How I Reached out for Help to Get out of the Trap

Posted on February 06, 2021 by Kamelia Allow, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

Running a full-time entrepreneurial business can be hectic, especially if you are on your own. Just coping with the daily demands is about as much as can be expected without even getting to do any kind of forward planning. There are always some or other crises to avert, a “fire” to be put out, that one gets drawn into chaos before you know what happened.
Strategic planning so often gets placed on the backburner when entrepreneurs and business owners are having to cope with the immediate day to day management of their enterprises that months and even years can pass without there being a clear master plan formulated. This oversight is the equivalent of setting off on a voyage without having a destination in mind.
Expelling all your energy on the daily running of your business might keep your doors open, but without long term goals and a well formulated growth strategy, your business will not reach its full potential. Having a realistic, well developed strategy in hand will give you and your business the edge over your opposition to weather and thrive during market upheavals and economic fluctuations. This kind of insightful planning is not a luxury that only big conglomerates can afford, it is an absolute necessity for any business and one that you can’t afford to ignore.
The unfortunate reality is however that there are so many small and medium sized businesses that are lacking essential forward planning. Entrepreneurs often opt for working harder and longer in an attempt to get their businesses to move on to the next level, not realizing that they need outside help.
For over a decade, I have been in business myself, long before I became a business coach. I struggled with these exact same painful realities of entrepreneurship on my own.
Frustrated after having tried all kinds of schemes and tactics imaginable, I came to the realization that the solution is not working many more hours per day, but having the knowledge, training and expertise that I was lacking at the time.
How I found the right business coach for me?
Realizing that I need help with my business, I searched and very quickly found several would-be advisors and business coaches offering online courses, all promising magnificent results. After signing up and embarking on one of these immensely expensive online courses, it quickly became clear to me that what I needed and that what I was getting was entirely different things.
What I wanted was to get mentorship from someone who had experience of establishing and running a multi-billion-dollar company, someone who has actually gained his or her knowledge through being an entrepreneur, who has personally lived through the problems that I was facing in my own business.
I researched and narrowed my search down to three top global business personalities. Approaching my selection of potential mentors individually through LinkedIn. I was fortunate that one accepted the challenge of tutoring me on a one-on-one basis.
The next eight months proved to be more productive than the five years that it took me to acquire my Master’s degree. By spending just 15 min once a month, with my business coach, I learned first -hand how and where I was making mistakes and what I needed to do to correct it.

Shock, denial, confusion & acceptance

Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to learn. After I have given an overview of my business to my coach, breaking the structure of my company down, showing in detail how it is made up, underlining the team structure, education levels, job descriptions, salaries and accompanying benefits, the review that I got back in turn was totally unexpected.
I had to put all my faith into my business coach and I was 100% committed to follow the process to the end, in order to achieve my dreams.
Learning that it would serve my business better if I retrenched my financial manager, a person who has been working for me for the past eight years and who was an integrated part of my company was a very difficult part of the process that I was going through. It was unclear to me how I or my business was going to cope without my financial manager at the time but as I have said, I trusted my coach.
Not long after having retrenched my FM, I found someone who had double the qualifications and was prepared to work for a salary which was 30% less than that of my previous financial manager!

The business coach is there to challenge your limits

My business coach pushed me beyond what I perceived to be my limitations and that of my business.
I have always set the proposed target every year at approximately 30% growth, knowing that the business will be fortunate if even half of that mark was reached. I did this every October/November when I was working out the budget for the coming year. My thinking was that in this way I was driving myself and my company harder in order to force us to achieve great heights and even greater profit.

My thinking was proven wrong by my business coach.
Since it is inevitable that sales dropped during the summer months, this technique that I have adopted for reaching for the top of the tree, but being content with plucking the fruit from the middle branches only worked to create a false sense of accomplishment. I have been complacent and did not challenge the status quo as far as growing my business was concerned. Even though I have mistakenly convinced myself that I was being proactive, the reality was that I have left a door open.
My business coach challenged the financial sheets and questioned my ability to overcome the weak performance of the business in relation to the much higher expectations that I have predicted in my budget motivation. This was frightening and I was placed in a very difficult situation. I was given two months to double the profit of my business during the quiet time of the year and without a financial manager.
During the ten years that I was at the helm of my company, the business never fluctuated and now I was put under tremendous pressure to turn the business around in a way that was totally unprecedented.
What my business coach did was to scare me into action and through doing so, I was able to achieve what everybody thought was completely impossible.

Results above all expectations
At the end of that year, I sold my business as a running concern for a multi-million-dollar figure, surpassing the expectations of everybody in the industry.
The ten years that it took me to build the business and managing it on my own was not easy and I only really got to see the kind of results that I dreamt of since I started working with a business coach.
My dedication and commitment, along with the trust that I have placed in my business coach helped and enabled me to successfully conclude that chapter of my development.
The lessons that we learn are not always immediately apparent to us. My coach once said that the most important lesson a business coach has got to share is kept to him or herself. How was I then supposed to gain the insights that I so desperately desired if my coach will not tell me what it is that I need to know.
Only through reaching deep within myself and proving to myself what I was capable of doing, did I get to understand the wisdom of my coach. It is through doing that we acquire the kind of knowledge that determines our success.
Anyone can study and read books and yes that kind of input is also very important, but the make or break experience in business is not taught in that way. You have to reach out for it and really want it, then your teacher will be there.
I have been given the amazing chance to gain firsthand experience through my own business and with the help of a very good business coach managed to fulfill a big part of my dreams. The knowledge and insights that have been bestowed on me, I want to now share with others to help and guide more entrepreneurs on the road to success.