Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a coach and a consultant where one might be applicable or not, or if they’re interchangeable? Well, we’re going to explore this together in this video right after this! So, Stay tune!

Hi, I’m Doug Barra, and I have had the honor and privilege of working with the owners of small local businesses like yourself for over 16 years.

And during that time, I have had lots of times when people asks me what is the difference between a coach and a consultant? So, I decided to take a little bit different tact today in this video.

And actually talk about that and discuss what the differences are when one might be appropriate over the other, and really try to give you an understanding of the value of each and where they’re applicable in your business.

And maybe, even get into how to choose one or the other for you and your business. Alright, so let’s get started! So first off, let’s just define the difference between a coach and consultant. So a coach is someone who helps you to be the best that you can be. A consultant is someone who is using their expertise to help you accomplish something.

So there’s a a little blurriness sometimes between those, especially in today’s environment because a few years ago it became very popular to be a coach. So many people who are actually consultants call themselves coaches. But what they really do is consult. And you know, many coaches do consulting as well, although they don’t necessarily say, “Hey, right now what I’m doing is consulting.

I am not coaching you.” So I thought I tried to separate the two and give you a real clear understanding of where one is appropriate and where the other is appropriate, where one isn’t appropriate or where the other isn’t appropriate so that you can actually choose for yourself is either one or both appropriate for me and my business? So I’ve defined kind of the high-level difference between those two.

Let me give you some like on the court examples. Alright, so let’s talk about the idea of marketing in your business. So how would a consultant typically deal with marketing in your business? Well, typically a consultant will be an expert in marketing. And what they’re going to do, and it might be varying levels of this, but what they’re going to do is they’re going to come in with their expertise.

They’re going to evaluate your target market. They’re going to create a campaign, and they’re going to implement that campaign. Now, like I said, there might be varying levels of that. Maybe all they do is help you work on your target market, or maybe all they do is create the campaign and leave it up to you to implement it, right?

However, the clear thing to understand around that is they are doing it. Now, how would a coach come in in marketing? A coach would come in work with you to evaluate what’s working or not working in your business marketing work with you to evaluate who it is that you want to reach in your marketing. And then they might recommend different ways of marketing,

But all the time working with you to have you do it yourself so that you learn how to do it, you know how to do it, and it’s incorporated into your business. So, the coach is never gonna tell you this is the way you’re going to do it. They’re gonna say, “Hey, here’s the ideas. These are the things that I’ve seen work in these businesses.

These are the things I’ve seen not work in these businesses.” So that in the end, you are left with the decision of how you are going to market your business inside of what you believe works for you with the advice given by the coach. And then typically you will implement those and the coach will help hold you accountable for what it was that you said you were going to do and for the results so that you get the results that you want with their guidance.

So that’s kind of an on the court example of those two different ways of working. You might have a consultant for HR, right? For Hiring, right? So you might hire a consultant to come in and create a campaign for hiring the team members that you want. You will probably have to give them the the job descriptions of the people that you’re looking for.

They will then create the structures, maybe even go through and do all the marketing for those people and bring you the candidates. Alright? That would be a hiring consultant, right? How would the coach work with that? Well, they would tell you, this is how we typically work and we’ve seen work in these industries. This is how we’ve seen the ads for these work and the places we’ve seen work for that.

What do you think? Where do you think would be the most effective place to run these ads? And then you would decide how you were going to do that. The coach’s job would be to hold you accountable for having done it, making sure that it gets done properly, and all of those pieces. So those are the basic differences between a coach and a consultant.

Now let’s talk a little bit about where is it appropriate and where is it not appropriate. Well, first off, if you are an entrepreneur who does not like to be told what to do, you’re probably not gonna get along well with a consultant. However, if you are an entrepreneur who wants everything done for them, you’re probably not gonna get along too well with a coach.

And you’re gonna have to make that decision for yourself. Which one of those is right for you? Now, on the positive side, if you are someone who doesn’t like to be told what to do, but loves the guidance and the accountability, then coaching would be the person for you. All right? If you are someone who you know wants to have someone else work for you and do the job and just hand it to you, then the consultant might be the best option for you, right? So that would be how you might choose them. You also wanna look at what is it that they do? For example, like myself as a coach and I work both sides of the fence. Sometimes I’m a coach, sometimes, I’m a consultant with the same client, right?

As a coach, I look at a business holistically. I’m not looking at only one area of the business. Typically, a consultant is going to look at one area that they are the expert in. I’m gonna look at the business holistically and help to put in those structures that will help all of those areas work for you and your business. So hopefully that’s given you a good understanding of the different options that are available for you in your business through either a consultant or coach.

Remember, neither one is better than the other. It all depends on what works best for you. Now, I would love to see in the comments, what have you tried? Have you worked with the consultants? What were were the results that you got with those consultants? Was it good? Was it bad?

Have you worked with a coach before? What were the results you got with that coach? Was it good? Was it bad? Did it work for you? Sharing in the comments will help other people also see what works, what doesn’t work for different people, and get some different perspectives other than just mine. And we’ll help everybody grow when we all work together. We all grow together.

Now, would you like to learn some more about how, what the difference is between coaching and consulting or other topics on business growth and business success?

Yeah!

Excellent!

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So thank you for listening.

I hope you got immense value from this.