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“GOLD”

Six Reasons Coaches Make Less Than Minimum Wage

After being a coach for 18 months I was earning more than six figures (a somehow magical number for coaches) and yet I often connected with coaches who had:

  • multiple certifications
  • years of coaching experience
  • stories of amazing workshops
  • and ton’s of books on coaching and business on their shelves.​

And yet . . . many of them were making minimum wage. Sometimes they made a bit more $50k – $70k a year, but often they were baffled at why they hadn’t achieved the success of their peers. I get it. I’ve been in the coaching industry, what sells is fast, short cut, get rich quick trainings, and books.

I know a coach who teaches FB messenger strategies and his group is full of coaches. Another coach I know teaches big live workshops that are always sold out. But in the shadows of both groups and beyond the success stories that are on their websites, many coaches who continue to struggle blame themselves for not being successful.

After working with and training coaches for several years—many who have gone on to run highly successful coaching businesses and even become CEOs of major coaching companies—here are the six things I’ve seen that keeps coaches from being successful.
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1) No Purpose and No Identity –

Often when I talk to new coaches the reason they go into coaching is because
A) they had a great coach or
B) people always come to them for advice.
While both of these are great reasons to get curious they aren’t enough to keep a coach going through the challenges of building a practice.

What I’ve noticed is that coaches who have a clear sense of themselves and a clear purpose for their work stay focused, work through resistance, and build their practices with consistency and creativity. If you want to be successful you need a good reason to be facing your fears and resistances.
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2) An Inability to Create Commitment –

Building a practice takes personal commitment, but it also requires that you learn how to support others to make powerful and lasting commitments in their own lives. Some people call this skill “sales”, others call it “enrollment”, but behind it all is an ability to support people to make commitments that scare and confront them.

If you don’t know how to do this you’ll either set your bar so low that your fees won’t pay your bills, or struggle to get any clients at all. Learning to create commitment is a learnable skill (aka NO ONE IS BAD AT SALES), but it requires a willingness to learn to create clients with integrity and a little bit of fun.

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3) A Lack of Connection –

Consistently the most successful coaches I’ve seen are the ones with pre-existing networks.

These coaches have professional networks that enable them to tap into a bank of connections they have built with skill their entire career. But if you don’t have this kind of network that’s not a problem. I didn’t have one when I got started. Before becoming a coach I was living at a monastery which gives me a cool resume but not a great place to look for clients.

You can learn how to attract and connect with people. Some people call this marketing but really it’s just about connecting with people. If you do this consistently and powerfully you can build a practice from nothing. But many coaches avoid connecting in the hopes of using brute force (aka bad marketing) as a way to get clients.
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4) Not Enough Personal Integrity –

Most people relate to integrity as a moral issue. If you don’t have integrity you’re a bad person. I know because that’s how I used to relate to it. But for me low integrity is like a leaky boat. The boat isn’t evil, it’s just leaky. And while a leaky boat can get you somewhere, you’re going to be spending excess time and energy bailing it out.

Integrity is really just about doing what you say you’re going to do. You don’t need to be perfect (which is impossible) but you do need to be reliable. When you have integrity people feel it and your business grows because of it. When you don’t it tends to be very stop and start.

And again integrity can be learned. Most people fail with integrity because they lack the systems and processes that support it OR they don’t empower the structure they’ve created. When this happens coaches don’t take consistent action which is what is needed to build a practice.

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5) Thinking You Have Too Little (or Too Much) Time –

Most of us have an unexamined relationship with time. It always feels like we have too little or too much of it. I can’t tell you how many coaches have blamed a lack of time on their ability to build a practice or (ironically) having almost too much time on their hands.

Time is much more flexible than you realize. Every coach in the world has the same 24 hours you do to build a practice and many of them do it with families, elderly parents, and even second jobs. This doesn’t mean that it can be hard to work with time. But it DOES mean that if you have a crappy relationship with time you’re likely to struggle as a coach.

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6) You have a Weird Relationship with Money –

One year as a coach I made over $300k, but in my books I lost $10k. The reason for this was that I had a weird relationship with money. I liked making it, but I didn’t like managing it (or dealing with it, as I used to say) so I didn’t do a very good job.

Being ‘successful’ as a coach for most people means making money, but many coaches think they need to make some money before they can deal with their issues around it. That doesn’t make any sense. When I see coaches with a weird relationship with money I notice they often struggle to make any money or hold onto any of it.

If you want to make good money as a coach and hold onto that money, you need to be able to deal with money in a powerful way. If you don’t, you’re going to have a hard time achieving the goals you want.
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Final Thoughts

None of these challenges are terminal for you or your coaching career. I’ve spent years working through these issues with myself and with the coaches I’ve trained and worked with, but 90% of the training you can get won’t address this stuff directly.

Instead it’s WAY more likely they’ll just hack their way around these issues.

Well it doesn’t have to be that way. You can actually shift these things, but the key is to deal with them directly. Create a purpose for your business, learn to master commitment, connect with people, develop integrity, overcome your challenges with time, and develop a new relationship with money.

This is exactly what I do with coaches who are part of my Embodied Coach Mastermind.

I help them move beyond the surface level strategies and tactics to the deeper issues underneath. Yes I teach them the systems and techniques I’ve used to build my practice (including the mistakes I’ve made along the way), but the center of what I teach is all about how to overcome the big things that stop most coaches from creating success.

It’s not a skin deep approach but a bone deep one. So if you want some support in overcoming these challenges Let Me Know.

And if not then please, please, please find another way to get supported. Anyone who wants to become a coach has the intention to help others and NO coach should struggle in purgatory trying to get there. The solutions aren’t rocket science, they don’t require secret knowledge, but they do demand you fundamentally shift something about yourself before you can create an incredible impact for others.

10 Thing You DON’T Need To Do To Raise Your Rates

Most coaches I meet don’t charge enough. And when I say enough I mean enough to live on, create commitment that are meaningful, and be aligned with the depth of work they are offering their clients. 

And most often the reason why is that they think they need to do something in order to raise their rates. They’re wrong. And here’s a list of the top 10 things you don’t need to worry about. 

 

  1. Become a better coach – Yes you should always try to be a better coach. But becoming a better coach is an endless game. If you’re very new to coaching then charge less and get some experience, but if you’ve been at this a few months to a few years, have worked with a good coach and gotten some training you can probably still raise your rates.

    There’s no magic ability to cash connection in the coaching business. YES better coaches sometimes make more money, so work on getting better and ALSO raise your rates. If you want to become ‘good enough’ you’ll never get there. 

 

  1. Change your packages or offerings – Back when I charged $1000 a month my packages and offerings were more complex than they are now. Over the years they’ve gotten simpler and simpler. If you want to shift what you’re offering because you’ve changed or it feels aligned GREAT, but this isn’t needed to raise your rates. In fact it’s probably better to charge more for something you’ve gotten good at doing than charge more for something you haven’t worked the kinks out of yet. 

 

  1. Sign more inspiring clients – I don’t really even know what this means anymore though at one time thought this was THE answer to becoming a better coach. The truth is being inspired by my clients is on me not on them. Yes it looks good on your website if you coached a king or presidential candidate, but it does NOT make you a better coach. It may make you a more well connected one, but not much else.

    Some of your current clients might struggle to pay more. Some of them could pay more right now. Some of them may not even be able to ‘afford’ what you’re currently charging. New clients or more inspiring clients change nothing. If you want to raise your rates do it, the clients you serve will likely change. But clients do NOT make the coach or the higher rates. 

 

  1. Update your website – My first website was horrible. Even now my website needs an update pretty bad but it doesn’t stop me from getting clients. So go ahead and update your website. But a new website has never gotten any of my client’s to pay more money. If your website is total dirt and you can afford to pay someone to help you, do it. The money will be well spent. But your website should be a reflection of your being not a fake it ‘til I make it kind of thing.

    Your current website is probably fine and also a year out of date, which are the same things. Again your website should slightly follow or slightly lead your level of success. If you want to raise your rates do it. Don’t wait for a page full of copy which probably won’t change anything. Besides websites are about attraction, enrollment is about commitment. Don’t confuse the two. 

 

  1. Discover some new fancy way to ‘sell’ – When I was new and charging very little for coaching I thought coaches charging $10k+ a year had some magic formula. Now that I’m a coach that makes 10x a year I can assure you there isn’t. Yes there are techniques. Yes there are different ways of being. But it’s become less and less gimmicky. The processes I learned in the past, the sales books I’ve read have helped a lot, but they never ‘fixed’ my fear. They just gave me new things to fill my mind with and ‘use’ on my prospects.

    Yes you can use the techniques and methods to close sales but they are a bridge to something deeper and more meaningful. As you get better at enrollment you will increase your rates. As you increase your rates you’ll get better at enrollment. But there’s no fancy short cuts. 

 

  1. Get better at ‘handling’ objections – No one likes being handled. I know I have tried to ‘handle’ people’s objections. The whole concept comes from this weird idea that sales is adversarial. It’s sort of like a psychological arms race. The prospect gets more clever at evading my tricks and I develop more ways to ‘trick’ them into buying.

    Don’t trick people into buying. Support them to commit to something they want. If you try new tricks you simply get new ways of saying no. And again learning to say higher numbers with a process that already works is generally easier than trying to get more commitment from a new method. 

 

  1. Pay a new coach a lot of money – This was tough to write because in truth I’ve seen the impact of this. I have hired coaches for big sums and then ended up charging more.

    Here’s what’s true about it. If you get into a conversation about making a big commitment and learn to sit in the center of that tension you can empathize more with your clients as they commit. If you haven’t ever made a big commitment then you are more likely to identify with your clients as they express doubts and concerns.

    They may even end up enrolling you in why they can’t do this and why the coaching won’t work (which is easier if you’ve already got some doubts about your coaching). 

    The problem is this isn’t a ‘FIX’. You can certainly make a big commitment to a coach and raise your rates as a result, but what matters is how you relate to that commitment. Hiring ANY coach will have a BIG impact on your ability to raise your rates, but throwing money at the problem won’t work at all.

    YOU DO NOT NEED TO PAY A COACH A BUNCH OF MONEY TO RAISE YOUR RATES!!!! Instead of worrying about the pay/pricing connection you’d be better off putting your attention on the way a coach changes your relationship to commitment. Money is one way they might do this, but it isn’t the only way and it’s not a magic bullet. 

 

  1. Change your niche, the type of coach you are, or your networking sales pitch – For a while I agonzied about what I called myself as a coach. I hated the term life coach. Executive coach didn’t really capture it either. It took me a while to see that what I was really wrestling with was my identity. I was trying to answer the question WHO AM I? and it was hard.

    You are already somebody as a coach. Let me say that again. YOU ARE ALREADY SOMEBODY AS A COACH. You may not know what or who that is, but it’s true. Every person I’ve ever trained has an essence as a coach that shines through. It may take time for it to emerge and working with a good coach can help it emerge. But it’s not really something you need to make up or figure out.

    A niche can help you hone your marketing, a good pitch can make you memorable, but neither is likely to impact what you charge. At least not immediately and you can raise your rates without having either of these filled out. 

 

  1. Make a certain amount of money or have asked for that amount before – For a while I sort of thought well I can’t say my rates are $1k a month until I’ve got some clients who are paying that. I’m sure you can see the insanity of that and yet many coaches think this. I can’t charge that until I can charge that. I can’t make that amount of money until I’m making that amount of money.

    The mind does weird stuff with you. It sets a barrier to you being present to what’s possible. What you can really do. The beauty is that all you have to do is charge $1000 a month to be charging $1000 a month. And to get someone to pay you that you have to start pitching it.

    The hook here is obvious and luckily the solution is too. Doing it is the way out. No one is going to give you a permission slip to raise your rates. It may take some time for you to learn how to enroll at your new rates and feel more natural saying the numbers, but you’re never going to get better by waiting to start. 

 

  1. Doing anything else that you think will ‘make it easier’ to raise your rates. – If I was only going to make this a 1 item list this is the item I would choose. Before I was charging more than $50 a session for my coaching and often even now when I raise my rates I think, well when I do x then it’ll be easier to raise my rates. But the truth is that nothing really makes raising your rates easier.

    Anytime you ask for more or commit to more, fear is likely going to show up. As my dear friend Adam Quiney says, “fear and possibility often show up in equal measure”. While there are many ways to work with fear there’s really no way to avoid it. Nor do I think you should try. Increasing your capacity for fear is essential to be a great coach and leader.

    So instead of trying to hack or avoid fear you’d be better off accepting it and learning to work with it. If you can do this then raising your rates can just be another part of your practice to be with and hold the vastness of human experience. 

 

Final Thoughts – 

There is one thing that you can do that can help you raise your rates and that’s upgrade your commitments and who you’re being in the world. If raising your rates is just about making more money or proving yourself, it’s probably going to be harder to do. But if it’s in alignment with a bigger commitment you’ve made or the result of you doing work to deepen yourself and how you show up, then it will be easier. 

That doesn’t mean it will be free from fear. In fact facing the fear of raising your rates will likely have you deepen who you are as a coach and a leader. It’s a powerful practice. Not a thing to get right or figure out, but part of the journey of becoming a master coach. 

What To Do When You’re in the Middle of a ‘Bad’ Coaching Session

Not all coaching sessions are going to go well. Some will feel full of life and inspiration like you’re sitting in the midst of endless possibilities and inspiration. Some coaching sessions will feel boring and challenging like you’re fighting through quicksand with every step.

I wouldn’t recommend you try to make every coaching session great, you won’t succeed and you won’t really be serving your clients. Still finding yourself in the middle of a bad session can be tough so here’s what I do when I feel like I’m in a session that feels like I’m dying a slow and painful death.
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1) Admit the session isn’t going very well –

If you’re brave share this with your client. Say hey I notice this session isn’t going the way I thought it might. How is it feeling for you?

They might agree or disagree with you. But by bringing it out into the open you will offer some relief if you’re both struggling a bit.

If that feels too edgy for you then simply admit it to yourself.
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2) Remind yourself that everyone has ‘bad’ sessions –

Every performer, artist, master, teacher, and coach has bad days and bad sessions. It’s ok, you’ll survive. So long as you’re not being a total asshole, verbally abusing your client, or sexually harassing them, you’ll survive this session.

If you are doing one of those things please stop immediately and get some support so you won’t do that stuff again. But if you’re reading this article you probably aren’t doing that stuff so don’t worry too much.

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3) Take a breath –

When I watch coaching sessions go bad 90% of what’s happening is momentum. The coach gets on the wrong foot, but they just keep going. They keep asking awkward questions. They keep interrupting their client.

So pause. Take a breath. Tell your client you need a minute to review some notes. This small break can give both of you a chance to reset and recenter.

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4) Figure out (or remember) what the client wants –

The #1 piece of feedback I give coaches is that your session would have gone better if you had taken the time to find out what your client wanted.

It seems so simple. So basic. But most coaches miss this. They get to coaching and they don’t really discover and confirm what the client really wants. And even then sometimes they lose track of that in the middle of the client’s session.

So if you realize you don’t know what your client wants, pause and ask them. If you think you know, pause and confirm it again.

Just connecting with this simple anchor of desire can make all the difference in the world.

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5) Let go of your agenda (or whatever else you’re holding onto) –

I once had a client that I felt was totally uncoachable. Every reflection I offered was met with a correction. Every question I asked was answered in the most disconcerting way. It felt so hard to figure out what to do next.

Then one session I simply let go of how I thought our sessions were supposed to go. I relaxed. I made each of their answers brilliant. I expressed gratitude for each of their corrections.

It was the best session we’d ever had.

Challenging your client as a coach is important. And sometimes you’re going to feel in conflict with them and the sessions may feel crunchy as a result. But it’s incredibly easy for your commitment to your client’s growth to become a grasping attachment to them being different.

If your session is going to crap start looking for what you’re holding onto. It might be an idea about how the session is supposed to be or it might be that you’re trying to hide how lost you feel. Find it and let it go.

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6) Don’t decide the session is a failure –

I have literally had sessions I thought were total dumpster fires and my client said to me “Wow that session was so powerful!”

The truth is we don’t know the impact of our work. We’re not even in that much control of it. Our clients do a LOT of the work of coaching. So even if you think the session sucked don’t be too attached to that opinion.

YOUR JOB AS A COACH

Your job as a coach is to stand up for your client’s dreams, to be there with them as they make those dreams a reality, not to grade every session you have with them.

YES you should try your best to be a good coach and learn from your mistakes but in the moment the most important thing to do is stay with your client.

In some ways being willing to show up when the work is hard, your client is resistant, and the conversation is challenging is what being a coach is all about.

So be brave, take a breath, and do your best to land the plane anyway you can.

Three Of The Worst Coaching Methods You May Be Doing And Why You Shouldn’t!

(OH, they start in the Drop BTW because #series)

You got into coaching because you wanted to help people. On some level this desire was deeply noble. You care about humanity, you care about other people, and you realize that your life means more than moving pixels from one column to another or creating tweets about deodorant all day long.

Of course, deodorant does have a noble background and history… and you can create anything to have a purpose, but I think you get my point. 

So there you are, ready to go out and help people, except you’re not really sure how to do it. So maybe you read some books about how to help people, or you take a course. Or maybe you try to help people in the same way someone helped you. (A lot of people who end up coaches start because they got coached by someone.)

As the fog of your idealism wears off, you start to wonder if you’re doing this the “right way.” And so you read more books, you take a course that’s got words like “200 hours,” “proven system,” and “complete in four weeks” on the sales page, or you hire fancier, more expensive coaches and try to do what they do. 

At some point you decide you’re good enough. You stop thinking much about coaching methods, and instead you start worrying a lot about marketing, niches, sales conversations, and signature programs. 

Unfortunately this usually happens before you’ve gotten really good at coaching. In fact, very often you’re barely above mediocre. The impact? At some point your business gets stuck. You can’t sign clients above a certain fee, you can’t sign clients that aren’t in some level of crisis, or you can’t make enough money to do anything but barely scrape by (and that last one is only true if you’re really lucky). 

Of course crappy coaching is only one reason why this might be the case. Sales and marketing can certainly have something to do with it, but it’s just as likely, if not more likely, that you’re coaching just isn’t that great. 

Except since 99.9% of the stuff in the coaching industry is about sales, marketing, niches, six-or-seven-figure programs, money mindset, and being a wealthy walrus, you probably won’t notice. 

After all, it’s WAY easier to sell you on the idea that a quick-fix funnel or social-media program will solve all of your problems, than it is to take you aside, put a hand on your shoulder and say, “Dude, you kind of suck at this coaching thing.”

Lucky for you, or maybe not, I’m here to help you not suck as a coach—or at least to come to grips with the way you suck as a coach. 

BUT FIRST SOME DISCLAIMERS:

1) THE COACHING METHODS I’M LISTING BELOW ARE SOMETIMES USED BY “SUCCESSFUL” COACHES.

I mean we hate to say it’s true but the truth is you can learn to sell something that sucks and still make money off of it. 

Just look at lottery tickets. I mean the chances of winning are REALLY CRAPPY, but people still buy them. 

Same thing with poorly made products. You’ve bought them, you’ve broken them, you’ve cursed at them, you’ve left angry one-star reviews on Amazon… AND YET, people still buy them. 

In the coaching industry this is super easy to do. 

Especially because it trades so much on persona, personality, and the perception of success, not to mention that coaching is really just a mashed up set of soft skills that are ill-defined, hard to measure, and easy to fake if you don’t know a lot about it. 

Add to all this that our industry as a whole is built on a flow and churn of endlessly new and idealistic coaches who don’t know ANYTHING about what they’re doing and with dollar signs and words like “work from anywhere” in their eyes… and what you have is a San-Francisco-gold-rush-level flow of hopeless, naive, new coaches willing to throw money at their dreams out of desperation and scarcity. 

Which means that for the past five years and maybe for the next five you’ll be able to make a lot of money with great marketing and not much great coaching. 

2) THESE COACHING METHODS CAN BE EFFECTIVE UNDER SOME CIRCUMSTANCES.

I’m not much of a coaching purist. I think all of this never give advice, always draw the answer out of the client, never hold them accountable BS. . . is . . . well . . .  BS.

In truth almost ALL of the bad or mediocre coaching that exists in the world has its place. I mean even the “don’t have sex with your client” rule doesn’t apply to all the great coaches I know. (A story for another day.)

Which is why I want to be clear, I’m not saying these methods of coaching will get you sent to the halls of coaching hell, or even the halls of coaching purgatory. Though I do chuckle at the idea that there’s a realm of hell for coaching without permission. What I’m saying is that when you use these as your WHOLE way of coaching, you are doing yourself, your client, and the craft of coaching a great disservice. So please, please, PRETTY PLEASE, stop doing them, or at least do them 1/1000th as much as you’re doing them now.

Okay, now that the disclaimers are over, let me do a bit better job defining what I think makes great coaching, in as simple a way as possible:

Here are (some) of the qualities of great coaching:

  1. It causes the client to change.
  2. It’s aligned with the change the client wants.
  3. It’s empowering for the client.
  4. It affects both the client’s being as well as their doing.
  5. It uses an appropriate amount and type of force/manipulation to produce the above results.

If you check out the chart I made up below you’ll see that A LOT of coaching ends up either being ineffective or disempowering. And some coaching ends up being BOTH ineffective and disempowering.  

All of the examples of bad coaching that follow fall into either the orange or red quadrants. You may wonder how this happens. Basically it’s due to the fact that coaches tend to optimize for either ego, outcomes, or feeling.

Coaching that’s effective but disempowering does tend to create more immediate and obvious outcomes. I mean, having someone yell at you to do a pushup will get you to do pushups—at least so long as they are yelling at you. 

Coaching that’s empowering but ineffective trades on the idea that mindset is everything and tends to blend in a lot of woo woo mumbo jumbo without actually creating a powerful container for change. The client feels good and the coach feels good, but they are both sort of ignoring the fact that they’re wallpapered over the same BS that the client brought into the conversation. 

The last category coaching that is both disempowering and ineffective happens because either:

  1. The coach lies to themselves and convinces the client that the reason the coaching doesn’t work is because of the client, often by pointing to people who were successful, even though those people only managed to be successful despite the coach or because the coach reminded them enough of some sort of dysfunctional parent in a way that made them co-dependently effective.
  2. The coach and client are kind of just polite with one another. The coach is afraid that the client will get offended, so doesn’t really challenge the client, and the client is afraid that it’s not working because they’re broken and so doesn’t really say anything to the coach about what is or isn’t working. 

And of course all of this starts to happen in the Drop. And of course there are a BUNCH of different kinds of coaching methods that fall victim to these problems. 

But here are the most common ones.

1. YELLING AT YOUR CLIENT ‘COACHING’

I could easily blame Tony Robbins for this kind of coaching. The reason people coach like this is that it works… sort of. I mean there is something really powerful about challenging clients to not hide from their commitments. A bunch of different schools of transformation use this, including Landmark (though EST used to be even more hardcore), and even several 12-step programs do this in one way or another. 

The theory is that if you really hold people to what they say they’re going to do, remove all excuses, push them to see what’s truly possible they get an experience of themselves beyond the BS of excuses and lies. 

Coaches who use this love it, because it’s sort of simple and makes the coach feel really powerful. I mean, who doesn’t love yelling at someone, right?! It’s also close to a powerful stance to take with a clients, so it seems like a good idea. 

WHERE IT STARTS:

This coaching tends to start in the Drop, because the Drop tends to be ALL ABOUT WHAT THE CLIENT ISN’T DOING, and the slow, deliberate deconstruction of all of their excuses, reasons, or objections to why they didn’t do what they committed to.

THE PROBLEM WITH IT:

The big problem with it is that it doesn’t really look at the thing behind the excuses, at least not as often as it might. It uses the club of extrinsic motivation to beat clients into submission. And while it can work because most of us were raised in schools that used extrinsic motivation to push us to conform, it doesn’t leave the client empowered. 

Instead it subtly sows a message of, “I must need someone to yell at me to get off my lazy ass.” Now this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ever confront your clients, but in general this form of coaching is artless, lacks subtlety, and serves to boost the coach’s ego at the expense of the client’s. 

It also should be noted that this type of coaching can happen even without yelling. It’s more of an energetic feeling than anything else. 

If you notice yourself doing this more than two sessions in a row, please stop being a dick and try to figure out how to make your clients feel empowered to take action rather than just berating them into compliance. 

2. “UUUUSHY-GUUUSHY, TOUCHY-FEELY, GO-NOWHERE” COACHING

This kind of coaching is on the total polar opposite end of the spectrum from the “yelling at your client” session. It usually involves asking the client where they want to go and then wandering around with the client until they stumble upon some sort of insight. 

This style usually leaves the client with a vague feeling of something changing or happening but without really being able to put a finger on it. If you were to ask a client what happened in a session they would struggle to explain it, but not in a “my being shifted so much I don’t have words” sort of a way, but rather more of an “I don’t really know if we did anything but I’m afraid to admit it” sort of way. 

Still, coaches—especially coaches on the more spiritual or woo woo end of the spectrum—love this kind of coaching because it feels in alignment with flow, the universe, or some goddess energy they made up last week. It’s also great because clients who believe what the coach believes feel really good in these sessions. Partially because they don’t really have to change, nothing is really on the line, and it’s more about them “feeling” like they’re doing something, or the “experience” of transformation more than anything else. 

WHERE IT STARTS:

Again this type of coaching starts in the Drop—or should I say, the LACK of a Drop. Sessions with this coach never seem to go anywhere… but you probably don’t notice because they never seem to start anywhere either. They are guided by the client’s feeling in the moment and while they can feel good—sort of like gentle back rub—this lack of a Drop causes pretty major problems down the road.

THE PROBLEM WITH IT:

The biggest problem with this sort of coaching method is that it’s both ineffective and it tends to empower people to make excuses or justify their own untransformed ways of being. It’s also problematic because it’s really similar to REALLY POWERFUL DEEP COACHING which can also go with the flow, have lots of spaciousness, and be guided by a spiritual coach. It’s sort of like a knock-off pair of sunglasses. The lenses scratch easily, the logo rubs off super fast, and the hinges break, but it’s okay, because it looks like an expensive pair of sunglasses at first. 

Even worse, this kind of coaching method hides it’s shiftiness in a layer of affect and spiritual aphorism, equivocation, and other subtly delusive thinking, which makes it even harder to figure out. Any objection to it not working is often met with suggestions about being out of alignment, with the universe’s negative vibrations, or something about chi or chakras—which sounds true but really just ends of confusing and obfuscating the vague meandering that the coach claims is a process.

If you think you might be doing this kind of coaching, please read EVERYTHING we wrote about the Coaching Canvas and really focus by starting your sessions by finding out what your clients want. Just adding a lil bit o’ structure to your sessions can make a BIG difference.

3. “TELLING WRAPPED IN SILENCE” COACHING

This kind of coaching share similarities with both the previous types. It has both the uuushy-goooooshy feeling of go-nowhere coaching and a subtle form of bossy-ness that exists in “yelling at your client” coaching.

Of course, these are tempered by the other, which makes it even harder to notice if this is happening. 

This coaching is often denoted by long stretches of silence, which add an air of significance to the sessions but not much else. The questions are sparse and simple, which hides the fact that they’ve been regurgitated hundreds of times, and are designed to have a client dance on a string for the coach. When used by newer coaches this kind of coaching has the quality of an awkward puppeteer playing with someone else’s dolls, but it’s no less insidious.

What really sets this coaching apart, though, is that these questions are always followed by subtle suggestions or observations that are crafted in a way to seem really insightful, but are actually just advice in a clever format. Each suggestion is followed by silence and a “What if?” feeling that gives a sense of awe to the whole vibe, but the coaching itself is only crafted to look original, even though it isn’t. 

The stories the coach tells sound good, because they’ve been told dozens of times. The feeling of the session is magical, not because of the magic but because of the careful persona the coach has learned to craft or is pretending to craft in the moment. If the coach is experienced, it’s only after working with this coach for six months to a year that you begin to see the game, perhaps less if the coach is newer to this art form. But the effect is the same: you start to wonder if you’re going to get any coaching this time or simply the performance of coaching they trot out every time they do a session. 

WHEN IT STARTS:

Again this starts in the Drop. Instead of the coach being with the client and finding out what they would like, the coach carefully nudges the client down some predetermined path only the coach can see, if they are even aware of it. And because of this, the session doesn’t Drop into the client’s possibility, but merely the coach’s script of various coaching options. 

THE PROBLEM WITH IT:

The biggest problem with this kind of coaching is that it LOOKS REALLY GOOD!! In fact, this kind of coaching is optimized for observation and performance. It’s not messy in any way, it’s not even wild. Instead, it’s clean and polished, and the more experienced the coach, the more polished it is. And so it’s really hard to notice that the session isn’t actually that powerful. 

Probably the worst part of this style of coaching is that it debilitates both the coach and client, because as the coach gets better at it, the sessions start to feel easier and more amazing, and the clients are more willing to buy into how amazing they are, even though the sessions have started to rot from the inside out. 

This can be one of the hardest shitty ways of coaching to root out; it’s something experienced coaches have to be on the lookout for. If you’re a newer coach this kind of coaching usually starts out as a form of imitation, which is of course a great way to try on different methods of coaching. But eventually it becomes so much of an homage to the coach you’re copying that any sense of you or even the client in the session is entirely lost. If you think you’re doing this kind of coaching, add a bit more of yourself to the session or find a way to break your coaching rules and have a session that is 10x more messy than any session you’ve had in a while. 

NOT ALL COACHING IS SHITTY

I’m realizing now as I finish this post that I could probably list out at least a DOZEN or more shitty kinds of coaching methods that you need to watch out for, but in truth A LOT of the coaching I’ve seen that subtly sucks falls into one of these categories in a big or small way. But don’t worry, almost every coach I know who’s any good has done a few sessions like the ones I described above. If you pay attention, get feedback, and keep working on your coaching you’ll notice that you’re doing one of these pretty quickly and be able to stop.

Really, the only way coaches get stuck in these types of coaching is when they don’t get feedback from their peers, stop studying their art, and double down on their way being the “right way” to coach. 

When we lose our humility as coaches, we lose our mastery, so long as you can stay curious, stay humble, and keep learning, you’ll be able to ferret out these insidious kinds of shitty coaching methods. But of course that’s what practice, a community of mastery, and dedication to the sacred craft of coaching is all about. 

Love,

Toku

 

 

The Next Coaching Dojo and Sales Dojo start on March 8th, 2019.

Priority Deadline: January 7th

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Coaches Rising Podcast: Transformative Enrollment

Moving Beyond Yes or No.

Mastercoach Toku McCree talks proposals, commitment and sealing the deal with Joel Monk on the amazing Coaches Rising Podcast.

Key Points:

  • The last 10% of the sales conversation is where the real opportunity lies.
  • Leaving clients “at the alter”.
  • Why is talking about money so difficult? Why is this the moment when our client needs us most?
  • Don’t settle for “No” – Getting a commitment even without a sale.
  • Enrollment is NOT about perfection, but practice.
  • The balance between our inner Monk and our inner Panther.
  • And even more!

Learn more about the truth of successful and transformative sales with Toku & Joel. Read more

The 4 Parts of an Incredible Coaching Conversation: Introduction (ODSC #1)

This is the first post in the series about the four key parts of an incredible coaching conversation.

Many coaches around the world focus heavily on topics like your coaching mindset and your being, but there doesn’t seem to be enough about what it takes to make powerful conversations. There are key points to maintain that will help you create stronger conversations and drive better enrollment opportunities.

In this introduction, Toku shares a bit about the four parts of the ODSC Framework: Open, Drop, Shift, and Close. In subsequent videos he’ll dive deeper into each of the parts and what makes them truly effective.

Read more

3 Key Coaching Pillars

I believe coaching is an art form. There are SO many ways to coach and none are inherently good or bad. The choices are dependent on the situation, the coach, the client, the delivery, the emotions, the container, the context, and so much more.

However, amidst all of the choices, there are 3 “pillars” that create a powerful foundation.

If one of these pillars is underdeveloped, your coaching will suffer as a result. And alternatively, you can continue to strengthen each of them to improve your coaching. Read more