What is

COACHING?

Coaching helps you identify your deeper desires and achieve your goals.

As a sub-discipline of psychology, coaching is probably most widely recognised in the sports industry but coaching can be applied to any area of life, including business.

Innumerable studies demonstrate the efficacy of coaching at enhancing hope, resilience, mindfulness and self-efficacy. (You might like to check out this one, this one or this one.)

Longitudinal studies also show that coaching can produce sustained change, which makes it particularly useful for overcoming issues which are long-standing.

How coaching works

Think about a coach as a cross between a loving friend or family member who has your best interests at heart, a wise mentor who has done what you want to do and can show you how, and a therapist who empowers you to develop self-insight, confidence and motivation to get you where you want to go.

Coaching works with each individual’s psychology to best determine the course of action, and to help overcome fear, setbacks, self-limiting beliefs and other obstacles that arise on the road to fulfilling goals.

Identifying your desires and setting goals.

Coaching is invaluable to identifying your deeper desires and setting goals. This process can be quite involved, as most people aren’t that clear on what it is they really, truly want to do. It’s quite common for people to adapt goals that are socially-acceptable or popular amongst their peers – this also applies to business clients.

With the help of a coach, you examine your deeper values, core beliefs and particular socialisation, so that you can better identify meaningful goals that you feel aligned with. By ensuring the goals we set are the right ones, we’re far more likely to achieve these while also feeling immense satisfaction when we do.

What is small business coaching?

Small business coaching is specifically for sole traders and small business owners and managers who want to get better at marketing, sales and business. Small business coaching is very different from executive coaching, which tends to focus on team management and talent development, and doesn’t include the myriad extra responsibilities and tasks that a small business owner has.

Small business coaching tends to have a far wider scope and is more hands-on than executive coaching and may cover things such as profit and loss analysis and financial forecasting, to marketing strategy and tactics, copy writing and messaging, branding, sales skills and processes, and business development ideas.

Small business coaching may cross over into training as you work with your coach to build work-related skills such as communication, digital marketing, better time management and delegation skills, so that you’re better able to better focus on what you need to do to achieve your goals.

Small business coaching helps you operate more effectively in your systems and networks: your workplace, staff and contractors, suppliers, competitors and colleagues and other stakeholders. Coaching helps you see the bigger picture through focusing on your role in, and impact on, those networks, and helps you identify what you want from them and what they want from you.

How to know if you’re coachable

Before you decide to invest in a small business coach, it’s important to consider whether or not you’re coachable as not everyone is.

If you’re not coachable, you’ll be wasting your money and time, as well as your coach’s time.

Traits of a coachable person

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Desire

It’s very difficult to coach anyone who doesn’t want to become better. The depth of your desire is an important indication to your coach that you’re a well placed for coaching.

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Openness

You need to be open to receiving feedback, analysing yourself, and constructive, relevant criticism so that you’re able to improve. Your coach may challenge your beliefs, attitudes or perspective, and while you should never accept this at face-value, you also need to be open to consider these.

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Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm for the process of coaching and its outcomes, and enthusiasm for realising your goals is essential for progress. Enthusiasm becomes its own motivation and makes the whole business coaching process easier and more joyful.

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Curiousity and openness to learning

Having an inquisitive nature, being open to new ideas, and innate curiousity and appreciation that you don’t have all the answers and that there’s more to learn and know, are imperative to coaching.

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Self-Awareness

While coaching helps to develop self-awareness and self-insight, you also need to start with self-awareness, because challenges will be far harder without some self-awareness. Self-awareness is the foundation of coaching – this is what we’re seeking to develop so that you can learn how to better coach yourself.

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Faith and commitment to the process

Coaching doesn’t always give instantaneous results. Especially with marketing and business development activities, we sometimes need to wait before our efforts pay off. While you should never blindly follow your coach’s advice, some patience and faith in the process is necessary if it’s to work.

Ask yourself:

Do you accept feedback?

Do you take action on feedback?

How deep is your desire for something different in your business?

How to choose a business coach

When looking to engage a business coach, consider:

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Experience

How long have they been coaching for? Do they have experience in the sector or industry that you’re in? Ideally, have they done what you want to do?

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Testimonials and feedback

Do they have plenty of testimonials and reviews from real people that show how they’ve coached others successfully? It’s not enough for the coach to have done something for themselves – they need to have applied their work to a variety of other people’s businesses, with success.

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Personality

Your personalities should fit together. You shouldn’t tolerate a coach trying to bully or overwhelm you into engaging them, instead you should feel supported with all the information needed to make a decision whether or not to engage them.

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Vision

When you first speak to your coach about your ideas, goals and desires, do they quickly hold a vision for you that’s greater than yours? This vision should be in line with what you want to do (not different from it) and though it may be scary for you, it should also be exciting.

Brook McCarthy

Your Intrepid Guide, Business Coach & Digital Marketing Trainer

What kind of business coach am I?

Like “a loving kick-up-the-bum!” a few clients have said.

With a background in Public Relations, 15 years’ experience in digital communications and marketing, and 20+ years as a yoga and meditation teacher, I combine emotional intelligence with up-to-the-minute digital insights.

I’ve been told I’m a cross between a trainer, coach and consultant: I ask before offering my insights and opinions but, ultimately, I empower you to make your own decisions and work with your own psychology to get the most out of coaching.

I strongly believe in developing emotional resilience in my clients, so they can be more joyful, more mindful, and experience greater satisfaction with their achievements. This becomes self-sustaining, as joy powers people.

Over time, greater resilience gives you better coping skills, more resources, increased self-efficacy and greater emotional self-regulation.

Are you ready to accelerate your progress?

We offer both group & one-to-one business coaching

One-to-one business is best if you’re busy and productive, but know you’re your own worst enemy in business – and you’re ready to do something about it. It’s best if you’ve had at least 18 months in business and want to earn significantly more than you’re currently earning.
Group coaching is best if you’re starting out, or if you’re wanting to build your network of allies, or if you want to deepen your emotional intelligence and gain a broad and complex perspective.