Business Mentor vs Business Coach: What's the Difference?
A client I'll call Sophie hired me last month after working with three different business coaches over two years. She'd spent £8,000 on coaching sessions where she talked through her problems, identified her limiting beliefs, and set goals she never hit.
"I know exactly what's wrong with my business," she told me on our first call. "I just need someone to tell me what to do about it."
But here's what actually happened in those coaching sessions: Sophie spent an hour each week talking about why she wasn't posting on social media consistently. Her coach asked beautiful questions. "What's stopping you from posting?" "How does that make you feel?" "What would happen if you posted every day?"
Sophie left each session feeling heard and understood. She had new insights about her relationship with visibility. She set intentions to post three times a week.
Then she posted twice in the following month.
The Real Problem With Most Business Coaching
Don't get me wrong – mindset work matters. Half my clients have genuine visibility issues stemming from being the weird kid at school. Others have money beliefs so tangled they think spending £15K on courses (they haven’t finished) in six months counts as "investing in themselves."
But here's what drives me mental: coaches who think every business problem is a mindset problem.
Your email open rates aren't low because of childhood trauma. They're low because your subject lines are rubbish.
Your sales calls aren't converting because of imposter syndrome. They're not converting because you never actually ask for the sale.
The difference between a business mentor and a business coach isn't that one deals with strategy and the other with psychology. It's that mentors know which tool to use when.
A business coach asks: "What do you think might be causing your low conversion rate?"
A business mentor says: "Your conversion rate is low because your pricing page has seventeen different options and no clear call-to-action. Here's what to change. Also, I noticed you mentioned deleting half your social posts before publishing – let's talk about what's really going on there."
When Mindset Actually Matters (And When It's Just Expensive Procrastination)
Sometimes the problem genuinely is between your ears. Like the client who built a brilliant course but won't promote it because showing up online makes her feel physically sick. That's a real block that needs working through.
Or the entrepreneur who's spent £20K on business coaches in two years while his actual business makes £800 a month. That's not investment – that's self-development addiction masquerading as business building.
Then there's the client who knows exactly what content to create but keeps sabotaging herself by deleting posts, missing deadlines, or creating problems that don't exist. Pure strategy won't fix that. You need to understand what's driving the self-sabotage.
But most business owners I meet are drowning in tactical confusion, not psychological blocks.
They don't need to explore why they're afraid of charging more. They need someone to look at their pricing structure and explain why it's confusing potential clients.
They don't need to discover their authentic voice through journaling exercises. They need someone to review their website copy and rewrite the bits that make no sense.
They don't need to set intentions around consistency. They need a content calendar and someone checking they're using it.
What Mentoring Actually Looks Like
When Sophie and I started working together, I spent the first session auditing her business. Not just her mindset. Her actual business.
I looked at her website, her pricing, her client onboarding process, and her marketing strategy. Then I gave her a list:
Rewrite your homepage headline – it's about you, not your client's problem
Add testimonials to your pricing page – you have none
Create a welcome sequence for new email subscribers – yours is one generic email
Stop posting motivational quotes and start sharing case studies
No exploration of her relationship with self-promotion. No deep dive into her fear of success. Just specific changes that would improve specific outcomes.
She implemented everything within two weeks. Her website conversion rate doubled. Her email list grew by 40%.
But then she hit a wall. She knew what content to create but kept deleting posts before publishing them. That's when we shifted into coaching mode – helping her understand why she was sabotaging her own progress.
The difference between good mentoring and pure coaching: I'll tell you to fix your sales page AND help you work through why you're sabotaging every sales call. I'll give you a content strategy AND help you understand why you keep deleting posts before publishing them.
The Mentor vs Coach Breakdown
What a Business Coach Does:
Asks powerful questions to help you find your own answers
Supports you in setting goals and exploring what's blocking you
Focuses on your mindset, beliefs, and personal development
Believes you have all the solutions within you already
Sessions often feel like therapy with a business spin
What a Business Mentor Does:
Diagnoses specific problems in your business operations
Gives you direct solutions based on their experience
Shows you what they did to solve similar problems
Holds you accountable for implementing changes
Focuses on practical, revenue-generating activities
But also coaches when the problem is genuinely psychological
When You Need Both (Which Is Most of the Time)
I learned this the hard way. I spent years as a marketing consultant, giving clients brilliant strategies they'd rave about but never implement.
I'd audit their business, hand over a detailed action plan, take their money, and move on. Then I'd check their socials six months later and nothing had changed.
It drove me mental. These were smart people paying good money for advice they genuinely loved. So why weren't they using it?
That's when I trained in NLP, positive psychology, and coaching. Not because I wanted to be a coach, but because I needed to understand why intelligent business owners would pay for solutions and then not implement them.
Turns out, sometimes the reason you're not implementing brilliant advice is because you're terrified of being visible, or you don't think you deserve success, or you're using business building as a way to avoid dealing with problems at home.
Here's what pure coaches miss: sometimes you need someone to tell you exactly what's broken and how to fix it.
Here's what pure consultants miss: sometimes the most perfect strategy in the world won't work if the person receiving it is psychologically sabotaging themselves.
A client I'll call Emma came to me because her sales page wasn't converting. That's a mentor problem – I looked at it, told her the headline was weak and the testimonials were buried, gave her a template to fix it.
But then she said, "I know what I need to do, but I can't find the time. My partner thinks my business is a hobby and keeps booking social plans during my work hours."
I can't tell you how to have that conversation with your partner. That's not a business strategy problem – that's a relationship and boundary problem. But I can help you work out what you need to say and why it matters for your business success, and I’ve been told I am a very good listener.
Most business owners need someone with both tools: solutions AND the ability to help you implement them when your brain gets in the way.
The Uncomfortable Questions You Need to Ask Yourself
Before you hire anyone – coach, mentor, or consultant – ask yourself these questions:
Do you actually know what's wrong with your business, or are you avoiding finding out?
When someone gives you direct advice about your business, do you implement it or explain why it won't work for you?
Are you using coaching sessions to feel better about your problems instead of solving them?
How much have you spent on courses and coaching in the past year versus how much your business has grown?
Do you need someone to help you figure out what to do, or do you need someone to hold you accountable for doing what you already know?
Are you sabotaging your own progress? And if so, do you want to understand why or just power through it?
If you're still reading, you probably know you need someone to look at your business and tell you what's broken. Not someone to spend six months helping you explore your feelings about what might be broken.
But you also know that sometimes the thing that's broken is you – and you need someone who can work with both.
The Clarity Sprint is designed for people who want answers, not more questions. In 90 minutes, I'll audit your business, identify what's holding you back, and give you a specific action plan. If what's holding you back is psychological, we'll address that too.
Because sometimes the most powerful question isn't "What do you think you should do?"
It's "Here's what you need to do – and here's why you're not doing it. Let's fix both."
If you enjoy my writing – you’ll love my Substack.
Part newsletter, part membership, part blog! Read more here.
