Is Hiring a Coach Worth the Money?

(Photo by ecstaticist)

Would you pay $300 a month to increase your productivity so that you can make multiple of that amount?

This is what Steve Pavlina says he did in his post Life Coaching. As a business owner, the amount of money he would make was dependent on his performance, and his coach helped him work smarter. Christine O’Kelly, another entrepreneur, also claims she tripled her sales leads by working with her coach.

If you are facing difficult situations at work or in life, a coach may be the sidekick you need for the breakthrough. It is an investment in yourself. And the changes you make in your life with the help of a coach are yours to keep, benefiting you even after you stop working with the coach.

The objective of this post is not necessarily to promote my coaching business (Update: I don’t offer the regular life coaching any more.  My Akashic Record Reading has grown to be my main work) but rather to inform you of a good way to choose a coach if and when you are interested. No one knows coaches like professional coaches, you know.

Just a cautionary disclaimer. . .

The most important point to understand in hiring a coach (and in life in general) is to understand you are the owner of your life. You have the free will, and what you choose to do is what brings in results. Steve and Christine took actions after they talked with their coaches, and that is what brought their successes.

If you are still playing the victim game and not yet up to the responsibilities of your own life, it is probably not a good time to hire a coach.

When would you benefit most from hiring a coach?

I think there are two major situations in life that you would benefit so much from working with a coach:

1. When you want to make a big positive change in your life.
   Like starting and growing your business, as Steve says. Or when you want to make a career change that better suit your values. Or when you are changing your lifestyle. In such situations, a coach can offer a good perspective and guide the way so that you can achieve the goal efficiently without getting into dead ends.
2. When you are faced with a big question in life and your existing support system is not enough.
   For example, you may have lived as atheist but are feeling more and more interested in spirituality. You, however, find it uncomfortable to just go to a church and talk to a priest . . . you don’t want to be taken in by the organized religion. Even talking to your friends who have certain faith may not feel right. In such a case, a caring but detached spiritual coach can be a great person to talk to.Another example is when you need to make a decision that can affect your family so much that they are not the most appropriate people to talk first. Maybe you want to quit working for your family business and move to the other side of the continent to pursue your dream. Maybe you want to go back to school, which will affect the family finance seriously.

Once you (not your coach, but YOU) make the decision, you might find your coach helpful in your effort to implement the change, as explained above.

How to choose the coach who is right for YOU

One of the best ways is referral. If your friend has worked with a coach and he or she is happy with that coach, ask for that coach’s name and check if they offer a trial session.

If you don’t know anyone, here are four steps to find the coach that best matches your needs:

1. Search by the niche.

Each coach has a niche that he or she specializes in. For instance, if you want to start your own business, search for entrepreneurship or small business coach. There are all kinds of coaches – career coach, relationship coach, mid-life crisis coach, grief coach. . . You can just Google, or use the coach referral services.

2. Pre-Qualify the coach by checking their websites.

Most coaches have websites, some write blogs, too. So while you are doing the online search, read what they have to say, and see if you feel affinity with them. Person-to-person chemistry is important for successful coaching.

3. Choose the coach who thinks differently.

For example, some of us are good at analytical thinking , others are at creative thinking, technical thinking, or people thinking. It is easy to surround yourself with people who think in similar ways. You agree on a lot of things. When it comes to hiring a coach, however, intentionally choose the one whose brain circuit is different from yours.

Steve emphasizes this point in his aforementioned post this way:

“When I first came to him, I was extremely left-brained, and he helped me integrate more right-brained qualities into my decision making. In the long run, this was very beneficial to me.”

This step may sound contradictory to step #2 above. It does not. Affinity is about the deeper level of personality. Your gut feeling will direct you to the coach with the personality makeup you feel most comfortable with. Your brain should choose the coach who challenges you to grow further.

4. Ask how the coach keeps learning and growing.

The best coach is the one who is committed to the personal growth themselves. Ask what kind of books they read, if they are taking any classes or workshops, and if they have a coach themselves. Many of these points are probably addressed in their websites, but if not, don’t hesitate to ask before you sign up.

Take charge of your coaching relationship.

It is critical to understand that you are in charge of the coaching relationship. It is you who present your challenges and determine your goals. Further, your will get the most from your coaching sessions by bringing in the topic of discussion. And you are responsible for taking actions. Your coach will hold you accountable, and many clients find this invaluable in achieving their goals, but ultimately, you are the one who does the work! And this is wonderful – you deserve the credits to your success.

The value of having your coach is the value you seek in your life by clarifying the issues and implementing the changes. I hope you all find joy and contentment, as well as worldly success, in your life.

Update on Oct 19, 2008: Steve Pavlina now offers coaching himself. The last time I checked, he was asking for $500 per hour. The most expensive coach I know so far is Steve Hardison. He charges $150,000 for 100 hours, so it’s $1500 per hour, but it must be paid in full upfront and it’s non-refundable for whatever reason.

If I Have To Work For An Idiot, I May As Well Work For Myself: Tony Lawrence

(Photo by Leefotos)

The foe is within us, not outside.

We often take the perspective of “me vs the rest of the world”. It’s an easy way of thinking. If you are employed as professional, you probably have indulged in the “I’m wasting my time and talent working for an idiot. I’m victimized.” thinking. Nobody understands you. Nobody appreciates you.

And some of you start your own businesses thinking you are now on top of the world — only to find that your customers are now your foe who don’t appreciate you! You wonder what went wrong . . .

Because you are yet to realize the challenge is within you, not outside. If your customers are unhappy, it’s because the business you have built has some glitches. Review your products and services, marketing strategies, the business structure, your people management skills, and so on, rather than making the customers wrong. You can start taking this responsible perspective even as employee.

Today’s guest is Tony Lawrence, who has been in the computer and network business for 25 years. He has a well-established website A.P.Lawrence.

1. Tell us a bit about your business and why you started it.

In 1981 I was working as a customer support rep for a Tandy Radio Shack Computer Center (yes, Radio Shack made computers back then). The base salary was low, but I also was paid a percentage of the store’s revenues, and that was pretty good. Unfortunately, IBM came out with their computer in 1981 and the IBM PC started killing our sales. By 1983, I was living on the base salary and hurting badly.

I had always wanted to start my own business (in fact had tried and failed twice prior to this) and it seemed like I had nothing to lose: I couldn’t do much worse than I was doing. So I just stood up one afternoon and walked out – I was a self employed consultant. In those days I did a lot of programming for small businesses. I was originally operating system agnostic, but I began to have more and more disdain for Microsoft and drifted toward Unix systems primarily. I’ve stayed there; picking up Linux in the 90′s and Mac OS X more recently.

My business has changed a lot over the years. I don’t do much programming now, though I do some back end Web scripts and small Perl projects. I sell mail servers for businesses with 10 to 750 employees, do some work with security routers and firewalls and am generally available for troubleshooting. I often function as the “IT guy” for companies too small to afford dedicated staff. I mostly do that for Unix and Linux systems; Microsoft Windows has improved enough that I won’t refuse to use it, but I still find Unix based systems to be more powerful and stable.

2. What were the biggest challenges when you were starting off as a new entrepreneur?

I thought my biggest challenge would be finding work, but in fact that wasn’t hard at all. At that time there were computer stores everywhere and the people who sold from them always needed help for themselves and their customers. I just drove around, stopped in, offered my services and left my card. Business came by the bucket full.

So much so that by 1985 I hired employees – four of them. I quickly found out that managing people is very different from providing technical services. I’m a lousy manager and most of the employees took advantage of that, goofing off while collecting generous paychecks from me. I was six figures in debt before I caught on and fixed the situation: I fired all but one and made him my partner.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out either. We worked well together, and made money, but his wife wanted to move to the West Coast and soon enough they did. We tried to keep the partnership going, joking that we were “conveniently located at both ends of Interstate 90″, but it became a bookkeeping nightmare so we shut it down and went our separate ways.

The other challenge that is on-going is keeping up with new technology. That’s especially difficult as I get older – the brain that could once memorize fifteen digits at a glance isn’t quite so nimble any more. As the small independent computer stores folded up, finding new business also became more difficult.

3. And how did you work through these challenges?

I still struggle with learning – it’s a good part of every weeks work. It’s so important to keep your skills up in this constantly changing field. As I said above, the older I get the longer it takes me to learn new things, but I keep plugging away. It’s not that it is horribly difficult now; it’s that it used to be so easy..

An important part of finding work is paying attention to opportunity. If you listen carefully to what a customer is saying, if you take the time to engage with their employees and their customers, you may find income opportunities that your customer doesn’t even realize are there. One of my mottos in that regard is

“There are no problems, only income opportunities”

I am constantly alert for new opportunity.

The Internet brought new opportunities that I recognized very early on. I put up my first web page in the early 90′s and instituted http://aplawrence.com in 1997. Although originally this was strictly a technical site dealing with Unix and Linux issues, I now also write about Blogging and Self Employment there and 25% of my income comes from advertising revenues alone. Of course it also is a great source of consulting and sales opportunities: I have both consulting and mail server clients all over the United States.

I definitely would not have been so successful if it were not for the Internet.

4. What is the best part of being an entrepreneur for you?

For me, freedom is the driving force that keeps me self employed. I love being able to work when I choose. I also love being successful enough to turn down work I don’t want; for example refusing work from difficult or nasty people. I also enjoy helping other people start their own businesses – I’ve helped out many people with lunch-time chats and have even given them startup clients to get them rolling. Not all of them make it, but it feels good to help them try.

5. Any advice for people who dream to have their own business and yet find it hard to make the leap?

Consider that the most important thing in your life is happiness and that the happiest people are those who control their own destiny. I know it can be very scary to give up a “safe” job and set out into the uncertainty of self employment, but there are such tremendous rewards that it is worth the risk. Remember this also: if you are skilled and competent enough that someone else is willing to pay you money to work for them, you are obviously skilled and competent enough to work for yourself.

Another of my mottos is

“If I have to work for an idiot, I may as well work for myself”

I view employment as a form of slavery and hate seeing any one forced into it. Break free, be free.

My Takeaway
I love the resilient manner Tony navigated his way through all the changes. A market change can be a disaster or an opportunity depending on your perspective. Also look deep to dig out the hidden opportunities – I see that, if I can do this, I am ahead of all potential competition. And I think it’s great he likes to help out newer entrepreneurs!

Thanks to Steve for choosing this post as Editor’s Pick at Carnival of Career.

The Best Birthday Present I Got For Myself

(Photo by CaptPiper)

Last year, I took a vacation day on my birthday – but not just to relax.

My birthday is coming up next week (Yep, I’m a brilliant Gemini. Two heads are better than one!) What do you do for your own birthday? Do you buy something you’ve wanted for a long time? Do you do something special?

I did something for my birthday last year, a seemingly small thing, which eventually led me to my current business. Back then, I was working the 8 – 5 corporate job, and I wanted to have my own business. I wasn’t sure where to start, but I wanted to start doing something. Maybe learning the general basic of small business is a good idea, I thought, and signed up for a seminar held by Small Business Administration. It was scheduled on Tuesday morning, so I had to use my vacation time to attend. Coincidentally, it was right on my birthday.

What do you really want for yourself going forward?

The idea of spending a vacation day sitting in a seminar may sound unromantic, but I’m glad I did. It set a tone for the year to come.

Not that I used the knowledge immediately. My business ideas have changed during the year. Initially, I was thinking of doing some real estate deals. I was learning how to make creative financing arrangements, and thought the timing was great to go ahead with the dooming market crash. Help those people who can’t pay their mortgage nor sell their house, put in good tenants, and I’d be a landlord! I still think this is a great idea and maybe I’ll do it – but I’ve found even more interesting thing to do as I progressed in the year.

I kept learning and working on some of the deals (potential deals, I should say. . .), and I ran out of vacation time. I figured that I needed at least one weekday to do this kind of real estate work. So I talked with my boss. I was very efficient and could fulfill all my responsibilities at the company in four days a week, and I was willing to do overtime on those four days if necessary, so may I free up one weekday? He told me no way. Everyone must work full-time or leave, no exceptions.

This made me think. This company relocated me from Ohio to Tennessee. If I weren’t working for this company, I didn’t have to be in Tennessee. What do I really want? Where do I want to be?

New possibilities emerge when we start moving to that direction.

I started meditating a lot last summer. I learned how to meditate more than 20 years ago, but I was only doing it on and off. Last summer, I decided to do it every day. And a strange thing happened. The idea of “Portland, Oregon” popped in my mind repeatedly in my meditation.

I moved myself to Oregon last October, still thinking I’d do real estate deals. But because I was new to the area, I had to learn the area first. While spending a lot of time driving up and down in this new city, and meditating and writing, I realized I’m very into personal development, especially in the spiritual area. So I started taking professional coach training courses. Now life coaching is my business, and real estate is put to back burner.

Looking back, I can hardly believe all the changes that have taken place in one year. And I think my birthday commitment to start a business of my own ignited these changes. It was my way to say “I’m in!”

Looking further back, I came to this country in 1995, two days before my birthday. I was to attend the summer courses at a college, and for the time being, that’s all I knew I was going to do. I didn’t know I’d get married, get a job, file divorce, change jobs, etc. at the time. I just put my first step forward in this new country.

You don’t need to know everything planned out to step forward.

If you want something more in your life, just start doing something for it. Then keep moving. It actually doesn’t matter if I’m using the tips I learned at the seminar for my business. I declared my intention to myself and to the Universe with that action, and that’s what matters.

For instance, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, what is the one step you can take now that moves you closer to your dream business?

• Do you need to learn more about the trade?
  There are three ways of learning. Which ones are you doing now?
• Do yo need to research the market?
  The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich has great tips for this.
• Are you not sure where to start?
  May I suggest my e-workbook 7 Check Points For Aspiring Entrepreneurs? It is packed with questions that you need to think to get ready as an entrepreneur.

Give yourself the gift of commitment for your birthday. Oh, if your birthday is too far off, make another case to take that action. Every day can be your special birthday.

Thanks to Alex for including this post in Personal Development Carnival.

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