On the menu: What do you care? It’s my business!
I met my friend, Yossi Gibraltar, in the grocery Friday morning. When I asked how his business was doing, he heaved a deep sigh.
As a good friend, I inquired what was behind his heavy sigh and the message he broadcast was helplessness.
“I have experience running the shop and I’m also quite knowledgeable in finance. My advertising is also high level. But I just don’t see that the business is moving forward and expanding. I don’t know what to do.”
Before I had a chance to say anything, Yossi — who had a vague recollection that I worked as manager of Mesila’s Business Division — stopped me: “Now don’t suggest that I go for business counseling. I’ve had enough of those consultations and their costs.”
I promised him I wasn’t suggesting counseling. I was suggesting coaching.
He insisted that they are one and the same.
I told him that I’m talking about coaching with a guarantee. That woke him up.
“A guarantee that I double my profits?” He laughed. “How soon?”
“A guarantee that you’ll know how to deal with your business in the right way and to take the steps necessary to get your business to flourish.”
I described to Yossi the genuine caring of Mesila business coaches – a caring that comes from the sense of mission that suffuses those who are part of an organization dedicated to bringing people to financial stability. The coach isn’t looking to bombard the business owner with information. He’ll sit down with him and evaluate what points can jumpstart the business and show him how he can move from where he is today to where he wants to be.
On the way, the client will benefit from Mesila’s overall expertise: Professional knowledge accumulated over the years; referrals to advisors specializing in various niches; problem-solving; a learning and enriching environment that promotes growth; digital tools.
“When someone really cares, he discovers surprises.” I told Yossi about the legume business that was coached by Mesila. It was a huge factory, with prominent, institutional clients and a range of manufacturing and transport challenges that kept the factory owners so busy that they lacked the headspace to think about additional avenues of profit. The coach came into the picture with a genuine drive to make the factory take off. He patiently checked out all of the production and marketing procedures, down to the most trivial details. When he said, “Eureka!” and told them his discovery, it was hard for them to bite, at first. He talked about empty sacks and wormy legumes as a source of profit.
But after the factory owners admitted the logic in the coach’s words, they started actualizing this profit potential. The empty sacks, which previously had been tossed in the trash bin, were recycled, yielding hundreds of dollars a month. The defective, wormy legumes were sold to a nearby horse ranch, and the net profit came to thousands of dollars more a month.
“Mesila has been in the field for over twenty years,’” I told Yossi, “and that means that we have invaluable practical life experience — like an emphasis on cash flow, the Achilles’ heel of many businesses. Most entrepreneurs are convinced that profit and loss are what determine a business’s prosperity or collapse. The Mesila coach is liable to recommend that he give more thought to cash flow, since that is often what seals the fate of wavering businesses. Our coaches have practical tools for implementation and a coaching method that dismantles internal blocks and helps you apply yourself. Above all, they have a sense of mission; they are there for you, present and dedicated, until b’ezras Hashem, you get the maximum that you want to achieve out of your business. They’ll also reevaluate your performance after a period and ensure that the changes are being maintained.”
Yossi liked what he heard. It could be that at the very moment that you are reading this piece, he has already registered as a client with Mesila and boosted his business to the next level.
(Written by Meir Eliani, Director of Business Division development at Mesila.)
