Coaching Small Business Owners: The Untapped Opportunity for ICF Coaches

Coaching Small Business Owners: The Untapped Opportunity for ICF Coaches

Facilitated by Beverlee Rasmussen, MA, PCC

Most coaches will, at some point, coach a small business owner, yet only 3% of ICF coaches identify this as their specialty. In this engaging and interactive session, Beverlee Rasmussen, MA, PCC, explores why coaching small business owners requires a distinct approach and how the ICF Core Competencies come alive in this unique context.

Participants will experience a values-based coaching practice and a systems-focused questioning exercise designed to deepen presence, evoke awareness, and build trust in complex client environments. Small business owners often bring financial pressure, team conflict, and deeply personal challenges to their sessions. This presentation demonstrates how maintaining presence, listening actively, and coaching the whole system—not just the symptom—creates meaningful change.

Coaches will leave inspired, confident, and equipped with practical, ethical, and evidence-based tools to better serve a client group that represents one of the largest, yet least understood, coaching markets in the world.

1. Connect Core Values Coaching Questions to Small Business Results

• Deepen understanding of how exploring values creates safety and evokes awareness.
• Linked to: Coaching Presence and Evokes Awareness.

2. Cultivate Systems Thinking in Small Business Coaching

• Learn to design actions and solutions informed by the interconnected nature of small business systems.
• Linked to: Facilitates Client Growth and Maintains Presence.

3. Democratizing Small Business Coaching

• Explore the ethical and professional considerations of making business coaching more accessible and inclusive.
• Linked to: Demonstrates Ethical Practice and Establishes and Maintains Agreements.

This presentation draws from content in Beverlee’s ICF Level 2 PCC-accredited program, the Advanced Certificate in Small Business Coaching.

1.5 Core Competency CCEs

Beverlee Rasmussen, MA, PCC is a respected global authority on small business success and the founder of Systems Business Coach® and Small Business Coach Training. For over 15 years, Beverlee has dedicated her work to one core question: How can we reduce small business failures by placing the business owner at the centre of our support systems?

She holds a Master of Arts in Executive and Organizational Coaching and graduate certificates in both Executive Coaching and Organizational Development from Royal Roads University.

A two-time author, including the Amazon #1 bestseller Small Business, Big Opportunity, Beverlee has trained and mentored hundreds of coaches and professionals globally.

Through her ICF-accredited Level 1 and Level 2 programs, Beverlee equips coaches with the structure, ethics, and systems thinking needed to coach small business owners effectively. Her mission is to democratize small business coaching—ensuring every entrepreneur has access to quality, credentialed support.