An honest guide
Coach, consultant or mentor?
All three are real jobs. All three are worth the money, for the right problem. Most of what is written about the difference is written by someone selling one of them, so here is the version with the arguments against me left in.
I am closest to a consultant.
I diagnose, and I tell you what I think. What I refuse is a fixed scope and a document at the end, because those are the two things that stop most consulting from changing anything.
The rest of this page is when to hire one of the others instead.
The short version
Three jobs, three different bets.
Those are fair descriptions, not straw men. If one of them is obviously what you need, stop reading and go and hire one.
Helps you find your own answer.
Structured questions, self-discovery, and the belief that you already hold the answer. They will not tell you what they think, because telling you is not the job.
The bet: the answer is in you and needs drawing out.
Answers the question you asked.
Expertise you do not have, applied to a problem you have already framed. Discovery, diagnosis, a plan, and often the hands to build it.
The bet: you know what is broken and need a specialist to fix it.
Has already walked your road.
Long term, relationship first, usually informal and often unpaid. Someone further along in your field, sharing what they learned getting there.
The bet: your problem is one somebody has already solved.
Side by side
Where they actually differ.
Twelve rows. Read the last four first, because three of them are where a firm beats me.
Capacity, cover, and a brand name behind the work. On all three a firm beats me, and it beats a coach and a mentor too. If you need any of those, that is your answer and you can stop reading.
Hire a coach when
The problem is how you behave, not what you know.
A brilliant technical leader who talks over people, cannot delegate, and has no idea they are doing it. Nothing is wrong with the strategy. The problem is a blind spot, and blind spots do not respond to being handed a document.
A coach will work on that patiently, over months, with structure. That is a real skill and it is not mine.
I do not sit on the fence and I move fast. Someone who needs to arrive at their own realisation slowly, in their own time, will find me too much too soon.
I hired one and they asked me questions until I found the answer myself. It felt like therapy. I wanted their actual thoughts so we could thrash it out and move. That says as much about me as it does about coaching.
Hire a consultant when
You already know what is broken.
You are moving three countries onto one system. Your supply chain is losing margin every month and the cause is in the data. You need a specialist who has done it ten times, and you need them to build it, not discuss it.
Go and hire one. Get a good one. This is not a truth problem, it is a technical one, and no amount of honest conversation will migrate your data.
It is structural rather than a failure of talent. A consultant is hired by the executive, to answer the question the executive framed, inside a scope the executive agreed. So the two hardest things to say are that the question is wrong, and that the person who framed it is part of the problem.
A large firm came into a bank I worked at. They asked the tick box questions but had no relationship with anyone they spoke to. People told them what protected their jobs. Nine reports came back. The leaders thought they had smashed it. Nothing moved, because none of it was true.
If you do not have a relationship with people, nothing true ever moves.
Where a firm beats me
Five reasons to hire someone else.
If you are reading a page like this to work out who to trust, the useful part is where the person writing it loses.
A firm can put six people on it for three months. I work three days a week and take a handful of clients a year. If you need volume, I am the wrong call.
They have a bench. If someone is ill or stretched, another partner steps in. I have no bench. That is a real risk you take on me and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
They may have people who have done this exact thing in your exact industry a hundred times. I bring a fresh read, which is a different thing and not always the thing you need.
When a board or an investor wants an independent report from a recognised firm, they are buying the name. I cannot sell you that and I would not try.
Some large businesses genuinely cannot buy from one person. Supplier vetting, insurance thresholds, framework agreements. That is not a judgement on the work, it is a rule, and rules win.
I say no. I have turned work down that I could not do properly, and I will do it again. Taking money for something I cannot help with wastes your time and costs me the only thing I actually trade on.
So what am I
A consultant who refuses the two things that break consulting.
I diagnose, I give you my actual view, and I bring sixteen years of running things to bear on your problem. I am not going to ask how the supply chain makes you feel.
A fixed scope.
You ask a question. I do not limit the search to it. Sometimes your question is exactly right. More often it is the surface, and the real thing is a mixture, because it is very rarely just one thing.
A process is broken, and a leader has stopped listening, and someone in the team has quietly outgrown their job. Look at only the process and you will fix a third of it.
Ending on a document.
Most of what people value is what happens after. The roadblock picked, the decision made, the checking in until it has actually moved.
The person who has watched me work longest calls that accountability. A coach will not chase you. A consultant has already left.
Which leaves the argument I would actually make, and it is not that I am better than either of them.
The real argument
One person, who already knows.
A problem does not stay one shape. It starts as a process and turns out to be a person. It starts as confidence and turns out to be pricing.
If you have a coach for one and a consultant for the other, you stop and explain yourself again every time it turns. You brief a stranger on your business, your people and your history, and you do it at exactly the moment you least want to.
Or you call one person who already knows you, your business and your people, and say the true thing.
Then the right support comes. Sometimes that is listening and guiding. Sometimes it is rolling up sleeves and building the thing. Usually it is both, in an order nobody could have written down at the start.
Common questions
The ones people ask before they book.
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. Nothing is off limits and it won’t offend me.
What is the difference between a coach and a consultant?
Is a mentor the same as a coach?
Which one do I need?
What if I do not know which problem I have?
Are you a coach, a consultant or a mentor?
When should I hire a firm instead of you?
How much does it cost?
Where to start
Twenty minutes will tell us both.
I have turned work down that I could not do properly. I will do it again. Taking money for something I cannot help with wastes your time and costs me the only thing I trade on.
Which is why the first conversation is free and has nothing in it to buy.
You tell me what is actually happening. I tell you honestly whether I am the right person, and if I am not, I will usually know who is.
Free. Video or phone. Nothing to prepare.