Business Insights from Coffee With A Fellow Veteran.
A conversation over coffee highlighted a major challenge most business owners struggle with.
I sat down recently with a veteran small business owner who built his company from nothing six years ago. It's a solid business now — the kind that took real grit to get off the ground. Somewhere in the conversation, he mentioned that other small business owners reach out to him constantly, asking for coaching.
He used to take every call. Gladly. He'd walk them through what worked, what didn't, and what he'd do differently if he were starting over.
Not anymore. Now, he just encourages them. He doesn't coach them — not really. I asked him why he made that change.
"Making it as a small business owner takes a small miracle. You have to have a passion for it so strong you're willing to sacrifice everything to achieve your goal. Too many people want the easy path without the sacrifice."
01. Where I Agreed With Him
I agreed with him — partially. I've heard some version of his frustration from almost every coach or consultant I know. It's a familiar pattern: someone asks for help, gets a clear plan, and then does none of it. They wanted the reassurance more than the roadmap.
That happens with my own clients too. Occasionally, someone comes to me looking for advice and then pushes back on nearly everything I suggest. It's frustrating in the moment. It's easy to read it as stubbornness, or worse, as someone who isn't serious about growing their business.
02. Where I Didn't
Here's where my experience has led me somewhere a little different. When a client won't take a piece of advice, that's not always defiance or laziness. Sometimes it just means the advice doesn't fit — their risk tolerance, their cash position, their season of business, or a hundred details about their situation that I don't have full visibility into.
Advice is built on my read of their business. But nobody knows a business better than the person living inside it every day. So when they push back, that's data — not defiance.
Advising means handing someone the answer you'd choose if it were your business.
Coaching means helping someone see their own problem clearly, then working through the options until they land on the solution they're actually willing to execute.
03. The Real Job of a Coach
Somewhere along the way, I stopped measuring my value by how good my advice was and started measuring it by how much of it actually got implemented. Those are two very different scorecards.
A brilliant recommendation that sits in a notebook, never acted on, has helped no one. A modest solution that a business owner builds themselves, believes in, and actually executes — that moves the needle every time.
That's the shift. Instead of leading with "here's what you should do," I lead with questions that help an owner see their own situation without the blind spots that come from being too close to it. From there, we explore the options together. The solution has to be one they own — not one I handed them.
Advice they don't own, they won't execute. Solutions they build themselves, they will.
04. What This Means for You
If you've ever asked for advice and then quietly ignored it, you're not the exception — you're the rule. It doesn't mean you weren't serious. It usually means the advice wasn't fully yours yet.
That's the difference between a consultant and a coach. I try to be both — but I lead with the second. My job isn't to hand you a plan you'll admire and never touch. It's to help you build the one you'll actually run.
Not sure if it's the advice or the fit?
Start with an honest look at where your business actually stands, then let's talk through what to do about it.
