Why Business Coaching?

This is more about me still than about why you should choose to work with a Business Coach. Just so you can get to know me a bit better.

My first introduction to Business Coaching was when the accounting practice of which I was a partner decided to engage a coach. We had seen a presentation by a Shirlaws coach at a conference, asked around and received some good recommendations about them from others who had worked with them. We got them in because our growth had just stalled. We had had many years of reliable growth but the two years that had just gone seemed almost dead in the water. Any growth we had was just inline with CPI.


So we got a coach from Shirlaws and said "Mate, we need to learn how to sell better, we need our staff to be able to sell this business to their contacts but above all we need the partners to be more effective at selling". So the coach, like all good coaches says "Yes I can see you have slowed down in your growth now tell me, what else is going on in your business?" "Well, ............................"

Cut a long story short (and it was a long story as we worked with our coach for two years) we did great things in that business. We had a really hard look at our culture, our communications, how we were positioned in the market, how to get our systems really supporting what we did and , oh yes, we did to a bit about sales skills! The biggest change of all though was for me. I had one of those light bulb moments (though it wasn't really like that, it was more like a beacon flaring up after starting with a couple of rubbed together sticks) where I realized that I just did not want to be where I was any more. It wasn't satisfying me. I was too constrained by all the compliance work to do what I really wanted to do, which was help businesses be better businesses, what ever that might mean for the owners. So I decided to leave, to strike out in a new direction, go back to Uni and follow my passion for learning and complete my Masters of Business Coaching and above all join this wonderful vibrant energizing organisation that is Shirlaws.

So that's why I am a Business Coach, to get those fires lit in people so they can bring passion to their business and their lives.