Over the course of meeting with hundreds of business owners about their coaching needs, we will be asked this question from time to time — What’s the difference between a business coach vs. a business consultant? And do I need to hire one of each?
Coaching and consulting are different, and there is value in both.
What’s the difference between a business coach vs. a business consultant
While these phrases are sometimes used interchangeably in everyday conversation, this is actually a misnomer.
A business coach's role (much like an athletic coach’s role) is to constantly research and study the “game” of business, work to develop playbooks, roadmaps, and techniques that each business owner and key leader (players) can follow, and then show up enthusiastically and repetitiously on a predetermined schedule to create the necessary push and conditioning through accountability and implementation.
A coach will push the stagnate, temper the overenthusiastic, motivate the exhausted, learn from defeat, and celebrate growth.
A business coach works with the business owner and key leaders, both in season and out of season, and their outcomes are tied directly to the goals set out through long-term vision casting.
For a business coach, it is more important that they study and coach the foundation of business than it is that they have specific industry knowledge.
Business coaching by definition will be ingrained across all systems of the business. Of course, there are situations where a business coach may drill down into specific niches of the business, for instance, a marketing coach, or a sales coach.
Business coaching tends to focus more on the accountability and implementation of long-term systems and processes, and less on short-term strategies that could change quickly.
Coaching is a long-term relationship that runs through the broad scope of emotional seasons of a business.
The business consultant is typically a current or retired industry-professional with decades of experience within their given field. If you own an ice cream shop, then you would hire an ice cream shop consultant. If you own a steel rigging and erecting business, then you would hire a steel rigging and erecting consultant.
The business consultant tends to bring a portfolio of best practices from their industry into a specific area of your business (i.e. accounting, or operational efficiency) and then advises on how to integrate those best practices into your day to day process.
Both coaches and consultants analyze existing performance and trends, the consultant compiles findings with suggested solutions, the coach creates a game plan from studying the analytics and then creates a repetitious accountability schedule to push the owner towards results.
Business consulting tends to focus more on mapping out a strategy of ideas and advising on those strategies, and less on the accountability of execution.
Business consultants tend to work more on a “fly-in, fly-out” contractual agreement where they come in for a defined period of time, say 6 months or 12 months for example, and then their contract is fulfilled.
Business coach and a business consultant can work closely together, and both are invaluable to the growth and maturity of a business owner and their key leader(s).
We’ve found consultants to be more prevalent in larger companies (100 employees and above), and coaches to be more prevalent in small businesses (under 100 employees).
A third-party voice in your business is an irreplaceable resource that can provide you with clarity, lend you courage, and re-motivate you and your team back to the mission and vision that you once had.
Macroeconomics are complicated. Highly complex minds maneuver highly complex algorithms and data points to determine economic sea changes and tidal flows, the currents of which move entire societal habits.
When the news channels report a sweeping new change or movement about this or that in the market, we are immediately programmed to assume the news piece directly affects us.
At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, John Elderidge released an unknowingly timely book entitled Get Your Life Back. A key concept of his writing was the practice of “benevolent detachment”.
Elderidge describes it this way on his blog, “Everybody has a junk drawer, that black hole for car keys, pens, paper clips, gum, all the small flotsam and jetsam that accumulates over time. Our souls accumulate stuff, too, pulling it in like a magnet. And so Augustine said we must empty ourselves of all that fills us, so that we may be filled with what we are empty of. Over time I’ve found no better practice to help clear out my cluttered soul than the practice of benevolent detachment. The ability to let it go, walk away—not so much physically, but emotionally, soulfully.”
We are presuming that a recession for the global economy, or at least your national economy, means a recession for you.
You are wrong to assume that.
Some of our greatest small and large businesses were launched in the midst of recession. And because much of a business's exponential growth comes during its first years, it would be silly to blindly buy into the broad narrative that recession equals bad.
A recession does not mean no business by and large…instead, a recession equals less business - but not for everyone.
We have clients standing on the front step of a new year with realistic projections of already-contracted business for this year that yield growth - in a recession.
Following the wisdom of Augustine, “let us empty ourselves of all that fills us so we may be filled with all that we are empty of.”
The pandemic years lulled many to sleep and turned many salespeople into order-takers (not all of course…but many) bellied up at the bar of new business deciding what they wanted and when they wanted it.
We have been emptied of hope and opportunity. We have been emptied of hustle and proactive, forward-leading customer engagement.
Instead, we have filled ourselves with the infinite scroll of reactionary firefighting responding to the latest, loudest fear-screamer believing that the end of business is near.
Value-added commerce, trade, and transactions have been operating for centuries throughout the litany of cultures and societies. We are microscopic players on a macroscopic world stage and it would do us well to walk outside and pay attention to the even more microscopic bird, Jesus the teacher reminded us it does not plant seeds, it does not harvest its food, it does not store its food and has all it needs.
A recession provides the needed jolt to sharpen our focus, to not take for granted the work we have been invited into and built for.
A recession is often the push we need to lean forward, take our mission to the right people (marketing), make a mutual commitment to serve those people (sales), and fulfill that service within the values that we have laid out (operations).
A recession is also a reminder that home runs are not a winning strategy. Base hits work and base hits require repetition, predictability, and meaning - all products of thoughtful action.
Recessions do not favor those bellied up at the bar taking orders at will all the while watching the breaking news merry-go-rounds fretting the what-ifs.
Recessions do favor those who are sober, proactive, and willing to hit the streets – those who realize that while the weather in some locations might look cloudy and rainy, the local weather is what really matters.
There might be less business overall, that might just mean more opportunity for you.
Their news is not your news unless you allow it to be.
If we could boil this entire morning down to one phrase, I think it would be captured in the phrase “intentionally engaging”.
Intentional - done with purpose… deliberate.
Engaging - charming and attractive.
Patrice talked about the time, effort, and money spent in recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a new team member.
I had the opportunity to work with Pfizer and was told that the onboarding of a new team member cost the company around $200k.
Certainly compelling, but that is not the real reason that you don’t want to lose team members.
The real reason we want a cohesive team that values longevity is for the same reason that we go back to the same restaurants, revisit the same destination, pull for the same sports team, and drive the same route to work.
We really do value stability, community, and “being known”.
Every Tuesday at our house we are humbled and honored to host a group of young men that over time has become known as “Man Up”
Back in 2016, I began meeting a group of HS Freshman guys at Wendy’s in Pritchardville.
We would compete in silly challenges like spitball competitions, squat relays, and light matches in the restaurant.
We would have some serious conversations about things they were dealing with and write some thoughts down.
Over the last six years, that small group of five has grown into a group of about 10 to 20 each week, and already a group of about 15 or so who graduated a couple of years ago.
That group is marked by intentional conversation, prom-dance-floor-destruction, their own vernacular and language, a plunger that serves as a sort of armour, and a flag that is made up of torn underwear from the years of wedgie initiations underneath the Lemon Island bridge in the dark. It’s a group that discussed money, relationships, sex, music, career, college, parents, confusions, and life principles that are now a part of their toolbelt.
They have their own language, their own grunts, their own body sounds, and their own nuances. They have a culture that is not based on money, status, or how-can-I get-more.
That is what we all REALLY want. Stability, community, and “being known”.
And yet, what are small businesses known for?
We can answer that by listening to what those same man-up guys think big businesses are known for = stability.
But is that true? Have you looked around to see all of the big business laying off thousands of people at a time? Does that feel stable?
Small businesses are known for instability and chaotic community.
How do we build a culture that is unleavable?
Pal’s Sudden Service vs. Taco Bell
Elements of a powerful culture…
I want you to use your Culture Calendar as the HUB of this next workshop time.
Think of your existing team, AND your new team members.
For the first 10 minutes, I want you to create as many intentional, thoughtful, whimsical, and creative ideas as you can about ways to build culture that will require more time than money.
For the second 10 minutes, I want you as a team to rank order those ideas from most impactful to least… and then bake them into your culture calendar with dates and frequencies, and the process by which who/how they will be done.
The last 50 years in world history have led to influential inventions, and yet still the top four inventions are the wheel, the nail, the compass, and Gutenberg’s printing press.
Dutch Philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam lived in chronological proximity to the printing press and was able to expand the influence of his writing. Books were a non-negotiable for Erasmus, saying, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
Indeed Erasmus was reported to have little money and so fought through hunger pains for the pleasure of reading.
Attributed to Mark Twain is a saying that should serve as an accountability nudge to leaders, “The (person) who does not read good books has no advantage over the (person) who can't read them.”
Here are three books I have read that I would challenge you to consider reading in 2023 in order to grow in fortitude.
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, Will Guidara
A friend and client Chris Kornman (Entablature Construction and Entablature Realty, New Orleans, La) recommended this book. Reading during a trip with my family I left a trail of dog-eared and underlined pages of thoughts and ideas.
Guidara walks through how he and a team took the famed Eleven Madison Park restaurant from a nice New York City establishment and transformed it into the number one restaurant in the world according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, along with four stars from the New York Times, and a coveted three Michelin stars.
Guidara caps a simple thesis of the book with this statement, “whatever you choose to do, be in the hospitality business.”
The ultimate quote for busy business owners jumps off of page 116, “you don’t want to have 100 keys; you win when you end up with only one - the key to the front door.”
From Strength To Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose In The Second Half of Life, Arthur C. Brooks
If you are in your mid to late thirties or above it is time to begin reading this book. In 1995, Bob Buford published a book entitled Halftime: Moving From Success To Significance. It was good and helpful. Arthur Brooks’ manifesto is deep and meaningful.
Brooks confronts what he describes as the “striver’s curse…a hidden source of anguish that wasn’t just widespread but nearly universal among people who have done well in their careers.”
Many successful business owners and key leaders build up capabilities and then feverishly work to avoid a decline in their capabilities.
Brooks delivers a needed blow, a thoughtful alarm, in order to wake up the leader who is heading off into their second half of life, “Here is the reality: in practically every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties. Sorry, I know that stings.”
This book invites you to prepare for a “second curve” and a reminder that “what got you to this point won’t work to get you into the future - that you need to build some new strengths and skills.”
Brooks then devotes the rest of the book to uncovering those strengths and their rootedness in wisdom, and how those strengths will be diminished in the face of workaholism that keep you tied to the fleetingness of worldly rewards (that rust and evaporate), and your fear of decline.
From Strength to Strength is an important shot of interpersonal cold water with the complimentary encouragement of a loving grandfather.
A New Kind Of Diversity: Making the Different Generations on Your Team a Competitive Advantage, Dr. Tim Elmore
We have culturally assumed diversity as a cross-section of race and skin color and less about the generational differences that illuminate the modern workplace.
Elmore writes, “Millennials and Generation Z will make up 70 percent of the workforce by 2025. We’d better get to know them.”
The older generations say things like, “nobody wants to work anymore” and “the younger generation has a bad work ethic.” Elmore brings a teaspoon of humility reminding us “we’re the ones who gave birth to them and raised them. If they (truly) were unready for the workforce, we must look in the mirror.”
Owners and leaders can moan, complain, and gripe about the new workforce, or we can embrace A New Kind of Diversity.
Elmore’s books are loaded with heaps of helpful and digestible research that he skillfully then summarizes into implementable takeaways.
A couple of weeks ago I heard of a new 23-year-old Director of Marketing at a large company. That same company has a 64-year-old Director of Estimating. That is an unprecedented span of four generations working together on one team.
It will be imperative that we all put in the work to understand generational tendencies, realities, nuances, and grow multi-lingual in speaking to others the way they wish to be spoken to as we all push towards a unified end.
Elmore recommends not just diversity training…but unity training.
Of the books mentioned above, Business On Purpose receives no compensation or recommendation.
Books are always a worthy investment of your time, attention, and leadership.
Test Prep Insight reported that 48.5% of adults did not read a book in 2022…let’s change that and all become book nerds in 2023!
Part of our work at Business On Purpose is working with business owners and key leaders to hold them accountable to the things that will help liberate you from chaos so you can make time for the things that matter…like reading.
Go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy to get a free assessment on the health of your business to get started.
“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”
Peter Segars wrote the sequence to one of the great wisdom lyrics in the history of folk rock in the late 1950s that would be recorded by The Byrds in 1965 and popularized as the theme music in Forest Gump, The Simpsons, and The Wonder Years.
Some have called Turn, Turn, Turn a number one hit with the oldest lyrics. Segars adapted the majority of the lyrics from the wisdom literature of the Jewish King Solomon’s writings in the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes.
The Segars rendition ends just shy of Solomon’s powerful sequence that helps us understand the motive and the value of work.
John Mark Comer in his well-reflected book Garden City says of our modern (primarily Western culture), “The American dream - which started out as this brilliant idea that everybody should have a shot at a happy life - has devolved over the years into a narcissistic desire to make as much money as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little effort as possible, so that we can get off work and go do something else.”
Kenny Chesney popularized a culturally Brazilian story about the fisherman and the businessman in his song The Life showing the contrast between a simple, humble fisherman’s idea of success - catch enough to live that day - and the scale-at-all-costs ambition of a savvy businessman who has the roadmap to create a world-dominating fishing empire, all so we can entice his humble fisherman friend to… do exactly what he is doing today, except with far more effort and stress.
We have twisted work as something equivalent to a modern curse on our humanity, something that we can widdle down to maybe 4 hours per week so that we can get on with the true desire of our hearts…leisure.
Solomon, regarded as the wisest person to ever live, said this of work, “There is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his labor - this is God’s gift to man.” (Ecclesiastes 3:13)
Have we walked astray from the original design for work? Is work really a gift?
Work is a gift. A gift is “a thing given willingly without payment”, and also something to be enjoyed.
Imagine waking up in a position where you are simply unable to work, to move, to think, to respond, to react. We have some in our society who have not been given the capability to enjoy the gift of work.
Their days are spent in a relentless cycle of managing indifference, wondering why they have been stripped of the gift of working, and only dreaming of the contribution they could make through the gift of work.
We were created to work. Of the world’s major monotheistic religions, there is a collective alignment that points back to an original woman and a man standing in their primitive office - a garden - tending, trimming, sowing, and harvesting…working.
The Jewish have a cultural phrase Tikkun Olam, “the repair of the world”. Work is an active, productive, skill-leveraging way to be in a constant state of repairing our broken world.
Work builds relationships and brings value to ourselves and others.
The Anglican theologian John Stott says that work is “the expenditure of energy in the service of others, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.”
New York City pastor Tim Keller describes work as “rearranging the raw materials of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular thrive and flourish.”
There is a storied tale that was shared in middle eastern Jewish history of a shrewd manager who had just been sacked by his owner. The manager has one final task of employment; to go settle up any outstanding accounts on behalf of the owner.
The shrewd manager begins slashing payments as a way to win favor with the customers, and shoring up relationships…building bridges using discounts and favors.
At the end of the story, we are instructed, “use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends.”
It is a wild story and one I thought would end with a rebuff of the manager.
Put more subtly, author Dan Miller says of the benefits of business and money, “I love having the opportunities that business provides, but I want to be a vehicle for being, for deep meaningful relationships, not just doing.”
For many, the reason we don’t feel a sense of success in our work is because our definition of success is elusive.
Solomon, a man who had far more than you or I will ever have, said this of confusing money with success, “Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich; restrain yourself! Riches disappear in the blink of an eye; wealth sprouts wings and flies off into the wild blue yonder.”
We have a success problem because we have allowed the eyes of accumulation to define the success of our life. Metrics have become our barometer while our relationships and connections starve.
You know what the fisherman does everyday after he fishes throughout the morning? The tale continues like this, “(I) play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
Even the fisherman had a schedule.
Annie Dillard, the American writer saw the value of a schedule in relation to a valuable life, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being;”
A schedule, then elevates work allowing it to exist more for relationships than for things. When things and money are prioritized over relationships, then our definition of success is upside down.
We have redefined the terms of success prioritizing the aimlessness of more; specifically more money and more things.
How should we define success in our work? We can start by asking this question, “who have I been created to be?” Each of us has been designed, created, and offered to the society around us as a creator. What have you been created to create?
Think through the filters of skill, temperament, personality, what gives you energy, and what depletes you of energy.
Dillard, a religious none (as detailed on her website) says wisely, “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”
Work is a valuable way to spend our lives when that work positions us to do what New York Times columnist Arthur C. Brooks lays out with thoughtful simplicity…
Use things,
Love People,
Worship The Divine.
Start reordering the verbs and work becomes misery.
As you listen to this, how can you shift your mindset, and your success definition to create meaning in a work worth doing?
Will you work till you die? Or will you intentionally shift your mindset to begin working towards an end filled with usefulness and meaning that creates the “cabinet of fortitude” (Arthur Brooks) needed adding value to our collective society?