What does business coaching cover?
Business coaching is structured one-to-one work on how your business grows: strategy, profit, pricing, systems and scaling. You bring your figures, we find the constraint holding growth back, and we work on it together on a 90-day rhythm so progress is measured.
Many businesses grow by reacting to opportunities, adding people when things get busy and cutting when they go quiet. Growth like that multiplies whatever is already there: if your prices are five per cent too low, doubling the revenue doubles the shortfall. Three common signs:
Turnover is up and your take-home is flat.
Revenue has grown, you have taken on more people and work longer hours, and you draw about the same as before.
The business still runs at your speed.
Every decision routes through you, the team asks rather than decides, and nothing finishes while you are away. More work means more of you.
Growth eats cash before it pays.
People, stock and capacity get funded ahead of the revenue they earn. Profitable, expanding businesses can run out of money this way.
Where does the work start?
Owners often arrive with a view about the problem that turns out to be wrong. “We need more leads” can turn out to be a conversion problem, a pricing problem, or a delivery problem that more leads would make worse.
The work starts with a diagnosis. What is the gross margin by job, rather than in total? What will cash look like in eight weeks? Which clients would you not take on again at the price they pay? Once the constraint is clear, the work narrows to one pricing decision, one process, or one number reviewed weekly and held to for a quarter.
An invented illustration of the shape — not a client, and not a claimed result. An owner bills £40,000 a month across three types of work. Costed properly, type A runs at a 42% gross margin, type B at 31% and type C at 9% — and type C takes almost half the hours. Repricing type C and letting the worst of it go drops billing to £35,000 for a quarter. Then the freed hours refill with type A work, and by month nine the business bills the same £40,000 at a blended margin near 36% instead of 29% — roughly £2,800 a month more gross profit, with no extra hires and hours handed back every week.
What does business coaching work on?
The diagnosis finds the one or two areas holding the rest back, and the work is sequenced so each change funds the next.
Strategy & direction
Where the business is going and what work you will turn down, set out in a written quarterly plan with three priorities.
Profit & margins
Gross margin by job type: which work makes money, which loses it, and what the accounts tell you when you ask the right questions.
Pricing
Why owner-managed businesses so often underprice, what your prices say about your positioning, and how to raise them without losing the clients you want to keep. Often the fastest profit lever in the business.
Systems & process
Writing the job down so it stops depending on who does it, using fewer tools properly, and getting new starters useful in weeks.
Scaling
When to hire, how growth gets funded before it pays, and how to add capacity without disrupting delivery.
The 90-day rhythm
Three priorities, numbers reviewed at every session and a full reset every ninety days — the same rhythm that runs through Performance on Purpose.
What does working together look like?
Sessions run fortnightly, for about ninety minutes, in person or by video.
Sessions one and two: the diagnosis.
Bring the last twelve months — management accounts, what each job billed against what it cost, and a log of where your week goes. We work out which area is binding.
Inside a session.
The first fifteen minutes cover what you said you would do and what happened. Then one issue is worked through properly. The last ten minutes turn it into two or three actions with dates.
Between sessions, you track progress on one page.
Three to five numbers you update before each session — revenue, gross margin, pipeline, cash and whatever the constraint is. If a decision cannot wait a fortnight, you get a call.
Every ninety days: stop and re-score.
Review against what we said would change. What moved, what did not, and why — then reset the next quarter. Progress means the numbers moved.
Who is business coaching for?
It is for established owner-managed businesses with revenue, clients and often a team, where the model works but not well enough. The owner suspects the numbers could be better without doing more of everything, and is willing to put all the figures on the table.
Three things make the work effective:
Trading history to work from
The diagnosis runs on evidence: margins, conversion, retention. A year of figures gives the sessions something to work with from the first week.
Enough stability to think
The work is about deliberate improvement over quarters. Where payroll is at risk within weeks, the first call will point you to an insolvency or turnaround specialist instead.
A willingness to make the changes yourself
In coaching you rewrite the price list and run the sales meeting yourself, and we hold you to both. Where you want the work delivered rather than the capability built, a consultant is the better buy.
Where this fits in Performance on Purpose.
Performance on Purpose asks two questions together: are you performing well — and is it serving a purpose that matters? At the business level that means growth that serves the life you want.
You score where you are on the quadrant, coaching moves you towards Performance on Purpose, and the score is revisited at every session — so the direction of travel is measured.
Explore Performance on PurposeThe three freedoms
Financial FreedomMoney, profit and control — enabling decisions made from strength, not stress.
Time FreedomSpace, systems and support that keep you focused on what actually matters.
Mind FreedomClarity, confidence and peace of mind, because the numbers are under control.The other coaching areas
Owners often start in one area and move to another once the first constraint is fixed.
Personal Coaching
Sometimes the constraint is a decision you have known about for a year and keep not making. Personal Coaching works on how you think, decide and lead yourself.
Explore Personal CoachingLeadership Coaching
Price and process changes only stick if somebody other than you holds them. If everything still routes through you at six o’clock, the next work is leadership.
Explore Leadership CoachingFinancial Coaching
If the figures themselves are the gap — margin, cashflow, forecasting — Financial Coaching builds your confidence with the numbers, delivered with Buzz Accounting.
Explore Financial CoachingRelated guides and tools
What Business Development Means for Owners
Andy Jackson on the five numbers behind all growth, and the order to work them in.
Read the article
When to Grow, When to Fix, When to Hold
The four tests that say whether the business is ready for a growth push at all.
Read the article
How to Improve Your Margins
Where margin leaks in an owner-managed business — and the order to fix it in.
Read the guide
Price for Profit
Why small businesses underprice, and how to raise prices without losing the clients you want.
Read the guideThe Five Ways
Five numbers — leads, conversion, transaction value, frequency and margin — and why small improvements to each multiply into larger profit.
Read the mindsetBreakeven
The day in the month your business starts making money. One number that changes how you price, sell and spend.
Read the mindsetThe Value Ladder
Structure what you sell so clients have somewhere to start and somewhere to go.
Read the mindsetThe free calculator shows what small improvements across the five ways would do to your profit.
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Frequently asked questions
How is business coaching different from working with an accountant?
They do different jobs. An accountant records what happened and keeps you compliant. Business coaching works on the decisions that follow: which jobs to reprice, which clients to let go, whether the hires in your plan survive contact with the margin figures, and whether you hold your nerve in the month revenue dips. Coaching runs on the numbers your accountant produces, so it works alongside your accountant. Buzz Coaching sits alongside Buzz Accounting, and you can keep your existing accountant. If the gap is the figures themselves, Financial Coaching is the closer fit.
How much time does business coaching take?
Plan for a session of about ninety minutes each fortnight, which is roughly three hours a month, plus the actions you agree between sessions. Much of the between-session work is work you are already doing badly or avoiding, such as pricing the next job properly instead of quickly, or finally costing your cheapest category of work. The first six weeks are the heaviest because the diagnosis is real work on top of a full diary. After that, the changes start taking work off your desk rather than adding to it.
How quickly should the numbers move?
Separate the decisions from the results, because they move at different speeds. The decisions move fast: gross margin by job type is often calculable within the first month from records you already hold. The results lag, because a pricing change has to work through the order book and a repriced quote takes weeks to become banked cash. Expect the middle to feel worse before it feels better — revenue often dips when underpriced work goes, and that is where owners are most tempted to reverse a correct decision. A quarter is realistic for the first numbers moving; two quarters for the pattern to be clear.
How will I know if the coaching is working?
At ninety days we sit your one-page scorecard — revenue, gross margin, pipeline, cash and whatever the constraint was — next to what we said would move at the start. Three outcomes are possible. The numbers moved: carry on and reset the next quarter. The numbers did not move for a reason we can name, such as a pricing change still working through the order book: the review says so and sets the date it should show. Or the numbers did not move and there is no good reason — then we recommend stopping.
Business 2.0 is also a book and a two-day workshop.
Read it on your own, work it in a room for two days, or take it fortnightly with a coach.
Business 2.0
Seventeen chapters on strategy, numbers, customers, delivery, systems and team, thirteen self-diagnostic tools you run on your own figures, and the 90-day Business Performance Plan with the rhythm that keeps it going. 214 pages, paperback on Amazon.
See the booksBusiness 2.0 — the workshop
Two days live, groups of eight to twenty. You leave with the Wheel of Business scored across nine areas, pricing, pipeline and delivery worksheets completed on your own numbers, an operating rhythm and a 90-day plan. £795 + VAT a head.
See the workshops