Work With A Coach

Even the best hairdressers have someone else cut their hair, and the best dentists don’t do their own dental work.

You’re building a great business, and it helps to have an outside perspective who can see things you don’t.
A sounding board.
A sparring partner.
A running mate.
You want someone who can see what’s in your blind spots, and help you get out of your own way.
Someone who can see both opportunities and traps.
Someone who helps you level out the notorious highs and lows of entrepreneurship.

What you want is a trusted advisor.

Someone who’s done this before, who can ask you good questions without telling you what to do.
A person who wants you to succeed, without bias or vested interest.
This is like having a sherpa for a climbing expedition – someone who can keep you on course and carry your bags, so that you can focus on getting up the mountain.
They lighten the load, and they aren’t doing this for the first time.

If this sounds like common sense, that’s because it is.
The tricky part is finding the right coach and the right arrangement.
Coaching is like any field, there are good ones and bad ones, some are brilliant and some are running a scam.

But the most important element is finding someone whose style works for you:

  • Do you want to be challenged and pushed, or go at your own pace?

  • Do you want an industry specialist, or an entrepreneurial generalist?

  • Do you want to work on technical problems, or shake up your mindset?

  • Do you want a consistent check-in, or intensive work for a shorter burst?

  • Do you want venture finance, or are you building a great lifestyle business?

  • Do you want to chat 1-1, or bring in more of your team?

Here’s what works most frequently at Evander:

“I want someone to work with me for a year, maybe 3 sessions a month, to help me keep up my momentum. I know I need help with building financials, bringing on more customers and training up my newest team members. Eventually I want to apply for bank finance or investment, so I need a good plan.”

“We want a weekly sounding board, where we bring you our toughest problems and you ask us good questions. To be honest we don’t want someone to tell us what to do, we want someone who will help us get un-stuck. And preferably someone who’s built a business similar to ours before.”

“We’re working through the design process, and want someone to facilitate sessions for our broader team. Someone who can work with us over 6-8 weeks while we test and build it out, keeping us accountable and pushing us on the hard parts.”

Pros and Cons

These work because we do a few crucial things well:

  • We are excellent listeners. We take your side, even when you don’t. We help you stay on track for your goals, not somebody else’s.

  • We’re choosing to work with YOU, not your idea. If and when your idea changes, we’ll support your decisions.

  • We know that neither successes nor failures are permanent, and so we’re not easily rattled by plot twists or complexities. The aim is to keep going.

  • We prefer interesting case studies, analogies and real-world examples wherever possible. It won’t sound like you’re talking to a professor or someone from Deloitte. If you’re choosing between us or Deloitte something has gone wrong.

  • We have a focus on commercial viability, and also on social impact. We want you to grow your revenue and your margins, but not in a ruthless/sociopathic way. You get the best of both, because either extreme becomes uncomfortable.

But in the interests of transparency, there are a few downsides too:

  • We are not a unicorn factory. Having worked with over 1,035 fantastic founders, not one of them has built a billion dollar tech company (so far). If that’s in your immediate future, we’d suggest going to a VC.

  • We don’t have unlimited capacity. We can work with any timezone, but you’ll have fewer options as other groups have some of those limited spots taken up.

  • We won’t do the work for you. We’ll do it with you, but you can’t avoid the work.

  • Our sessions tend to be responsive and unstructured, unless you’ve asked for us to be proactive. We want to know what’s on your mind and on your plate today, so we can work through the big issues. This works brilliantly, but it makes it hard to forecast exactly what you’ll have done with us in 3 months’ time.

Let’s Work Together

You can find lots of examples of our content across this site and online.
It should give you a sense of our style and our strengths.
If we’re the right fit for you, please get in touch with the form below.
And even if we’re not, we’d highly encourage you to find a trusted advisor – your work is too important to do alone, and the right coach will bring out your best.