Do you need a coach or do you need a consultant? I'm Dave Lorenzo. This is the Inside B.S. Show. So I've done over 800 of these shows now and one of the things people love to ask me when they meet me in person on the off chance they know who I am, they ask me all the time, Dave, are you a coach or are you a consultant? And if you're a family business owner, I'm the ideal person to help you.

My partner and I, Nicola Gelarmino and I, work with family businesses in the $5 million to $100 million range and we help them grow and we help the business owners and their families become financially independent and treat their business like a true investment. You're able to let the business run without your day-to-day supervision and if you and your family decide, you can sell the business and enable generational wealth not just for you and your children but for your children's children and those that follow. If you decide you want to keep the business and the family, the business can run without the day-to-day involvement of members of your family and the reason we can do this is because we are consultants.

What does that mean? We sit down with you and we understand what your goals are and we understand what you want to accomplish and what you want for your family as a result of not only owning but operating your business. We understand what you want your legacy to be and then we set a plan in motion, a plan that is created by you and we make sure that that plan goes completely and totally as you would like it to. That's what we do.

We have the experience and the team to make sure that your wishes happen with or without your day-to-day involvement. Most of the people we work with remain involved in their business. Some of them want to set a process in motion that enabled the business to run completely and totally without them and we make that happen for them.

That's what we do as consultants. We're not coaches. What a coach does is a coach stands by your side and helps bring out the right feelings in you.

A coach helps you get to the right answer on your own. You're already successful. When we work with you, we're not going to work with you if you're not a successful business owner already.

We're here to make sure that the success continues without your day-to-day involvement. We're here to make sure your business gets to the next level with or without the involvement of your family in the future. We have systems, processes, and a team that makes all of this happen.

A coach is there to motivate you. A coach is there to guide your thinking. And a coach is really the type of person that would take you from startup to five million in annual revenue.

They're not the person to take you from five to 100 million. Consultants have systems, processes, and practices. Coaches are there for thoughts, feelings, guidance, and motivation.

I guarantee that your family and you will be motivated in implementing the systems and processes we have for you. And if you're unable to do it, we have the team that can do it for you. A coach is somebody who would bring out the best in you.

We enable the best to happen for your business regardless of what your motivation is. We are a sure thing. A coach is there to potentially bring out something that may or may not be inside of you.

So what should you do if you're thinking about working with a coach, you're thinking about working with a consultant, and you don't know what you should do? If you can afford to work with the best, if you can afford to work with someone who has systems, processes, and a team, that's what you should do. So I think you should do your homework. The first thing you should do is investigate the options that are available to you.

Talk to coaches and talk to consultants. See which one fits the situation that you're currently in. If you need help with your mindset, if you need help with motivation, if you need help grappling with your feelings as you build a business, then maybe a coach is the right fit for you.

If you want systems, processes, and a proven team to implement a strategy that you and a consultant come up with, then you need the consultant to work with. The second thing you should do is look for references from whomever you decide to work with. If you pick a coach, if you pick a consultant, you need to talk to the people who've worked with those folks in the past.

Ask them specifically what it was like working with the team these people put in place. Ask them specifically if they did what they said they were going to do, and then ask specifically what the results were. References are critical.

Then go to the coach and go to the consultant and ask to speak with someone who worked with these people and they didn't work out. Ask to speak with someone who terminated the process early. I am a realistic business person.

90% of the people we work with are unequivocal successes. 10% of the people we work with don't work out. And the 10% of the people that don't work out are out there living and breathing and available to talk to anyone who will listen.

What I can guarantee you is that people who decide that they're not a good fit for working with us or if we decide these people aren't a good fit for our system or our process after we've agreed to work together, we part company amicably and it's for reasons that are not readily accessible when we get into business together. An example is we start down a path of working with someone who wants to sell their company. We get them all the way to the finish line and then they back out of the deal.

And they back out of the deal because they decide they don't want to sell their company any longer. They want to continue to own and operate the company. Not our fault, not their fault.

They've had a change of heart. We part company as friends. You should be able to talk to people for whom the process didn't work out as planned because that's an indication of the integrity of the person you're going to deal with.

So when you're interviewing a coach or a consultant, you should also work with people who no longer work with that coach or consultant so that you can understand why they parted company and how it worked out in the end. Finally, I want to make sure that I stress this point. Whether you're working with a coach or working with a consultant, they should put some skin in the game or at least offer to do so.

Every one of our engagements, every one of the consulting engagements that we enter into, we offer the client the option for us to share in the upside of the practice we're implementing. The client can elect either to do that or not to do that. But we put some skin in the game in every consulting engagement.

I don't know of any other coaching organization or consulting company that will stand behind the results by agreeing to put skin in the game every time. This is what you should do if you're thinking of hiring a coach or a consultant. If you want more information about selecting a coach or a consultant, reach out to me.

My number and my email address are directly below. I'm Dave Lorenzo. This is the Inside BS Show.

We'll be back here again tomorrow with another edition of our show. We'll see you tomorrow at 6 a.m. Until then, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.