I’ve invested close to a million dollars in my coaching over the past twenty years.
Over that time, I’ve had extraordinary coaches, mediocre coaches, and every once in a while, a terrible coach. I’ve learned from all of them.
I’ve had female coaches and male coaches. I’ve had coaches under 25 years old and older than 80 years old. I have enjoyed having a coach twenty years younger than me, and I currently have three coaches who are more than twenty years older than me. I’ve been coached in person and by text message, email, phone, Skype, and Zoom. I’ve hired coaches and even fired coaches.
I once spent seven years flying to Canada several times each year to work with one of my coaches. I used to fly to Arizona twice a month to meet with another coach.
I’ve had relationship coaches, business coaches, nutrition coaches, fitness coaches, financial coaches, negotiation coaches, parenting coaches, and creativity coaches. I’ve also had a variety of consultants and therapists.
1. A coach who doesn’t invest in their own coaching is like a doctor who learned everything they know from Google. Would you trust that doctor?
I’ve had many one-on-one coaches. That’s essential if you want to be a world-class coach yourself. And I often have more than one coach at a time.
I’ve been in many group coaching programs. That’s essential if you want to create and run your own world-class group coaching programs.
I’ve had coaches who charged so much that it took me years to save up to work with them. But if you want to be world-class, you need to invest heavily in learning from world-class coaches.
2. No coach will do the work for you, no matter how much you invest.
Back in 2007, I invested $50,000 to learn from a coach. At the time, I’d never invested that much money in anything other than a house. I remember, to this day, waking up the next morning with a visceral sense of fear at the thought, “What if he’s hit by a bus?!”
But I also remember what stopped me from immediately asking for a refund… It was the thought that followed, “I have to make this happen, no matter what.”
3. Coaching is an apprentice-based profession. If you want to be the very best you need to learn from the very best.
World-class coaching is often expensive due to the high-quality standards, customized support, exclusivity, and research and development that go into developing and providing it.
If you have never invested more than you feel comfortable spending in your own coaching, how will you ever know what it feels like for your clients to invest in working with you?
4. Coaching is the single best investment you can make in yourself.
You are a true leader when you model to your clients that you walk your talk by having your own world-class coaches.
5. Coaching has a compounding effect that builds over time to help you unlock your potential.
Here are several key ways that coaching builds on itself over the years:
- You improve your cognitive skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical reasoning.
- You develop pattern recognition, for faster insight, by making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts.
- Your confidence builds, with a positive feedback loop, as you accomplish things that once looked impossible.
- There’s a powerful network effect when you work with coaches who take the time to develop the community. You can build valuable connections, and collaboration, and exchange ideas that further enhance your success.
- The more coaching you experience, the greater your capacity to handle adversity. This leads to a virtuous cycle of wisdom acquisition and personal growth.
I currently have a business coach, an intuition mentor, a fitness coach, a couples therapist, a parenting coach, and a financial coach. And I’m constantly seeking out the very best to support me on my personal journey to success.
How about you?
Love. Rich