ESI Coaching is a tried and tested professional services resource. ESI Coaching provides SME enterprise development and entrepreneurship services across a very broad range of society, commerce and industry. Here is how that has come about.
ESI Coaching is the most recent enterprise development initiative of Enterprise Solutions International LLC (ESI) and a spin-out from its sister service, ESI Advisors. www.esiadvisors.com.
Until 2000, ESI's focus was high-impact/high-tech ventures - both large and small. After relocating operations to North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains from the US Northeast, ESI shifted focus to the largely under-served professional services needs of a very different enterprise population: those with ordinary SME (i.e. small-medium enterprise) ambitions. This is a very large sector as these companies routinely deliver about 30% of the US GDP, payroll and jobs.
ESI Coaching's first key observation is that durable success rates for new ventures are quite small. Considerably fewer than 10% of ventures do more than eke out a living after four years from the idea to open the business.
ESI Coaching's second key observation is that durable economic success is most likely when entrepreneurs learn to adapt to circumstances once the doors are opened.
ESI Coaching's third key observation is that working to effect small positive changes in durable success rates for this sector could have enormous national economic and societal impact.
Experience has proven that, beyond a market validated need, a sound business plan, adequate financing and a motivated entrepreneur, the single most effective success tool is 1-1 coaching that is focused on an effective business model, effective business operations, and effective use of key performance measures.
Usually, entrepreneurs seek guidance from management consultants, investors, lawyers and accountants whose primary focus is most often either advice, cousel and assistance for planning and forming a new enterprise venture or professional services for specific legal, accounting and contract matters. Too few of these service professional have the right experience for or have designed a practice that can be economically successful by focusing on day-to-day operational issues confronted by every venture once the doors are opened.
Late in 2005, ESI Coaching began to evolve out of ESI Advisor services via projects with a regional university (Western Carolina University, http://ief,wcu,edu) and through collaboration with and some sponsorship from economic development organizations - the regional Western North Carolina state-sponsored agency, AdvantageWest www.awnc.org, and a regional, non-profit micro-enterprise development organization, Mountain BizWorks www.mountainbizworks.org.
These collaborative projects helped ESI to define an effective system of coaching methods and establish an economically viable professional services practice focused entirely on operational matters for new, early-stage, or expansion stage entrepreneurial ventures.
The rest, as they say, is history.
