It is World Cup season, and one thing keeps playing on my mind. Every team that made it to the quarter-finals is full of world-class players. Some of them play for Real Madrid, Manchester City, Liverpool, Bayern Munich and other top clubs in the world. They know how to dribble, how to pass, how to read the game and how to score. So why do they still need a coach? The coach does not step onto the pitch. The coach does not score goals. The coach does not run for 90 minutes.

The answer is simple. The coach sees what the players cannot see while they are playing. When a player is on the pitch, his focus is only on the ball, his teammates, the opposition and the pressure right in front of him. But the coach is at the side of the pitch. He sees the whole game. He sees the space that is opening up. He sees the opponent’s weaknesses. He knows when to defend, when to attack and when to change the strategy. That is why great teams are not just teams with great players. They also have a great coach.

A few days ago, I sat down to talk with an entrepreneur. His business had been running for a few years. His sales had already reached hundreds of thousands of ringgit a year. But he still found it hard to grow. In that conversation, he asked me, “Datuk, how can you see the problems in my business in less than an hour?” I just smiled.

The truth is, I did not see it in an hour. I saw it because for almost 20 years I have sat face to face with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs from all kinds of industries. I have seen companies start from a house and grow into companies worth tens of millions of ringgit. I have also seen companies that looked great from the outside, but in the end collapsed because of one wrong decision. The more entrepreneurs I guide, the more I realise their problem is rarely that they do not work hard. Most of them already work too hard. They have just been “on the pitch” for too long, until they can no longer see the whole game.

That is why I always say, people do not pay a coach for the one hour of his time. They pay for the years of experience that let the coach see something a founder might only notice five years later. Just like a football coach. He might make only one substitution in the 70th minute. That decision takes a few seconds. But it comes from thousands of hours of experience, observation, analysis and hundreds of matches he has been through before.

It is the same in business. Sometimes I ask just one question. Sometimes I challenge just one assumption. Sometimes I ask a founder to look again at his positioning, his customers or his business model. But that one question can change the way he sees the whole business. One right decision can save hundreds of thousands of ringgit in losses. One change in positioning can double sales. One right strategy can even speed up growth that used to take years.

The more someone has really gone through the grind of building a business, finding customers, watching cash flow, paying staff salaries every month and getting financing, the more he values experience. He realises experience cannot be rushed. But experience can be borrowed. That is the real value of a coach. We are not buying their time. We are borrowing their experience so we do not have to repeat the same mistakes.

Because in business, time is the most expensive asset. Money that is lost can still be earned back. But time that has passed will never come back.

That is why I believe great founders are never embarrassed to have a coach. Just like world-class players who still need a coach at the side of the pitch, great founders also need someone who can see what they themselves cannot see. Not because they are weak. Not because they are not smart. But because they are mature enough to understand that all of us have blind spots we cannot see on our own.

Because in the end, champions are not built by players who train alone. Champions are built by players who are willing to be led, corrected and guided to become better than they were yesterday.

Datuk Wira