Business Coaching
Ready to take your business to the next level? Need help and support from one of the most experienced business coaches in the UK?
Here’s how my business coaching for entrepreneurs works, who it’s for and why it works.
What are you looking for in your business coach?
Your business is ready to grow
I work with entrepreneurs and business owners who already have a business that works. It’s doing okay, but you know it could be doing so much more.
You need an experienced business coach focused on business growth. A genuine entrepreneur who has run companies before and who knows what is needed for your company to move forward.
You want to scale up
You have big ideas and ambitions. You want your business to be so much more, but you’re not yet clear how to get there. Or even if it’s possible to achieve your ambitions.
Business coaching for entrepreneurs gives you the confidence to aim higher and create something bigger and to make your dreams of a bigger future into concrete plans you can start implementing now.
Business coaching for small businesses
I only work with small businesses – if you have more than 30 employees, I’m probably not the right business coach for you. Everything I do is through the lens of what works in practice for small businesses, based on growing my own companies and coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs over the last 20+ years.
We’ll work on the plan for where you want to take your business and develop a growth strategy made up of workable solutions for each step of the way.
21st century business coaching
Too often, business coaches offer only a support role rather than bringing a full range of expertise to the table. Of course, being a sounding board and helping you make clear and mindful decisions is important. But, in my opinion, your business needs more than this.
The best business coaches will have a 21st century approach. They will be able to help you negotiate this rapidly changing world by using new tools and technology to make your business go faster and accelerate your business’s growth.
To achieve your hopes and ambitions, you need more than just support and hand-holding. You need systems, processes and practical know-how about what needs to happen to find and push the levers of profit for your business.
How online business coaching works in practice
We meet every two weeks online to work out the right strategy for your business. I’ll help you to get your marketing right, to create the right team around you, work out your pricing…everything you need in place to create a successful company.
I also support you between our online coaching sessions. When you need help negotiating a deal, I’m here to help you get it right. When you rewrite the copy for your website, I’ll be tweaking it for you to make it convert more sales. If you have a crisis, you call me first and we work out what to do.
You get the hard business strategy and tactics learnt over many years of doing this, plus a trusted friend you can rely on to be in your corner.
I’m based in Brighton in the UK. My business coaching services are for small businesses all over the UK and internationally. All our sessions are online so I don’t need to be near you.
Don't forget that I also run programmes and courses for people who want to build product-based businesses over at Adventures in Products.
I’m interested, but I’m not sure yet.
What could you achieve with the right business coach?
I’ve worked with hundreds of companies over the last 20+ years, but for me, I think the difference my business coaching services make can be summed up by a conversation I had last year. I bumped into a client in the street. He stopped me and said:
“Hi, Julia – do you remember me? You were our business coach about 10 years ago. I’ve always meant to get in touch. Thank you for your help. We’ve been selling that product you helped us to come up with ever since, and we’ve just paid off our mortgage because of it. Thank you so much – it really helped.”
I was smiling for the rest of the day after that.
Here’s what some lovely people have said about working with me as their business coach:
Federico Tomassetti - Strumenta
“Helps us move ahead more confidently”
“Identify your blind spots, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Julia can tell you what you don’t know and you can fix that.”
Elli Bliss - Mokita
“I’m a facilitator, I’m an educator. It’s totally different to being a business owner. So it was giving me those new skills that I needed to be able to create and do the job that I wanted to do.” Elli Bliss
As a new business owner, Elli Bliss faced the challenge of making significant decisions without prior experience.
Alisha Airey - Mokita
“At times, it can be quite difficult for us to make decisions or come to a conclusion of what the decision needs to be. Having a coach helped us to kind of guide us in a direction and ask difficult questions that I don’t think we would ask ourselves.” Alisha Airey
What kind of people need a business coach?
What kind of businesses do you coach?
I only work with companies with less than 30 employees – quite a lot of my coaching clients are one or two-person businesses or small teams. Part of why I love my work is that I get to work with all kinds of people running very different sorts of companies, and I learn about all kinds of things, from tofu manufacturing to digital publishing.
You might be in one of my specialist areas – I’m the business coach for e-commerce companies, software and online tech businesses, and a wide variety of training and consultancy companies. And you can see how I support people who want to switch from services to products at my other site, Adventures in Products. But I’ve also coached entrepreneurs in childcare, video scripts, and video production, plus virtual assistants, conference organisers, copywriters and entertainment agencies.
And because I’m clear about my own values and the need for business to be a force for good in the world, value-driven, ethical and environmental businesses recognise a kindred spirit when they meet me.
I work with people who are happy to remain a small business but want to make that company as successful as they can. And I’m the coach for entrepreneurs who are on a mission to scale their business dramatically. Some of my business coaching clients want to sell for a few million in 5 years’ time, and I’m here to help them do just that. Others are not motivated by money but want to maximise a positive impact on the world.
Let’s talk
Let’s sit down over Zoom, preferably with coffee and maybe some cake, and we’ll talk about what kind of a business you want your company to grow into. And I’ll honestly tell you if I’m the right kind of business coach for you, if business coaching is the right choice for you, and what the next step should be.
What does my business coaching cost?
Hannah Martin – MD of Talented Ladies Club
Hannah points out how important it is to have a business coach who understands the foundations of how a business works. And that not all business coaches have this.
Business Coaching for Entrepreneurs - FAQs
I’ve been a business coach for more than 20 years now, and I’ve found that online business coaching works better for the busy founders, entrepreneurs, and owners I work with. Maybe If you want a more touchy-feely kind of life coaching, online coaching might not work as well for you, but my down-to-earth, no-bullshit coaching style works well online.
It’s time efficient and convenient for my clients because they don’t have to take extra time out of their day to travel and find parking at my Brighton office. We can hop on a Zoom call. And we can get straight into what needs to be worked on, whereas face-to-face coaching always takes up more time.
And of course, my clients are often international, not just from the UK, so online coaching is essential for them.
I find online business coaching to be very effective. Even if you worked in the office next door, I’d probably suggest that we have our coaching sessions online. In the old days, when I was doing coaching calls on Skype, you sometimes had to switch the video off to be able to talk online. It could sometimes be annoying, and only my international clients or people who were far away in the UK would use it. But nowadays, thankfully, Zoom works fine 99.9% of the time.
I also think that there’s something about talking on a video call that sometimes allows people to open up about what they’re thinking or feeling in a way that they might not be able to if they were sat at the desk next to me. For some folk, this means they want to walk about or fidget while they’re talking, vape while they’re on a call, or just be more expressive. It’s up to you.
Don’t even try to find a business coach in your local area.
As more and more people enter the small business coaching field, you will probably find a business coach near you. And maybe you’re lucky, and they’re very good. But I think your business deserves the very best business coach you can find, and to do that, you might need to cast the net a little wider.
Maybe your ideal business coach is the person who is best placed to help you make big changes in your growing company, but maybe they are not near you. Maybe they’re in a different country or a different town. Go wider to find the right person for you.
That might be me, down here in Brighton in the UK. Or it might be a completely different person who you click with more. That’s fine. But because every entrepreneur needs the right coach for them, you might need to look a little further afield.
I’m an online business coach, but many of the companies I work with are not primarily online. Some are in quite traditional sectors, for example, recruitment, legal services, and even a traditional Scottish storyteller.
My approach often involves using 21st-century business and online marketing techniques. I advise many companies on how to build remote online teams, but you don’t have to be an online business to use my business coaching services.
I work with many international businesses. Part of my philosophy is to treat the whole world as the starting point for your addressable market and then niche down from there – the world is your oyster.
Maybe you need help addressing a particular geographical international market, such as the UK or the US. Or perhaps you need help in the practical aspects of selling internationally. I have direct experience building a company across borders and have helped many entrepreneurs grow their businesses this way.
Around 40% of my clients are international, ranging from Turin, New Zealand, Cape Town and, of course, the US.
No. I’m a female business coach, and about 40% of my clients are female entrepreneurs. This is probably an over-representation statistically, given that there are fewer women founders than men. And I’m sensitive to the differences there can be between how women and men run businesses.
But I work with all genders. My focus is on your company and what we need to do to get it working for you in the way you want it to.
Miranda Birch and Nick Price
Miranda and Nick got together to talk about their experiences of business coaching with me. Especially important points here include:
“she pushes you to be uncomfortable…”
“she can pick out what the real problem was…
“having someone alongside you who you know is rooting for you”
Ruth Smith, Sustainable Results
Julia's helped me create a business that's scalable and helped me understand the difference between a freelancer and a business leader.
Nick Parker, That Explains Things
Sophie Allen, Sophie Rebekah
