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You built it. You grew it. You know it better than anyone— every client, every process, every decision. And that, right there, is theproblem.
I get asked this a lot, usually in one of two ways. Thefirst is genuine curiosity from a business owner who's heard the term but isn'tentirely sure what it means in practice.
Most business owners start thinking about selling theirbusiness when something forces the issue. A health scare. A competitorapproach. Burnout. A birthday with a round number.
There is a point in almost every business's growth wherethings slow down. Revenue levels off. Margins tighten. The team seems stretched despite the workload feeling the same. New clients take longer to win.
If you're a business owner in Dorset — or the broader South West — and you're exploring whether a business coach might be the right move, this piece is written specifically for you.
Most management teams don't fail because the wrong people were hired. They fail because the right people were promoted too early, given titles without authority, or left to figure out leadership on their own.
If I asked you what your business is worth, you'd give me a number. Most owners can. The problem is that the number they give me is almost never the same number a buyer would give.
If you've been exploring whatkind of external support might be right for your business, you'll haveencountered all three: coaching, consultancy, and mentoring. You may well haveseen all three offered by the same person.
There is a version of selling a business that most owners imagine: a clean transaction, a fair price, a smooth handover, and the satisfaction of handing over something you built and are proud of.
I've worked with a lot of business owners who knew, somewhere, that they were approaching the end of a chapter — but kept not quite having the conversation with themselves about what that meant.
Most growing businesses have too much data and not enough information. The accounts come in monthly. The bookkeeper produces a P&L. There's a spreadsheet somewhere with sales figures.
Here's a lie I hear from good, smart business owners every single week: "AI isn't really my problem, that's for the tech team." It's confident. It's delivered without a flicker of doubt. And it's completely wrong.
Ask a business owner who they are, and most will tell you what they do. "I run a scaffolding firm." "I own three gyms." "I'm a coach." Ask again in ten years, if the business is gone, sold, or simply different, and watch how many go quiet.
Most owners can tell you their revenue for the year. Ask them for last month's lead conversion rate and you'll get a shrug, a guess, or a promise to "check with someone". That gap, between knowing the big number and knowing the numbers that produced it, is where growth quietly stalls.
In most businesses above a certain size there is at least one person who should not be in their current role. And the owner knows it. Has known it for longer than they would comfortably admit.
The skills, behaviours, and instincts that built your business to its current size are real. They worked. The problem is that at a certain point they stop being assets and start being constraints.
Ask a business owner what they do and they will tell you about the business. Ask them who they are and most of them will tell you about the business again.
Nobody is sitting around. The team is in early and out late. On the surface the business looks like it is working hard. And yet the numbers are not moving.
There is a conversation I have more often than you might expect. The business is doing well. Turnover is up, the margins are decent, the team is in place. And yet the owner says they do not know why, but they are not enjoying it anymore.
There is a version of business success that looks, from the outside, like exactly what you set out to achieve. Revenue is growing, the team is in place, the clients are good. And yet something is deeply wrong.
Walk into most offices and you'll find the values on the wall before you find them in the room. Integrity. Excellence. Teamwork. Printed in a nice font, mounted somewhere near reception, and about as connected to daily behaviour as the fire escape diagram next to it.
Ask an owner what their business is worth, and you'll usually get a number pulled from somewhere between hope and hearsay, a multiple they half-remember from a mate's business, applied to a profit figure that hasn't been stress-tested in years.
There's a particular kind of owner I enjoy working with most, the ones actively trying to make themselves unnecessary. Not lazy. Not checked out. Deliberately building a business that doesn't need them in the room to function, because they understand that's the actual goal, not a by-product of success.
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