As an extension of deep growth, the client might become more capable of, and adept at, finding solutions to their problems overall.
Coaching might not be the right course of action for someone who needs direct answers or is unwilling to focus within, although it could also help to find the best next resource.
As a business owner, finding the right support to help you scale will depend on what stage your business is in, your level of knowledge, and your willingness to change yourself. The good news is that there is support, and finding which is best for you is possible. By scaling, you become capable of carrying out your business vision and serving your own clients in a greater way.
Michele Roberts Coaching 