Top 5 skills you’ll need as a business owner in 2025

30 Jan, 2025, No comments

The business landscape is evolving rapidly, and as a business owner, staying ahead requires adapting to new trends and challenges. Here are the top 5 skills you’ll need as a business owner in 2025 to thrive in a competitive and tech-driven world:

1. Digital Literacy and Tech Savviness

Why It’s Important: Technology is reshaping industries, and businesses that fail to adapt risk falling behind. From AI and automation to data analytics and digital marketing, understanding and leveraging technology will be critical.

How to Develop It:

Stay updated on emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and IoT.
Invest in digital tools and platforms that streamline operations and improve customer experiences.
Take online courses or certifications in digital marketing, data analysis, or tech-related fields.

2. Adaptability and Resilience

Why It’s Important: The pace of change is accelerating, and businesses must be agile to navigate uncertainty, economic shifts, and evolving customer expectations.

How to Develop It:

Embrace a growth mindset and view challenges as opportunities to learn.
Build flexible business models that can pivot quickly.
Regularly assess market trends and be willing to adjust your strategies.

3. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Why It’s Important: As automation handles more technical tasks, human skills like empathy, communication, and relationship-building will become even more valuable. High EQ helps you lead teams effectively, build strong customer relationships, and foster a positive workplace culture.

How to Develop It:

Practice active listening and empathy in your interactions.
Seek feedback from employees, customers, and peers to improve self-awareness.
Invest in leadership training or coaching to enhance your interpersonal skills.

4. Strategic Thinking and Problem-Solving

Why It’s Important: In a complex and competitive environment, business owners must think critically, anticipate challenges, and make data-driven decisions to stay ahead.

How to Develop It:

Use frameworks like SWOT analysis or design thinking to approach problems strategically.
Stay informed about industry trends and competitor strategies.
Collaborate with mentors or advisors to gain new perspectives.

5. Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Why It’s Important: Consumers and stakeholders increasingly expect businesses to operate sustainably and contribute positively to society. Integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into your business can enhance your brand reputation and long-term success.

How to Develop It:

Adopt eco-friendly practices, such as reducing waste or using renewable energy.
Support social causes that align with your business values.
Communicate your sustainability efforts transparently to build trust with customers.

Bonus Skill: Lifelong Learning

The ability to continuously learn and upskill will be essential in 2025 and beyond. Commit to staying curious, exploring new ideas, and investing in your personal and professional development.

How to Prepare for 2025

Assess Your Current Skills: Identify gaps in your skill set and create a plan to address them.
Invest in Training: Take courses, attend workshops, or hire a coach to develop these critical skills.
Build a Skilled Team: Surround yourself with talented individuals who complement your strengths and fill your gaps.

By mastering these skills, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2025 and build a thriving, future-proof business. Let me know if you’d like help creating a plan to develop these skills! 😊

Coaching vs. Consulting: What’s the Difference?

30 Jan, 2025, No comments

Coaching vs. Consulting: What’s the Difference?

1. Coaching

Focus: Personal and professional development, mindset, and skill-building.
Approach: Collaborative and client-driven. The coach asks questions, provides guidance, and helps the client discover their own solutions.
Goal: To empower the client to develop their skills, overcome challenges, and achieve their goals through self-discovery and action.

When to Choose Coaching:

You’re looking for guidance to build confidence, clarity, or leadership skills.
You want to overcome self-doubt, improve decision-making, or develop a growth mindset.
You’re ready to take ownership of your growth and need accountability and support.

Example: A business owner struggling with self-doubt hires a coach to build confidence and create a clear plan for growth.

2. Consulting

Focus: Solving specific business problems, providing expertise, and delivering actionable solutions.
Approach: Expert-driven. The consultant analyzes the situation, identifies solutions, and provides recommendations or strategies.
Goal: To deliver measurable results by leveraging the consultant’s expertise and experience.

When to Choose Consulting:

You need expert advice to solve a specific business problem (e.g., scaling, digital transformation, or marketing strategy).
You’re looking for a proven framework, tool, or strategy to implement in your business.
You want an outside perspective to identify opportunities or challenges you may not see.

Example: A business owner hires a consultant to create a digital marketing strategy and train their team on the latest tools.

Key Differences at a Glance

Aspect	Coaching	Consulting
Focus	Personal growth, mindset, and skill-building.	Solving specific business problems.
Approach	Collaborative and client-driven.	Expert-driven and solution-oriented.
Role of the Expert	Acts as a guide and accountability partner.	Acts as an advisor and problem-solver.
Outcome	Client develops skills and finds their own solutions.	Client receives actionable strategies and solutions.
Ideal For	Building confidence, clarity, and leadership.	Solving technical or strategic business challenges.

How to Decide: Coaching or Consulting?

Ask yourself these questions:

Do I need to develop my skills, mindset, or confidence? → Choose Coaching.
Do I need expert advice to solve a specific business problem? → Choose Consulting.
Do I want to take ownership of my growth and find my own solutions? → Choose Coaching.
Do I want someone to provide a ready-made solution or strategy? → Choose Consulting.

How I Can Help

I offer both coaching and consulting services to meet your unique needs:

Coaching: If you’re looking to build confidence, overcome self-doubt, or develop leadership skills, my coaching programs are designed to help you grow personally and professionally.
Consulting: If you need expert advice to solve a specific business problem, my consulting services provide actionable strategies and solutions to drive results.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Not sure which service is right for you? Let’s talk! [Book a Free Consultation] to discuss your goals and find the best way forward.

Ten Ways a Business Coach Can Rocket Your Business Growth

15 Jan, 2025, No comments

As a business owner, you surely want to see your business grow dynamically like successful ones. That kind of rapid growth is happening now in some businesses even with the uncertain economy. But maybe your business is not growing, or it has declined. Or perhaps it’s just not growing fast enough. Here are the Ten Ways a Business Coach Can Rocket Your Business Growth.

Why does rapid growth happen to some businesses but not others? No doubt some factors are out of your control. Take for example the economy or your business location. However, you have more control than you may realize. Your business should grow and you should accomplish the calling for your life!

Planning an Execution in Your Business

Certainly, business growth can happen spontaneously. But more often than not businesses grow through planning and execution. Wise owners bring in an expert to help. A good business coach will help you get clarity on your personal vision, calling and goals. Your business coach will identify and remove obstacles to your growth. Business coaches help business owners to develop a growth plan. They are experts at developing a shared vision with your team and stakeholders. A good business coach will renew and inspire you and your entire team!

Ten Ways a Coach With Rocket Your Business Growth

Planning works! A good coach is a great way to go. Here is my top ten list of how a coach can rocket your growth. The first five items relate to how an effective business coach will impact you personally:

1. You will have a clear vision of where you personally are headed.

The most important key to business growth is you, the business owner! Most business owners have big goals like “Be the biggest business in town,” or “Make a lot of money” but you need more clarity than that. Breaking out of foggy thinking can transform and grow your organization.

2. You will get renewed clarity about your personal passions and gifts.

Your passion will overflow into your prospects, customers, and employees. It is very rewarding for me to see discouraged, burned-out business owners “light up” as they see how to break out of the day-to-day monotony of doing the same thing and getting the same results.

3. You will discover “hidden” obstacles that sabotage your growth.

Once these obstacles are removed, business growth will naturally begin. A business owner of a mid-size business recently told me, “I thought I would be making more money by now. I’m about ready to quit.” Pay attention, you don’t need to leave your business to find success! A simple redesign of your job description and your processes can change everything.

4. You will possess a crystal clear vision of actions you need to take personally.

During a recent coaching session, a business owner told me that he is “always putting out fires.” I am helping him to learn ways to stay focused on his calling and “highest and best use” as a business owner. You can too! A coach will help you develop actions to address the obstacles, reach new prospects and keep your business growing.

5. You will be renewed, inspired and energized personally.

Your energy and inspiration are the most important factors in a good business plan. If you are excited about where you are going, you will keep moving forward. If you love what you are doing, you will persevere. Persistence will lead you to reach your business goals.

Once you are personally energized, you should engage your employees and other stakeholders. This is like pouring gasoline on a fire! Take a look at the last five ways a good business coach will rocket your growth:

6. An outside, unbiased perspective will help you to discover obstacles in business.

A business owner of a growing business told me that he liked the fact that employees are more honest with me because I am unbiased. No matter how hard you try, it is very hard to identify obstacles on your own.

7. You will have clarity on where you are taking your business.

Everyone around you will sense your passion, your clarity, and your leadership. No more nebulous thinking.

8. Your vision and enthusiasm will “rub-off” on your team.

Now everyone will have clarity about the direction of your business. As your employees and stakeholders see and feel a new passion and resolve in you, many of them will also become excited!

9. Your employees will be pulling in the same direction as you.

Fragmented groups going in different directions will be reduced. Others will be handling tasks that drain your energy. You will all begin moving in the same direction, and this is a powerful thing. Like a freight train, at first, you will slowly begin to build momentum. Soon your growth will accelerate!

10. The new passion in your business will overflow into your community.

You won’t need to push, cajole or lay guilt trips on your team anymore. Prospects and customers alike will be attracted to your energy and will want to join you in your efforts in telling others about your business. You will experience dynamic growth because you are fulfilling your purpose in life.

Conclusion

In summary, a good business coach will lay a good foundation for you to achieve your personal goals. Then he will bring clarity and unity to your business. Doing that will change your community and beyond! A good business coach will guide you to develop a clear plan to achieve your goals. The plan will include specific achievable goals to help improve not only your business but fulfill your calling and passion to help others.

Kefilwe Lekabe makes personal and small business coach training easy and energizing for business owners. Whether you simply need business or personal coaching or an effective plan for your business, Alan can help. To get a clear vision for your life or business:

Questions about our small business coaching services?

The 5 biggest misconceptions about business coaching

15 Jan, 2025, No comments

Unless you’ve had personal experience with it, business coaching is probably a bit of a mystery. Do business coaches just walk in and fix the broken parts of your business? Are they only there to motivate and support, or do they get down in the weeds with you? In this blog, I clear up some common misconceptions about business coaching

Here are five of the most common misconceptions I see.

1. Coaching is only for failing businesses

This misconception is unfortunate because it can lead many owners of stable (and profitable) businesses away from coaching, thinking they have nothing to gain. But coaching isn’t just for at-risk businesses whose owners are in a constant state of overwhelm. It can also turn a good company into a great one. In fact, if you looked at many of the businesses whose owners are just starting as EMyth clients, you’d probably say they looked like great companies. They’re unquestionably successful in some way. Maybe the owner has worked diligently to build a business that turns a profit and that’s not dependent on them. Maybe they have solid employees and loyal clients. Yet they, too, are challenged in other ways. Sure, some owners come to coaching to fix a struggling business; but many others come with a strong business that’s stagnant—one they just don’t know how to grow. The point is, coaching can help any owner whose business has yet to fully become what they’d like it to be.

2. Business coaching is therapy

Business owners approach coaching as a way to improve their business. But the way a business works reflects the choices the owner makes. It reflects what they want and who they are—the good and the bad. To change your business, you need to change yourself; it’s self-work, guided by a mentor. So it makes sense that people would often make the mistake of thinking business coaches are—more or less—like therapists. But this is a big misconception.

To treat a patient, a therapist needs to be distant and objective, to look at an individual from the outside. But a client isn’t a patient. And a coach—in the EMyth definition—doesn’t linger objectively on the outside. A coach needs to get side-by-side with owners to guide them through their challenges. In order to see what they can do to impact profitability or growth, coaches and owners need to speak a common language, with no acronyms or jargon. And the coach needs to be personal, curious, and invested—without being immersed, without getting so far into mentoring that they can’t see the picture clearly. To help their client, a coach actually has to be subjective enough to connect and understand, while maintaining enough objectivity to see and light the path an owner needs to take.

3. A business coach is a glorified cheerleader

It isn’t the job of a business coach to stand on the sidelines and cheer their clients on. Sure, we can do this—and love to when owners make great strides in their development plans—but coaching is about accountability first. And while coaches always want to motivate and offer positive feedback, their key role is to see and reflect what their clients need to do to grow and improve their businesses—even (especially) when it’s tough to hear.

4. A business coach does the work for you

If an owner comes in thinking their coach is going to do the hard work, they’ll find themselves in a difficult spot. The heart of coaching is transformation and change, and it has to come from the owner themselves.

Coaches are interested in helping you create a thriving business and a more fulfilling life—and it’s an exercise in patience for everyone involved. To create lasting and productive change in your business, you need to learn how to do everything on your own. Only then will you know to do it the same way—or not the same way—next time.

And to be honest, it’s a difficult line to hold, especially when we find the business solution really interesting. But business coaching isn’t about fast results: It’s about getting to those results in a meaningful way. If a coach does all the work for you, it short-circuits your outcome. If you’re driving your own solution—if you’re tied to it tactically—you’re going to use it. If not, the solution will live in isolation. Coaching is beyond getting to the answer; it’s about living that answer.

5. Business coaching is a quick fix

Business coaching is like any other type of coaching: It’s a development process. Consider a baseball coach. If you’re having a hard time hitting the ball, your coach can’t simply come in and say: “Do it this way and you’ll hit it.” To achieve your goal, you need to take the necessary steps. You need to shift your stance, hold the bat differently, work different muscles. You need to practice. Business coaching is no different. It takes time.

In business coaching, we’re talking about you, the business owner, not just the functions of your business. We look at your whole company (not simply a single pain point) and how it’s a product that’s distinctly yours. And it’s a lot of work. Some owners have young businesses that need structure to survive. Others have businesses that have been around for years—businesses built with different habits and beliefs than the ones they need now. Whatever your business or your challenges as a leader, in order to change you need to accept what’s true today so you can stop the merry-go-round and spin it the other direction. If you work at it, you’ll see results on day one—and lasting impacts down the road that will amaze you.