What is the difference between a Coach, Therapists, Consultant, Mentor, Trainer?

The Analogy of Becoming a Business Owner.
John wants to become a World Class Business Owner. He doesn’t know the first thing about Business though, having spent most of his youth in a desk job. To achieve his goal of becoming a Successful Business Owner, he decided to employ the services of some professionals to help him.
Therapist – First John went to see a therapist. She helped him to dig deep to find out what might be holding him back from starting his own business, other than the fact that he didn’t know anything about business, John didn’t know if he had a psychological resistance to starting a business or becoming very successful at it.

Consultant – John decided there were no psychological blocks to starting a business, so he went to see an expert about the Business he wanted to start. The consultant provided John with an overview of the Business Model, a copy of the tax laws relevant to him, what type of insurance he would need and all he could ever want to know about the business he was going to start.

Mentor – John feeling more knowledgeable and more in touch with his Entrepreneurial side, quit his job and decided to get a mentor, someone who was really successful in the business world. His mentor gladly shared all his experiences of running a successful business and the wisdom and lessons he had learned during his lifetime. He gave John some tips on what to look out for so he would not make some of the mistakes he did.

Trainer – Now that John had all that wisdom and expertise he learned from the other Professionals, he thought he would hire a trainer to provide him with some step by step instructions on how to operate his business. His trainer was world-class and gave him many courses and lessons to study to increase his knowledge of operating his Business. The trainer corrected John even before he made a mistake, and this was very irritating to John and he felt rather ashamed and hopeless and frustrated. John felt he couldn’t make independent Business decisions working like this, so he decided to end the lessons before he finished all his courses. This left John feeling rather down, and a little hopeless.

Coach – After much disappointment and self-reproach and exhausting all other possibilities for professional help, John decided to hire a business coach. After speaking with the coach, John noticed the coach was different from the other professionals he had enlisted before. The coach listened to what John had to say, didn’t judge him, but rather asked questions to help John gain more clarity of what he wanted to do and acknowledged John’s dream of becoming a world class business owner.
The coach offered to help John create a plan to help him achieve his goal. The coach didn’t just give information about starting a business, or running it, but rather helped John understand how to use all that knowledge that he already aquired to make his dream come true. The coach then inquired about what John had already tried, what worked and what didn’t and helped him see where he might try things differently to gain greater success. John loved the freedom he had with his coach and started to move more freely and confidently.

As they continued to work their relationship grew, John trusted his coach and John shared thoughts and ideas that he couldn’t with anyone else. The coach was a great thinking partner and brought greater clarity of what he need to do.
The coach had John’s best interests in mind and helped him created actionable achievable steps to move forward, kept him focused and held him accountable for the tasks he said he do, which John loved.
John noticed that his coach was his greatest fan, he loved celebrating his wins, and bringing John up when he was down.

John has a world class business now, and couldn’t have done it without the help of his coach.