Business coaches are as varied as the entrepreneurs who use
them. Some are paid professionals, others volunteers. Often,
coaching relationships develop on an informal basis between one
entrepreneur and a more experienced business owner.
The range of services coaches provide is equally wide. A
business coach may be a generalist, helping you with all aspects of
your business operation, or a specialist who bolsters you in areas
where you lack skill or expertise. The important thing is that the
coach be accessible, someone you respect, and someone whose track
record impresses you.
That's how Bouton feels about his coach, Bob Ritter.
"Whenever I have a sales idea or a problem, I run it by
him," Bouton says. "He takes the big picture and breaks
it down into digestible chunks."
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Like many coaches, Ritter can be a specialist as well as a
generalist, coaching entrepreneurs who lack skills in direct
marketing. "We were working on form letters to send out,"
says Lloyd Wright, owner of Solid State Cooling Systems in
Poughkeepsie, New York, and another of Ritter's clients.
"[Bob] was able to make our letter sound 10 times better by
coaching us as to what grabs a customer's attention."
When Greg Winden and Ken Smith decided to open a lumber and
hardware store in Dillon, Montana, they knew how to build a house
from the foundation up, and they could explain it all in plain
English to weekend do-it-yourselfers. But the nuts and bolts of
operating a store-such as the accounting, inventory and
marketing-were a mystery.
"We had learned certain things through the school of hard
knocks," says Winden, co-owner of the Beaverhead Home Center.
"But there were other things we didn't know about, like
finance and promotion." So the partners sought coaching
expertise. "We looked for coaches with the skills we
needed-people we could connect with and have confidence
in."
Enter small-business coaches Mark and Elizabeth Bruskotter, who
together built a solid foundation under Winden and Smith's
business. "They're not knowledgeable about the financial
side of the business," Elizabeth says of her clients.
"But they're doing well because they have good
instincts-and, we like to think, because they have good
coaches."
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