How to Find the Best Business Coach Near Me
You’ve heard the saying: “everything worth doing takes time.”
Well, finding the best business coach is no exception—it’s a process worth doing with careful consideration.
There’s a lot more to finding a business coach than a quick Google search. You can’t just type in, for example, “best business coach in New York, NY” because the idea of the best business coach is completely subjective.
All coaches have specialized skills, experiences, and certifications that vary widely. And so, the best business coach for your colleague, Jim, might not be the best choice for you and vice versa.
To help you get started on your quest, we've created a comprehensive guide with steps that cover the ins and outs of finding the best business coach service for your needs.
Step 1. Decide if You’re Ready for a Coach
You’ve probably been hearing your clients, friends, or someone on your team talking about the improvements they’ve had with their business coaches.
More and more businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers are looking into business coaching to improve their success odds.
It’s no coincidence that the International Coaching Federation study reveals that the need for coaching has increased by 20% in recent years.
Now that you’re considering coaching services for yourself, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself if you’re ready for the commitment. The path to success is never a laid-back journey.
A coach will push your boundaries and ask you to step outside of your comfort zone to reach your goals and attain a better version of yourself.
But they can only do so much. You need to be willing to do the legwork to attain success and take your career to the next level.
Step 2. Determine What Kind of Coach You Need
There are different coaches for different needs. Here's a list of various coaching services and categories to determine the best fit.
Small Business Coach
If you’re a small business founder, looking for ways to grow your business may lead to many sleepless nights.
A small business coach can help founders create a better action plan to bridge their business gaps. They can empower small business owners and help to avoid significant landmines.
Many small business coaches have been entrepreneurs or small business owners themselves and know the steps needed to achieve great results.
Executive Coach
Whether you’re in charge of a mid-level team, a CEO of a large company, or have just moved up to a leadership position. You can benefit from the guidance of an executive coach.
Executives, leaders, and managers face lonely uphill battles and are easily blindsided without an executive coach's services.
Executive coaches, who are also often former business leaders, will guide your leadership development to help you make more effective decisions for your team, show you how to increase employee engagement, or mentor you on carrying an organization's weight without breaking.
Subject Matter Expert
We all have knowledge gaps. It's completely normal to need help improving in your technical field. Or, maybe you need training on a brand new technical competency to succeed in your role.
If you fit either description, subject matter experts might be the solution for you.
Much like their name suggests, subject matter experts are leaders that help businesses or individuals gain proficiency within a specific subject.
If you need assistance with, say, developing your small business brand on social media, you may need a marketing expert. If your team needs to learn how to develop a product strategy and roadmap, a product expert can help you overcome the knowledge gap.
Advisor
Some professionals find themselves stuck while trying to address particular issues at work. This might include preparing for a difficult conversation with your company manager or creating a direct report, resolving a personal conflict, or even asking for a raise.
An advisor can help people with on-demand guidance and answers to their questions.
Maybe you're just going through a rough patch; advisors help people address immediate challenges and shed light on a problem within one or two sessions. An advisor can offer insights and tips on fixing a particular issue so that it doesn't snowball into something bigger.
Life Coaching
Most people don't realize how interconnected their personal lives are with their professional lives. When your personal home life suffers, it can deeply affect your businesses and career—this is where a life coach should step in.
Life coaches can become a person's accountability partner to keep reaching their personal and professional goals.
If you don’t know how to live out your personal dreams within your current career path, or your home life is getting in the way of your professional success, a life coach can help you get your personal life in order and help it seamlessly flow with your career.
Step 3. Know Where to Look
Now that you have an idea of the type of business coaching services out there, it’s time to start looking.
Like anything, some people choose to do it the old-fashioned way, which is slower and usually involves more dead ends than not. This includes:
Asking around your business community for referrals and giving out your email address to potential coaching candidates
Calling business coaching certification schools to refer you to successful alumni
Your cities’ chamber of commerce can also be a good place to stop and ask about any members they can recommend.
However, you shouldn't restrict yourself to searching for business coaches near your home; looking online gives you more opportunities to meet the best of the best.
Or you can do it the efficient way, and that doesn’t mean Google; a big search engine can potentially lead you around in circles and offer too many results that don’t fit your criteria.
For a more specialized search, use sites like CoCaptain, which personally vet coaches and securely connects clients with options that don’t break the bank while protecting your privacy.
Step 4. How to Pick the Best Candidate for YOU.
After looking around, you’ll be left with a few good coaching candidates to choose from. Here’s how to sift through your options and land of the right one:
Certifications
You might be surprised to learn there's no universal consensus on what certifications or training is required for a career coach. Certifications are absolutely valuable, but they do not replace a coach's skills, experience, or relatability.
Several certification programs are dedicated to training and coaching. For example, the ICF offers training through three credential paths (Associate Certified Coach, Professional Certified, and Master Certified).
As an alternative, many coaches possess formal training through a university certificate or degree. It's up to you to require one of these credentials.
Interviews
Like any job opening, there should be an interview session in which you can talk to a candidate and evaluate their strengths, weaknesses, and work history.
You’re going to be spending time, money, and trust in this person, so you have to make sure to interview any potential candidate diligently.
Be sure to take note of the following:
To guide their clients properly, coaches should demonstrate themselves to be great listeners—not just talkers. They have to listen to their clients to understand their life, needs, and goals. An interview is an excellent place to evaluate this skill.
Go into the interview with notes and questions. Remember to ask about their resume, coaching experience, and how they have helped other clients. A successful professional career doesn’t necessarily indicate a successful coaching career.
Remember that a good coach is comfortable challenging you throughout the process. So, it's important to evaluate a coach's ability to balance constructive feedback with empathy.
Ultimately, it’s important to note how you feel when talking to a potential candidate. To develop a successful partnership, there has to be synergy and connection.
If their way of communicating or working doesn’t match your own or doesn’t give you a good feeling, consider moving onto the next candidate.
Avoid Scams
There are scams in any industry, and when looking for career coaches, you should look out for red flags.
Anyone can post anything on Google, which is why you should be careful when searching the world wide web; it’s a challenge to know when a posting is authentic or fake.
With sites like CoCaptain, you are assured that every coaching profile is vetted and authentic so you can be comfortable sending a message to any coach that fits your needs.
Step 5. Moving Forward
Now that you’ve made your choice, you can expect to develop a long-lasting partnership with your career coach.
If you’re an entrepreneur that wants one quick session with an advisor, then that relationship may be brief.
But if you go into business coaching, life coaching, or any other service, you should expect to stick with your coach’s program for at least six months to a year to see concrete, long-lasting results.
Business owners and professionals who trust their coach’s process and consistently do the work can begin to see progress right away.
So, what steps have you already taken to find your business coach?
