The following is taken from David’s interview in 10 Super Coaches.
What words of advice would you give to a coach starting out?
I would say, make sure you’ve got some good guidance. Whether that’s through a school or through a mentor coach or a good circle of support around you that also has good business sense.
And, you need to coach. You can’t just wait for it to happen, you can’t just wait to get confident and you can’t just wait for people to float through your door at $300 or $400 a month.
You need to coach fifty people, I’d say, even if it’s just one session, so that you can develop some confidence as a coach and that’s when your career can really take off. When you know that you’ve got the skills, when you know that people are getting results, that’s what’s got to happen and it won’t happen until you actually coach.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Marcia Reynolds in 10 Super Coaches.
What was the most interesting or exciting thing for you about building your practice?
Learning to trust that the flow and speed of building my business is perfect. Even when I had cancellations, if I didn’t get scared and just accepted that the cancellation was making room for something better, I found that my business developed in the form and at the speed that was best for me. And the more I focused on learning and practicing, the quicker my business grew.
Also, I gave up on the idea of having a business plan. I offer corporate seminars and public speaking services as well as coaching. When business goes down in one area, it often picks up in one of the other two. Therefore, I always have work. I’m never sure what the balance will look like at the beginning of the year. I just go with the people and opportunities that appear and my success has grown every year.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Philip Cohen in 10 Super Coaches.
Do you recommend offering free coaching?
Offering free coaching is one of the best techniques a new coach has to fill their practice. I suggest offering a free coaching session to anyone who is willing to take advantage of it. It’s a great way for a prospect to experience coaching and for the coach to get practice.
After the first session, I suggest the coach does what ever is necessary to fill their practice. Sometimes that means offering free coaching for several weeks or months, however I prefer the coach offers coaching at a reduced rate instead of coaching for free.
It’s important that the coach tell the client at the beginning of the relationship the amount of their usual fee and how long the reduced coaching will last.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Anna Dargitz in 10 Super Coaches.
What words of advice would you give to a coach starting out?
Coaching is more than a calling and more than a business. It transcends both because it’s about evolution. You are setting out to become a mentor for those who are ready and willing to evolve. Don’t take it lightly. It’s not as easy as it looks. And the rewards are more abundant than they appear.
Be prepared to dedicate your life to discovering, living and teaching others who you really are and who you really aren’t. Plan to learn and relish all kinds of truths about the underlying dynamics of people, situations and life. Plan to express yourself fully. The field of coaching is evolving fast: Plan to keep up.
Before you can help others evolve faster, you’ll need to immerse yourself in your own evolution. Don’t scrimp here. Find a good mentor. When you’ve given up all your attachments to how you thought you, life, others, coaching, and almost everything else is supposed to be, you’ll be ready for the noble role of Personal, Business and Professional Coach. And people will flock to you. Where are you now on that path?
The following is taken from David’s interview in 10 Super Coaches.
What top three methods, in order, did you use to get your clients in the first 2 years?
The first thing I did was use my current network. I called people I knew who might have an issue or that I wanted to work with, or who I thought might just do a session we me because they were a friend of mine. That was very important.
Another method that I used was public speaking, and I worked with a mentor coach, Christine McDougall. She helped me put together my speech and I went out to Rotary and I did the free speaking circuit and I actually got quite a few clients out of that, so I definitely thing that’s a very powerful way to go.
The third thing that I did was I developed my website and I spent a lot of time studying the search engines and working out how that all works and trying to get more and more traffic. I love playing with my website, and I get 95% of my business now through the web.
The following is taken from David’s interview in 10 Super Coaches.
When you started out did you coach face to face, or by telephone?
I did both. Initially I thought it had to be face to face, then I moved to phone coaching because I got a client in Melbourne and I was in Sydney at the time.
Now what I’ve found is that I actually prefer phone coaching. I do quite leveraged sessions, I work for twenty five minutes a week with people and I think if I was going to coach face to face it would probably be more appropriate to do forty minutes, maybe longer.
I’ve moved more and more towards voice only, over the phone. Also, if you do expand to a national practice or an international practice you’re going to have to do a lot of phone coaching, it’s just the only way to do it.
I say to new coaches, do what feels good.
