Here are the reasons why business coaching is crucial for start-ups:

• Most of the start-up entrepreneurs are new to the business world. Therefore, they may not know the business principles, legal requirements to do a business, taxation rules, etc. I know an entrepreneur who started a service business in 2009. Being a new businessman and coming from a non-business family, he was not aware of one of the then prevalent important taxation rules—when the revenue crosses 10 lakhs in a year, the business needs to collect service tax from the clients and pay it to the government. However, since he was unaware of this rule, he did not collect any service tax from his clients. After 2 years of operations, he was happy and satisfied that he made good profit. However, he was unpleasantly surprised when service tax personnel came after 2 years for a routine check. They demanded a total of 25 lakhs from him, the service tax, interest, and penalty. He told them that he did not collect any tax from his clients as he was not aware of this rule. Finally, he had to pay a significant amount to the tax authorities. He lost all his profit of 2 years due to not knowing this rule.
• To decide on whether to enter any business or not requires through due diligence. To narrate another story…a businessman, Ravi, who was well established in electronics business wanted to diversify his business. He got the opportunity to buy an existing and operational restaurant business. The interiors were very well done and at a price of 1.2 crores. The incumbent owner was selling it for 80 lakhs. It appeared to be a great deal. Ravi bought the restaurant without any thorough due diligence. He was not able to run the restaurant because of his lack of domain knowledge of running a restaurant and also because it was in a mall far away from the city. The fact that the incumbent owner was unable to get sufficient number of customers because of the remote location was totally ignored and was not considered by Ravi while buying the restaurant. He lost nearly 2 crores because of the deal because the business was running in loss for most of the months in a year. In addition, he did not file the income tax return of this loss in a timely manner. Had he filed the timely loss return, he would have adjusted the loss against his profit of the electronic business and would have saved paying a huge amount of tax in a legal manner. Not only did he lose 2 crores but also wasted significant time and effort in operating and trying to revive this business. Had he spent 2 hours of time with a good business coach all these losses of money, time, and effort would have been avoided and his quality of life would have been much better for those 2 years.
• Maximum support is required by start-ups. They need an experienced and matured person to guide them and to do brainstorming with them.
• Being a start-up founder is so intensely stressful, from working hard to create a good product or service, to getting traction with end-users, fundraising (and being rejected), hiring, firing, and managing employees, and balancing personal needs. Being an entrepreneur oftentimes means being alone. And there are conflicts when a start-up founder tries to vent to investors, significant others, or employees. In these conflicting situations, start-up entrepreneurs require a third party and expert view to know where they are wrong and where they are right.
• There is no one to listen to a startup founder to be honest about his greatest fears and his grandiose visions. Entrepreneurs need huge doses of optimism, encouragement, wise feedback, an open heart, and just an opportunity to be completely and thoroughly honest.