Talking about a new business idea in the real world can be one of the most uncomfortable and important steps for founders. In the customer discovery and exploration phase, fear and fixed mindsets often hold entrepreneurs back from the honest feedback they need to grow. At our latest NCME meeting, experienced coaches shared how the right support helps founders push past these barriers and turn uncertainty into learning.
Exploring a business idea and engaging directly with customers is often when founders feel most exposed. This isn’t a box-ticking exercise to validate a concept. It’s a moment of reckoning, where assumptions are challenged and real market feedback comes into sharp focus. The reality is that what founders hear may not align with their expectations, or even the future they had imagined for their business.
So how can coaching adapt to the unique pressures of the customer discovery and exploration stage? At the March 2026 Network for Coaching and Mentoring Entrepreneurs (NCME) meeting, leadership coach and Salt Yard Group founder, Sanja Moll, and Venture Builder and Entrepreneurship Educator, Davide Turi, shared their insights on supporting founders through this critical phase.
Tackling the fixed mindset
A fixed mindset is a major risk in customer discovery. Founders may think they have an open view, but biases are deeply engrained. And it’s common for there to be misconceptions about what founders are trying to achieve at this stage.
“It’s not to confirm what they already think they know, but actually to explore,” Sanja explained. “For the first time, you are getting out of the building and your own set of assumptions.” Before going too far, entrepreneurs must first consider what this phase is really about, which is “exploring, experimenting, learning, being curious.”
Moving away from a fixed mindset, where founders think they already know what they will hear from their ideal customers, is a key part of preparing for this business phase. From a coaching perspective, Sanja believes this preparation stage should be thorough, focusing on inner work that helps the entrepreneur move from a fixed to a growth mindset.
Reframing the fear of failure
The fixed mindset common in founders can lead to other issues. “The fixed mindset comes from passion, their beliefs and their idea,” Davide shared. “But crucially, I believe at the bottom of it, there is sometimes the fear of being proven wrong.”
The fear of failure is very real for entrepreneurs. They may have taken on risk, made life-changing decisions, and quit a stable job to pursue their business ideas. The possibility that the business idea doesn’t resonate with ideal customers, or that other roadblocks will come up during the exploration phase, can have massive consequences for the entrepreneurial journey.
But coaches can help founders reframe what failure means. “To be proven wrong, it’s terribly damaging to the ego,” Davide said. “But the point here is not the ego. It’s the business. The ultimate goal of the exploration journey is not proving you right or wrong; Highlighting what you don’t know you don’t know. It’s seeing where the golden nugget is actually hiding.”
It can be helpful to remind founders that many successful start-ups didn’t scale the original version of the business idea they had. “Counteract the fear of failure or fear of being proven wrong by saying ‘look, there is a bigger prize out there.’ Failure is part of doing something new; no one has written a playbook for it.”
Enjoying the journey can be a reality
Enabling entrepreneurs to accept and even embrace the realities of the start-up journey can be transformational.
“Rather than getting hung up on the end goal, which is quite fixed, it’s helping them to really enjoy the process of doing it,” Sanja said. “It creates an ease, which I think allows people to have less tunnel vision if it doesn’t go to plan. It’s getting them into that wider mindset of actually just enjoying the journey. It’s a cliché, but I think you can coach to help someone see that.”
The analogy of exploring new territory can help entrepreneurs better accept the process, particularly when they come face-to-face with prospective customers. “No one has been there. You haven’t got a map. How do we find out where the safe path is? It’s about trying, exploring, mapping, going back, going forward, moving left, moving right,” Davide said. “And if you misstep and you fall? That’s not necessarily a failure. It’s just making progress towards putting together the map.”
Having targets and goals can come from childhood, where the message often sticks that not getting an A grade, or not winning a competition, means failure. Coaching can help entrepreneurs identify deep-rooted places where their idea of failure comes from, and help them reframe it with a growth lens that is healthier for the start-up world.
Building resilience and identity
Recognising the emotions founders will face during customer discovery can build resilience. “They are going to be impacted,” Sanja said. “Unless they’re made of Teflon and are super confident! They will be impacted by potentially difficult conversations.”
According to Sanja, this is where preparation and “inner work” comes into its own. Through coaching sessions, Sanja encourages her clients to consider how they might feel in advance.
“It goes back to mindset,” she explained. “We’ll talk about how it’s normal to feel rejected, or to find it difficult when this period of uncertainty happens. Then reframing it as a time of curiosity, exploring, and learning, and discussing what methods might help them bounce back. Resilience is something that can be learned. It’s just like building muscle at the gym.”
According to Davide, it’s equally important for founders to have an identity outside of the business. “I try to avoid when they fall into the trap where their entrepreneurial journey – and its ups and downs – is eventually defining who they are.”
He encourages clients to come back to subsequent coaching sessions with a list of activities of endeavours they will pursue alongside the business idea. “It could be as easy as reading a book, learning how to play an instrument, going for a certain goal at the gym, swimming 10 kilometres,” he said. “You are the business you are doing. But at the same time, there are unrelated things you are pursuing. Thus, the combination of everything is defining who you are.”
Practical steps: how coaching can support this phase
Here’s what coaches can focus on to support entrepreneurs through the customer discovery and exploration phase.
- Clarify what customer discovery is really about. This prepares founders for a variety of potential different outcomes.
- Support the shift from a fixed to growth mindset. True exploration during this phase can be exciting and enlightening if you embrace it.
- Redefine failure. The entrepreneurial journey has ups and downs, and the downs help you learn and find a better path.
- Focus on the process, not the end goal. This can encourage adaptability and enjoyment of the journey.
- Pre-empt difficult feelings in advance. This builds resilience, and creates a plan for when things don’t go as anticipated.
- Work on identity. Encourage a life outside of the business, so the business doesn’t define the founder.
An empowered path ahead
The customer discovery and exploration phase of a new business is filled with shifting dynamics and uncomfortable feelings. Whether they realise it yet or not, founders need to be open-minded to new possibilities, ready to confront their ideas of failure, and become more resilient. Through coaching, they can prepare themselves for the combination of external interaction and internal turmoil, and navigate a clearer path forward for themselves and their ventures.
Authors: Professor Harveen Chugh and Victoria Nicholl