So let me answer the question directly, even though I'm a business coach and you'd expect me to tell you to hire one. Here's how to choose well, including how to work out whether I'm the right fit or not.
The £10,000 mistake: hiring on certification instead of evidence
The coaching industry is stuffed with certifications. Anyone can do a weekend course, get a badge, and call themselves a business coach by Monday.
A certificate tells you someone sat in a room. It doesn't tell you they've built anything. When you're handing over thousands of pounds, you're not buying their training, you're buying their judgement. And judgement comes from having made the decisions yourself, with your own money on the line.
Ask for evidence, not credentials. What have they built? What did it cost them when it went wrong? A coach who's only ever studied business will give you theory. A coach who's run one will give you the thing you actually need: what to do when you sit down at your laptop on Monday morning and don't know where to start.
Have they actually built and run a business?
This is the first filter, and it's brutal.
I ran a marketing agency among other businesses before I ever coached anyone. I made the niching mistakes. I dealt with closing the business during riots. I held a restaurant hostage when they didn't pay their invoices. I went months without taking a salary. I'm not proud of all of it, but every one of those scars is why I can spot the same patterns in your business before they cost you.
There's a huge gap between what coaches say and where you actually are in your business. The good ones have lived in that gap. And been through every stage of the business life cycle. The theoretical ones float above it, pie in the sky, no help to you when the work gets real.
Right coach, wrong stage = wasted money
A coach can be brilliant and still be wrong for you.
Someone who specialises in scaling a team of fifty is not the person to help you sign your first ten clients. Someone who lives in startup-land won't understand the plateau a service business hits at six figures. The skill is real. It's just pointed at a different problem to yours.
Be specific when you ask. What stage of business do you most often work with? Where do your clients usually start, and where do they end up? If the answer doesn't sound like you, keep looking. The fit matters more than the reputation.
Client retention is the truest signal
Here's the question almost nobody asks: how long do your clients stay?
A coach can win a client with good marketing. Keeping one for three years means they're delivering something that actually changes the business, year after year. Retention is the metric that can't be faked. It's the loyalty that comes from results, not from a clever sales call.
When you're vetting a coach, ask about their longest relationships. Ask to speak to someone who's worked with them for years, not just the freshly delighted client who's three weeks in. The long-haul clients tell you the truth.
Methodology vs vibes
Enthusiasm is lovely. It is not a system.
Some coaches run on energy and good intentions, and you'll leave every call feeling motivated and lost in equal measure. What you want is a framework: a clear way of looking at your business so you always know which lever you're pulling and why.
I work through seven pillars, Marketing, Sales, Business Model, Client Delivery, Systems, Finance and Mindset, because a business is a structure and you strengthen it one pillar at a time. It doesn't matter whether you like my particular model. What matters is that your coach has one. A method means your progress doesn't depend on how inspired you happen to feel that week.
The questions to ask before you hand over a penny
On a discovery call, ask these and listen carefully to how they answer:
Have you built and run a business yourself, and what happened when it went wrong?
What stage of business do you work with most, and is that where I am?
How long do your clients typically stay with you?
What's the framework you use, and how would it apply to my situation?
What does success look like, and how will we measure it?
You're not being difficult. You're spending serious money, and the right coach will respect you for asking. The wrong one will get cagey. That's information too.
This is exactly what a connection call is for
If any of this lands, that's what an initial call is for. No pitch, no pressure. You ask me these questions, I tell you the straight answer about whether I'm the right fit, and if I'm not, I'll say so.
The worst outcome isn't choosing the wrong coach. It's spending another year unsure whether you've got the right one. Let's find out in half an hour.
