The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
David: OK, so we’ve got some lovely things that can help them develop life purpose. Again, they could be thinking life purpose or they could be thinking career. For some people it’s mixed, but for some people life purpose is just too hard. They just want something that will fulfill them. It’s not much different, but that way you can say it in words they can understand. You can say, let’s find a career direction, something you can do with your life that will make an impact and have you feel fulfillment, which is what they’re after.
Let me give you a model that I have been using with my clients. I’ve had mixed success with it, but for some people it works really well. The model is Vision, Mission, Games. How it works is, I have them write down their vision if the world was perfect, what would they want for their vision? It has to include more than them. Then once they’ve got that, they write a mission: how they will personally bring about that vision. Maybe world peace is the vision or harmony between all people. The mission might be something like, to expand people’s awareness of who they are and inspire them to grow. Mission doesn’t have to be that specific. I like to have the vision and the mission be quite broad. The games, or projects is another word for this, are anything you can do that would contribute to that.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Mike Turner in 10 Super Coaches.
What method did you find most effective in getting your initial clients?
Getting work through my existing network.
Initially, I took every opportunity to try and sell my coaching services whenever the opportunity presented itself. After I had been doing this for a couple of years, I reviewed where the work I was doing had come from. What I found, to my surprise, was that none of it had come directly from the people to whom I had been trying to sell it – instead it had all come from unexpected directions.
But what I also realized was that it was important that I was putting myself about rather than just sitting around at home waiting for work to show up. The principle here seems to be that, if I put out my energy for coaching into the world (by talking about what I do, by writing about it, and by taking any opportunity to demonstrate coaching), this energy comes back in the form of work – but by a circuitous and indirect route.
And when I realized this, I stopped trying so hard to sell coaching to the people I met and instead focused more on promoting coaching – which in turn makes the energy flow more easily.
The following is a transcription taken from Explode Your Practice.
It seems to be split about 50-50 between folks who are career people and they are salaried employees, so they make a good living and all that. And then there seem to be a fair number, almost 50-50, of folks who are actually committed to creative life. Maybe artists, photographer, etc. So they are running their own business. I seem to get both. I get kind of the straight-laced salary folks who believe there is more to be had in relationship and the creative folks who seem out there to satisfy more of a creative need.
David: All right. Got it. So what I suggest you do for homework is flesh this part of it out. So in your target market really write down every characteristic you can find. Are they hip and happening? Are they straight-laced? What kind of income level? Where do they live? You are going to market different for relationship coaching in Wisconsin. Is it international? List everything you can. And then list things like, where do these people hang out. Like what do they read, what associations they belong to? Things like that. Just so you can get into their shoes a bit. Of who these people are that actually are going to pay you for your services
The following is a transcription taken from Explode Your Practice.
So you’re going to need some kind of summary.
So your homework exercise, what I invite you to do, is write down the key things that you would like to be able to reference for a person. Any key information about them, anything that will help with your coaching.
One thing I write down is strategies next to the goal. They may have a goal on relationship so I write the strategy next to the goal and I don’t want to have to keep coming up with new strategies every week. Ok are you going to clean up your life? Ok that is a strategy. Are you going to go out and meet as many people as you can? That’s a strategy and that way you can hold them accountable to having some consistency. That will let you have follow through in your coaching rather then week-by-week whatever happens.
The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.
Client: Well that’s it. I mean, that would be a hard question for me to actually go over there now, because –
David: But I’m wondering if you want that.
Client: Exactly. I mean, she wanted me to keep traveling with her, and I didn’t want to because I’ve done enough traveling, and I still don’t want to do that. So yeah, I don’t think I’d even make that.
David: Yeah, so it was interesting how I picked it up, the way you said it. You said to her, ‘I’m not going to go and do it because you don’t want that,’ but really you’re not going to come and do it because you don’t want that.
Client: No. Exactly.
David: That’s a very different place to come from. ‘This doesn’t support me, and it doesn’t support you, so it’s just really clear,’ rather than, ‘If you wanted me to, I’d be over there,’ which is sneaky, isn’t it?
Client: I guess I’m always trying to protect myself from getting sort of hurt, or giving away too much. I don’t want to seem like I’m this pathetic, slobbering thing that’s baying for her, which I almost have been. I think she lost respect for me when I was like that.
The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.
David: Let’s talk about revenue, and I think it fits in really well with this other thing. You said you decided to pursue a loan to open a location and use someone else’s money, but then almost in the next breath you said, ‘I really need to focus on creating more revenue.’ I get nervous when the two of those are put together or when the two of those exist together. Talking really big picture stuff – what I’d like to see for you is that you create revenue, and then you launch into a location to expand an existing revenue stream, or one that you already know is going to be there. So that’s the big picture point. So, let’s say you’re going to launch a location and you do that over the next three months. What’s the worst that could happen? Do a little risk analysis.
