What is the difference between a business mentor, consultant, and coach? And why do we choose to be coaches? Let’s dive in and talk through that today.

Hey there everyone! Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here.

We got a question last week from someone outside our network who asked us, “So what really is the difference between business mentors, consultants, and coaches?”

I thought it was a great question because to most people it’s just a different way of saying the same thing. So what do each do well, and what are the shortcomings of each? 

Well, let’s start with business mentors. Kind of the most unofficial of the 3. Everyone should have a business mentor. Someone who you can take to lunch and just fire off 100 questions. Someone who is a step or two further down the road and may have survived some of the battles you’re facing. 

A mentor is a sounding board but largely stays in an unofficial capacity. The beauty of a mentor relationship is they have typically experienced what you are experiencing and can give you some perspective of life on the other side. The drawbacks, well, they are typically not as available to you as you need and are not responsible for holding you accountable. And, from what we see, accountability is huge.

Business consultants are hugely valuable, too! When you think of consultants, they will largely be industry-specific. And there is a time and a place for consultants. If you want to launch a new product line or need industry-specific decision-making help. You need someone who has been there and understands the CRMs and supply chains. Someone who knows the yearly cash flows inside and out and can help you make specific decisions that those outside your industry may not be as knowledgeable about.

Consultants downside?  They tend to have a reactive approach to their work. Tell me what hurts and I’ll tell you how to fix it. They can help you through problems in the future, but the majority of their work is reactive vs. proactive. 

Consultants typically are temporary. If you hire a consultant who wants to work with you long-term (greater than 2-3 years), run away. They have no stake in the game to help your performance. No metric to reach, just some ambiguous consulting relationship that is open-ended. Now, if you have a 5-year goal to get somewhere and go into it thinking that way, then great! But be wary, if not. By definition, consultants should have a date by which your relationship is dissolved due to the goal being met.

Lastly? Business coaches. Business coaches are somewhat of a hybrid between the two, but like any coach in sports…they have a system. A methodology and philosophy of the way they run a business. Be vary wary of a coach who doesn’t have their system. Just like you would never hire a football coach who couldn’t walk you through their offense or defense, any good coach should be able to tell you what they are walking you through and how much time to install in your business.

Most coaches don’t reinvent the wheel but repackage and organize content in a way that is approachable for business owners and provides incredible oversight and accountability. Coaches don’t want to teach you how to run a contracting business, they want to teach you how to run a business that happens to do contracting work. They don’t want to teach you how to run a landscaping business, they want to walk you through the skills in business that you need to master, to provide a new set of eyes to spy on your business and organize the back end of your finances…for a business that happens to do landscaping.

The downside of business coaches. They are not industry professionals. They may not know high-level accounting or what the perfect sales software is for your business. They can’t be professionals in all industries.

But what they can do is teach you how to run your business, no matter what industry it’s in.

So there you have it! You will probably need all 3 of these positions at some point in your business ownership. We typically coach our businesses to spend between 1 and 3% of their real revenue on coaching or consulting. It’s that vital! There’s a reason guys like LeBron James spend millions of dollars a year on personal trainers, nutritionists, sports psychologists…you name it. 

They know that to reach peak performance and to maximize their potential, they need people walking alongside them and holding them accountable to a standard. To use their expertise to bring out the best in them.

The business world is no different. So what are you waiting on?

For us, we specialize in liberating business owners from chaos and we use business coaching as our platform to do just that. If you want a metric for how in chaos you are, take the next 5 min and take our healthy business owners assessment. It’s super easy and will give you a score for how well run your business is on the things that we truly value.

Head on over to boproadmap.com/healthy to take that now!

And please, ask yourself which of these positions could be a value to you today. Have a good one!