The best coach for a new business is a coach who can remember what they went through when starting their first business. I can remember what I went through and how different it was to working for a billion dollar company.

Considering the success I had at helping grow small companies toward their first billion dollars, you might think I would be a great coach for a billion dollar company. In fact I am a great coach for businesses way back at the start when they aim for their first billion but not so interested in helping them achieve their second billion. Large company politics within established companies does not interest me.

I can point you to good coaches when you grow past the "new" and "small to medium" categories.

Small to Medium

Businesses are often labelled "small to medium" based on annual turnover. Most businesses in Australia are small to medium by world standards. Only a few stand out as large.

Telstra is large because it had a government endorsed monopoly on the supply of telephone services. I helped Telstra by helping Telstra’s suppliers. unfortunately the politics within Telstra mean that the improvements achieved by Telstra’s suppliers may never be selected for use within Telstra.

Coles Myer is large because it acquired lots of smaller companies and in many cases expanded the smaller companies out from local businesses to national brands. I helped Coles Myer with a specific cost management exercise and found the managers of individual Coles Myer divisions to be excellent thinkers focused on gaining large company economies of scale without losing small company customer service.

Overall Coles Myer seems to have focused too much on the gaining of size without letting their various shop chains retain their individual service standards. Their office supplies chain, Officeworks, dominates the office supplies market around here but fails to supply a decent range of products. Almost every time I shop at Officeworks, there is something I cannot buy because they are out of stock or have decided to stock something cheap or just not stock anything. I could show them how to maintain both a great range and a good profit margin but who wants to battle large company politics.

Years ago I helped Coles Myer’s largest competitor, Woolworths. Woolworths has better differentiation of service across their shops in our part of Sydney. I used to shop at Coles supermarkets until Woolworths made a major improvement in product range and quality. The improvement occurred when Woolworths purchased a smaller company named Safeway. Woolworths managed to transfer all the good features of Safeway to Woolworths without interfering with the economies of scale already achieved by Woolworths.

Conclusion

Business coaches are as essential as Internet access and telephones. You just need the right one for your current business and your expansion plans.