Background photo: Waag Society
Business coaches provide advice and guidance when an issue approaches in your work life. Finding one isn’t always easy if you don’t know where to start. I can say that having a business coach in the event planning industry has been a life saver as well as with entrepreneurial adventures. Once you have found a business coach, they are invaluable and can provide a strong relationship and a multitude of insights you might have never realized or taken many years to recognize on your own. Follow our six quick tips below to help you find a business coach:
1) Identify the area or issue your struggling with
We all need coaches, even The President has coaches (teleprompter coaches at least) and we all know that every star athlete has a coach. They might even have a whole team of coaches to help them hone their skills. So why wouldn’t you? We all need help getting over issues that arise in our business or career that may be holding us back. Your coach will have ideas and strategies to help you over the hump.
2) Look for expert coaches that have strong skill sets in the area you are struggling with
If you wanted to play rugby you wouldn’t hire a cooking coach, unless of course you needed to change your diet to maintain your rugby skills…but to learn ins and outs of the game, you would search for a rugby coach. You also wouldn’t choose a big business CEO who has always worked in a larger industry to address the struggles you have in pursuing entrepreneurship. Just because someone is successful in one field doesn’t mean their skills can be easily applied to your situation, make sure that the coach you choose can align their skill set with your needs.
3) Interview potential coaches
You need someone that will motivate you and hold you accountable, but most of all you must also be able to work with them. If you continually get frustrated with them, it won’t move you along your way to solving your problems. You need to count on them for honest feedback and ideas.
4) No family or friends
Your family and friends love you to death but might not be the ones to turn to for coaching for your business. You need to be able to talk honestly and get tough feedback and someone to hold you accountable – Family and friends might not be able to do that job or you may take their criticisms too personally.
5) Hire from wherever!
In this day and age, coaches don’t have to be in your town. You might not find the right coach for you in your city. With the internet, you have the ability to find the right coach from any place around the world. Skype and Google hangouts make connecting super easy! Using a webcam, it’s like your coach is right in front of you.
6) There are many places to find coaches for any variety of topics
SCORE is a website that offers free small business advice along with tools, templates, and a mentor search. EVENT HEROES is another resource soon to be launched by me (Tracy Fuller, owner and president of InnovativEvents) that offers training and event resources for events and event planning. (It’s going to be amazing!) There are a myriad of other available options if you put your mind to it and do a bit of research!
photo credit: Waag Society / Flikr / Creative Commons
