With October 1st, 2025, marking the first day that SCORE, at least in the form we’ve long known it, no longer exists due to the loss of its primary funding source from the Small Business Administration (SBA), I’ve been reflecting on the role it played in the small business ecosystem. Having served as both a chapter chair for SCORE and the executive director for the local SBDC, I’ve seen firsthand how the two organizations differ in their approach to serving business owners. That dual perspective has given me a unique lens through which to think about the kinds of business advisors entrepreneurs should turn to for help.
As I’ve thought about what SCORE contributed, one thing stands out: most business owners, and even many advisors for that matter, don’t fully understand the difference between a coach, a consultant, and a mentor. I’ve heard those terms used interchangeably for years. But they aren’t the same. Each plays a very different role. And if you don’t recognize those distinctions, it’s easy to hire the wrong kind of help and walk away frustrated.
The Coach – Improving the Individual
Coaches focus on the person, not the business system. Their craft is helping you, as an individual, reach your greatest potential. A good coach listens, asks the right questions, and holds you accountable.
What coaches don’t necessarily bring is deep domain expertise. They don’t need to understand your industry at a detailed level. Their role is to help you reflect, challenge your thinking, and grow as a person or leader.
This is why senior executives so often hire coaches. By the time you’ve reached the top of an organization, you already have subject matter experts in every corner: finance, engineering, operations. You don’t need another technical expert. What you need is someone who can help you improve yourself: sharpen your communication, become more resilient, build trust with your team, or manage your own energy and focus.
Think of a coach like a personal trainer. A trainer doesn’t have to be an expert in your specific sport to help you perform better. A tennis coach doesn’t need to have been a Wimbledon champion, just as a golf coach doesn’t have to be a PGA master. What matters is that they understand the discipline of coaching — how to push you, hold you accountable, and bring out the best in you. In many cases, that outside perspective makes them even better at helping you become a stronger version of yourself.
The Consultant – Solving Specific Problems
Consultants are specialists. They’re the people you bring in when you have a problem you can identify and want fixed.
“My Facebook ads aren’t converting as they once did.” “I need to restructure my payroll system.” “We’ve got cybersecurity risks and don’t know where to start.”
These are consultant problems. You’ve identified a specific need, and you’re hiring an expert who knows that function inside and out.
Consultants are often reactive. You bring them in when you already know what the problem is, and you’re not expecting them to peel back the onion and uncover something deeper. You hire them for their expertise in a specific area, and they’ll usually give advice through that lens. My dad used to say, “If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The same holds true here: if your consultant is a CPA, the guidance will almost always center on numbers; if they’re a marketer, the focus will be on promotion and branding. That’s why it’s important to be clear about your real problem. If you misdiagnose it, the consultant’s solution may end up as a band-aid that treats the symptom without curing the underlying cause.
A consultant’s role extends beyond simply giving advice. They may sit down with you to work through the issue side by side, or in some cases, they’ll take ownership and resolve the problem themselves. That combination of specialized knowledge and hands-on involvement is what makes consultants so effective when a business owner is facing a clearly defined challenge.
Consultants bring deep, narrow expertise to a specific area of need. You go to an oncologist for cancer, not for a sprained ankle. In the same way, you hire a tax consultant for IRS compliance, not for building your sales team. That kind of specialization makes them valuable, and often expensive.
In our local small business ecosystem, this is where I see most SBDC advisors fitting in. They tend to be functionally aligned in areas such as HR, marketing, accounting, or cybersecurity, and step in to help business owners address specific deficiencies that surface once the business is already up and running. By contrast, SCORE often worked with business owners during moments of transition, whether launching a startup, making a major pivot, or scaling to a new level, when broader guidance was needed that was not tied to solving a single functional problem.
That difference in focus sets the stage for the next section, which examines mentoring and its critical role for small business owners.
The Mentor – Guiding the Whole Business
Mentors take a different approach. This was SCORE’s sweet spot, and it’s also where I tend to work with most clients. Having built and sold several service-related businesses of my own, I bring the perspective of someone who understands how all the moving parts of a business connect. I approach client work as a generalist rather than a narrow specialist, helping owners step back, see the bigger picture, uncover root issues, and recognize how solutions in one area often ripple through the rest of the organization.
Mentors are typically individuals like me who have run their own employer-based businesses. They’ve carried payroll, navigated regulations, hired and fired, wrestled with margins, and lived through the ups and downs of business ownership. That firsthand experience provides a broad, integrated perspective that makes mentoring different from coaching or consulting.
Unlike a consultant, a mentor doesn’t just react to the problem you identified. They often dig deeper to find the real issue, then equip you with the tools and apply their wisdom to help you resolve it. Mentors are big-picture thinkers who help you understand how a solution in one area can influence the rest of your business. Fixing a cash flow issue, for example, may change how you manage operations, impact the way customers experience your service, and even influence staffing decisions.
In my own mentoring sessions, I often meet with clients who come in saying, “I need a bank loan.” A consultant in that situation would get to work helping the client apply for financing. But as a mentor, I dig a little deeper. More often than not, I find the issue is not really a lack of money at all. The real problem is how they are managing the money they already have. In those cases, the solution is not taking on new debt but learning how to use their existing capital more efficiently.
When looking for a mentor, consider a match based on a general industry background, such as service-based, manufacturing, or e-commerce, rather than a functional specialty like marketing or HR. What matters most in a mentor is their ability to understand how the entire ecosystem of a business fits together, not just one isolated piece of it.
If consultants are specialists and coaches are personal trainers, then mentors are more like general contractors. They may not install the plumbing or wire the electricity themselves, but they understand how all the parts of a project fit together and ensure everything works as a cohesive system.
Why the Distinction Matters
Understanding these differences isn’t just semantics. It affects outcomes.
Hire a coach when what you really need is a consultant, and you’ll get plenty of reflection but no fixes.
Hire a consultant when what you really need is a mentor, and you may solve the symptom but miss the root cause.
Hire a mentor when what you really need is a coach, and you’ll get good advice but not much personal growth.
The best entrepreneurs know how to use all three at different times, for different reasons.
Starting out and unsure where to focus? A mentor helps you see the bigger picture.
Running into a technical roadblock? A consultant helps you fix the problem.
Growing as a leader and need accountability? A coach helps you get there.
Building Your Own Support Team
Mentors, coaches, and consultants each serve very different purposes, and clarity matters more than ever. Mentors haven’t disappeared, but they’re no longer as easy to find in one central place. That means business owners must be more intentional about seeking them out.
So, what does this mean for you? It means building your own support team and knowing exactly who to turn to at the right time:
A coach to sharpen you as a leader.
A consultant to solve a specific, technical issue.
A mentor to help you see the bigger picture and understand how all the pieces of your business fit together.
Don’t confuse these roles, and don’t expect one to do the work of another. The right advisor, at the right time, can make all the difference in your business journey.
What kind of advisor do you need most at this stage in your journey — a coach, a consultant, or a mentor?
