I believe that just about anyone with an ounce of common sense can start and grow a business into a 6-figure revenue, after all, I did it in the 1990s pretty much on my own!
I’ve just reached my next milestone in life, my 60th birthday, and a number of people have asked me if I’m going to slow down at all. I’m not going to do that, in fact I have another idea for a business brewing… What I said to them was that actually I’m going to speed up because time is getting ever more precious and all the while I’m loving all the things I do, I want to do more not less. One of the things I want to do more of is write. My book is coming out shortly (summer 2024) titled ‘The Very Best Business Handbook You’ll Ever Own’, and also to share more of all the things I’ve learned over 30+ years in business in these blogs, today – more help and guidance for entrepreneurs as they grow and scale their businesses.
I believe that just about anyone with an ounce of common sense can start and grow a business into a 6-figure revenue, after all, I did it in the 1990s pretty much on my own! Common sense will guide you to find the right information and knowledge to get your business going and growing. In reality, you will outgrow this methodology pretty quickly if you’re serious about scaling. At some point, and the sooner you get this the better, you will have to learn in a different way. That means learning from others who can SHOW you how not just TELL you how. The same way you did from your sports coach or driving instructor. More courses, workshops and books won’t cut it. At this level, we learn from others who can demonstrate best practice. Basic knowledge and information can only get you so far. So what’s the next step?
Getting the help that’s right for you
If you’re a manager, you have a management role or you are managing others in any way, perhaps there’s 5 or 6 in your team and several teams in your organisation, coaching your team comes with the role. The people around you look up to you and expect you to be able to guide them. Again, at this level, most people don’t have any training to be able to deliver on that. Of course, some people are naturally able to be that coach, but most are not. We’ve all had people around us that are good and some that aren’t so good. I found myself, particularly in the last decade, being approached by people saying, could you come and give us a bit of advice and help. Not because they’re broken or failing, but simply because they’ve reached a plateau they just can’t seem to break through. To use the sports analogy again, amateur sports is all very well and good but if you want to move up to professional level, you need training, coaching and mentoring.
So, in January 2018, I decided to launch The Academy concept to be that trusted resource for those wishing to move up to professional business level. I completed my own coaching training (ILM 7 executive coaching and mentoring) so I’m able to offer both mentoring and coaching. To give you some context, the ILM 7 Diploma level qualification required that I complete 100 hours of witnessed and supervised coaching and mentoring and be assessed against best practice standards and benchmarks. It was such a proud moment to be a top 5 finalist from 250 nominations in the national mentoring matters awards 2024. Thinking about the work I did, I think it was actually even more than I completed for my masters degree!
What’s the difference
Mentoring comes from experience, in my case, 30+ years of starting, scaling and selling several businesses. As an example, you might come to me and say “Have you got any advice Mark, I’ve got this particular issue and I can’t seem to solve it”. Typically I might say “If I was you, here’s two or three things we could do that I already know work”. Mentoring is perfect if you want or need ideas that you hadn’t or can’t come up with yourself or can’t see the pathway toward change. As a coach, my response to the request for help would be different. Instead of saying, here’s some ideas, I might say “ok, tell me about the problem, give me some context, what have you considered, what do you think might work, what evidence have you gathered, how will you decide what to do next” etc. I think you get the picture. Mentoring is about offering advice based on experience, and coaching is about asking questions to bring you to your own conclusions. In reality, most people want or need a mixture of both, and that’s true of my clients too. Most of my client journeys begin with mentoring and once I’ve shown them how to become their own innovation and change factory, we move into more of a coaching relationship.
Think of it this way – all mentors can coach, but not all coaches can mentor.
Which is right for you where you are now and where you want to be? Perhaps you need someone with both skills who can move between the two without tripping over either themselves or your aims and goals.
If you were to ask me why so many companies don’t succeed (over 60% in their first 5 years), and I’ve had my fair share of hiccups, failures and setbacks too, there are a number of factors – read more here: Why Start-ups Sometimes Fail, for now let’s focus in on two in the context of today’s blog. Firstly, they simply fail to get enough sales. They get stuck by focussing too much on their products without developing their marketing and sales pipelines. The second thing founders often don’t do as well as they should do is they don’t listen. I know I didn’t when I could have and should have. Like all of us there’s a temptation to cherry pick advice, we take the bit that we sort of agree with, then take other bits from other sources that we sort of agree with and try to cobble them together to create a way forward. This inbuilt confirmation bias is very common when we don’t pick up on the things that would actually make a difference. I think sometimes people step back from progress because they might have to work for it, or the perceived risks of failure are too high. Read more here: What Does Making Changes In Business Really Mean
Let’s come back to the question, is mentoring or coaching right for you. Firstly, don’t be tempted into one when what you actually need is the other. Thinking about our propensity towards confirmation bias, we are naturally more likely to believe in our own decisions and advice so could non-directive coaching, i.e. not giving advice, be the right approach for you. I’ve found that when we take our own advice, we are more likely to carry it out. It’s certainly true that I’ve met many people who asked for a little advice only for them to come back to me six months later with the same issues.
One of the key traits of an entrepreneur is supposed to be that they’re really single minded and driven. So there’s a paradox between listening and taking advice and being single minded and taking action.
Getting the balance right is key
I’m getting better at this but on occasion whilst working through a topic with a client, they say, “You’ve asked me 10 questions and I know that you know the answer to this, why don’t you just tell me so I can go and do it, and then we can get on with something else”. My response to that is usually “Well, I don’t want to give you the wrong advice, so let’s keep talking, see where it takes us, and then if it’s appropriate, and if you’re still comfortable, I will give you my take”. I find this to be the best way to support learning but also to support the all-important self-discovery aspect of decision making.
If you’ll take a little advice now – make sure that whomever you choose to help you, has the demonstrable ability to support you by being able to flex between mentoring and coaching and to know when it’s the right time to do so.
You’ll need somebody with both sets of skills. Somebody who is able to move from one to the other without bias. Somebody who is able to say that sounds like a great idea, but let’s explore the consequences that perhaps you haven’t thought through. At the very least, let me put all the options in front of you because I’ve made plenty of mistakes and I can help you avoid the mistakes I made.
To sum up, the best thing about being experienced is that you can take what I’ve done, and get it for nothing, so you can learn from it. That’s the essence of mentoring. To complement mentoring, coaching focusses more on supporting you to work it out for yourself. The best advisors, let’s call them that, are able to transition between the two depending on the context and the circumstances without a script or bias towards one or the other.
A word about boards
We’ve all heard varying opinions about boards. Should they be involved at a high level, guiding and advising, or should they be involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. I have a couple of non-exec director roles myself and I have a very simple rule-of-thumb; ‘Eyes in, fingers out’. Know what’s going on, support and advise but leave the operations to the directors. As organisations, and I say organisations because this is another principle that applies across every type of organisation that generates revenue whether profit or not-for-profit, it can be tough for scale-ups to get the right balance.
As a public company or organisation with shareholders, you have to have a board of non-executive and independent directors. There’s a big difference between having a board where you have to have them, and a scale-up board where perhaps you’re looking for some guidance, some advice, but more often than not, some investment. If you are going to ask people to invest in your business, they are very likely to ask; “Who else is around and have you got a board in place already?” You want to be able to point to people that look like they know what they’re doing! You want to able to point to people who have invested before, perhaps chaired boards of start-up and scale-up organisations and taken those organisations through start-up to highly profitable.
I’ll give you an example of a business I’m working in. The person who started the business (let’s call him Simon), like many others, has ended up taking people onto his board because it was a condition of their investment. Not always the best position to be in because those people haven’t brought the experience or the skills that were really needed. The ideal situation is that you have people around on your board that can introduce you to other people, that can give you guidance and experience and advice on contracts or sale pipelines or recruitment etc. I think a lot of founders aren’t careful enough thinking about who they’re going to take on when the focus is on getting investment rather than getting the right people.
The conversation went like this. Simon said to me; “I’ve met this person (let’s call him Adrian) through somebody else and I think he’s going to put some money in, but what I liked was that he said how much he loves the product. He loves what we do and he really wants to join the board. He says he can introduce me to these people in the supply chain and everything”.
My response was; “Okay, if we take your organisational chart that we talked about and how you’re going to fill it, can you tell me where Adrian fits in? What role is he going to fulfil because I can’t see it from what you’ve told me. What is he going to do that you can’t do? What specifically are you going to ask him to deliver on, what will he bring and by when? Would it be an idea to test that because if he’s good, and he really does love your product and he’s really supportive, then he won’t mind. What due diligence can you do to assess his performance in other businesses and what do people say about the value he put in”.
A side note – another good example of the difference between mentoring and coaching. I could have just told him what I thought, but instead I supported him to his own conclusions which made the learning more powerful and so he could ask those questions himself.
When Simon met Adrian again, I think it was for the third time, Simon was able to ask some of those questions Simon and I discussed. Simon said; “You’ve said you can put some money in and you love the products, but you haven’t really answered any of my other questions. I’d like you to meet Mark because he’s my advisor and he’s an investor himself so he’s experienced in this process. I’m free next week, but you tell me what works and we can set up an on-line call”. Simon sent several messages to Adrian, no reply. Emailed him, no reply. When Simon and I spoke the following month, still no reply. He just disappeared. Sadly not uncommon when someone wants to be paid in equity for their services but is not willing to or able to add anything else to the organisation. This is a big problem as it’s the value add that scale-ups really need. The lesson learned, don’t let the immediate want of investment overtake the real need for surrounding yourself with the right people.
I hope you can see that taking people into your business, whether as non-exec’s or full partners, can be fraught with dangers if you’re not clear on what exactly you want or need from them that will support your plans and not theirs.
Let’s bring this to a close by adding a couple of points to remember when seeking investment. Firstly, it’s not like Dragons Den or The Apprentice on TV! In real life, your potential investors are going to want to see a number of things. For example, when I invest, I want to see evidence of demand, proof that you’ve got some orders, proof that people want your product. How big is it now, how scalable is it, what’s the market size, what could it be, where are the recurring revenues, and what’s the competition. Don’t believe that charisma and passion will get you through. It may get you started but without the foundations, you may end up giving away more than you wanted to because you’ve been negotiated into unfavourable terms.
A final word
Earlier I said that one of the things I’m going to do more of is write, and my book is coming out summer 2024 titled “The Very Best Business Handbook You’ll Ever Own”.
I love business books, but I’m not so keen on the ones that aren’t practical. So I like books like ‘What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School’, ‘The One Minute Manager’ and ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’. All books where you can pick up ideas you could try tomorrow. My aim was to write a business book that has simple to follow and implement ideas that I’ve work out and worked through myself, and you can dip in and out like you would a handbook of instructions for your car. If you buy a copy, I’m sure you’ll find it useful whatever stage you’re at in business. I’ll post more as it comes towards launch. At time of writing (April 2024), it’s due July 2024. BOO UPDATE: Here’s the link: The Very Best Business Handbook You’ll Ever Own
Hope that’s a useful insight for you as you continue your journey, and remember, I’d be pleased to hear your story and where you are up to, perhaps even discuss what working together might look like. Drop me a message here, call or email.
That’s it, I hope it’s useful.
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I help owners, founders and leaders create a scalable business that works without them, build a world-class team, and 10x profitability. Book a call with me here to see if we could work together.
Remember, there are only three types of people – those who make things happen, those who wait for things to happen, and those who talk about why things don’t happen for them. Which one are you?
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