Most business experts recommend hiring coaches to assist in your career or business trajectory. Coaches can help you push through limits and expand your perspective. Sometimes, it’s helpful to work with a coach in your field. Sometimes, it’s helpful to work with people that have no idea about your profession to be able to ask the stupid questions, the questions that expand your perspective and make you think about things differently. However, when do you hire a coach?
You are frustrated more often at work than you are happy.
I call this the “more likely than not” test (yes, that’s a little tax humor for you). Are you more likely to be anxious, frustrated, or otherwise annoyed at work? Yes? You need a coach. A coach can be an incredibly valuable resource to help you push through the limits that are causing you personal angst at work.
If you are a business owner, a coach can come in and help you identify how to take your practice to the next level. Running a tax practice is hard work! You are constantly battling internal team requirements with client expectations, and actually doing the work. It is incredibly helpful to get an outside perspective that can push you to make the hard decisions needed to find more satisfaction.
You’re languishing.
Have you set goals for the last five years and never reached them? Has your business or your professional life been stagnant? Yes? Hire a coach. Part of what a great coach will do is help you identify areas of opportunity and define the best path to achieve them. Sometimes, having an external perspective on your big, hairy, audacious goals can make them a reality.
You are a business owner without a partner.
Having a partner helps. It helps a lot to have someone to bounce ideas off of, to have someone to chat through the future with, someone to help motivate your through the sludge, and ultimately someone who cares as much about the business as you do. Without that partner relationship, how do you solve for the singularity of running a practice alone? Well, a business coach is the answer. A good coach will help you take your loose ideas and turn them into solid plans. A good coach will help you decide when ideas are good ideas. A good coach will help you decide when you are being insane. Their only job is to help you accomplish your goals and facilitate your learning and development.
You are in the midst of a life change.
Like it or not, what happens to you personally affects your business. If there are big changes happening outside of the company in your life, it is a great time to hire a business coach. When in the midst of a big life change, you need checks and balances. You need someone that knows you, knows your business, knows your goals, and helps you take care of yourself through the process. You might not realize how badly life interferes with business and having a coach to call it out and help work through how to address it can make a giant difference in trajectory.
This is your first business.
Have you ever run a business before? Have you been through scaling cycles, change cycles, and development cycles? No? Hire a coach. A coach will be the sounding board to help you prioritize what matters. A coach will also be able to bring a different perspective to the table and help you see things that you would have otherwise missed.
There are a million reasons to work with a coach. Many of them are intangible. It is incredibly important to find someone that aligns with you personally and professionally. Talk to your entrepreneur friends about their experiences with a coach and validate to yourself. Tax accountants, in particular, tend to be cheap when it comes to spending money on self-development, however a good coach will pay for themselves in short-order. Make a commitment to yourself and your business and use the expertise of a coach. Remember, it’s tax deductible, so that’s kind of like taking a 30% discount, right?
