When should a startup get a business coach?

When you have real decisions to make and want to make them well. Many founders benefit most in the first year, when habits and priorities are being set, rather than after problems have set in.

Is a business coach the same as a startup mentor?

Not quite. A mentor usually shares their own experience and advice. A coach helps you think, decide and act, and holds you to it. See business coach vs consultant vs mentor for the detail.

Can a coach help me raise money?

A coach can help you get clear on the business, the numbers and the story. Specific advice on investment, tax and legal structure belongs with qualified advisers such as your accountant and lawyer.

What if I cannot afford much yet?

Be honest about that on the first call. If coaching is not the right spend yet, Tom will say so and point you to free resources that help in the meantime.

Business Coach for Startups and First Time Founders

Starting a business is a bit like assembling flat pack furniture while sitting on it. Everything is urgent, the instructions are missing and somebody keeps asking when it will be finished.

Mr Purple coaches startup founders and first time business owners through the early decisions that shape everything after: what to sell, who to sell it to, what to build first and what to ignore for now.

Book 15 with Tom

Sound familiar?

Fifty ideas, no clear first priority
Building the product while nobody has paid for it yet
Doing every job yourself and none of them well
Unsure whether to hire, partner or wait
Plenty of advice, all of it contradictory

What a startup business coach helps with

Early stage founders rarely lack ideas or energy. What they lack is a neutral person who asks the awkwardly useful questions before the money is spent. A good coach helps you test assumptions cheaply, make decisions in the right order and keep moving when it gets lonely.

The early decisions we work through

Who exactly is the customer? Not everyone. A specific person with a specific problem who will pay to have it solved.

What is the smallest thing you can sell? Something real that gets money and feedback flowing before you build the grand version.

What do the first ninety days look like? Three priorities, written down, with a weekly check on progress.

Which numbers matter now? Usually cash, conversations with potential customers and sales, not vanity metrics.

When to bring people in. Co founders, contractors, first hires and advisers, and how to set each relationship up well.

Learning from mistakes, cheaply

Tom has built, lost, sold and rebuilt businesses, and his Mistakeology work is about treating mistakes as data rather than shame. For a startup that is gold: the aim is to make your mistakes small, early and cheap, not large, late and expensive. Our piece on learning from business mistakes goes deeper.

Where to start

Grab the free Start-up Welcome Pack
Write one sentence describing your customer and their problem, then test it on five real people
Choose three priorities for the next ninety days and drop the rest
Book a weekly hour with yourself to review cash and progress

Bring one business wobble

Fifteen honest minutes with Dr Tom Hitchcock. Bring the problem you cannot quite name. No surprise proposal ambush and no hard sell. If coaching is not the right move, Tom will tell you, and usually point you somewhere useful.