The courage to ‘strike out on your own as an entrepreneur’ has an appropriate counterbalance: working with a business advisor and with a coach. Without these counterweights, an entrepreneur goes barreling off into the future without the advantage of a professional’s perspective nor a mechanism of reflection, and faces the isolation of being at the head alone.

This is unfortunately the experience for so many entrepreneurs, but it doesn’t have to be.

The Benefits of Working with a Business Advisor

It may seem obvious, but the benefits of working with a business advisor can be the difference between success and failure. In fact, a study by the U.S. Small Business Administration revealed that half of all non-mentored small businesses fail within their first five years, and 70% fail by the ten-year mark. Business owners who work with an advisor? – the statistics completely reverse: 70% make it.

Why the difference? Business advisors:

• Enable you to learn from others’ mistakes. Making mistakes is part of the entrepreneurial process, but what if you could focus on making better mistakes instead of repeating those already made by others? An advisor who has guided other business owners knows where the common pitfalls lie, and can help you recognize and steer around them.

• Bring you up to speed quickly. If you had the time, you could probably learn all the in’s and out’s of this or that business or financial scenario. But what if you could leverage off the knowledge of someone’s who’s seen it before? How much quicker could you make a decision and what better quality would that decision be?

• Provide an informed external perspective. When you’re inside your business, you by definition lose the ability to see things from the outside. An advisor can provide a seasoned point of view and see things that would otherwise have never come to light.

The bottom line: you as the entrepreneur are the decision maker and driving force of your business. But if you augment your ability with the insight, perspective, and experience of a good business advisor, you’ll exponentially increase your chances of success, not to mention reduce your stress.

Why Business Coaching Matters

But more than just advisors, are coaches: those skilled at expanding mental vistas and bringing clarity to the fog that’s natural for new horizons. There’s a reason top performing athletes and performers have coaches — the true but little-known secret, is that top performing entrepreneurs do too.

A good business coach helps you to:

• Ask the right questions. When you’re launching out into the unknown, the right questions are more important than the right answers. A business coach helps you to hone in on what’s truly important to you, so you don’t find yourself barking up the wrong tree for years.

• Clarify the next path. Sometimes an entrepreneur’s creativity leads to running in multiple directions at once, but getting traction in none. A business coach helps you gain clarity on your next path and how to focus your energy on it, so your business continues to evolve rather than spin in circles.

• Disassemble roadblocks. At certain points, you will become your business’ biggest obstruction. A business coach helps you recognize and navigate these inevitable transitions, and your breakthrough by extension becomes the business’ breakthrough too.

All of these things point to the fact that the journey of the entrepreneur is as much an internal one, as an external one. As a result, working with people who have the expertise of a business advisor coupled with a skill of a business coach, means that you’re fully engaged on multiple levels towards your future success.

The Simple Path™

Following our experience working with entrepreneurs for decades, we developed in our Lab the unique tool — The Simple Path™. Using it, we meet with business owners on a regular cycle and step through the approach which includes: (a) evaluating what has gone well in prior quarter, (b) clarifying the picture in your mind of the future you’re heading toward, (c) identifying and fleshing out the next steps to catalyze momentum in that direction, (d) and ensuring the indicators of success are properly aligned.

The conversations are always different, because every entrepreneur and every business is different. But the principles remain the same, and each of the business owners we meet with steps away with the energy and direction for their next sprint of success. Responses we’ve heard include:

“You’re the only one who makes me think out my plans – thank you!”

“Between our Simple Path planning sessions, the things we talk about just seem to happen without realizing it.”

“I always feel good after our meetings: I come away with many good ideas to act on.”

“I feel all rev’d up and ready to go!”

Your Business Advisor + Coach

If you’re interested to work with our team as your business advisor and business coach, check out our Do We Fit? page to request your Coffee Conversation. And if you’re a current member of The Elements Circle and you’re ready to expand your access to our team for these services, just send us a request to contact you.

Even if our team isn’t the one to help you in this way, we strongly encourage you to setup your own relationships with a good business advisor and a good business coach, because we guarantee the value they will bring will help you immensely on your entrepreneurial journey.