Feeling lost? Feeling confused? Worried your business is stagnating but with no idea how to fix things? Whether you’re a new solopreneur or a seasoned freelancer, there comes a time in every solo professional’s career when things just fail to make sense. Thankfully, there are a special group of people who can potentially help you through your malaise. Introducing business coaches.
A business coach specializes in working with professionals to define and reach their business goals. They help take you from where you currently are to where you want to be, with the emphasis placed on what you want to achieve. The coach takes the time to understand what’s important to the business owner in order to determine which tasks and strategies will best achieve the desired end result.
Many of the most successful entrepreneurs and corporate leaders use business coaches or consultants. There’s no taboo against hiring the services of an expert to provide guidance and support. It’s not a sign of weakness or failure. In fact, for solopreneurs and freelancers seeking to skyrocket their careers, hiring a business coach is usually seen as essential.
How a business coach can help you
So what are some of the issues you may potentially be facing which suggest business coaching might be what you need?
A business coach can help if you are:
- Feeling directionless
You know what your business is about and you have vague ideas about where you want to take it. However, you’re just not sure which particular direction out of many possibilities to actually take. Facing a number of different routes, each of which are filled with benefits and drawbacks, can lead to analysis paralysis. This leads to fear and anxiety which result in potentially poor decision making and stagnation.
A business coach will use their years of experience to help you decipher which direction is best for you as a person, for your target audience, and for your business and career as a whole. You’ll gain a new outside perspective of the ideal route to your goal.
- Confused about what tools to use
So many tools, so little time to try them all out. There are literally tens of thousands of apps and platforms on the internet. With such a plethora of options, many of which are nearly identical, it can be overwhelming to choose the best tools for your business needs.
You know full well that good tools are essential to running a successful business. They boost productivity, speed-up cash flow, enable smoother collaboration, improve project management, benefit record keeping, and so much more. Many of them are also free, such as our free SaaS invoicing software here at Invoice Ninja.
A business coach knows the best tools and apps because they use these tools and apps themselves. In many cases they’ve already done the testing and research for you, and can quickly direct you to the best tools for your unique business needs.
- Blank as to branding
A vital component of any business is its brand identity and this is no less important for a solo-professional like you. A potential client or customer needs to immediately understand what you do when they visit your website, see your logo, and view your marketing materials.
If you’re struggling to succinctly define what your business is all about, and are worried about connecting both logically and emotionally with your target market, a business coach can help.
- Worried about lack of growth
Whatever you do, your business seems to stand still. You dream of an upward trajectory in terms of sales and income, yet it’s currently flat lining, or worse. No matter how hard you work, things don’t seem to improve and you might quickly be approaching burnout. Sometimes working harder is not the answer.
Working smarter can be achieved with the expert knowledge of a professional business coach. They have likely been in a very similar position to where you are now and have also coached business owners just like you. As an experienced coach they’ll spot what’s going wrong, problem thinking habits, and how issues might be fixed.
- Losing drive and motivation
When first building a business as a solopreneur, there’s a lot of enthusiasm, excitement, and hope. You’re likely working on something that’s a passion project which connects with what you have always wanted to do. For a few months, this passion and newness drives you forward. Yet when results fail to eventually materialize, even a subject you’re passionate about becomes a chore. You begin to lose drive.
A business coach knows how to inspire and reignite your passion. They do this by helping you see the bigger picture and modifying your existing strategies to meet with improved results. They’ll dig deep to help you see why you do what you do and ignite a renewed drive by reminding you of those reasons.
Perhaps most importantly of all, they’ll keep you accountable. They’ll regularly ask about your progress, results, and mindset. Keeping these commitments will also spur your motivation.
- Out of ideas
Most solopreneurs like to think of themselves as creative thinkers and in most cases this is true. Building your own business needs creativity and lateral thinking. However, even the most creative of people can hit roadblocks when it comes to ideas. Fear and frustration in the face of poor results can quickly take the oxygen out of your creative powers.
A business coach will know the right questions to ask in order to inspire new ideas and concepts. They’ll know what direction you want to take and will instinctively know, based on years of experience, how to get you to think in such a way as to draw out the ideas you need. What’s more, they don’t judge the answers you give. You have the freedom to explore even the wackiest of ideas.
They might just be the next great product or service.
Why a business coach is essential for solopreneurs
Being a solopreneur, in whatever field or specialism, is difficult. You might frequently be alone, without colleagues and staff to support you. This can potentially lead to negative thinking and stagnation when it comes to new ideas and identifying ways forward.
It’s all too easy to fall into a negative loop of believing everything our minds tell us about our business, its potential, and our veracity of our ideas. We can get stuck in a rut, burrowed out of fear, self-doubt, and stubbornness. Without outside support and guidance, we can be blinded to the most logical routes to take to meet with improved results.
This is why a business coach can be so essential for any solopreneur. It might be worth reinvesting some of your earnings into hiring a professional coach.
