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How coaching can help small businesses
I recently won a coaching session as a raffle prize. My first instinct was to find someone “who needed it more than I did”, however everyone I approached seemed to be sorted. In the end I contacted the coach and booked my complimentary session.
I am a big advocate of coaching and mentoring, having been coached before and part of a mentoring programme when I worked in Canary Wharf. However, I have only sort out coaches when I have had a specific challenge to tackle. I must say, it is difficult attending a coaching session if you don’t know what to talk about.
However Nicky of Be Ready Coaching was most helpful with a workbook which guided me on what to focus on in the session. I took some time to think about “me” for a change, rather than my normal priority of Red Desk’s clients. By changing the focus it helped me have a stronger idea about Red Desk’s identity and in turn what we can offer clients.
What did I learn from my coaching session?
Taking time out from the business and focussing on you (and your business partner) can help you get back on track if you feel as if you have lost your way.
I also learned what skills I wanted to use and develop, who our ideal customer is and who our ideal candidate/Red Desk team member would be.
Coaching for small businesses
Coaching can help at all stages of running a small business: from making that career change, the initial set up of your business through to successfully expanding your business. Here are a few other reasons why you might use a business coach if you are a small business:
- Improving business efficiency
- Time management
- Winning new business
- Networking
- Dividing up key tasks and delegation
- Feeling empowered
How does a VA fit in with coaching?
If you have attended an executive coaching or coaching for small business session then you will probably come out with a lot of action points. Some of those action points may involve delegation of tasks to free up your time and focus on the core activities. A VA can become a trusted member of your team, taking on research, admin and gently reminding you of appointments and upcoming tasks.
An advantage of using a VA company like Red Desk is that you only pay for the time when we are carrying out tasks on your behalf. We VAs are a help rather than a hindrance and will help grow the finances of your company as opposed to being a financial drain.
If you are thinking of using a VA, we would happily chat to you about how we can help your business.
Social Media Training & Social Media Consultancy
Here at Red Desk we attempt to offer a very flexible service as we understand that the support needs of small businesses is ever changing. We therefore offer a variety of services to help small business owners manage their social media and online presence.
We can either completely manage your social media for you (see our Social Media Set Up Guide article), or we can offer the business owner one-to-one training to allow them to eventually manage the social media themselves.
We are open to suggestions on the combination of management & training we offer but in an ideal world we would suggest the following:
- 1 month analysis and set up of social media (10 hours)
- 2 months of social media management
- consultancy / handover sessions to be agreed
As part of our one-to-one social media training we can help you to decide which platforms to use that best suit your business and that you will be able to manage successfully. We will look at how to use a social media dashboard to allow you to schedule your content. We can look at the insights and analysis of social media showing you the free tools available for you to monitor the success of your social media campaigns and finally we can help you with content ideas by looking in detail at the keywords you should be using to help your business be found on line.
Social media can be a daunting task for a small business owner but with our support you can begin to manage your online presence yourself, scheduling the social media into your daily tasks and successfully giving your business and brand an online voice.
Please get in touch with either Lindsay or Mel if you would like us to discuss the possibilities further.
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