Canadian Small Business Women

Connection, Synergy, Community

Working With A Business Coach Is Like Psychotherapy

 Martina-R.

I was squirming in my seat, sympathising with the challenging questions a fellow entrepreneur was struggling to answer. She had volunteered to go on stage in a so-called “hot seat”, whereby my business coach and today’s event host was grilling her about her business and what might be holding her back from greater success.

It was in no way meant to be mean, though it was challenging, as this small business owner was nudged to not only think hard but admit to herself where and how she may in fact be sabotaging her own success.

This made me think that working with a business coach has many similarities to getting psychotherapy. (Don’t ask how I know that…)

I have been working with business coach Odette Laurie as part of her group coaching program for the past 14 months, as well as a few months with Jason Reid for one-on-one coaching.

I too have squirmed, questioned, resisted, and faltered. I have also had many “a-ha!” moments, made changes and improvements in my patterns, received excellent feedback from colleagues, prospects, and new clients, and experienced personal growth and business successes.

Business coaches of course share their wealth of knowledge and experience as successful business owners themselves, and yet working with one ends up being about so much more than your sales and marketing strategy, your client conversations, and business goals.

You are asked to ‘dig deep’ about your motivation for being in business, have to identify and work through inner demons and past baggage that may be holding you back from success, and implement strategies and new ways of working that will help you succeed. Our past baggage can be anything from low self-esteem, fear of failure (or fear of success!), not feeling worthy, downplaying our successes and skills, fear of public speaking, and a ‘scarcity syndrome’, which can be the cause of under-charging for your products or services.

Pretty cool actually; not only have I received incredibly valuable business tips and guidance from my business coaches, I’ve also had indirect counselling!

When we grow as a business owner, we also grow as a person. I highly recommend working with a business coach, even for a short while.

References:

Odette Laurie, Business Women On Top, www.businesswomenontop.com

Jason Reid, The Rechargeable Entrepreneur, www.rechargemymojo.com

Martina Rowley is the Chief VA of Beach Business Hub Virtual Assistance Services. She can handle many of your recurring or one-off administrative tasks, client and project management, organisational challenges and more. Let this VA give you a hand! Contact her at:http://www.beachbusinesshub.ca, on Facebook and on Twitter

Getting clear and focused

sandra

Clarity is an amazing thing.  Once you are clear on what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it, it can almost seem as if magic is starting to happen.  Opportunities present themselves in ways you never would have imagined.  You’re able to focus on exactly what you need to do to make realize your objectives.  Achieving clarity can feel like the heavens have opened up and the seas have parted, but getting there is the challenge.

We all have goals that we want to achieve.  Most of us can agree on some basic goals that we’d like to achieve: more freedom, financial security, continued great health and happiness.  How each of us achieves these broad reaching goals is totally up to us as individuals.  The way I define freedom, may not be the same as yours.  What’s going to make me happy may not resonate with you at all!

It’s sometimes easy to get caught up in what we think we should do or what we believe we ought to be focusing our energy on.  If we want success in achieving our goals and getting a feeling of accomplishment, we have to do some soul searching.  Consider what your ideal life looks like, not what you think others expect of you.  Think about what’s going to get you out of bed no matter what.  Dig deep and figure out why your goals are important to you, what they mean to you and what their achievement is going to bring to your life.

Once you start to figure those questions out, the picture of the life you want to create will start to become clearer.  You’ll have a vision of the goal you’re working towards and then you can start to map out what you need to do, with that final destination in mind.  It’s like planning your route on a map.  Once you know where you want to go, you can look at the various paths that will get you there.  After that is figured out, you can focus on what you need to get you there.

What do you need to bring along on your journey?  Do you have all the right people and things in place, or do you need to recruit help and get the right tools and materials to help you get to where you want to go?  When you achieve clarity, feelings of overwhelm diminish, you’re able to focus on what needs to be done, and obstacles and challenges don’t deter you from getting the job done.

Take the time to contemplate where you want to be a year from now.  Don’t limit yourself; think in terms of “best case scenario”.  Listen to your heart, and not the naysayers.  Once you have a picture in your mind of what you want your life to look like twelve months from now, start to put together the plan to make that vision a reality.  Get clear, get focused and get it done!

Sandra Dawes is a certified life coach specializing in helping women who feel unfulfilled with their 9-5 follow their dreams and pursue their passions. She holds an Honours BA, an MBA as well as a certificate in Dispute Resolution.She has completed her first book,Embrace Your Destiny: 12 Steps to Living the Life You Deserve!

Connect: 
www.embraceyourdestiny.ca
www.facebook.com/embraceyourdestiny

www.facebook.com/embraceyourdestinythebook
www.twitter.com/sandradawes