I don’t want a Coach, I want a Concierge! In Blackboard Fridays Episode 129, Jacob talks about Growth Planning. Need this implemented into your business? Talk to the international business advisor who can do exactly that – Contact Jacob, Learn More, or Subscribe for Updates.

Who is Jacob Aldridge, Business Coach?

“The smart and quirky advisor who gets sh!t done in business.” Back independent since 2019.

Since April 2006, I’ve been an international business advisor providing bespoke solutions for privately-owned businesses with 12-96 employees.

At this stage you have proven your business model, but you’re struggling to turn aspirations into day-to-day reality. You are still responsible for all 28 areas of your business, but you don’t have the time or budget to hire 28 different experts.

You need 1 person you can trust who can show you how everything in your business is connected, and which areas to prioritise first.

That’s me.

Learn more here. Or Let’s chat.

Transcript

I’ve said it before, folks. I’m a business coach who doesn’t believe that business coaching works. Now, way back in episode 60, I walked us through the five different advisory disciplines to help to explain the difference, for example between coaching and mentoring, consulting, facilitation, and so on.

Coaching absolutely has a place, but it is very much over used and far too much of a buzz word in modern business. Coaching works on assumption that you, as the business owner, know everything. You have all of the information and desires within you and that if I, as a couch, simply ask you the right questions than I can draw that information, that expertise out of you. Because it was within you, you will believe it, you will own it, you will take responsibility, sooner or faster get an outcome.

For business owners, that’s complete bunk! Life coaching, and there’s a lot of terrible life coaches just like there are a lot of terrible business coaches, can get deep into individuals and help them to self actualize, to self identify, but if I sit down with you as a business owner and say, Let’s talk about tax returns, and I’m just gonna ask you some questions cause you already know, everything you need to know about tax! You’d realize why I believe business coaching can be a whole lot of hot air.

For helping you make decisions, own decisions, and for transferring some information, absolutely, coaching is one tool, in my tool kit, that can support. But it’s quite often not what a business owner is looking for. See, coaching almost assumes that you know where to start, and you have the time to really develop those skills for yourself.

As with the example of tax returns, that’s really not the case. There are things that you know can go out to a specialist expert, who can do that work for you or who can give you the information, so that you don’t have to dive deep into your own resources to develop it yourself.

You might recognize the diagram behind me. At least these three layers of learning that we discussed in episode 32, when we talked about doing a training need analysis for your business. When it comes to developing skills, any kind of skills, from driving a car to running a business, we go first through inspiration, down into strategic design and education, and lastly, into execution, where we actually out what we’ve learned into practice, and we do it, we make it, and we move it forward.

Great business coaches are generalist. They can have conversations with you about topics as diverse, as culture, valuation, marketing, and I could make that list go on much further, and if you do want to see the whole list, do reply to the email or reach out to us, and we’ll send it through. And that slow burn approach of sitting with you and taking you through a concept, so that you understand why it’s important, educating you, and then coaching you through the road blocks to implementation, that can work for some business owners.

If you look at the heading of this weeks video, you know that sometimes you don’t want a coach. You just want somebody, who can point you in the right direction, and either give you the answer or connect you with the person who can get shit done. Now, here are businessDEPOT, we’re calling that person your concierge.

The concierge, quite similarly, has that deep general stability to understand all of the different areas of your business and to a high level of skill, to be able to have a meaningful conversation with you. This means that they can sometimes see what you need, even when you don’t know what you don’t know.

That allows them, instead of having to coaching through this whole process, to with lazier accuracy, inform you that what you need right there is sales training, or what you need right there, is somebody who can actually do that accounting work, that marketing work for you, and they can connect you with exactly the right person who can solve that pain, who can solve that problem in your business.

It’s faster. Sure, it doesn’t transfer the skills and the expertise, it doesn’t make you the sales accounting and marketing guru. Chances are though, you started your business because you love and are good at whatever it is that your business does.

Actually, developing the business skills on top of that is a bit of a perk, and I hope you’re loving that part of the business life cycle. But you’re going to gain much more traction becoming better in your industry, and learning some of these on a simple level, while working with the experts, to go deeper and to make that change happen.

If you wanna find the right expert in whatever area of your business, even if you don’t know which area you need to look at, don’t go looking for a coach, who’s gonna sit there coaching. Go looking for a concierge, someone who can out you in the right direction in the way that works for the realities of business.

Next Steps

Want to learn more about how this can apply to your business? It costs nothing to chat:

• Email me jacob@jacobaldridge.com (I read them all)
• Call, Text, or WhatsApp me +61 427 151 181
• Or just Subscribe https://jacobaldridge.com/about/subscribe-to-jacob-aldridge-com/ to stay in touch