Considering getting some external assistance for your business? Engaging a consultant or engaging with a Business Coach or Coaching Program are the most common ways to access external support and expertise for your business. In some Programs, there is an element of group and community participation; often referred to collectively as a Mastermind group. All can be good and effective solutions…but which one is right for you?
Even though we offer a Coaching Program based on a group structure, our goal is for you to have a great business. Part of how we achieve that is to provide information on all of the possible solutions, not just the ones we sell. That should ensure that you’re able to make a good choice and get the most appropriate assistance for your business and its current stage of development.
In this article, we’ll compare the advantages (and some disadvantages) that come with each of the three primary options:
- Engaging a Consultant
- Engaging a Business Coach
- Joining some form of a group program
The advantages of engaging a consultant
Consultants are available for almost any function in business: Sales Consultants, Marketing Consultants, IT Consultants, HR Consultants, Strategy Consultants, Lean 6 Consultants and so on and so on. Consultants typically offer a high level of expertise in a particular area of business and are readily available at short notice. Furthermore, their delivery model is one through which they will usually do much of the work for you. For example, they will actually design your marketing program, write your strategy, manage your technology or run your HR function.
In line with this, many of the advantages of engaging a consultant relate to speed. When you engage a consultant, they will come into your business, roll up their sleeves and get the work done. They should have genuine expertise in their field of consulting so should be able to deliver a good outcome or service in a relatively short time. They should be able to do this with relatively little of your involvement, making this a practical and easy way to get a job done, leaving you to focus your time and energy on other things in your business.
Given that they are investing their time and effort into actually doing the work for you, engaging a consultant will typically be a more expensive solution. In addition, while getting a certain task or activity done quickly and (hopefully) well, once the consultant finishes their engagement, that expertise and capability are lost from your business. As a consequence, the benefits of engaging a consultant can sometimes be shorter term and offer less sustainable solutions for your business.
In summary, engaging a consultant tends to be a quick solution, delivering a specific piece of work at a good quality. It may cost more and may not build as much capability into your business, but it is a very good way of addressing a specific need, requiring particular expertise, in a reasonably short timeframe.
The advantages of engaging a business coach
For the purpose of this article, we refer to business coaches but our comments include many executive coaches. The distinction between the two is not well defined and invariably depends on who is defining it. Whichever name is used, we’re talking about a 1:1 engagement that involves some combination of education, coaching, accountability and support to achieve your plans and goals.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of working with a Business Coach is the extent to which the engagement can be tailored to you. Yes, there are some coaches who will simply try to apply a single model, or framework, to your business. However, better coaches will invest considerable focus in diagnosing your situation, your challenges and opportunities and where you want to go. Whilst they will of course have various models and frameworks to use, they will very much use them as applicable to your situation and plans.
As you progress in the engagement, a good coach will also be able to observe you and identify development opportunities for you; helping you to develop the skills, beliefs, values and habits required to achieve your goals. In this journey, you will typically build a very close relationship with your coach, develop real trust with your coach, and can tap into your coach for assistance with a wide range of things that might come up in the course of developing yourself and your business.
Reflecting these advantages, 1:1 coaching can be ideal for the most complicated situations, the most involved requirements and the greatest degree and speed of development. For example, we have found this style of engagement to work well with companies pursuing rapid and large scale-ups and often the engagement involves numerous members of the client’s Executive Team.
1:1 coaching also tends to produce very sustainable improvements in the business and in its owner. Unlike a consultant, a coach will not be doing the work for you. Instead, they will help you and your team to become more proficient in doing the work – an improvement that may take longer in the first instance but that will continue to deliver value to you into the future.
Because of this structure, engaging a Coach is likely to be considerably less expensive than a Consultant. The Coach will invest less time into your business each month than a Consultant would. Nonetheless, for a high-quality coach (someone with a strong track record in business and in coaching, proven systems and methods and plenty of evidence of successful clients), the required investment will still be inappropriate for smaller businesses and probably not justified for more basic and standard development needs in a business.
The advantages of joining a group program
The most obvious advantage of joining a group program (such as a Mastermind group, EO or YPO forum) is the group. Having more people focused on your business and your situation increases the possible sources of ideas to address that situation. It is more likely that someone else will have confronted a similar challenge or opportunity and will be able to share with you how they solved it.
Being surrounded by a group of peers, all of whom are having similar experiences to you as they build their businesses, will usually also provide a great community of support and often friendship. It can supply inspiration at times, a shoulder to lean on at others, a source of business opportunity at others and almost unlimited opportunities to collaborate in different ways.
As a program with more leverage built into its operation, the group-based programs tend to require considerably lower levels of investment than either engaging a Consultant or engaging a Business Coach.
Check out the best business coaching programs in Sydney here.
Summing it up
Choosing what form of external support to engage with to advance your business is an important decision, with plenty of factors to take into account. In some cases, the speed and ease of getting someone else to do the work for you will justify engaging a Consultant. In some cases, your massive plans and the complicated situation might argue for engaging a 1:1 Business Coach. For others, the enjoyment and range of support that comes from a strong community will guide you towards a group-based program. They are all valid options and all have achieved great results for the right people and the right businesses in the right situations.
At BGB, we offer a program that is heavily community-based, but with some elements of coaching included. Our programs have you working with other like-minded business owners to craft your plans; however, you will be doing so with regular access to top coaches, and building those plans with the most comprehensive and proven set of business systems and methodologies in the market. With the clarity of those plans in place, it is then the ongoing support and accountability from the community and the coaches that will ensure you achieve your goals and enjoy the journey to get there.
Through this combination of Community, Accountability, Education and Results, BGB programs are able to deliver the best of both coaching and group programs, at a cost that is affordable to any business. If you’d like to explore whether one of our programs is a fit for you and your business, contact one of our team today.
P.S. Whenever you are ready…
Here are three ways we can help you grow your business.
- Get the ‘finish your business’ checklist: The complete step-by-step recipe to have all the ingredients in place to actually finish your business. That means it works without you and gives you a great life. Click here.
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- Apply to become a member of BGB: If you would like to be considered for membership and go from working in your business to working on your business… send us a message and put ‘membership’ in the subject line… tell us a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and we’ll get you all the details.
