The key to leveling-up your business could lie in hiring a professional coach to help get you on track. By Jennifer Paulson
If you’ve played any sports, you’ve no doubt benefitted from the insight and motivation provided by your coach. You might’ve even developed a coaching relationship with a fellow NRHA Professional to help you when you’re stuck training a horse or putting the final polish on before a major event. In either case, your coach helps you find ways to develop your skills, find a framework to meet your goals, and cheers you on as you progress (and picks you up when you stumble).
But have you ever considered enlisting the help of a coach to level-up your business?
Katie Hollingsworth is a familiar face around NRHA, having provided her coaching services to NRHyA delegates and officers and to NRHA employees. She’s also married to a rodeo coach at Oklahoma State University, and is a barrel racer herself. Most notably (and important to you as a business owner) is Hollingsworth is a performance and leadership development coach at Krave Coaching and Consulting.
Here, Hollingsworth details how a professional coach can be the best investment you make in your business and in yourself in these articles:
Part 2: Getting Started and Finding a Coach
Part 4: Put Your Mind to It and Stay on Track
What Is a Coach?
You might be scratching your head, saying you understand the traditional definition of a coach, but how can a person in that role help me as a professional and business owner? Hollingsworth gets that question a lot and begins her explanation with three scenarios in which she helps people reach their full potential.
- Mental coach—involves mindset and motivation.
- Small business coach—helps you establish where you are, where you want to be, and how you’ll get there.
- Leadership coach—establishes how you can be the best leader of your team, whether it’s a three-person staff or a 30-person roster.
As you can see, all three of those roles can pertain to your career as a professional trainer, small-business owner, and leader of your team of assistants, grooms, and other employees.
Hollingsworth says people come to her in a few common situations.
- You’ve reached an impasse—you want to do better, but you’re not sure how.
- You want to compete more presently—distractions weigh you down, whether business or personal—and keep you from achieving your goals.
- You want to be a better leader—maybe you’ve lost a few key employees and want to improve your management to retain your help.
- You want to get sharper, faster—this can apply to your business and in the show pen.
“Most people don’t come to me from a place of distress,” Hollingsworth shares. “I function differently than a mentor or therapist. A mentor comes in and tells you exactly what to do for your business to flourish. A therapist helps you manage things in your past—such as deep trauma and mental health. Coaches help clients gain clarity and focus about their lives, expand their creativity, and discover solutions to life’s challenges, focusing on the root (or core) of a challenging and shifting underlying energy that feeds thoughts, emotions, life experience. This approach provides a cutting-edge framework and research-backed metrics to inspire our clients to achieve extraordinary results in whatever they do.”
