What does it mean to be a business coach?: A talk with Inge Wouters
Lead Business coach Inge Wouters has spent years guiding founders at Start it @KBC, from their very first bootcamp to the moments when a start-up, and the person behind it, gets tested. What does that role actually involve? How do you build trust without becoming a friend? And where does coaching stop, where does something else need to take over? We asked her all about it.
What does a business coach actually do?
Can you explain what the role of business coach at a start-up involves?
"A coach follows the founders and start-ups assigned to them for at least twelve months. We don't need to be experts. We don't need to know exactly what business our founders are in or understand every detail of their finances. What we do need is a generalist's eye: where are struggles hiding under the radar, where are the potential pain points? Through asking questions, digging deeper and holding up a mirror, we try to bring out founders' full potential. That's not always 'wow, great job.' It also means confronting people and pushing them out of their comfort zone now and then.
All of that starts from one big foundation: trust. That's why our coaches follow training linked to the ICF coaching certificate, not because a start-up will ever ask about that piece of paper, but because it contains genuinely good methodologies and an ethical code around trust, wellbeing and recognising your own limits as a coach."
How many start-ups does a coach guide at the same time?
"For a full-time coach, we aim for around ten start-ups per cohort. Most coaches are therefore guiding between fifteen and twenty start-ups at once, spread across different cohorts. The first part of the year is more intensive, with more contact hours; later on, the intensity drops off for the older cohorts."
Coach, not expert
Coaches aren't specialists in every sector their founders work in. How do you handle that?
"That's true, and it's a deliberate choice. A coach stays a coach, not an expert; that's the big difference with a mentor. We have a wide network we can draw on when expertise is needed, but the coach's main job stays the same: draw the potential out of the founder themselves, through questions, mirroring and confrontation.
That's why we set clear expectations from the very first conversation: what can you expect from me as a coach, and what not? If someone says 'I expect you to tell me whether to go left or right,' I explain why that's exactly what I won't do. Even with years of experience, your view is only ever one perspective, and the business world changes so fast that an exit from three years ago might play out completely differently today."
Keeping the right distance
You follow founders very closely. How do you maintain enough distance while doing
that?
"That's absolutely essential. You're a coach, not a friend, even though you work together
intensively and often end up sitting on the terrace together. But you always need to be able to tell the difference: am I here right now as a coach, or just enjoying a relaxed moment? That can be a nice situation, but also a tricky one. I sometimes say: the upside is that I'm surrounded by passionate people every day, but at the end of the day, the responsibility for their decisions isn't mine. That sounds harsh, but it's the reality. What is my responsibility: making their blind spots visible. A typical example: a founder who keeps saying they'll reach out to more customers, but never actually does it. As a coach you can keep pushing, telling them to just do it, but then it might happen once, for you. The moment you stop being on top of it, it stalls again. There's usually something underneath it, like 'I'm just bad at sales.' Only once you uncover that, by asking when
it did go well and what was different then, do you see people really move forward. That's a very rewarding part of the job: staying quiet and waiting until they find their own answer. Because eventually, they always do."
Where coaching stops, and when to refer someone on
Entrepreneurship isn't just about numbers and strategy. How important is founders'
wellbeing in your role?
"Enormously important. Founders often carry heavy financial pressure: can I pay my team, can I pay myself? I've experienced that myself as an entrepreneur. That kind of stress can stay with you for years, so I never underestimate what financial stress does to someone. Entrepreneurship can also be very lonely. Founders see only the highlight reel on social media: big funding rounds, new clients, while they themselves just watched two deals fall through. That's why it matters so much for coaches to simply walk around the hub, chat by the coffee machine, rather than rushing from meeting to meeting. Just being present is at least as valuable as a coaching session."
At the same time, you have to know exactly where your role ends. We're not relationship therapists, not psychologists, not doctors. When I sense something bigger is going on, sleep problems, signs of burnout, I listen, I name what I see, and I refer them on. We work with an external partner that offers, in a low-threshold and anonymous way, access to podcasts, reading material and conversations with professionals such as psychologists. I always say: I'm still here for you as a sounding board, but this isn't my expertise, and giving you the wrong advice here would be irresponsible.
"Sometimes, the instinct is to jump straight to solutions, but the most important thing is to let them talk, listen, and then be very concrete about what you're asking of them: see your doctor, talk to a specialist, and let them know you'll still be there. Not as a friend, not as a psychologist, but as a coach who shows up."
A rewarding positon
What gives you the most satisfaction as a coach?
Seeing people find their own answers. I always hope founders leave a session with something still simmering; that's the best sign. When they come back two weeks later and say 'I've thought it through, and I'm actually going to take a different approach than we discussed,' I don't feel like I failed. I think: good, something got shaken loose.
Curiosity is the key word for good coaching, for me. Not judging when someone takes a different path than you would, but asking what makes them feel that way. Founders also need a healthy dose of stubbornness. The best CEOs aren't the ones who know everything themselves; they're the ones who surround themselves with people who are stronger in certain areas, and who still dare to chart their own course. And most important of all: it's never about me. As a coach you have to set your ego aside. A founder's growth, as an entrepreneur and as a person, isn't something I get to take credit for. That's exactly why it matters so much that we say it to each other as a coaching team, that we see and acknowledge one another. Because you can't expect that recognition from the founders you guide. We have to give that to each other."