How do you prepare for a first business coaching conversation?
A recent client, an offer or a week in your calendar gives us something concrete to examine together.
Start with something in the business that you want to understand or decide. Choose an example that helps explain it, and think about what you would like to be able to do after the conversation. A few notes are enough to begin. You can come without a precise goal; finding where to start can be part of the conversation.
In my first coaching conversation, we look at real pieces of your work and how they fit the life you want to live. You do not have to diagnose the business before we meet.
Choose the situation you keep coming back to
Write a few lines about why you are considering coaching now. Perhaps a client has asked you to take on more work, and you are unsure whether to agree. Perhaps the business earns money, but your calendar leaves little room for the work you want to develop. Describe what is happening and the choice it leaves you with.
If you have several concerns, begin with the one affecting an actual decision. What will you need to say yes or no to? What have you been putting off? You can bring the wider picture into the conversation as we go.
Someone preparing to become self-employed can bring the work they are thinking of offering and how they imagine delivering it. Where you do not yet know what customers will buy, say so. We can examine what you need to find out before committing to a particular way of working.
Bring an example that shows what the work involves
Choose a recent client, an offer or a week in your calendar. For a piece of client work, note what you agreed to deliver, what you were paid and how much time it actually took. Include what happened after delivery: further questions, extra work or responsibilities that stayed with you.
Where you have an estimate instead of a record, label it as an estimate. Include what the client received from the work and what you know about its usefulness to them. We can work with what you know and identify what remains uncertain.
Imagine an owner who wants fewer evening commitments. They bring a recent assignment and notice that the agreed delivery was manageable, while the follow-up requests kept returning to them. That gives us something specific to discuss: what they promised, what the client still needed and which responsibilities they want to keep.
My first conversation makes room for two or three examples. Start with the one that best explains your question and choose others if they help show a pattern or a difference. You can use brief notes to describe them without preparing a presentation.
Say what a change must make room for
Your own plans belong alongside the business details. Which work do you want to do personally? What pace can you sustain? What must remain possible outside work? These questions help us examine whether a commercial option fits the business you want to run.
Be specific where you can. Wanting time to develop a different service gives us a different question from wanting to keep evenings free. If you want to keep a particular customer relationship, include that too. A change can solve one problem and create work elsewhere, so we need to understand what you want to preserve.
You may not know the answer yet. Describe the part you are unsure about, including any options you have considered and what makes each one difficult to choose.
Choose what you want to decide or try next
Before we meet, consider what you would like to have decided or tried by the time we finish. It can be a question to explore rather than a fixed target. During the conversation, I ask questions, challenge how you see your options and bring practical business sparring where it helps.
The first conversation is 90 minutes and stands on its own. We agree a step you choose and what you want to notice or learn from taking it. Afterwards, you receive a short written summary of what we agreed. You decide whether you want further conversations.
You can read how the first conversation works or write to me about coaching. We can meet online in English or Danish wherever you work, or face to face in Copenhagen. A few lines about the situation you want to discuss are enough for an initial email.