Leadership Coach vs Business Growth Consultant – which one does your business need right now?

Last week I invited my friend Rebecca Morley onto my podcast.

As she’s a coach and I’m a consultant you might think we’d see ourselves as competitors, but we don’t! We’re actually going to be collaborating in the future,

We help business leaders at the same stage, do the same thing, but in a different way. We see each other as colleagues, not rivals.

Here’s why.

Like me, Rebecca works with entrepreneurs and businesses that are scaling up.

And that’s where the overlap ends.

When a startup has realised they’ve got as far as they can with the processes, and approach they’ve used so far, it’s time to call in a business growth consultant (me).

I have the personal experience of running my own business right from being a startup, through rounds of investment, scaling it, and selling it on.

I work with the founder/s to review their current processes, their current vision, their current approach to how they run their business. Then, I help them break out of ‘how things are done now’ and embrace what they need to do to reach the next stage for their business.

And I don’t have a simple prescription I hand out to each and every business.

Every start-up and scale-up journey is very different.

I ‘consult’ with the leadership team and help them find answers to questions like:

• What are your business objectives?
• What are you struggling with right now?
• Have you got the right resources in place to scale?
• What can you learn from your SWOT analysis?
• Do you understand the numbers driving your business?

I focus on where they are now and where they want to get to – then help them create and implement an action plan to get there.

Rebecca is a leadership coach – and she’s concerned with how that leader behaves, whom they want to be, while they are on that scale up journey.

She talks to them about who they need to be to lead that business.

She doesn’t TELL them who they need to be – she asks them:

• What do you want to be known for?
• What do you want your team to say about you?
• Who do you want to be in terms of how you work with investors, with suppliers, with customers?
• What would you be proud to say about yourself in five years’ time?

As a consultant, I plot out the route, put fuel in the car, and load everyone into the vehicle and keep the car on track to reach its destination.

Rebecca influences what the driving style is like and therefore how pleasant the journey is for all involved.

We both care about the successful completion of an enjoyable journey – but we influence that outcome in different ways.

And here’s what we both want you to know.

If someone comes to me, and after getting to know them I think they’d get more benefit from working with a leadership coach – I tell them, and happily hand over Rebecca’s contact details.

If someone goes to Rebecca, and she thinks what they really need is a business growth consultant, she’ll point them in my direction.

We’ve both got lots of experience in business and helping our clients to scale theirs. So all you need to do is wave your hand and ask for help – and trust that we will only work with you if we genuinely believe we’re offering what you need when you need it.

Have you used a business coach or a business consultant? Have you thought about getting a non-exec director to join your board?

You can connect with me here: Emmie on LinkedIn. Come and join the conversation on topics like entrepreneurship, digital marketing, business growth, securing investment, podcasting, human connection and businesses that make a difference.