Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 10 - 8 Reasons Why You Should Work With A Coach

podcast Jun 28, 2021

What’s it like to work with a coach or a mentor? What are the benefits and is there a difference?

In this episode, I talk about the difference between a coach and a mentor. I also share 8 reasons why working with a coach can be that missing piece that can help you take your business to the next level. Listen up and take some notes.

Key takeaways from this episode:

The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.
A coach helps support you move towards your goals, not by advising, but by asking questions by being present and utilising active listening to help you find your answers.
A good coach or mentor will give you unbiased feedback.
A good business coach will help you see your blind spots because you're too close to your business to see the gold and the opportunities.
A good coach will help you close your knowledge gaps because you don't know what you don't know.
We all need some form of accountability.
Finding the right person to support you is crucial.

Episode Timeline:

00:04 Intro

01:08 Episode Topic

02:43 The difference between a coach and mentor

05:20 Eight reasons why working with a coach can help your business and change your life

05:28 Navigation

06:03 Focus

06:30 Personal attention

06:45 Unbiased Feedback

08:12 Blind spots

09:40 Knowledge gaps

11:52 Accountability

13:07 Outro

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth Gilbey here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription

Ruth Gilbey 00:04

Hello and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Hello, and welcome to today's episode. I'm going to be talking about eight reasons why you should work with a coach or a mentor. So I'm going to put eight things forward to get you thinking about why I think this could be really good for you for helping you move your business forward.

I firmly believe that if you're serious about your business, you should have a coach or a mentor. I feel that strongly about it. It's been such a powerful process for me, and it completely changed my life and business when I started working with a coach and particularly over the last few years when I went all in and really was serious about my business as well. It was just it was the thing that has kept me moving forward. You don't need to do things on your own.

I've always believed that the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. Actually, that's not quite true because I've not always believed that. But I certainly believe that in the last few years now, there are lots of coaches out there. And it can be quite overwhelming to kind of work out who you want to work with.

So I'm hoping this episode helps you ask yourself some questions get you thinking about the different types of coaches out there and the different types of mentors, and you don't actually need a qualification to call yourself a coach in at the moment. It isn't actually regulated.

Now, personally, as a coach, I wanted to understand and seek certified training before I called myself a coach. It was essential to me that I had world-class coaching training that could help me support my clients and me. So I've got a coaching diploma. I'm a qualified coach. And during that process, I really learned the difference between what being a coach is and what a mentor is. So what I say a coach is a coach helps support you move towards your goals, not by advising, but by asking questions by being present and utilizing active listening to help you find your answers. Whereas a mentor is someone who might be ahead of you, slightly ahead of you in their kind of where they are in their business or career.

So you're learning for someone who's been through the steps that you want to go through. And it's very different. They would be advising and giving a point of view. However, there are different ways of supporting a client. And there are crossovers. There are many, many different ways people coach and mentor. And it's actually debated quite a lot. Some coaches really believe that you should never advise. Whereas there are other coaches that believe there are so many different ways you can actually be a coach, it's really about finding out what you need personally and what's going to drive you forward confidently.

I have found during many of my coaching sessions that the coachee often seeks advice, and it says it's essential that I ensure that the client is aware of what coaching is and what mentoring is. And this needs to be clear before I start a coaching session. And what I do to make sure it is clear as I do something that's called contracting in which isn't necessarily just signing a contract, it's having a conversation and making sure that they know the way you work as a coach and they are in agreement in that way of working that you've got permission from them before you start a coaching session. Now I offer both mentoring and coaching.

However, to kind of confuse things. I still use coaching techniques, even as a mentor, because I just know it's such a powerful way. I still think it's essential that you don't just advise someone but that you ask them the right questions so they can find their answer as really which one is right, your advice or helping the client work out what they want. Now when you find the answers yourself through guidance and through coaching, it's such an empowering process, and you feel more confident and have more clarity in your own direction.

So when I approach your coaching session. I'm also on a level playing field. I'm not the expert, and no one needs fixing. It's all about me helping my clients unlock their path and helping them find the right answers within them. I believe coaching is an empowering process. Whereas mentoring is more about guiding and teaching. And both are really, really useful. Anyway, here are my eight reasons why I believe working with a coach can help your business and change your life.

Number one is they'll help you navigate challenges and meet your goals. They'll help you take better and smarter action because you set the goals you really want. And the coach will make sure you're heading in the right direction and the direction you want, which is absolutely key.

Over the course of years, even small changes in your direction can lead to dramatically better results. And a business coach serves as an important objective third party to regularly check-in to make sure you're on the most direct path to your ideal destination.

Number two is they'll help you make better decisions for yourself because they'll help you make sure your focus is clear. And they'll open your mind to new habits and ideas. Because we can get stuck being very busy in our business and stuck in working a particular way. So if you've got someone who can kind of shine a light and ask the right questions to help you look at things differently and challenge you around those decisions, that can be a really, really powerful process.

Number three is you'll get personal attention from someone who knows your business inside and out. And they are actually making you the priority and getting you to take that time out and look at your business and helping you and supporting you prioritize yourself as well.

Number four is a good coach or mentor will give you unbiased feedback. Now, have you ever asked friends or family members for advice and been left either more confused or worse, not wanting to do something?

I hear this all the time where, you know, I see so many business owners struggling to get that kind of advice or support from the right person because, you know, they're surrounded by people who just don't understand their business or aren't in the same sector as them. And that's why also looking at coaches who specialize in the sector that you work in as well is really important. So for me, I work with female business owners who are service-based online business owners. That's my specialty because I understand that sector really well. And a lot of my clients are either coaches themselves, or as I say, their service-based online business owners. I also work with an awful lot of marketers as well because my background is in marketing. So they want to work with someone who understands marketing. So within my membership, and a lot of my clients are copywriters, web designers, social media managers, Facebook ads strategists, and I am starting to work with some other bloggers as well and some other coaches as well. So it helps them also within you know if you're doing group coaching as well to be amongst peers as well.

Number five is a good business coach who will help you see your blind spots because you're too close to your business to see the gold and the opportunities. Now often, I ask coaching questions on a call in a kind of challenging way. And let me give you a couple of examples.

Recently, I had quite a lot of what I call breakthrough strategy calls. I do these one-off calls with people. And it was something I was running for my new members where any of my new members in my membership would get this breakthrough strategy call. And so many of them had never actually worked with a coach and were coming to these calls and didn't really know what to expect. And I asked them these I was really you know, I was listening, asking them questions about their businesses finding out about what their goals were. And some of them had never been through this process. And I absolutely loved getting to know their businesses and loved getting to know what their goals were. And people walked away just from one session saying, Oh my goodness, it's so obvious now, or I should have known this, or it makes so much more sense now, and it was almost like I could see in their face the penny drop. And they uncovered that they unlocked that they found that they found their answers. I just asked them some questions or just asked them the right questions to help them find their answers, and I absolutely love when that happens. So that's number five.

Help your coach will help you see your blind spots, things that you're too close to number six. A good coach will help you close your knowledge gaps because you don't know what you don't know. Right. So if you work with someone who is slightly ahead of you in their business journey, if you're working with a coach or a mentor and you want to learn from them, or you want them to help you understand, say, I've had 25 years experience in the trenches as a business manager in operations in HR, understanding businesses as well. So I understand the intricacies of startups and corporate life as well. So I can help people when it comes to setting up their businesses as well. But you don’t.

You might not know these things. But so you might need someone who's a mentor who's got that kind of experience. The other thing is, you also don't know what you do know. Now bear with me. Stay with me here is because you're too close to it, you don't, you can't see the gold and the opportunities within your business. And a business coach can help you identify what you already have and also identify what you might need more of. And it's getting that right balance because I think I see a lot of women, particularly thinking they need another core. So they need to change their strategy, or they need to pivot their business. And they need to change everything when often it's just some tweaks, some minor tweaks, and adjustments. It's not.

It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be time-consuming. It's just these little tweaks. And so this stops the shiny red object syndrome and chasing things that aren't going to move you forward in life and business because they'll it's just sometimes these minor tweaks that you are too close to number seven is a coach will help you unlock self-imposed limits because you set yourself unnecessary obstacles, we all do it we all set ourselves obstacles in a cage on what you can or cannot do. So having a good coach will help you work through the blocks of the obstacles and self-imposed limitations in a thoughtful and challenged, challenging way.

And number eight, there are so many more, but I'll stick to eight today is they'll keep you on the right track and hold you accountable. We all need some form of accountability. Have you ever done a course and just not finished it because it's been self-study. However, when you've done it within a group setting or with a coach, they'll help you move forward. So a coach can help you get stuff done, and not procrastinate or uncover why you're procrastinating and uncover why you might creatively be avoiding something because every action there's a reason to it behind our actions. And a coach will help you see that by asking the right questions.

So yes, the answer is a coach, or a mentor can really help you. However, there are also some caveats here. It's all about finding the right coach for you. And also it depends on you. Do you feel ready to ask yourself questions and possibly look to challenge your way of thinking? You have to be ready to do this.

You have to be ready to do the work. You have to trust the process. You have to trust yourself. You have to be ready and willing to challenge things and find it then if you are ready. Finding the right person to support you is crucial. It's been life-changing for me. And also, it's been so lovely to see the difference my coaching makes for my clients.

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.