'One of the best decisions I ever made'

A couple of years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Brett Gallant, founder of Adaptive Office Solutions, an IT and cybersecurity solutions company.

It had been suggested to Brett that a leadership coach could help him navigate some of the challenges he was facing at the time. He talked to several people he trusted, who had taken on coaches, and they all urged him to do it.

When I met with him, he struck me as the perfect candidate – earnest and conscientious, the issues he faced were surmountable, with the right coaching. Brett was skeptical: he felt he was too busy and wouldn’t be able to find the time.

That was another sign that he could benefit from coaching – I knew it meant he was spending too much time working “in the business” instead of “on the business.”

He committed, and I took on the responsibility of being his coach. Through our sessions, we worked through evolving his business from spending a lot of time on little revenue to one that introduced managed services for companies, providing stable and recurring revenue.

We tackled his HR issues, and set him up with professionals who could support his business on a fractional basis and help propel him and his enterprise forward.

“Coaching helped me reach a pivotal moment when I realized more was possible in my business. I realized that the only person who could stop me from achieving is me.” ~Brett Gallant

These were all discussions led by Brett, and decisions taken by him. My job as his coach was to help him discover the issues and the solutions, and hold him accountable to those.

He still remembers calling me from a parking lot one day, questioning the decision to stop serving the home computer support market – a move that was supposed to be made public that very day. Brett was second-guessing himself, but we talked through it and he moved forward.

“It was one of the best decisions I ever made. We needed to prioritize, to strategically work on our business. Other areas were distracting and we weren’t being as effective as we could be,” Brett says.

“Coaching challenged me. I had a limiting belief of what I could do,” he says.

Brett attributes the breakthroughs he made through coaching to an impressive 30 per cent increase in revenue.