You need a business coach. In my 18 years as an accounting professional (14 of them as CEO of Ignite Spot), I've worked with hundreds of business leaders. In that time, I picked up on a trend: Every successful person has a good coach in their corner—and each coach probably has a different coach helping them too.
You don’t know how to do everything, and there will always be people who are better in business—and even in life—than you are. So, learn from them. A business coach—especially one who’s also in the position to provide you CFO services—can be a valuable resource to help you achieve your goals.
What is the business coaching aspect of CFO services?
A lot of entrepreneurs entertain the idea of hiring a business coach—aka an executive coach or leadership coach. Business coaches help business owners and professionals like you grow, providing feedback, personalized advice, and growth plans. Because a coach works to boost your business revenue and growth by leveling up your leadership skills, they and your CFO services partner should be one in the same.
What does a business coach do?
The big thing to remember about coaches is that you are the priority. They intentionally come to the table ready to help you get to your purposes rather than defaulting to their own agenda. They may defer to past events to inform their work but focus more on what’s possible than what has been before.
Following your lead, a business coach provides:
- Guidance on defining business goals
- Strategic planning for growth and sustainability
- Professional advice to unlock new perspectives
- Accountability for you to reach your goals
Who needs a business coach?
What are you trying to change or improve? Business coaches can help anyone who needs to do and be more. Business owners especially benefit from coaching services, as do managers who need strong leadership skills.
By partnering with a business coach, you can tackle meaningful goals. Hiring a business coach/CFO services hybrid might be the right choice for you if you need:
- To Grow Your Business - Business owners and managers waste time on tedious daily tasks. A coach will show you how to delegate so you can focus on growing and scaling your business.
- A Bigger Audience - So many businesses don't know how to get their name and message to key audiences. A business coach can get you valuable exposure, including getting online followers and more customers.
- Help Reaching KPIs - Do you know which KPIs you should be tracking for your business, and are you monitoring and adjusting appropriately to reach those goals? You should be able to track your growth, and a business coach can help identify blind spots and opportunities.
- An Accountability Partner - Owners and managers get overwhelmed by all the moving parts that go into helping their business succeed. A business coach will ensure you don’t lose sight of your goals and that you stay the course.
- New Skills and Strategies - The only way to improve business performance is to constantly develop new skills. A business coach helps you develop these skills, building up your resilience.
What qualities should you look for in a business coach?
The stakes seem high when you’re looking for the right coach, but a little trial and error is healthy. You want to understand your weaknesses, then find a relevant expert. We put too much pressure on ourselves to find a business coach, and it’s easier than you think.
Experience and Expertise
The Association for Talent Development says an executive coach “provides a safe, structured, and trustworthy environment in which to offer support for the individual. The coach also helps the leader understand their current competencies, see how they’re perceived by others, and focus on identifying and clarifying current goals as well as the appropriate action steps to reach those goals.”
In practice, that means mental breakthroughs and perspective changes that perpetually get you and your business “unstuck.”
If you’re more process-focused, the Wharton School lays a solid framework for assessing who makes a business coach. Look for folks who follow this model:
- Active experimentation (planning)
- Concrete experience (doing)
- Reflective observation (reviewing)
- Abstract conceptualization (concluding)
- More informed active experimentation
Be sure your shortlist includes coaches with the right education and track record, with certifications accredited by the International Coaching Federation. They should help you achieve clarity using one or all of these tactics. A business coach should earn his or her keep each month, so avoid entering into a long-term contract unless and until you see results.
Attitude and Accessibility
Part of looking for a business coach involves lots of research to find the right fit. Don’t overlook the value of doing your homework because it’ll make a difference in the quality of the coach you partner with—and consequently your personal growth from the relationship.
You have a handful of solid resources to find the right professionals who are credible and honest. You can:
- Ask your network of fellow business connections if they have a coach. You may just score a valuable introduction.
- Find a few (moderated) online forums of business owners and ask those groups.
- Google your way to CFO services that offer business coaching—cautiously. Demand for coaches has skyrocketed, giving way to fraudsters who collect thousands of dollars under the guise of being an “expert.”
Once you find a few potential suitors, dig a little deeper to determine if they can really support you.
- Are they readily accessible? You want to be able to sync up regularly without juggling scheduling due to time zone differences or even language barriers.
- Does this accessibility unlock more opportunities, such as helping you network and partner with other businesses?
Experience, Fit, and Willingness to Share
After you’ve collected a handful of potential coaches, it’s time to weed out the good from the bad. So, how do you know if a coach is going to be great?
They need to have a 360-degree track record.
Coaching is as much about helping other people succeed as it is helping themselves succeed. It helps if they’re part of a reputable system or company, such as the Tony Robbins Results Coaching program. There are a lot of high-value coaching companies out there!
Make sure your personality fits.
You shouldn’t be best friends, but there should be enough chemistry that it’s equally easy to hold you accountable to your goals and metrics and course correct. It also helps if your coach operates the way you do.
Prioritize working together over simple knowledge transfer.
A coach who just instructs versus journeying along with you imposes their own agenda. Can you put yourself in the executive kitchen with your master business chef? Create and consume all the firsthand learning you can together and up close.
You might go through three or four people until you find a business coach. And that doesn’t say anything bad about you or them. Similar to finding the right therapist, you just need to find someone you’re comfortable with to truly accept their direction and advice.
What’s the cost of a business coach?
If you want to be the best, you find the best. A straight-up business coach typically charges between $1,000 and $4,000 a month. Of course that fluctuates when your CFO services and coach are one in the same. So what does your investment cover?
The Value of a CFO + Business Coach
The reason you usually pay more for a business coach is that their work is unique to you. If you find a business coach, they’ll be worth millions to you. Remember, business coaches work to:
- Get you outside of your comfort zone.
- Hold you accountable.
- Help drive your success.
And when you add in CFO services, you get much more. At Ignite Spot, we help you set goals, understand how your business performs against those goals, and make strategic financial decisions with the future in mind.
What You Don’t Get from a Business Coach
For as much as they do, business coaches still have to draw the line between what’s in or outside of their purview. If you want a professional coach, don’t expect to get:
- A teacher with specific information to share, who is focused solely on knowledge transfer
- A consultant who works for you, charging a fee for specific deliverables
- A mentor who can guide you based only on their own prior experiences
- A therapist or counselor who solves challenges based on a diagnosis
- A manager looking to move you in the direction of their goals
- A friend or professional peer looking for camaraderie
A business coach answers to you and your agendas, not their own or a curriculum. If you could hit your financial, business, relationship, and health metrics 10 years earlier, what would that mean for you?
Your business is the sum of your investment.
Your business can only be what you put into it. Between the everyday tasks and product/service delivery, what can you do to stand above? A business coach and CFO partner helps you to—as the Army used to say—be all that you can be. And they know that you are the priority, following your lead to identify ways for you and your business to be better.
Sound like something that could give you the right edge? Get out there and find the best business coaching services for you. In the meantime, we’re here to help. Book your free CFO session, and speak with an Ignite Spot rep to get advice on your financial picture.
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