Beyond Technical Assistance

Many kinds of coaches exist. Most likely, your mind first conjures up an image of a sports activity. Coaches also help executives be more effective, aid people in their career paths, and support leadership transitions. Coaches for entrepreneurs or business coaches do more than provide technical assistance. They help you think differently about your businesses, both the challenges and possibilities. What coaches don’t do, however, is write a business plan or make crucial business decisions for you. They will coach you to write the best possible plan and, because it is your work, you will be more likely to use the plan, change it, and add to it. They will coach you to consider a host of important factors before you make key decisions. Think of the coach as a guide on the sidelines, ready to listen to your dreams and concerns, ready to ask the probing questions, and able to refer you to additional resources and training opportunities.

In many cases, entrepreneur coaches have been in business themselves and know at the gut level what you are facing. Not only do they bring real world experience, but also specific training on business development and coaching strategies, to the table. They offer encouragement when you are discouraged and frank assessments of issues and concerns facing your business. As coaches, they help you uncover your own wisdom and passion for the business and, at the same time, assist you in learning new things that can make your business successful. In all this work, they offer alternatives and options; so that you can make sound decisions. Coaching relationships that work well are mutual learning experiences.

Talking over your business with a coach can help you clarify ideas and gain a new perspective.

Some entrepreneurs find a coach to help them get started and will often return to that coach when encountering new opportunities or challenges. Other entrepreneurs seek out coaching to assist with specific aspects of their business, like business planning, marketing, or financial management. Some coaches work well with certain types of entrepreneurs and not so well with others. Sometimes coaches help entrepreneurs separate family and business decisions, so that the entrepreneur can be more successful in both arenas. When seeking a coach, you should choose one with whom you feel comfortable talking about what is most important to you and your business.

Coaching entrepreneurs plays a major role in the Entrepreneurial League System (ELS) developed by Thomas Lyons and Gregg Lichtenstein. In ELS, each entrepreneur’s unique set of skills and expertise is assessed and then the entrepreneur is matched with the most appropriate coaching and training resources for their situation. “Rookie” entrepreneurs are thus paired with coaches who are most skillful at helping start ups and facilitating business plan development. A “major league” entrepreneur might be linked up with a coach whose expertise lies in a specific area such as e-commerce, export marketing, or intellectual property

Another model for coaching entrepreneurs is PeerSpectives®, an innovative peer-to-peer learning tool developed by the Edward Lowe Foundation. This model brings together “roundtables” of 10-12 entrepreneurs from noncompeting businesses and a trained facilitator to promote sharing of issues and fostering a “community” approach to developing solutions. The roundtables are not industry specific, meet regularly, and focus on the entrepreneur’s needs managing an enterprise.

Where can you find an entrepreneur coach? Some Small Business Development Centers offer coaching as a form of technical assistance and some extension programs also provide coaching as part of their business development efforts. Another resource might be your community college since many of these institutions are also developing ways to support local entrepreneurs. Most business or entrepreneur coaches, however, can be found in communities and regions that have adopted entrepreneurship as a key economic development strategy and, thus, have allocated resources to support a coach for local and regional businesses. Checking with your regional economic development organization or Chamber of Commerce might help you find the coach you need to pursue your dreams.

Prepared by Mary Emery, North Central Regional Center for Rural Development