ZAMBIAN-BORN entrepreneur Patrick Greenaway has led a charmed life in the build-up to finding his true calling as a business coach.
After moving to South Africa at a young age, his initial training was as a fitter and turner.
Greenaway is the owner, master coach and franchisee of business coaching and training company ActionCOACH KZN.
The Hilton-based firm has won several business awards and Greenaway has capitalised on the recent growth in popularity of business coaching.
Pietermaritzburg and surrounding areas has proved to be a lucrative market.
"I've battled to get out of Pietermaritzburg. The demand here definitely exceeds the supply," Greenaway said.
"Coaching is in vogue. The Australians were the pioneers around people coaching. After reaching other countries, it has finally become popular in South Africa."
Greenaway warned that coaching should not be taken up by "people with nothing else to do", as it was a specialised area of expertise.
"The perception that only businesses that are not doing well should resort to coaching is not correct. In the past quarter, about 88% of the businesses we coached were not battling. Sometimes it takes a coach with a baseball bat and the skills to take you up to the top of the mountain."
Greenaway is well-known in local business organisations and his path to coaching has been interesting.
"In my professional career, I was always 'Mr Fixit'. Coaching was the vehicle I identified to give something back to KwaZulu-Natal."
He went to school in Winkelspruit and studied engineering in Durban, where he also completed an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner.
However, he soon departed from this field, completing various courses in psychology and enrolling in a psychology course in Scotland.
Becoming a sales engineer with packaging firm Metal Box and moving to a job at a bottling firm (later known as ABI) in Pietermaritzburg set him up for a career with multinational Coca Cola that spanned three continents.
It was a move to Ireland that marked his entry into entrepreneurship in 2001.
It is worth noting that Greenaway puts his money where his mouth is: he also has a coach. "My coach is David Holland, who is based in France."
This bears testament to the fact that coaching is not solely for struggling businesses and executives.
Published with permission from the Witness.