subject: 6 Ways Executive Coaching Can Make Your Small Business More Financially Durable [print this page] Cohesive groups pull more effectively on the ropes that move the load of business success. Henry Ford said Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. An executive coach can be a powerful part of a financially durable business team.
The small business owner faces a number of financial challenges. Lean staffing and tight budgets are common especially among start-up companies and small to mid-sized businesses. The days of fat organizational structures with layers of managers and specialists is over. Lean staffing and just-in-time human capital is the new normal. Large companies enjoy in-house expertise to help with financial analysis, planning and capital markets activities. Small businesses typically try to make do with fewer resources. Executive coaching provides objective talent for a small business team.
Here are six ways a capable executive coach can help your small business navigate the complex world of business to improve your financial durability.
An executive coach can help you identify your small business purpose. A goal, milestone, achievement, objective, task, pinnacle, summit, hurdle, checkpoint, and finish line are all mile markers in your business life-cycle. But none of these are your small business purpose. What customer need do you fulfill in nearly every moment of your business life? This is your small business purpose. It is not what you want to do but the discovery of what you are already doing in business. Your customers have told you what business you are in. Are you listening? We don't create small business purpose. We discover it.
An executive coach can help you navigate by your small business purpose. When you discover your small business purpose your choices to spend or borrow money become clear. All choices to spend money that are in-line with your small business purpose are acceptable. You are only limited by a finite amount of business capital. Don't chase and fund options that are not in line with your small business purpose. Business becomes a multiple choice exam where you can eliminate the answers that obviously don't match your purpose.
Executive coaches are objective sounding boards for strategic business capital planning. Capital planning, also known as budgeting or financial forecasting, is a critical tactic for small business success. An objective adviser or executive coach is indispensable to point out where the plan is grounded in solid reality or cloaked in illusion. Your executive coach is a mirror to reflect the plan against the backdrop of your small business purpose.
Your executive coach is a trusted resource in your strategic business planning process. Financial goals, objectives, strategies and tactics are a strategic planning pyramid. Each element supports the elements above it. The strategic financial planning process brings all the business capital activities into alignment with the global corporate identity and the direction of the company. Your executive coach will aid your plan for business success through reflection on financial goals, objectives, strategies and tactics that effectively support your company mission. Your borrowing will be more effective, your spending more powerful and your investing more accretive with a well constructed strategic financial plan.
Your executive coach is a mirror to reflect your thoughts about a potential business investment. The idea fairy often drives the decision to make a business capital investment. A small business can improve its earnings, valuation and industry standing through the realization of dreams and goals. But the dream is only the beginning point. A solid fundamental analysis of the investment opportunity must be completed to ensure it adds tangible enterprise value. The business executive needs to be reasonably sure based on sound financial calculations that a minimum acceptable return on invested capital (ROI) will be realized. Executive coaching can help as an objective source of business counsel.
Executive coaching can help your capital markets makeover. The pursuit of business funding is like a capital courtship. The competition for attractive business loans and start-up capital is intense with lenders and investors searching for the most promising and creditworthy companies. The most eligible capital providers hunt for hotly pursued companies with solid credit capacity. Do you need a capital markets makeover to attract the sources of funds your business desperately needs? Executive coaching can help.
Why should you get an executive coach on your small business team? The experienced and capable executive coach coming together with the small business owner who aspires to success is a potent force. Together they intensify a focus on the causes that lead to the desired outcome of financial durability.
