You didn’t get into coaching because of the numbers. I mean maybe you wanted to make money at it, you wanted to take that instagram picture from your little casita in tulum and talk about how #blessed you were, but you didn’t really care about the numbers.
You didn’t care about getting rich, you said. You didn’t need to be wealthy, you said. But you did want to pay your rent and do meaningful work.
So you became a coach. They promised it would be easy. They told you to focus on serving, to let go of the outcome, to follow their step by step system. But it didn’t work. The numbers didn’t add up, and instead of questioning all of this common wisdom you ended up questioning yourself.
So here’s the hard but simple truth about being a coach –
#1 Shortcuts are easy to sell but hard to execute on –
If it’s simple and easy, everyone would be doing it. So the fact that everyone isn’t doing it means it’s not simple and easy.
Building a business and being a great coach takes work, dedication, time, and effort. You can skip a few steps if you’ve got a bunch of money and spend it well or have a natural network of incredible people, but most of this stuff isn’t shortcuttable. It’s better if you do the work.
Doing the work means talking to people, connecting with them, figuring out what makes them tick, learning to sell to them, and dedicating yourself to improving as a coach.
You want a shortcut, so the world of coaching obliges, but a shortcut rarely works.
#2 You have to learn to sell –
This is perhaps the hardest thing for most coaches to grasp. You have to learn to sell, to convince people to give you their money, and then to stand by your work no matter what results you get.
Selling is hard for most people. It’s scary, it’s challenging, and it means overcoming a bunch of internal resistance, but despite what people tell you about being successful without selling, no coach I know that makes good money does it without selling. Some of them love selling and in truth you’d love to be sold by them.
Selling isn’t evil or pushy, it’s simply the art of creating commitment. Selling doesn’t have to suck, but you do have to learn to master it.
# 3 You will always be worse than you could be –
Looking back at my clients from 2 years ago… I sucked at coaching them. I mean not really. Even two years ago I was better than most coaches. But compared to today, I gave way more advice, I got lost a lot, and I would lose my patience with them. As I continue to grow as a coach, I get better. I’m already a brilliant coach, but two years from now I’ll be even better.
This is how it is. Always. If you’re new you’ll be fine, but not great. After a year or two you’ll be decent, maybe even good, depending on your training. It takes years to be great, but you’ll get better. You will always wonder if you could do more. That’s ok.
Just let yourself be as good as you are and work to get better. Don’t let how much better you know you could be, stop you from being as good as you are. You’re the coach in front of this person and that’s better than no coach at all.
#4 You have to care about the numbers
- How many connection calls did you have last week?
- How many coaching calls did you do last month?
- How much do you charge?
- What’s your profit margin?
- What’s your burn rate?
- What do you want to take home?
You may not care about the numbers when you get started but eventually you have to. Because the numbers don’t lie. The numbers don’t have feelings. They don’t tell you if you’re a good or a bad person or if you’ve got a bad haircut. They just tell you the results and the performance of your business.
So you have to care about the numbers. If you avoid them or make them mean something that they don’t really mean, then you’re screwed. The numbers are there to help you see where to put your attention.
Final thoughts –
Coaching isn’t for scared people. Though there are a lot of scared people in coaching. But that’s not what a master coach is committed to. They are committed to being great, to serving people, and to believing for people who often doubt themselves. Which by the way is most of us at least some of the time.
These truths about coaching may be hard to accept, but accepting them, doing the work, and making a difference is what the life of a coach is all about.
Toku
