Running a company changes the kind of problems a founder has to solve. Early on, the questions are usually practical: how to find customers, price the offer, hire the first people, preserve cash and turn an idea into a viable business.
As the company grows, the founder may be managing managers, making decisions with incomplete information and dealing with problems that cannot be solved simply by working harder. The support that was useful at the beginning may no longer match the problems appearing several years later.
The Problems Change as the Company Grows
At an early stage, advice from someone who has already built a business can save a founder months of unnecessary mistakes. A mentor who has hired a first sales team, raised capital or survived a serious cash-flow problem may recognise practical risks before a less experienced founder does.
Growth changes the nature of those questions. The issue may no longer be how to hire someone, but whether the founder is allowing the person they hired to make decisions. A sales problem may turn out to be excessive dependence on the founder to close important deals. A team problem may involve the founder changing priorities too often or avoiding conversations that have become uncomfortable.
Experience remains valuable as the organisation becomes more complex, although more decisions begin to involve trade-offs rather than obvious answers.
Mentors, Coaches and Therapists Solve Different Problems
Mentors, coaches and therapists are sometimes discussed as though they offer slightly different versions of the same kind of support. Each is useful for a different kind of problem.
A mentor usually brings relevant experience. Someone entering a new market, raising capital for the first time or building a leadership team may benefit from a person who has already dealt with similar situations.
Coaching is more likely to focus on the founder's own decisions, behaviour, priorities and blind spots. The founder may already understand what needs to happen but continue avoiding a difficult conversation, holding onto work that should have been delegated or changing direction whenever uncertainty appears.
This is why understanding what kind of support you actually need matters more than simply finding an impressive person to speak to.
Therapy belongs in a different professional category. Business pressure and personal difficulties can exist at the same time, and significant psychological distress, trauma, depression, anxiety or other mental health concerns require appropriately qualified mental health professionals rather than another layer of business advice.
The Right Support Changes With the Business
Founders can lose considerable time when they keep using the same type of support for every problem. Someone who needs market expertise will gain little from months of discussing mindset. A founder who already knows what to do but repeatedly avoids doing it may not need another mentor giving the same advice.
As the business grows, several sources of perspective may become useful. One person may understand the industry, another may have scaled a company through the next stage, while coaches, lawyers, accountants or specialist advisers address completely different issues.
The people who were valuable when a company had ten employees may not be the ones best equipped to help when it has one hundred. Good leadership increasingly includes recognising where the founder's own expertise ends and choosing whose perspective is worth bringing in next.
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