The Transformative Power of Business Coaching: in Conversation with Kooks
If you’ve already built a successful business, you might wonder if you need business coaching at all. It was the question that went through the mind of our team member Kuldip “Kooks” Singh Sahota when a friend first suggested he try coaching. He’d already grown multiple successful businesses – could a coach really teach him anything?
But in spite of his success, Kooks realised he needed help: he was working every hour of the day and not earning the money that would make that punishing schedule worthwhile.
We chatted with Kooks to discover how he went from a sceptical business owner to an enthusiastic coaching client, then to a successful business coach himself.
Becoming a Business Owner
In 2008, Kooks’ family launched Mr Singh’s, a business selling his father’s chilli sauce. It began with a huge gamble when Kooks spent £900 on his credit card to secure a stall at the BBC Good Food Show.
Thankfully, the risky move paid off and business soon skyrocketed. The products were stocked in the likes of Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and Ocado. The brand was even featured on a BBC1 TV series and in national newspapers.
“It gave my family a sense of purpose, a sense of direction. It bonded us,” Kooks explains. But in spite of that, he felt trapped. “I got to a point where I absolutely hated it,” he says. “I was working all of the time. I couldn’t see a way out of changing that, and rather than doing the smart thing and look for help, I decided to quit.”
After leaving Mr Singh’s, Kooks swiftly started another business, this time focused on signage. His talents stood him in good stead – before the business even opened its doors, he had clients lined up. The business grew relatively quickly and Kooks found he was earning decent money in a matter of months.
There was just one problem: history was repeating itself. He was at work all the time and felt as though he couldn’t step away or the business would collapse.
“Despite making more money,” he explains, “I was still feeling the same: if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid.”
Taking a Chance on Coaching
Things started to change when Kooks found himself on a trip with a friend who happened to be a client of Parag, the head coach at the Business Growth Agency.
“Over the years, I’d seen him become more and more successful, have more and more free time on his hands,” Kooks says of his friend. “I asked him ‘How are you doing this? How are you able to live this type of life and build your business the way that you’ve built it?’”
His friend’s answer was simple: business coaching.
Kooks was sceptical. Given that he’d already achieved so much without anyone’s help, could a coach really teach him anything about building a business that he didn’t already know? His mental picture of coaching was of someone parroting management strategies from a book – someone who had never had to risk their family home or getting into crippling debt like he had.
Kooks says it was his friend’s highly pragmatic advice that finally convinced him:
“He said to me, ‘Look, just try it out. What have you got to lose? Either your life is going to get better or it’s going to stay the same.’ So I thought, fine.”
Coaching Experiences
That initial taster session with Parag caused a fundamental shift in Kooks’ perspective on the challenges he was facing.
“When I walked out of that coaching session,” he recalls, “I instantly knew that I was the problem. I lacked knowledge and I needed and wanted to get that knowledge.”
So, he signed up for coaching then and there. It marked the realisation that he himself was something worth investing in: “I was afraid to spend money on business education because I felt like I didn’t have it. But I had plenty of money. I was just afraid and that was what was holding me back.”
The wake-up calls kept coming. He came away from his first full session with the knowledge that it wasn’t only his attitude to money that needed to change but his attitude to his work-life balance as well. On the way home, he booked his first proper holiday in 7 years. It was a huge step for someone who was convinced that working all hours was the only way to keep a business afloat.
After that, he threw himself into coaching. “I became the kind of really geeky, front-of-the-class student who would do the homework straight away and bugged the teacher constantly for feedback,” he says. “I wanted to change my life.”
It wasn’t all about fundamental mindset shifts though. The practical advice surrounding goal setting, time management and finances also helped him upgrade how he managed things day to day.
“Those types of things were really powerful,” he adds, “They don’t cost any money, but they do make quite large, impactful changes.”
Becoming A Coach
Like nearly every other business owner, Kooks found things thrown into chaos in early 2020 when the Covid19 pandemic hit. None of his businesses could operate as normal in lockdown conditions and things were looking bleak.
It was during that initial upheaval that he first saw an advert from Parag who was looking for a new coach to come on board. Facing an uncertain future and intrigued by the idea of giving back through business coaching, Kooks decided to reach out for a discussion.
In the meantime though, he realised he had to adapt. He set himself up as a marketing consultant, something he could easily do remotely. He also transformed Mr Singh’s into an eCommerce business, successfully pivoting to selling their chilli crisps online.
With consistent work and creativity, Kooks managed to get all of his businesses into a much better place by the end of 2020. So, when it came time to revisit the discussion about becoming a coach, the calculations had changed drastically.
“I had to either stop my consulting business or do coaching,” he says. “I couldn’t do both and have the other businesses. So, I decided to wind back the consulting and do the coaching because I felt that it would enhance my skill set and change my environment.”
That thirst to grow and improve set him in good stead as he embarked on the intensive training necessary to become a coach. He qualified in February 2021 but, as he explains, the learning didn’t stop there.
“Focusing on self-improvement and self-reflection becomes a way of life,” he says. “When you recognise that there’s a gap in your skillset and if that gap is in the way of you achieving your goals, by default almost, you seek out the knowledge to fill that gap.”
Where He Is Now
Kooks is now a successful coach at The Business Growth Agency, helping clients across many different industries through Group and 1-to-1 Business Coaching services.
His particular interest is communication, with a focus on branding and marketing. As he puts it: “Branding is the personality of your business, and you must be able to communicate that.
Marketing is lead generation, but again, you must know who you’re speaking to and why.”
His main criterion for an ideal client is pretty simple: someone who is open to change. Someone who will work hard and implement the changes necessary to achieve what they want.
He thinks the secret behind transformative business coaching experiences like his is simple. “All coaching is a question followed by a moment of silence to help you extract the truthful answer that you’ve always had inside you,” he explains. “I think the problem that coaching solves is that most people don’t give themselves the time to have that silence and they don’t have someone to ask the questions they need to extract the answers that they already have.”
And he would know. It took someone asking him those all-important questions back when he was struggling with his second successful business for Kooks to recognise what was keeping him from the results he wanted.
Making a Change
If you’re feeling stuck with your business or are facing struggles that you just don’t seem to be able to get on top of, you can book a free taster call with one of our coaches. It’s not a sales call – just a friendly, 45-minute chat about your needs and how coaching could help. They’ll also provide strategies you can start using right away.
As Kooks says: “What’s the worst that could happen? Your life stays exactly the same. What’s the best that could happen? It could transform your life and give you happiness, success, fulfilment, more time, freedom, and whatever else you may be dreaming of. That’s a pretty huge upside.”
