Is a Business Coach high on your agenda?
For many small business owners having a Business Coach is becoming a reality and indeed a necessity is driven by the need to learn and acquire new business skills quickly and to enhance business performance and profits.
Largely in business, the master/apprentice relationship of old is missing entirely. This provided for the transfer of skills to create a new generation of skilled masters of their craft.
Michael Gerber and the E-myth Academy
Michael Gerber of E-myth fame was one of the first to articulate the challenges faced by all small business owners. He defined the core issue as being that of business owners working as a technician and not as business people.
The technician works flat-out in the business but not on the business. Great technical skills alone will never be enough to survive in or grow a small business. The two activities are a world apart.
Unless you have grown up in a business environment where Mum and Dad have been active business owners or had the opportunity to work in a business along-side a good business operator you will quickly realise there is a great deal to learn.
Business training and gaining formal qualifications will go some way to bridging the gap but “don’t let education get in the way of learning”. Mark Twain
Nothing beats real hands-on experience at the coal face.
Let me share a little of my business experience and development process.
As a business owner, I was hungry to understand all of the aspects required for success in business and would read the likes of BRW cover to cover absorbing everything that I could.
I read the E-myth revisited and torn out the enrolment page from the book to fax it off to the US to enrol in the E-myth Academy. My Business Coach would ring me at 5.30 am Perth time and we would get stuck into a session.
Subsequently, I joined the Curtin Business School Centre for Entrepreneurship and their Small Business Growth Program. This program run over 12 months and provided a great deal of what I needed!
The most crucial being proper financial management and applying the principals of Financial Dynamics.
This program provided the inspiration to acquire the Handy Rentals Ute and Car Franchise from the then franchisor on behalf of 18 WA based franchisees. A short time later this became a national network managed from WA.
A great deal of my experience has come from the engineering and automotive fields from Acrow Engineers in NZ building tunnel forms and form-work to F1 cars in the UK with McLaren’s – true story.
From there I came to WA and worked as Sales Engineer for Mobil Oil which mostly involved securing significant payments from WMC, BHP, Brambles and a host of other large commercial users of Mobil product. Credit control.
Entrepreneurial seizure
Then I had as Gerber describes an ‘entrepreneurial seizure’ and went into business for myself.
Over a 20 year period this involved franchises with Caltex Oil, membership of Tyrepower, Handy Rentals plus vehicle imports and sales along with ARB 4 x 4 equipment.
In 2000 with the arrival of the GST I sold up to take on new goals and challenges including Finance and Home Loans with Aussie Home Loans, studied accounting and added a host of personal development and professional training to my list of achievements.
So why would I share any of this will you here? To gain the experience and knowledge of what it means to be in business and insight into human behaviour and dynamics is not something that is learnt over-night. Nor indeed learnt by way of a coaching franchise.
Being a Business Advisor and Consultant for the last 10 years in itself has added a whole new dimension to what I can bring to coaching and working with business owners to improve business and personal effectiveness and performance.
Action steps to take today
Talk to a Business Advisor!