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
Desire
Openness
Enthusiasm
Curiousity and openness to learning
Self-Awareness
Faith and commitment to the process
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:
Experience
Testimonials and feedback
Personality
Vision
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.
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.
The Hustle & Heart Program
Gain confidence, clarity & direction
If your marketing and sales skills are lacking, it doesn’t matter how fabulous your work is.
Fear of talking money, sporadic, confused, same-same marketing and lack of consistent community-building can cost your business big time – not just profits, but by eroding your enjoyment for what you do.
Learn how to earn more money, work with your perfect-fit people, and do your best work …
even if you find marketing excruciating, you’re not good with money, and you have little (okay, no) time.