A business coach is one of the best investments you can make today.
Professional athletes of all kinds employ the use of a coach to help guide them and improve their performance.
Large companies employ business coaches and consultants to help them improve their overall performance.
Why shouldn't you? One of the most important things a business coach will do for you is to give you an objective look at your business.
He or she will show you what is working and what is not and point out the root cause.
It is very difficult to do this on your own because you're too close to it and too emotionally involved.
As an owner you will see the same things in the same way and overlook things that may be obvious to a business coach.
When you try to do the same thing in the same way, you will get the same results.
Once a business coach identifies the problem he or she will be able to identify the root cause.
That is important because if you continue to fix the symptom, you will keep having the problem.
As an example, if you have cash flow problems that is a symptom.
What's the root cause? Is it collections, are your prices too low, are your costs too high? There can be many causes and until you fix those, you'll never improve.
A business coach will help you build systems that can help you run your small business effectively so that it doesn't depend on you.
That's one of the main problems with most business owners.
They're too close to their business and spend most of their time working IN the business instead of ON the business.
Are you spending your time in the day to day activities of your business? That means you have a job, not a business.
Is that what you wanted when you started your business? You need to rethink your marketing strategy.
With fewer buyers of your product or service you have to change the way you market so that you capture your fair share of the market.
Most business owners cut their marketing and advertising costs when times get tough.
That's the opposite of what you should do.
Make sure you monitor the results you're getting with your advertising, but don't shoot yourself in the foot.
Do you have a strategic plan? Do you have business goals that you want to achieve? Do you know what you have to do to reach those goals? Do your employees know what your goals are and did they buy in? Are they all on the same page? Do you have performance goals that help guide them in helping you reach your goals and objectives? When you have your people on the same page and a system to measure their performance, you'll be more successful.
Many times business owners say they can't find good people.
I have found that many times it's not the people, but the lack of systems and management that is the problem.
Be objective.
Think outside the box.