Should You Hire a Business Coach or a Business Consultant? Here's How to Decide - EP # 265

Are You Looking for a Coach or a Consultant?

Most business owners aren't entirely sure. And honestly, most don't know they need both until they've tried one without the other and wondered why the results didn't stick.

In this episode, I'm breaking down what coaching and consulting actually mean in the traditional sense, where they differ, where they fall short on their own, and why the combination of both is what produces real, sustainable business growth.

What You'll Learn from This Episode:

The traditional consulting model — what it is, what it does well, and the one critical gap that prevents strategies from ever getting implemented.

The traditional coaching model — what it actually means to be coached, why pure coaching isn't always enough for a business owner who needs direction, and what makes it so powerful when combined with the right expertise.

Why most entrepreneurs need both — and what happens when they only get one.

How I work — why I call myself a business coach but bring 18+ years of corporate and entrepreneurial expertise directly into my work, and why I give both strategic direction and deep mindset support in the same engagement.

Real client results — what this combination actually produces in practice.

How to know what you need — three honest questions to help you figure out what kind of support would move your business forward right now.

This Episode Is For You If...

• You've invested in coaching or consulting before and felt like something was missing
• You know what you should be doing but can't seem to do it consistently
• You're looking for support to grow your business faster and simpler and want to make an informed decision
• You're curious about what business coaching actually involves beyond accountability calls

Book a complimentary consultation to explore what the right support looks like for your business → https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call-1

Transcript

EP 265 - Coaching vs Consulting

[00:00:00] welcome back, everybody, to the Diamond Effect podcast. I'm your host, Meggie Perotin, and today I want to tackle a question I get asked fairly regularly, sometimes by potential clients, sometimes by people in my network, and just yesterday I was presenting in one of the networking groups I belong to, and I was asked that question by a potential strategic referral partner.

And honestly, it's a question that I have asked myself too, especially early in my business. And the question is: Are you a coach or a consultant? And my answer has always been both. But I want to go deeper than that today because I think the distinction matters, not just for how I describe what I do, but for what you as a business owner actually need when you're [00:01:00] looking for support to grow and scale your business.

So in today's episode, I wanna walk you through what coaching and consulting traditionally mean, where they differ, where they overlap, and why I practice elements of both, and most importantly, also why I believe that combination produces the best and most sustainable results for the clients I work with.

So let's get into it.

Let's start with consulting because it's probably the more familiar of the two, especially if you've spent some time in a corporate world like I have, or even, read literature. And I think it's an industry that's probably has been around for longer than coaching. So in the traditional sense, a consultant is an expert, someone who comes in with deep knowledge, experience, and expertise in a specific area, whether that's [00:02:00] strategy, finance, technology, or something else entirely.

And their job is to analyze your situation, diagnose the problem, and tell you what to do about it. So think big consulting groups like McKinsey

Or Deloitte. Think a management consultant brought in to restructure a company. Think an IT consultant hired to overhaul your systems. They arrive, they assess, they deliver recommendations, and they solve the problem for you, or at least they tell you exactly how to solve it

The relationship here is typically project-based or engagement-based. It has a beginning and end, and there's usually a specific deliverable, a report, a strategy, a plan, recommendations. Sometimes they will oversee the project of the implementation of that recommendation. [00:03:00] Depends on what the business wants and what they can afford, of course, and it's largely expert-driven.

The client comes with a problem, and then the consultant comes with an answer. Now, the strengths of that model are obvious, right? If you hire the c- the right consultant, you get access to expertise you don't have. You get a huge shortcut. You get someone who has solved this problem before, who knows the landscape, the best practices, who can look at your situation with fresh, expert eyes and say, "Here is what I see.

Here is what needs to change, and here is how to do it." But of course, every solution has pros and cons, right? So the limitation is that the consultant can diagnose and prescribe, but they can't force you and make you implement. They can help you potentially, but they can't do it for you.

But they can't [00:04:00] make you believe, for example, that it's possible. They can't address the mindset blocks, the fears, the leadership gaps, or the identity shifts that often determine whether the strategy actually gets executed.

They can hand you the map, but if you don't believe you're capable of making the journey, or you don't have skill set, or you're lacking in certain areas, even your team, or you don't understand why you've been avoiding it, the map sits in the drawer. And that's what I've often seen with some of the clients that maybe hired before consultants.

They got the solutions, but very often they either didn't implement them at all because they got overwhelmed by the magnitude of what needed to be done, or they started but then the day-to-day took over and they slipped away, or they s- lost the belief in the solution halfway through, so [00:05:00] they half implemented it.

Now let's talk about coaching, and specifically what it means in the traditional formal sense. The International Coaching Federation, which is the gold standard body for professional coaches worldwide, defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

And what does that actually mean in practice? A traditional coach does not tell you what to do. In fact, giving advice is specifically something a purist coach avoids. The fundamental belief in coaching is that the client already has answers within them, that the coach's role is not to provide solutions, but to ask the right questions, create the right space, and then help the client discover their own [00:06:00] answers, remove their own roadblocks, and develop their own capabilities.

The tools of coaching are powerful questions, active listening, reflections, and accountability. A coach helps you get out of your own way, helps you see what you can't see about yourself, A coach helps you work through the beliefs, fears, and patterns that are keeping you stuck, not that by telling you what to believe, but by helping you examine what you currently believe and whether it actually serves you or not

Coaching is also typically a long-term ongoing relationship because that kind of inner development, personal development it facilitates doesn't happen in a single session or a short engagement. It unfolds over time with consistency, trust, and depth.

[00:07:00] The strengths of coaching are profound, okay? It produces real lasting change in you as a person, as a leader, as a human being, because it works at the root level. When a client shifts a belief and develops new capability, expands their emotional capacity, builds their self-awareness, it helps them step into a new identity as a leader.

It helps them become a better version of themselves, and that change doesn't disappear when the engagement ends. They carry it with them. So it's very powerful. Now, of course, there is a limitation, especially as it applies to business owners. A pure coaching model can be frustratingly slow for someone who also needs concrete direction, right?

If your business is suffering and you need [00:08:00] to make money now, attract clients now, applying just pure coaching can be too slow for you to get results

If you're a business owner who doesn't know how to build a sales process or how to convert your ideal clients into paying clients, or you're a person who's never hired a team member b- before, who doesn't understand how to position their services, their offer in a crowded market, a coach asking you powerful questions about what you think you should do is not always the most efficient path forward.

And if you don't have a business background and business foundation, the answers you might even find might not always be the best for you or the ones that will create the fastest results, right? So sometimes you do need someone to say, "Hey, here is what works based [00:09:00] on your industry, your ideal clients, your strengths, because I've seen it work.

And here's where it gets interesting, and honestly, here's where I think the industry has a bit of a blind spot. Most business owners who hire a coach or a consultant need both things at once. They need strategy or the framework, best practice, and they need support with the inner work because that will allow them to successfully implement that strategy or framework.

They need direction, and they need someone to help them move through the fears and blocks that will inevitably surface and come up when they try to implement that direction. I've seen it so many times. A business owner gets an incredible strategic advice from a consultant, let's say, and then they don't implement it because they're scared [00:10:00] of raising their prices.

They don't believe their team can handle more responsibility, or they don't even believe they can find the right team members, or they get afraid of what their existing clients will think when they change their services. The strategy might have been right, but without the inner work, it goes nowhere. And then on the other side, I've seen business owners spend months in coaching, developing beautiful self-awareness, doing the deep mindset work, while still not knowing how to build a marketing system, how to structure the sales process, how to onboard a team member, how to price their services profitably, and then struggling to figuring it out for way too long, which then impacts their business and their personal situation financially, and then puts them down in the hole unnecessarily, right?

So the inner work is very valuable, but without the [00:11:00] practical expertise, foundation, and skill sets, the business still doesn't grow or it grows super slow, which usually nobody has that amount of financial cushion and money to wait for. So the gap between traditional consulting and traditional coaching is exactly where most service business owners live.

They need both. And that's precisely why, after years of practice and experience, I've built a model that bridges that gap intentionally

So let me be transparent about how I describe what I do and why I've landed here. I call myself a business coach, and that's the primary label I use, and I use it intentionally because the relationship I build with my clients is a coaching relationship. It's ongoing, it's deeply personal, it's built on trust and the [00:12:00] clients being willing and feeling safe to be vulnerable with me because that's how I can help them the most and the fastest.

It's the relationship that focuses on the whole person, not just the business problem in front of us, because I work with a human being. I truly believe that as human beings, we're a holistic person, and one area of our life will affect the other if there's no harmony between them, right? So I'm not a pure...

But I'm not a pure coach in the traditional ICF sense, and I've made that decision consciously. And why? Because I spent over 18 years in the corporate world, most of my career in business. Even before I moved to Canada and lived in corporate, I was actually in sales for small businesses. I was [00:13:00] selling, agricultural products to wholesalers.

I was selling fabric to the manufacturing of clothing. I was selling so many different things, right? And then in corporate world, I led teams. I built and streamlined operations. I improved service delivery. I ran construction projects and co-led huge technology transformations. I navigated scaling under enormous pressure with demanding clients, punitive contracts, and scaling from seven to eight, nine figures.

I developed processes, systems. I hired and onboarded people. I dealt with performance issues. I built highly performing teams, dealt with stakeholder management, budget constraints, the rapid growth. I have an executive MBA. I am a certified change management practitioner

so when I left corporate and built [00:14:00] my own business from scratch, starting with zero network, zero social media presence, I learned firsthand what it takes to build a service-based business from the ground up, and in my corporate, I knew how to scale it from a certain level to a much higher level, right? So the marketing, the sales, client delivery, the systems, the mindset, money management, the visibility, all of it, I've done it either through my own business or by working for other businesses.

And that expertise doesn't disappear when I sit across from the client, and I don't think it should. When I see a business owner making a pricing mistake that's going to Cost them or cap their growth, I'm not gonna just ask them powerful questions for, let's say, three weeks until they figure it out. I'm just gonna tell them.[00:15:00] 

I'm gonna give them that shortcut because this way we can move faster, right? When a client asks me how to structure their onboarding process or how to create a sales conversation that doesn't feel pushy but converts, or how to position their offer for a specific type of client, I'm just gonna give them the answer because I know it and I know what works.

I've seen it. I've lived it. I've created it, right? And I am all about efficiency and helping my clients create fast results because that gives them also a great return on investment in my services. So if I can speed it up for them, thanks to my expertise, I would. Why wouldn't I? That would be against my own internal values, holding back information that I know can help my clients.

So that's the consulting element, right? Expertise-driven, [00:16:00] direct, strategic. I bring frameworks, like my Diamond Effect process and my Diamond Effect groups for beginner entrepreneurs, helping them build the foundation and get to their first 100K, and then sustainable scale system, helping more advanced business owners scale to multiple, six, seven figures and beyond, and then all the concepts and frameworks that go within that.

It's a structure approaches my clients can apply immediately and get fast results. But also, here is what I learned from my corporate leadership experience, just coaching my team members, my own journey as an entrepreneur, and from working with hundreds of entrepreneurs by now, the strategy alone is never enough.

Because between knowing what to do and actually doing it, there is fear, [00:17:00] limiting perspective or beliefs. There is innate aversion to change as human beings. So being a certified change professional and, leading hundreds of people through major changes in their professional lives, I know that.

As human beings, we intrinsically don't like change, so we always have certain resistance, even if we're open to change, right? So coaching helps guide my clients through it. And there's also imposter syndrome sometimes that shows up, right? The belief that you're not ready or that you're not good enough, that you're not the kind of person who does that, right?

There is perfectionist, procrastination, avoidance, and every other way our brains try to protect us from the discomfort of growth, from the discomfort of change. And if I handed a client just a perfect [00:18:00] strategy and send them on their way, I would be doing them a disservice

Because without the mindset growth, without the accountability, without the self-awareness and self-leadership development that coaching provides, the strategy becomes just another thing they know that they should do, but they don't do

So that's why every client I work with gets both. They get the strategy, the frameworks, the direct expertise, the concrete direction step by step, and they get the deep work, the mindset, the identity of a leader, the self-trust, the courage building, right? Expanding their emotional capacity to handle complexities of the business and the belief shifts that allow them to actually execute everything successfully

Let me share what I've seen [00:19:00] this produce in practice, because of course, that's not theoretical. I helped many clients. So I, my client Glory, who was a guest on this podcast, so you can search for the interviews I had with her. When she came to me running a speech therapy practice, she was at around $80,000, $90,000 in revenue, and then three years later, she's approached a million dollars, scaled to 24 therapists, and expanded into new states, new markets.

And that didn't happen because I just gave her a business plan and left. It happened because throughout our coaching, alongside the strategy for scaling her team and building her team, we also worked on her identity as the CEO, on what that meant to lead a growing organization, on the fears that came up for her when she was [00:20:00] learning how to delegate instead of doing herself, on the money belief that she had to shift to then be able to grow to that level of revenue without sabotaging it, right?

And then another client of mine, Jennifer, who grew from around $50,000, $60,000 a year to over 100, I don't remember, $180,000, probably almost $200,000, and then keeps growing. It wasn't just strategy. Yes, it was strategy. Yes, it was sales process. It was the team building and onboarding, but we also worked through the belief that she could lead a scaled business, that she is a leader, that she can public speak and overcome the fear that was paralyzing for her.

Or another client of mine, financial advisor [00:21:00] who was great at delivering amazing results for her clients, but then didn't believe, didn't have the confidence to portray that in her marketing and sales. So we worked on top of working through strategic marketing and building her sales process for high conversion also on her confidence and self-belief in the ability to scale a business and truly grow and build something that can be a legacy and not just a job

So the outer work and the inner work for my clients happen simultaneously, and that's the point. You don't do just all the mindset work and then tackle the strategy. You work on both in parallel because the map of the strategy usually will bring up the mindset blocks that prevent you from [00:22:00] implementing it successfully if not addressed

So then the doing the mindset works makes the strategy possible to execute successfully. So if you are someone who's looking for support in your business right now, how do you know whether you need a coach, a consultant, or someone who does both? Here is a few honest questions you wanna ask yourself.

First is, do you know what to do but struggle to do it? If you can articulate the strategy clearly but find yourself not implementing it, procrastinating, overthinking, or self-sabotaging, you definitely need coaching. You need the inner work. The problem is not strategy. Second, are you missing the expertise or the knowledge of what to do next?

If you genuinely don't know how to build a proper marketing system, how to sell, or how to structure your team, or price your [00:23:00] offers, or even design your client experience, you need someone who can give you that, right? So you need more of the consulting element. And then third, which is very important, are you at a stage of business where both are happening simultaneously?

You're trying to implement new strategies, but you're not sure if they are the right ones, while you're still navigating fears and, identity shifts. Maybe you still think of yourself as an employee. You're trying to implement... then you need both, right? And that's the reality for most growth-oriented entrepreneurs I work with.

The right support for you is the support that meets you where you are with both the knowledge of where you need to go and the skill to help you actually get there

So I wanna leave you with this. Labels matter for marketing, right? They help people find you and understand what you do, but [00:24:00] ultimately what matters more than a label is the outcome. Does the person sitting across from you, whether they call themselves a coach or a consultant, have the expertise to give you real strategic direction, how to grow your business, right?

How to scale, and do they have the skill and the depth to work with you as a whole person and help you implement it successfully and not just treat you as a business problem to be solved

Because you're not a business problem, right? You are a human being building something meaningful for yourself, building something that can impact positively a lot of people, and you deserve support that honors both. So if this episode made you think about what kind of support you're currently getting or what you might be missing, I would love to have a conversation.

My complimentary consultation is always open, and it's a great place to start exploring what [00:25:00] kind of support could look like for you and your business right now

I will leave the link to book one in the show notes. Thank you for listening. If this one resonated, please share it with a fellow business owners who is maybe thinking about investing in coaching or consulting and might need help to make a better decision for themselves. I will see you next week. Bye for now.