We recently conducted a study in partnership with the sales and marketing automation company Infusionsoft on how small businesses define and achieve success.
We were surprised by one of the findings. This is the extent to which successful small businesses are using coaches.
We didn't set out to study this topic. We didn't even have questions on the use of coaches in our interview guide. But while conducting in-depth interviews with 26 successful small business owners, we kept hearing about business coaches.
And when we went through the interview transcripts, we found almost all had mentioned using business coaches.
We consistently heard several reasons why the small business owners we interviewed use coaches.
First, business has gotten more complex and is changing more rapidly. There simply is no longer the time to “learn while doing” or the margin of error to “learn by making mistakes” as in the past.
Because of this, small businesses are turning to expert coaches to provide guidance on working through complex problems quickly.
The small business owners we interviewed also said they used coaches to improve their management and leadership skills, help them set and achieve goals and work through difficult business problems and decisions.
Coaches also provide emotional support, especially around facing fears and having the confidence to move forward. Most of those who are using coaches interacted with them on a regular basis, in large part due to the emotional support they provide.
Coaching doesn't come cheap. For example, coaches hired through the Emyth coaching network costs a minimum of $1500 per month and can go as high as $3,000 or more per month. Their coaching framework is below (click to enlarge).
The small business owners we interviewed said good coaching was extremely valuable and well worth the cost.
But they also warned that not all coaches were effective or worth their fees and suggested conducting due diligence prior to hiring a coach.
We were aware that coaching had become a big business. It's part of the personal services boom we've been following for many years.
We also know that small business coaching has been around a long time and that there are a number of large and well respected coaching programs. Vistage, for example, says they have over 21,000 people participating in their small business coaching program.
Despite reputable programs like Vistage and lots of satisfied small businesses, the coaching industry overall has a less than stellar reputation. There's also been little research on small business coaching. These two reasons explain our surprise at this study finding.
Interestingly enough, few of the small business owners were surprised. They said they learned about coaches from other small business owners and they generally thought the use of coaches was pretty common. In fact, they were surprised we were surprised.
This shows the value of getting out of the office and talking to real people - you learn things.
We will diving deeper on this topic in the coming months.
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