Hiring a business coach

[Notarealsignguy]

Two of the tech certificates I have are Lean Manufacturing and Critical Business Skills, the kind of stuff coaches and classes shove down people's throats, companies waste money sending people to, and they don't really fit into much of the "sign shop" industry. Most of their stuff focuses on streamlining assembly line type manufacturing, distribution processes, and labor management to maximize output. It just doesn't fit, or benefit small "job shop" type businesses that change direction, jobs, and processes, often several times a day. We're not in the widget making scenario where the "usual methods" benefit. They're about as useful for a small sign shop as Gino's life coach

Save your money. Get involved with your local business community, B2B organizations, Chamber of Commerce, find out what businesses need, and cater to it. Hit up factories, always good for repeat business. Banks source a lot of graphics and signage locally. Hit up realtors that handle commercial spaces for leads/ referrals. Bars, stay away from, too many can't pay their bill.... But it's ok to patronize them

Business is business. The whole idea of a "widget" is exactly that, it doesn't matter what product or service you produce (the widget). The principals of business are the same whether you're running a sign shop or running a strip club. Or both if you're from Arkansas?

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I'd last about ten minutes with that freak. Exhausting!

That's longer than Notareal will last with him......

 

[DL Signs]

This is super true, until a point where you're making signs by the location & new builds only, at which point you are dealing with widgets, those widgets are small sign shops, and you need to leverage all of these critical business skills to strong arm them into getting signs on the wall at midnight. At that point we call them a national and their rate is at least 25% beyond what local customers pay...

Business is business. The whole idea of a "widget" is exactly that, it doesn't matter what product or service you produce (the widget). The principals of business are the same whether you're running a sign shop or running a strip club. Or both if you're from Arkansas?

I'm not saying it's all bad, just do the right stuff, in the right scenario, and for the right purpose. Real business training is different, human resources, accounting, book-keeping and records management is a lot different, and more useful than what you get with business coaches, advisors, and these over priced courses...

Before I retired, the firm I was with spent a fortune sending key people like me to these courses, hiring coaches and advisors to shadow us... Never asked for it, it just became part of the job, and dropped our profit sharing to almost nothing for 2 years.

We started small, and grew to national, specializing in large major trade show exhibits, store POP/ POS displays, product branding, plus all the general signage and graphics we still did for the local market. We went from a little company doing the decals, banners & graphics most of us do, to runs of hundreds & thousands of store displays, both graphics and manufacturing, and we had growing pains. In our case most of what they pimped we had already figured out and implemented before any of it just using common sense in our workflow to streamline things. It didn't take us to new levels. I found most of it pretty textbook generic, some even admitted that our "job shop on steroids" didn't fit in their box (but they were sure happy to take the check at the end, and credit for what we had already done before they showed up). Probably could have gotten the same info and outcome from a $20 book, but that's just me.

I don't see where a 1-3 person sign shop that caters to a small local market would get any value from these types of things. For a small shop, the internet is full of resources, business webinars, papers, publications, and you can find ones that are more industry specific than all the coaches, advisors, and courses that aren't geared to any specific industry. Plus these resources are either free, or relatively cheap compared to courses and coaches that cost as much as putting a new printer in your shop. The one thing they aren't is cheap.
But you do get some pretty fancy looking certificates to hang on your wall. I feel more edumacatededed.

And thanks Notareal, now I wanna' move to Arkansas and open a shop.... Maybe I'll grow my mullet back too

 

[Tomtint]

A friend of mine that is in the same business that we are..And was already very successful, Hired one. They were over the top pleased with their investment and credit him with taking their business to 2.5M a year to 5M plus a year. Some of the biggest changes of the business model was to stop discounting jobs for repeat customers, Also to add accountability all the way up and down the employee chain of command. There is obviously more to it than that but those were just a couple highlights that stood out in our talks about it.

 

[Dantellian]

In previous years i would say that i don't need one, because i know everything, but frankly after making through the whole business process i would agree that my colleagues and myself need some sort of coach

 

[Precision]

If your looking for a business coach, it's a sign your struggling. It's going to be an extra expense so why? Organize yourself. We use Trello.com (free) with columns for each employee, each job has a job card with picture. We also use a 4x6 3 month erasable wall install calendar. Last, spend some money on Google advertising something your good at and have the resources for. Focus on what you can do and try not to do the things that bring no $, and are more of a headache than it's worth.

No business coach.

Good luck.

 

[Splash0321]

I worked for two different companies in two different industries that hired business consultants. The following is a summary list of what the company owners and managers had to say.

1. It was too costly of an investment for a small percentage increase of ROI. A small company (less than 30 employees) would not gain much financially out of it. Larger companies that are bringing in revenues close to 8 figures or more would benefit most from it.
2. Both stated there are courses and/seminars that could have taught them what they gained from a business coach.
3. They would’ve rather spent the money on industry specific training and certifications for their staff.
4. Both bosses admitted that several employees had similar suggestions as the business coach long before the coach was hired. They wished they would have included employees in developing new strategies rather than spending money on a consultant.

I would rather invest in training for myself and employees before considering a consultant. Listen to your experienced employees and consider trying ideas that are not your own as long as the rationale for those ideas are sound.

 

[mbasch]

It is tough being a small business owner. We all wear lots of hats and don't have nearly the same resources or help the leaders of larger businesses have. We have to be jack of all trades and reality is we are masters of few. Sometimes we just need a neutral party to be a sounding board and to help us stay focused. That said, I think it is important to differentiate between a consultant/business adviser and a business coach. A consultant will look at your business, analyze it and give you suggestions about ways to improve internal processes, financial health or sales growth. A business coach will help you focus on the goals for you and your company, guide you to identifying the steps it will take to get there and then hold you accountable for taking the steps towards your goals while helping you clear the mental blocks that keep you from getting there, like procrastination or lack of focus. A business consultant should have experience in your industry while a business coach doesn't need industry experience. They just helps people stay motivated and focused.

 

[ikarasu]

We hired a business coach a year ago.

It was pretty much a 3 day, 24 hour session with 5-6 key people in the business - I thought it would be stupid and useless... And right up until the end I did as well. It was pretty much him asking us how we think we could grow the business, What our issues our and our expertises are.... It's something everyone in the room always knew... It ended with putting together a plan on how to grow the business while focussing on a few key areas every week until those objectives were done, then moving onto others - And doing it persistantly.

It's great to get a group of people together and plan out long term goals - If you just go about business everyday like it usually is, pushing your sales reps to grow the business and doing nothing else... A business coach will help. If you're a "Go getter" and have a bunch of plans on how to grow it... Then it doesnt help. A business coach is just there to set you on the right path if you suck at organizing... And thats pretty much it. Think about it... A generic business coach doesnt know the print world, or any of the other worlds they "Coach" on - What they do is take your ideas and structure them for you.


Do I think it was worth it? No... I mean, 2 of our sales reps used to never charge a rush fee, or a fuel surcharge.... And he drilled it into their brains that while theyre both scam fees, everyone charges them including shipping companies... So we make roughly $10-20 more per order just on fuel surcharges... When you're doing 40 orders a day that adds up. I'm sure it paid for itself - I feel like Most of the people in the room got nothing from it...but the people who were more...stubborn / felt like they knew everything, it opened their eyes a bit and they got something from it.

We also set a schedule for price increases - Some customers havent had a price increase in 15 years.... Because their sales reps never increased the price. Meanwhile our products cost 50% more due to all our price increases / labor charges - A few customers got a 40% increase on products and were rightfully angry, So they learned small increases every year or two is good for us and the customer, and doesnt piss the customer off. It's little things that I'm sure most people know and already do.... Hiring a coach isnt necessary bad... if you're a 1 man shop, I dont know if I'd do it. If you have 4-5 people that could benefit from it, It may be worth it.

 

[gnubler]

I would rather invest in training for myself and employees before considering a consultant.

Agreed. I started this thread going on a year ago and still think about it from time to time. My concern with hiring a 'generic' business coach is that they don't have any knowledge specific to this industry. I'd be worried that it might end up turning more into therapy sessions, or bitching about bad customers or nightmare jobs.

Investing in industry related training sounds like a much better use of my time and money. I get all the business coaching I need right here on the forum...and then some.

 

[Goatshaver]

I feel like I'm right along with you on this. I've been operating about the same amount of time (3.5 years) and I feel like there is so much room to improve day to day things but I'm always so overwhelmed with work I never end up getting to it. (Also not enough work to hire someone either).
Look into your city or states small business services. They might be able to give you some good resources for this kind of thing.

 

[royalwrapz]

Check out WrapIQ. Large group coaching. Excellent investment. Ran by John Duever, huge fleet graphics company and Avery wrap trainer.
Monthly group calls, private forum, we all help and learn from each other.

 

[ExtremeG Alamosa]

Chiming in here. 2.5 years into my sign shop business. We are up about %20 in revenue over last year. I have a business degree, and have always loved all things business. I like to say "Business makes the world go round".
What is your goal? It sounds like most folks on this thread want to be less overwhelmed and have more time to think through what you want. I want to be able to pull out about $200k/yr in benefits from my business. If my net profit is about 20% after adding back all the "meals, uniforms, truck payments, new roof for my "home office", corporate annual meetings in tropical locations". I will need to get my gross revenue up above $1m/yr. Currently we are half of that. So I've hired an industry specific business coach to help me set in place a plan to double our growth.... We'll see how it goes!