The Prosperous Coach - Steve Chandler (Highlight: 121; Note: 0)

───────────────

◆ 1: “Why isn’t this working?”

▪ Be fearless in your coaching. And be fearless in how you create clients.

Show your clients what they cannot see.

Say to your clients what no one else would dare to say.

And you will have all the clients you ever desire.

◆ Without a client you’re not a coach.

▪ When someone sees the world differently, they show up differently, and they create results that
looked impossible a moment before. That is a miracle.

▪ The Pro coach is committed to coaching, no matter what. Failure doesn’t stop them. They are not
embarrassed by their mistakes. There’s no turning back.

▪ The Pro coach learns to love selling coaching. And they know that cash is not the only way to be paid
for coaching. You can be paid in experiences. You can be paid in relationships. You can be paid in
learning. You can be paid in referrals.

▪ The Pro coach knows there is no “hard” part. They love the business side of coaching as much as they
love coaching.

▪ The Pro coach serves people and does not try to please them.

▪ The Pro coach knows that being uncomfortable is the only way to grow. And because they create such
powerful agreements, their clients never miss or are late for a session.

▪ The Pro coach has huge dreams, and takes tiny steps every day.
▪ The Pro coach knows there is no such thing as a high-paying client. Your fees are just a filter for the
clients you’d love to coach.

▪ The Pro coaches their butt off.

▪ The Pro coach understands that receiving coaching is part of their professional development. They
model the power of coaching by devoting a significant part of their time, energy, focus and income to
being coached by the best coaches they know.

▪ The Pro coach knows that money is just money.

▪ The Pro coach knows that confidence is a result of taking action.

▪ The Pro coach sells by giving people a powerful experience of coaching.

▪ The Pro coach knows that credentials are irrelevant because the only question clients ever want an
answer to is: Can you help me?

▪ The Pro coach is creative.

▪ Safety is the enemy of success.

Be proud of your mistakes. Take a risk. Fail spectacularly.

And then go out and fail more.

◆ Love the “hard” part

▪ My business plan has become one line: Meet fun and interesting people. My attention is on building
relationships and coaching people and making bold proposals.

I enroll my clients by coaching them. As simple as that. In fact, my calendar now has only two colors: red
and blue. Blue signifies any time I am coaching a client. Red signifies any time I am creating a client. I
have made the two boxes overlap so much that if you were to observe me on a coaching day you would
be hard pressed to know whether I was speaking to a client or creating one.

▪ Lead powerfully.

Challenge how your clients see the world.

They do not need sympathy. They do not need you to be their friend.

◆ Design your preferred lifestyle

▪ Start to outline your dream lifestyle now.

Don’t worry if it seems out of reach. Imagine your life five years from now. Ten years. Who are your
dream clients? Where would you love to be coaching them? What else would you love to be doing?

▪ People pay you not what they decide your coaching is worth, but what you decide your coaching is
worth.

◆ Cultivate deep foundations

▪ To become highly successful as a coach, you need to master three disciplines:

1. You need to master the business of Creating Clients (in fact, to be highly successful, you need to love
creating clients as much as you love coaching clients).

2. You need to become adept at Fearless Coaching (a willingness to courageously lead your clients in the
most powerful way possible).

3. And beyond these, you need to be willing to work your own process—and do the Deep Inner Work
necessary—so you can see your own blind spots. You can’t take your clients any deeper than you have
been able to go in your own life.

▪ Eighteen Fearless Disciplines

#1. Sell the experience, not the concept, so that the client’s only decision is whether or not to continue
coaching with you.

#2. No cold calling. Use or create inner circle connections.

#3. Know the half-life of enthusiasm. Act quickly.

#4. Do not use email (for persuasion or confrontation) in the act of client acquisition when phone or in-
person options are available.

#5. Use conversations. Schedule conversations. Fill the day with conversations until your client list is full.

#6. Use certainty versus belief. Speak from what you are certain of. Keep a success list.

#7. Share stories and case histories versus features and benefits.

#8. Find the goal behind the client’s goal. Ask about your client’s clients.

#9. Needy is creepy. Stay with their wants versus your needs.

#10. The Lamp Post Metaphor, from Michael Neill: Be the first and only totally committed listener in
their lives.

#11. Maintain innocence in getting your yes/no. Yes lives in the land of no. If they have to “go think
about it” the conversation was not complete.

#12. Leadership in the close. Direct all the action.

#13. Slow down. All the wealth you want is right there in the next conversation. Don’t have a huge to-do
list, just be with Who’s Next.

#14. Get a coach. A coach without a coach is like a doctor who won’t see a doctor. Get a coach who will
build your practice and change your professional life.

#15. Leave the conversation in a context of possibility, not a context of affordability.

#16. Limitation creates value. Make sure you are the one doing the auditioning of the client, and not the
other way around.

#17. Be constantly aware of role reversal. Do not surrender your power, leadership and role as the
coach in the conversation.

#18. Be great at what you do... not just good. Have routines, habits and practices that guarantee that
you become better and better as a coach every day. Read books, see movies, listen to audio and talk to
people who make you better as a coach. Every day.

▪ No high-performing client was ever created outside of a conversation. And no high-paying client was
ever created outside of a powerful conversation

◆ Have the disciplines be fun!

▪ You want your client to describe the gap between the goal and today’s reality. You want a long
description of the client’s default future: What if you don’t do anything (like this coaching) and nothing
changes? What does that life look like? What is the downside of this default future of yours? What are
the consequences? How painful is it?

▪ We don’t want to be needy. We want to have it be the opposite. We want to talk and think deeply
about the client’s world, not ours. The sale always occurs inside the client’s world.

▪ We want to practice different ways to stay connected. We want to explore ways to deliver value in
each communication. We practice these different approaches when we communicate because we’ll get
clients so much faster that way.

If you haven’t heard back, send a gift and a note. Don’t even refer to working together. Contribute and
serve. You don’t need them; they need you. Behave accordingly.

▪ I don’t want the conversation to disappear into the ether. I’m the coach in this relationship so I want to
show some leadership. I want to direct the action so that once someone says they want to work with me
it gets completed!

“Okay, great, so if you want to do this work, and you’re ready to begin, here’s what you need to do.
Open your calendar so we can put our first session on it. What’s a good date and time for you?
Wonderful. Now you can either pay at the website, mail your fee in or bring it to the first session,
whichever way is most convenient for you. Any questions about that? Excellent. I look forward to this.”

Now I’m directing the action as if you’re coming to a great auditorium and I’m standing outside and I
ask, “Do you have your tickets?” “Yes.” “Okay, then please go into that line. Now, when you get into that
line, you’ll go here, then inside, and then talk to the usher; he’ll seat you.”

▪ Remember that coaching occurs because of long, slow conversations. It occurs because of the focus
you give to someone. It occurs because they have a sense that you are there for them, that they are very
important to you, that you have time for them. You cannot have that happen if you don’t slow down.
And the more you slow down, the more you’ll get done in this profession.

▪ Coaching improves someone, improves anything they focus on, including income,

▪ Before our conversation ends I want to return the client and myself to the context of possibility. Even if
we have slipped into the context of affordability, I want to re-direct the conversation to the context of
possibility before it ends:
What’s possible if we worked together?

Why would it be worth it to you if we worked together?

How would it be worth it to you?

What in your world that you would like to be different might be different if we worked together?

What’s possible for us?

What would you like to change?

What do you want?

Why don’t you have it now?

Tell me what you want and then tell me why it is not in your life right now.

If you can tell me why it’s not in your life right now, you and I might be able to create a plan to work
together to make that possible for you. What would that be worth to you? Would those results be worth
that investment? You tell me. I’m not going to tell you.

Now we are back in the context of possibility.

▪ Coaching is about the future. It’s about creating a future that’s different from the future that would
have arrived by default if you had no coach and no sense of creativity and no commitment.

◆ Step-by-step process

▪ Connect + Invite + Create + Propose = CLIENTS

▪ Step 1: Connect
▪ “Hey Sarah. Long time no speak. How’s things? How’s the family? How’s the business? What are you
up to? What’s your next big project? What’s your biggest challenge right now?”

▪ Step 2: Invite

▪ THERE ARE TWO LOVELY QUESTIONS that change everything for a coach who is creating clients.
“Would you like some help with that?” And “Who do you know?”

If you are talking to someone who you believe could really get value from spending time with you,
there’s a simple question to ask them when you hear them describe their dream, their challenge, or
their biggest fear: Would you like some help with that?

If the answer is a clear yes, do not jump into coaching them in that very moment. Be like a doctor. If you
meet a doctor at a party and you start to tell them about the problem with your knee, they won’t ask
you to roll up your trouser leg! They’ll tell you to book an appointment.

▪ So be a professional coach. Not a social one. If the answer to your question, “Would you like some help
with that?” is a clear yes, invite them to meet with you. In person is always best, but over the phone can
work perfectly. Block out two hours for them. Let them know that you will create a life-changing
coaching experience. Don’t be afraid to tell them that. Coaching IS life-changing. Even a single session.

Then put a date in your calendar.

The alternative, if you are speaking to someone you either imagine may be open to coaching or may
know someone who wants coaching is to ask the question, “Who do you know?” It is so gentle and
creates so much space that the person you are speaking to can relax and really hear your question
without any of the natural resistance that most coaches create when they are trying to “get” a client.

“Christina, can you help me? I have a space available on The Confident Woman’s Salon. It’s a program
for nine amazing women. Each woman is powerful, confident and successful. She has already achieved a
great deal in life. And despite a track record of success, she is ready for support to achieve a goal that
feels ‘impossible’ right now. Do you know a woman like that?”

Every once in a while, the person in front of you will say, “Oh my gosh. That’s me!” But even if what you
are creating is not for them, they won’t feel you’re trying to force something on them.

And if this isn’t right for the person you are speaking to, they will pause and genuinely reflect on who
they know.

Then, when someone says a name to you, never say, “Thanks, I’ll call them.” In fact, do the opposite. Get
curious...
“Tell me about her. What’s her big dream? What do you think may be holding her back the most in life,
right now? Has she ever experienced coaching before? Do you think she’d be open to coaching? Why do
you think she’d benefit from speaking to me?”

At the end of this conversation, if it feels like there may be a fit, say something like:

“Have your friend call me or email me. You see, I never cold call. Even for a referral. Tell her that this is
my gift to her from you. Tell her that I’ll block out two hours for her. I’ll create a powerful coaching
experience and we’ll get her challenges handled. Forever.”

Make your invitations as if you are inviting people to the best party in the world. Coaching is such a gift
to most people’s lives. Don’t hesitate to share it. Because they’d be crazy to miss it. But even if they’re
not ready for it in this moment, that’s perfectly fine, because someone else will be.

And when they are—that’s when you get to create your magic...

▪ Step 3: Create

▪ The problem is: no one cares!

▪ The truth is they don’t care if you’re a coach, a consultant or if you can sprinkle fairy dust on them. If
you can help them get what they really, really, really, really want, then they will find a way to become
your client. So the real magic is not in your diplomas or coaching certifications. (Most of the very best
coaches I know have no certification. Some have failed marriages, some went broke and some were
fired from jobs. That’s all irrelevant.)

▪ Show up. Be present. Be bold. Coach them powerfully. Be relentless. Be Sherlock Holmes and explore
deeper into their lives than anyone has ever gone with them.

Find a way to create an experience of your Coaching Magic for everyone you spend time with. Because
then they will do whatever it takes to experience more of it.

▪ Don’t wait for one-hundred percent readiness. It will never come. When you are eighty percent ready,
go for it. Run straight at it. Get exposed. Risk messing up.

▪ Step 4: Propose

▪ Most coaches have no idea how to make a proposal. A potential client asks, “What would it look like to
work with you?” And the coach dives into logistics and hours and packages and options. Or they say,
“Let me put something in writing and I’ll get back to you…”
Don’t be afraid of the money. It’s just a number. Some people will say yes. Many will say no. And either
is fine because you can move forward once you have a clear yes or no. Most coaches are so afraid of a
no that they won’t ever make a proposal.

“Rich, I loved this coaching session we just did together. How much do you charge?”

“Well, let’s slow things down for a moment. Let’s find out if it would really be a great fit for us to coach
together. I have five criteria that any client must meet. My clients must be inspiring, or have an inspiring
mission. They must make, or be ready to make, a big impact in the world. They must be fun. They must
bring along a challenge; I’m not looking for an easy ride. And they must understand the power of
commitment.”

I’ll pause to check in with the person in front of me. If they meet these criteria, I’ll let them know. And
then I’ll go on.

“Would you like to hear a little more about how we could work together?”

You see, I’m continually seeking permission to continue when it comes to a proposal.

Then, based on our conversation, I will map out how our coaching will support their dreams, visions and
goals becoming a reality. I will add to our conversation stories of results my clients have achieved or
outrageous goals my clients have taken on. I’ll share stories about my own goals and even my own
struggles. I don’t want to hide anything from my clients.

And only then, if all of this is still a fit, will I talk “logistics.”

“This is how often we will speak or meet. This is how much support you can count on from me. This is
how much your investment will be. And this is how you make your payment. This is what you can count
on me for. And this is what I require of you, if we are to work together.”

I will be very clear with them:

“Does this feel like we are rushing things? If it does, let’s slow things down. Because if this doesn’t feel
like a fit, let’s call it a clear no for now.

“Let me be clear: you do not need coaching. In fact nobody needs coaching. The question is, do you
want coaching? Personally, I believe in coaching so much that I have had my own coach for years. But
that’s because I love having someone who believes in me. I love having someone hold me accountable
to a bigger vision. I love someone who doesn’t believe in the negative stories I tell myself or the fears
that hold me back. Not everyone wants that.


“Basically unless this is an absolute yes for you, let’s leave today being totally clear that it is a no. That
way if the desire begins to build in you to be coached you can come back to me. But only when you are
ready.

“And if you decide you’d like to begin, the moment you make your payment you are in. Here’s where
you send your check...”

◆ Don’t close a sale—open a relationship!

▪ Approach a conversation with a potential client from a place of being really, really present. Put all your
attention on them and get curious. Ask questions about their life and their world. Ask about their
dreams and desires, their fears and their pain.

And then, if—I stress if—you see a place where you could help, ask, “Would you like some support with
that?”

I always come from a place of building relationships. I’m never trying to “sell” anything to anyone.

◆ Learn to astonish your clients

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME you astonished a client?

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that one of the most powerful ways to create new clients is to serve
your current clients so powerfully that they never stop talking about you.

How could you astonish one of your clients today?

It usually doesn’t take much.

Call a client the day after a coaching call for a five minute catch-up. Clients love to hear from you when
it’s not expected. Send a book to a client without telling them in advance. Offer to double the length of a
coaching call, to really go deep with a client. Invite a client to a day-long, face-to-face session with you,
instead of your usual one hour over the phone. Write a client a personal, hand-written note, right now.

▪ Failing is not a problem you will face. Failing is how you get there.

◆ Sell the experience, not the concept !

▪ WHAT DO I WANT MY INTAKE conversation, my long “getting-to-know-you” conversation with a
coaching prospect to demonstrate?

I want it to demonstrate my curiosity, my love of coaching, my ability to relate a story or case history or
two about people I’ve helped through coaching, my ability to listen, to relate, to get to the bottom of
things, and my desire to convert dreams into projects so that my prospective client will stop wanting
things and start engaging in the process of creating them.

Therefore I really want to take my time when I first talk to a client. And if my prospect has a website,
blog posts or a physical place of business, I want to do good homework prior to talking to this prospect.
That demonstrates commitment.

◆ Actively seek exciting clients

▪ ALWAYS KEEP YOUR EYE OUT for great clients—high-functioning people who want to go from good
to great. Coaching comes from the world of sports and the arts, where athletes and actors receive
coaching so that their work will become extraordinary instead of just okay. Coaching gives clients a
secret weapon, a competitive edge that their un-coached peers do not enjoy. Coaching takes people
from good to great. Coaching is not for dysfunctional people. It is not there to heal the sick and
wounded. It’s there to help people reach their higher callings and unlived lives, the lives they are not
living because they are trapped in their own isolated, self-critical egos. Coaching expands their world.

◆ Possibility will trump affordability

▪ when these disciplines are practiced, coaches become prosperous.

▪ The coaches who are failing have no system for success. It’s all about their mood and feelings. They
take their emotional temperature throughout the day to determine what they will or will not do. If you
see yourself in this sad portrait, throw your thermometer away and turn pro.

◆ Magical vs magic
▪ Here are the key components of fearless coaching. Learn these, practice these, and your clients will
thank you. And remember this: do not wait. Use them in your very first conversation with a potential
client. Don’t save them until after someone has hired you.

They are most valuable to you when a potential client experiences their power right away, right there in
that very first, long and extraordinary intake conversation.

Be bold.

Search for the Glimpse of Genius in the person in front of you.

Go deeper.

Be OK with silence.

Keep some of your attention on the inside.

Remember that the magic is in the person in front of you.

Pay attention to their words.

Lead powerfully.

Hide nothing.

God with a small “g”.

Come from Spirit.

Set a clear intention.

Seek permission.

Coaching creates miracles.

Invest in yourself.

Be YOU.

COMMIT.

Be willing to fail.

▪ 1. Be bold.
Say boldly what needs to be said. And hide nothing. You are not there to be their friend. You are there
to create the most powerful coaching they have ever experienced.

As a coach, your only mission is to wake up each morning and ask yourself: “Who can I serve so
powerfully that they never forget our conversation for the rest of their life?” When you serve people in
this way you will become an extraordinary coach.

2. Search for the Glimpse of Genius in the person in front of you.

My clients tell me that one of the biggest gifts for them is that they know I always believe in them, even
when they forget to believe in themselves.

The high bar you set for your clients has nothing to do with how much money they make, their job title,
or the size of the company they work for. It has everything to do with your criteria for dream clients. My
own clients are inspiring, and they make a big impact - or they are ready to. They are committed. They
are fun. They bring a challenge to the table. And I ruthlessly seek out these criteria in any potential client
I spend time with.

3. Go deeper.

Be on a relentless quest to go deeper than they ever imagined they wanted to go. Find their “secret
dream”—the goal behind their goal.

You can only create extraordinary clients when you are willing to ask them questions that no other
coach would ask. Dig deeper into their deepest dreams and their secret fears than anyone else has ever
gone.

Every client has a goal behind their goal.

And no client ever comes to you for the first reason they present to you.

Your job is to find out what they really, really want. Do that and they will thank you forever. And you will
have all the clients you ever want.

4. Be OK with silence.

Learn the power of the pause. It is one of the most powerful coaching tools.

Do not coach until you have a client in the room. Wait until you are certain what they really want. And
know that if you are speaking more than they are, you are unlikely to uncover what is really going on
inside them. If you don’t have a question to ask, say nothing.

5. Keep some of your attention on the inside.

What you are feeling on the inside is an incredible coaching tool. We are all deeply connected. So, keep
a small percentage of your attention on the inside of your body. Slow down. Because what they are
feeling, you are too.

6. Remember that the magic is in the person in front of you.

If you give them your absolute, full, undivided attention and you get really present, your inner wisdom
will tell you where to go next.

Listening is the most underrated skill for a coach. You do not need to be an expert in your client’s life or
business. They didn’t hire you to be a consultant. They hired a coach. I have coached CEOs, soldiers,
Hollywood executives and Olympic athletes and I didn’t have to know anything about what they did in
order to help them create remarkable results.

In fact, as a coach, one of your gifts is that you know less about their business than they do. So don’t be
afraid to say nothing, or even to ask questions that seem obvious.

7. Pay absolute attention to the words of your client.

Because their language creates how they see their world. And how they see their world becomes their
world. If you are prepared to listen deeply, their words will tell you everything that is going on in their
world.

As a coach, when you meet a client whose behavior does not make sense on a surface level, you can
know for certain that deep down there is a level at which the behavior makes perfect sense.

The results your clients are generating perfectly correlate with the actions they are taking. But if you
can’t help them find out why they are taking those actions, the actions will never change.

Pay rapt attention to their words. Because their words tell you where they are focusing. Change their
focus and you change their world.

8. Lead powerfully.

Refuse to buy into any story your clients may bring with them. Challenge how they see the world. They
do not need sympathy. They do not need you to be their friend. “But this is who I am...” is not an
absolute. It is a choice.

Coaching requires passion and authority. Never forget who’s the coach and who’s the client.

9. Hide nothing.

Show up fully expressed; show the real you. Hide nothing; hold nothing back.

10. God with a small “g”.

Notice just how powerful the person in front of you is. Put your attention on their power. One
advantage of me spending so much of my own life feeling powerless is that I now quickly see how
powerful people are. But this is something we can all do.

Your client is the god of their world because they create their own world. And they don’t even know it.

11. Come from Spirit.

This isn’t about you. Tap into something deeper. Your purpose. A higher calling. The universe. God.

You cannot be a powerful coach if you think this is all about you.

12. Set a clear intention.

Get clear on where you are speaking from and where you are speaking to.

Speaking from your head to their head is only one way to coach. Try speaking from your heart to their
inner wisdom. Or from your gut intuition to their heart.

13. Seek permission.

The more safety you create, the deeper you can go. “Would it be OK with you if I ask a question about
that?”

14. Get clear that coaching creates miracles.

And let your client know that. Set a powerful context for every coaching session. Increased expectations
will call out the best in both of you.

15. Invest in yourself.

Because you can’t take a client any deeper than you have gone yourself. I have invested hundreds of
hours and over a quarter of a million dollars to receive very deep coaching from some of the world’s
most impactful coaches. I believe in the life-changing power of coaching because I have experienced life-
changing, powerful coaching.

16. Be YOU.

Because there is no coach like you in the world. And that is priceless.

17. COMMIT.

Play FULL Out.

18. Be willing to fail.

Again. And again. And again. As Sir Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to
failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Barbara Kingsolver wrote: “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for; and
then live inside that hope.” As coaches we can do better than that. Life really can be amazing. So why
not have your clients find out what they really, really want—and then help them to create it. Hope is
irrelevant. Coaching makes miracles occur.

John F. Kennedy once said: “The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.” It’s actually the
only reason to have a powerful conversation with anyone. Fearless coaching means every time you
coach, you change the world.

▪ In fact, as a coach, one of your gifts is that you know less about their business than they do. So don’t be
afraid to say nothing, or even to ask questions that seem obvious.

▪ It doesn’t matter who your client is, they are paying you to be one of the few people in the world who
is willing to say the things that no one else will say.

◆ Coach and coach and coach

▪ YOUR ACTIVITIES ARE GOOD, but through all this good preparation and contact-making don’t forget to
coach. Get a client NOW and start coaching, whatever you have to do to do that. Remember that you
build a coaching practice by coaching people. No other way to do it. No reason to delay.

Get with people and coach them. Have long, long, involved phone conversations. No one will want
coaching because of an email or anything like it. Just as a brain surgeon would not send emails
promoting brain surgery.

Enjoy the fact that you are a coach now!

Take some interested person who has “no funds” and coach him for two hours. He’ll find the funds for
more work with you.

◆ Learn to love those feisty no’s

▪ A no can be the best and most exciting thing about a coaching practice, but only after we practice a lot.
And learn to really feel how fun they are. How powerful.

Yes lives in the land of no. Without no there could be no yes. No means you are in action. Only passivity
can stop you from being prosperous.

If someone in another city, unseen by you, flipped a coin a lot of times, could you tell me how many
heads they got? No, you couldn’t even make a good guess unless you knew more information, right?
Okay, well, what if I told you how many tails they got? Would you then be in a better position to guess
how many heads? Absolutely! Why? Tails and heads go together! You get them both when you flip.

▪ Yes and no go together, too. So if I know how many no’s you got last year, I’m in a much better position
to tell you how many clients you have.

◆ Truth is what clients value

▪ LET YOUR PROSPECTS KNOW WHAT coaching with you would be like by having your intake
conversations be long, extremely real and truthful. You are selling coaching, so don’t mince words or do
the dance of money-fear by flattering them, chatting them up or acting in ways that disgust your own
heart and soul.

Instead, be willing to listen deeply and then be the first person in their lives to tell them the truth. Be
real and tell the truth about how you really see their problems.

▪ Just find one person and coach that person. Then move on. That’s really how coaching practices are
built.

Don’t focus on massive numbers, because that takes your attention away from quality of listening,
quality of conversation. It’s all about the next person you talk to, not the number of people you talk to.

Slow down and focus. Stay on the path.

◆ 34: No such thing as plural

▪ YOU ONLY EVER HAVE one client to worry about.

This client.
The one in front of you right now.

One of the biggest mistakes coaches make is to think in terms of plural.

Singular is all there is.

The client in front of you right now.

◆ When you do use email, do this

▪ WHEN YOU DO SEND EMAILS, make certain they always contain value for the recipient and are not just
requests that benefit you.

And when you check back with someone who is out there “considering” working with you, make sure
your communication always offers a fresh new idea and added value, and is not just an attempt to check
in.

In other words, because we are coaches gifted at creating transformation and delivering the tools of
personal growth, we should make sure we never miss that opportunity!

We should never turn into someone who is just selling.

Although where possible we always want to upgrade our communication with a prospect from email to
phone, from phone to in-person, from in-person to climbing a mountain together, etc., there are times
when an email can be powerful. So don’t be afraid to have your email be strong and clear. Here’s one I
once sent to a prospect, and it got me a coaching client.

▪ Dear Bill,

You said you want to hold off on the conversation with me until you know what my “templates and
approach” are.

There is no approach, and no standard coaching template. You yourself are the agenda and you are the
approach.

We work on the lies, the self-deception and the fears in you about money, and about the power you
perceive to be outside yourself in other people. We work on your difficulties with “making decisions”
and inability thus far to make bold choices in life and follow through and trust yourself completely to do
so.
I have no coaching approach. Transformation is the only objective. And the irony for some people is that
the very thing that they want the coaching for (an indecisive, half-hearted life) is what’s keeping them
from deciding whether to get coaching.

When you’re ready you’ll call me...meanwhile I am attaching an eBook I wrote called Powerful Graceful
Success because I know it will help you to the next level.

Steve

▪ Focus on the person in front of you. Ask yourself, “How can I serve this person so powerfully that they
never forget this experience for the rest of their life?”

◆ Strength comes from getting uncomfortable

▪ Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable and your world will change.

◆ Extraordinary results are created by extraordinary requests

◆ Don’t charge for what you do

▪ YOU AREN’T BILLING FOR TIME elapsed. You are billing for the very real possibility of a goal being
achieved that would not have been achieved without fearless coaching.

Your client has a default future that will occur on its own if his life does not change.

When he pays you he is paying for his life to change.

He is paying for his dream to be converted into a project. You will be the project manager. (In
businesses, good project managers make six figures.)

If all you talk about is “per hour” and how long the sessions will go it demeans the real value of
coaching. Your client has hired you because of something they want to do differently. They know deep
down that it’s true what Walt Disney said: “If you can dream it, you can do it.” That’s what they will pay
for.
Also remember you are charging your client for the breakthrough they wish to achieve instead of the
“things they get,” like sessions, emails, spot coaching, in-person meetings, and so on. You can say that
“at a minimum” you’ll get these, but you want to have your intake conversation establish the goal.

▪ Your client has a default future that will occur on its own if his life does not change. When he pays you
he is paying for his life to change.

◆ The best time to plant a tree

▪ The best time in life to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time in life to plant a tree is
today.

Don’t wait. Coach people.

Don’t wait. Raise your fees.

Don’t wait. Make bold proposals.

Don’t wait.

◆ 46: It’s time to lead

▪ Your clients want you to lead because it gives them permission to be leaders in their own lives. Do not
be afraid of stepping into your power as a coach.

◆ The secret: there is no secret

▪ What I love about coaching is that you get to make up how you show up.

Try stuff out.

Find out what you love.

Be creative.

Be you.

There is no secret.

◆ 49: The value of daily practice

▪ I gave you the Eighteen Fearless Disciplines that are proven to work in the art of client acquisition. If
you practice them.

If you are a coach, your work is good work, and badly needed by the client you don’t have yet.

Imagine that client going through life without support, without a structure for raising self-awareness,
without someone to tell the truth to, without a prosperity guide or a spirit guide. Imagine that person
not having any of those things because you decided not to practice today.

All this coaching success stuff is practice, practice, practice.

▪ Your clients want you to lead because it gives them permission to be leaders in their own lives. Do not
be afraid of stepping into your power as a coach.

◆If you want to do this, NOW is the time

▪ If you want to do this, NOW is the time

IT IS TIME TO LET GO of your fear of being bothersome, pushy or disliked.

It is time to be completely authentic so that people can trust you.

It is time to start asking for what you really, really want.

It is time to only coach clients whom you absolutely love.

It is time to master the way you communicate.

It is time to make bolder proposals.

It is time to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

▪ Raising your fees is not hard when you can see the incredible results your clients are creating.
◆ Service: energy out = energy back

▪ However, if you wake up every morning and answer the question, “Who can I serve?” you can then
offer your attention and your energy to the first person who comes to mind. Now you connect with
them. And you serve them. In the very best way you can. 

You email them an article.

You call to check in with them.

You offer them a coaching review session as an ex-client.

You look at their website and send them a book that will support their mission.

Then let go of any needy attachment to them becoming a client, or even replying to your email or
returning your call.

If you serve someone new every day, your world will transform as a coach.

▪ Steve and I have a friend who is a coach who fills his practice every year by writing a few handwritten
letters to the five to ten people he would absolutely love to coach that year. Each letter is so
personalized with so much attention on that individual that they cannot help but be moved by this man.

So: who would you love to coach?

◆ Who are you being?

▪ How would your coaching practice change if you were never again allowed to “tell” people what you
do? What if, from now on, the only way for people to understand what you do is for them to experience
the power of your coaching?

◆ Think exponential versus incremental

▪ Nobody said that change has to be slow or even hard. To live an exponential life, you have to be willing
to do things differently and be open to the possibility that everything you want is closer than you think.
◆ Slow down to speed up success!

▪ Space is where miracles occur.

And so I began to create space for myself.

And I slowed everything down.

Slow down your conversations with clients and you will notice things they can’t yet see. Slow down your
intake conversations with potential clients and you will create space for them to delve deeper into their
lives than ever before.

Slow down the time you spend preparing for a meeting with a new client and you will think of questions
that no one has ever asked them. Slow down enough to get a sense of your client’s world before you
meet them and you will be more present for them than anyone else has ever been for them.

▪ Practice regularly setting aside time for yourself to do nothing. Put time on your calendar for
committed, quiet, creative time. And practice making this time as important a priority as a meeting with
a client.

Even coaches who are already thriving and who want to get to the next level can benefit from slowing
down their enrollment process.

◆ You can do this as a blue collar job

▪ If I have a game to play, my energy and hope are not problems. They are high. But if I have no game,
no process goals, no scheduling of my own activities, then my moods plunge.

▪ It’s similar to this: I used to coach writers and authors when they were struggling with “writer’s block”
and not making progress on their books. Their hope and energy were low, so they did not write.

What I had them do was create a game, a scorecard, a schedule for logging the minutes or pages each
day, with a win possible every day if they completed the assignments they gave themselves.
▪ So in coaching the trick for me was to find a way to make as many of my activities be lunch pail, blue
collar activities as I could. So mood would not be a factor. Hope could come or go, it didn’t matter. My
energy would be high or low and I’d still do what I set myself up to do.

That takes practice. Logging a certain amount of conversation and invitation time each day. Making a
certain amount of proposals each week. Measuring my activities, not my results. Staying in the game.

Instead, engage people in conversations that serve them and you. You can’t be in a bad mood while you
are genuinely helping another human being. The mind can’t do both things at once.

Put up an activity scoreboard. Make it a game. Declare destinations. Follow your maps. A trucker’s life
works for you, too. Life can be a full of hope and energy for all of us blue collar coaches.

▪ Free advice is usually taken with a grain of salt. But a paid session can change someone’s life forever.

◆ No one ever pays for coaching

▪ Money is a sign of the impact you are having in the world. More money in your bank account means
you are making more of an impact. Bank account low? Find a way to make a bigger difference in your
clients’ lives.

Money equals service. If you want to make some money, wake up and ask yourself, “Who can I serve
today?” And then create a way to serve them even more powerfully.

Money is the most perfect expression of your creativity. If your bank account is low, it’s a reminder that
it’s time to get even more creative.

Remember, too, that money is only good for one thing: it’s good for buying stuff. But most people want
money for the feelings it will bring. So when money comes in, they feel good. And when it doesn’t, they
feel awful.

Break that cycle quickly as a coach.

Stop tracking and celebrating your billings. They are out of your control. Instead, celebrate the
amount of money you make in proposals. Proposals are in your control. Billings are not. Increase your
proposals and your billings will follow.

◆ Fail and fail and then fail more!

▪ If you want to be successful as a coach then get ready to stay in the game. There will be times when
nothing seems to work. Stay in the game. There will be times when everyone is saying no. Stay in the
game. There will be times when you seem to make mistake after mistake. Stay in the game.

▪ Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

▪ Sometimes I will challenge my Apprentices—who are already thriving coaches—by saying that we will
have no coaching session next week if they don’t screw something up in the next seven days.

Safety is the enemy of success. Be proud of your mistakes. Take a risk. Fail spectacularly. And then go
out and fail some more.

▪ Build your self-esteem. Clients like it when you have it. It reassures them that they have picked the
right person.

◆ Learn to log in and log out

▪ NO SALE EVER TOOK PLACE outside of a conversation!

▪ every single moment I spent outside—logged out—of a conversation was a self-defeating waste of
precious time and a deliberate self-destruction of my business. A lazy man’s cry for help is to passively
fail to do what he knows would get the job done.

◆ Grow your professional self-esteem

▪ So one of the best ways to keep your confidence and your sense of value high is to save and read your
fan mail.

Any time you get an email complimenting your work, save it. Save all of the rave reviews for anything
you do in a certain file. Keep a little journal or notebook. If somebody calls and thanks you or
compliments you, jot it down.

Because there’s going to be a time next week or next month where, before you go into a very important
call or meeting, you’re going to want to read through those notes and really get who you are.

We let our self-esteem slip.

By not paying attention to the subject.

◆ Learn to suffer a little injury

▪ THE GREAT PHILOSOPHER Emerson said: “Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what
we can.”

▪ Dr. Thomas Szasz says it best:

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is
why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older
persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.

◆ You are the one you are looking for

▪ Be YOU.

There is no one like YOU in the world. In a planet of 6.5 billion people, YOU are a very, very scarce
commodity.

The more YOU you become, the more you will draw the right people to you.

The more YOU you become, the more fun your life will be.

And the more YOU you become, the more your clients will pay.

As Dolly Parton said: “Figure out who you are and then do it on purpose.”

▪ Don’t wait for one-hundred percent readiness. It will never come. When you are eighty percent ready,
go for it. Run straight at it. Get exposed. Risk messing up.

▪ Failing is not a problem you will face. Failing is how you get there.

◆ The end is really the beginning

▪ The way you create a thriving relationship—one day at a time and one conversation at a time—is also
the only way to create a thriving coaching practice.

▪ Let go of any need for a “magic” system for creating clients. Instead, focus on the person in front of
you right now. Ask yourself, “How can I serve this person so powerfully that they never forget this
experience for the rest of their life?”

And be prepared for a miracle to occur.

▪ You know, life really can be exponential. You are far closer to everything you want than you could ever
imagine. Miracles are far closer than you think. And there is no one “right” way to do anything in life.
Woody Allen was correct when he said that eighty-percent of success is showing up.

▪ Be YOU. Because there is no coach like you in the world. And that is priceless.

◆ The Litvin List

What is the power and impact of YOUR coaching?

Rank each item below from 0-10

(Where 0 = I’m nowhere near... & 10 = I’ve nailed it!)

Outcome Goals: An outcome goal is bold and audacious and gets me in action. I understand that the
only other purpose of an outcome goal is to have me feel amazing in this moment. I have an outcome
goal that both excites me and scares me. (Example: I call one potential client a day. Or I make three bold
requests a week)

Process Goals: A process goal is clear and achievable in a fixed time period. I have clear process goals for
the next ninety days, so that each morning and week after week I know where to focus my time, my
energy and my attention. I have habits and rituals that support and renew me on a daily/weekly basis.
(Example: I call one potential client a day. Or I make three bold requests a week. Or I spend ten minutes
planning my day before I check email.)

Mindset: It’s OK to feel nervous or scared (that’s called being human) but I commit to never let my fears,
doubts, limiting beliefs or insecurities hold me back from taking action. I seek support in crafting a set of
empowering new beliefs to help me create the next stage of my life.

Skillset: I understand that confidence is a result, not a requirement, and I continually upgrade my
coaching skills and my business skills. I have identified any other skills I need, such as public speaking or
writing, and I work on them regularly.

Energy: I know what people, places, habits and things fill me with energy. And I know what people,
places, habits and things drain me of energy. I actively remove those energy drainers from my life.

Creativity: I spend time each day/week being creative. I use my creativity in enrolling clients and also in
coaching clients. I am turning an ordinary business into an extraordinary business.
The Art of Deep Coaching: I provide exceptional value to clients. I vulnerably lead my clients in the most
powerful way possible. I am committed to serving, not pleasing, my clients.

The Art of Creating Clients: I sell the experience of coaching, not the concept. I create deep, powerful
coaching experiences for potential clients. I adopt an attitude of service. I leave conversations in
possibility, not affordability. I grow my practice by invitation and referral only. I love creating clients as
much as I love coaching clients.

Getting the Value of Coaching: I have my own coach so I can do the deep inner work needed to see my
own blind spots. I know that I can’t take my clients any deeper than I have been able to go in my own
life. I model for my clients just how much I believe in the power of coaching by paying for my own
coaching. I pay my coach more money than I feel comfortable spending.

Being Unique: I have discovered what I am best at and enjoy doing that is different from what my peers
are doing and that requires relatively little effort from me. I put huge effort into honing my skillset, so
that it becomes extraordinary.

Service: I regularly ask the question: Who can I serve today? I regularly send referrals to colleagues.

Time vs Money: I complete every task I start. I work towards big goals one tiny step at a time. I
understand that discretionary time is far more valuable than money.

Integrity: I’m impeccable with my word. I keep my word to myself and others. I clean up immediately
when I don’t keep my word.

Authenticity: I’m willing to discover, confront, and tell the truth about myself-whenever and wherever I
catch myself not being genuine, real, or authentic. I own my inauthenticities with my clients, too.

Committed to Something Bigger than Myself: I am committed to something bigger than myself that
allows me to continue in the face of impossible hurdles and barriers. I get that no amount of money,
fame, position or power will ever be enough. And I understand that life brings true joy when I am used
for a purpose that I know is a mighty one.

Thought Leadership/Influence: I make my unique talents more unusual and more impactful every year. I
build a body of work. I develop intellectual property that I share to help others use these skills. I am
willing to risk disapproval in sharing my unorthodox way of seeing the world.
◆ How to fearlessly create a powerful coaching conversation

Litvin’s client creation formula

Step 1. Connect

How much time did you spend building/creating relationships with people in the past thirty days?
Include things like phoning a colleague or old friend, networking events, dinners, parties, workshops,
lunches, meeting for coffee, etc. Do not include building an email list, working on a website, time on
Facebook, time on email, or writing a blog.

Do your research before even a first connection. Look them up on Google, LinkedIn and Facebook. Read
their blog, their website or their book.

Get into an attitude of service.

Bring a sense of humor.

Adopt a spirit of curiosity.

Just connect. Ask them how they are. Ask about their life, ask about their business, ask about their
relationships. Don’t get too intense if this is a first conversation, just be genuinely curious.

Ask what support they most need. Could you connect them with someone useful? Is there a book you
could send them that would be just right for their current challenge?

If they ask about you, tell them what you are up to.

If this is the first time you have spoken to this person do not be in a rush to move to the next step.
Building great relationships takes time. Be prepared to connect with this person many times over the
next few months (with a spirit of service) before the time is right to ask the next question.

Step 2. Invite

How many potential clients did you invite to experience a Powerful Coaching Conversation with you in
the past thirty days?

Even if you think you are speaking to a “dream client,” begin your question with the words, “Who do
you know...?” Then get real specific. For example, if you coach women entrepreneurs who have run at
least one successful business, you could say, “I have a space for one client right now and I only take on
new clients by referral from people I trust. So who do you know who is an entrepreneur with a proven
track record of success—but who is at this moment facing the challenge of transitioning to a new
business?”

Then PAUSE... Bite your tongue if you need to. Give them space to think for a moment. If you’ve
described their situation accurately, often the next words will be: “That’s me!”

“That’s me! How much do you charge?” If this is the response, resist the temptation to answer the
question. Instead say, “Actually, my coaching is tailor-made. And I don’t even know if you really need
long-term coaching right now. Instead let me block out two hours for you at a beautiful location, or even
over the phone. Experience powerful life-changing coaching. At the end of the two hours you might be
complete and not even need any more coaching. And if you’d like to know more at that point, and if it
feels like a fit to both of us, we’ll talk.”

Then pull out your calendar and agree on a date and venue there and then.

“You should speak to so-and-so...” If this is the response (instead of “that’s me!”), resist the temptation
to say, “Awesome! Give me her number, I’ll call her.” Instead slow down the conversation. Take your
time to ask the following questions: “Thanks so much for the referral. Tell me, why do you think she
would want coaching? Has she ever had coaching before? What’s her biggest gift? What’s her biggest
challenge right now? How do you think coaching will benefit her most? How do you think she will
respond if you tell her about coaching?”

If after all this it feels like a good fit, explain, “I want you to know that I never cold-call. But if you think
she would get value from spending time with me, I will block out two hours with her. And please tell her
that I am willing to do this as a gift, to her from you. Have her call or email me and say that she was
referred by you. Will you do that?”

Step 3. Create (Your Magic)

How many potential clients did you spend time with in a powerful coaching conversation in the past
thirty days? It only counts if you asked—and received—permission to coach them. Do not include time
coaching a friend, colleague or family member where you were having a chat that turned into coaching.
That is not the same as a powerful coaching experience.

This is where you get to do your magic. Show up powerfully. Dig deep to discover what they really, really
want. Hold nothing back. Give them the best coaching experience they have ever had. Look for what
they cannot see. And be bold enough to say to them what no one else will say.
Step 4. Propose (and Direct)

How much money did you make in Proposals in the past thirty days? A proposal is where you explicitly
say to a person, “It will cost $X to work with me for Y months.” It’s a proposal when you find out what
would be a Hell Yeah! for a potential client. It’s a proposal when you ask them: Hell Yeah! or No? It’s a
proposal when you say, “This is how you make your payment. We begin the moment you send the
money.”

Once again, don’t be in a rush. Making a proposal when you are creating a high-paying, high-performing
client can require a depth of experience and relationship-building between the two of you over a
significant period of time. I have seen this take over two years in some cases.

If you have got to the end of the coaching session and they have had a powerful insight or breakthrough,
sometimes the very best thing to do is to sit in absolute silence and wait for them to speak first. If you
have really rocked their world, this can last from five to thirty minutes. Say nothing.

If the silence has lasted long enough or they say, “Thank you” or “What next?” then you can say, “Would
you like to hear a little bit about what it could look like for us to work together?” Remember, you cannot
rush this. You are not selling a fifteen-dollar book; you are selling high-end coaching.

If they are ready to hear more, you can use The Litvin List above to craft a coaching program for them.
Pick around five of the items and then relate them specifically to their challenges or goals. For example,
“You want to transition smoothly to the role of CEO, so the first part of our work together will be to
remove the fears, doubts and insecurities that are holding you back. Secondly, we will craft powerful
goals that allow you to inspire and motivate your team. Next, we will review how you manage your
energy from day to day. And finally we will help you build ways to ensure your relationship with your
husband thrives in the midst of this new challenge. How does that sound to you? What else would we
need to add to make this exactly the coaching program you are looking for?”

If you are relatively new to enrolling high-end clients then you must decide on your numbers well before
this conversation begins. If you are experienced at this, you can make your numbers up on the spot,
based on the program you are willing to offer.

Here are some examples of ways to make a proposal:

“Your investment will be $55,000 for a year of coaching. You pay up front and there are no refunds.”

“It’s $30,000 to work with me for a year. But I am not offering that to you. Instead, I would like to create
a ninety-day program for you. It is an $8,000 investment. If at the end of this time we both wish to
continue, we will talk.”

“I charge $12,000 for six months of coaching. But that’s not what you need right now. Instead, let’s get
together for a full day. You will bring along your challenges and we will handle as many as we can in that
day-long session. It’s $1,500 for the day. And I will include a follow-up coaching session by phone, one
week later.”

Please, please, please practice saying your numbers out loud before the session. Say them to your
husband. Say them to your kids. Say them to yourself in the bathroom mirror. But practice saying them
out loud so much that they begin to roll off your tongue like your phone number.

When you have made your proposal, once again: slow down…

If they say they are in, challenge their “yes.” I know, it seems counterintuitive. But this is how you will
create the most committed clients on the planet. “Are you sure I am not rushing you? Do you need to
speak to your husband/wife first? This is an important decision; do you want to take some time to
reflect?”

Then, this is how you complete a powerful proposal. Tell them:

“This is what I require of you if you wish to work with me. You need to agree that you will never let fear
get in the way of you taking action. It’s OK to feel fear—that’s called being human. You just won’t let it
get in the way. You need to commit to being authentic with me and hiding nothing. And you need to
agree to make all payments as agreed, no exceptions.

“So let’s put a date on our calendar right now for when we speak next. That will become our first
coaching session once you have signed up.

“You are in once you send a check to me at this address… Or let me take your VISA card number.”

◆ Fear and excuses

Here’s how you handle some of the most common thoughts that stand in the way of succeeding as a
coach.

They can’t afford it.

You have no idea what they can afford. Stop making up stories. I have seen people say they can’t afford
coaching and then go on holiday for three weeks. Give them the best coaching experience they have
ever had and let them choose where they will invest their money.
I’m not worth that much.

Your “worth” is irrelevant. Coaching changes lives. And their dreams are priceless. Put all your attention
on the value they will get from coaching.

I don’t know how to set fees.

Pick a number. Raising your rates is the easiest thing in the world. For now, pick a number, preferably
two. And practice saying it out loud until it rolls off your tongue like your phone number.

I don’t know who to speak to.

Call an old friend. Call a colleague. Go to a social event. And put yourself in a service mindset. Give
instead of take.

I need a client.

If you can’t pay the rent you don’t need a client, you need a job. Forget coaching. Find a way to create
income immediately. You will never create high-end clients from a needy place. Once your basic
expenses are covered and you no longer ‘need’ a client you are in a perfect position to start coaching
again.

I can’t afford my own coach.

If you don’t believe enough in coaching to invest in your own coach, why would anyone ever invest in
you? Find a way to save what you need for the very best coach you can afford. Model what it takes to
your own clients.

I keep getting no’s.

Awesome! Play the NO game (see Appendix 5). But if you only ever get no’s, it either means your
coaching is not powerful enough or you are in too much of a rush. Creating high—paying clients cannot
be rushed.

I don’t know how to get into the corporate world.

Start with what you know. You have a background in accounting, law, marketing—then seek out the
people you know because you know their secret dreams and their secret fears better than anyone.

▪ Life really can be exponential. You are far closer to everything you want than you could ever
imagine. Miracles are far closer than you think.
Business Coaching - Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford (Highlight: 85; Note: 1)

───────────────

▪ You can also make a CD. Some people today simply don’t read books… they’re too impatient. But they
do get into their vehicles, so they are glad to pop your CD in and listen. Or they go to the health club and
put their head phones on. Any coach can make a great CD. You can, too! Make sure it’s not too scripted.
Make sure you’re not just reading. Have a few bullet points and ad lib and get loose and get excited
about what you’re saying. What are you going to put on your CD? Anything that excites you about
coaching. Ideally, you’ll tell some stories about yourself and about people you’ve helped and how. Don’t
make it too sales-oriented. Just share with the listener so that they want more of you.

Clients are as easy to find as you choose to make it. Why make it hard?

Most coaches already have a debilitating belief system in place that says: This is the hard part of the
business. But look at this email we just received from a coach we are now coaching. She had decided
that she wanted to get her coaching income up to $15,000 per month. (Could I do something like this on
Spotify "Why music artists should have a coach"? could help get more streams overall.)

▪ When we ask them to describe what they think is wrong all we hear about is other people. Other
people disappoint them. Or scare them. Then we hear about circumstance. The competition. The
economy. Their location.

We know right away why their life is not working. A life of expectation is a life of disappointment. A life
of trying to win the approval of others is a life of fear.

Our job as coaches is to restore the creative life. Because a creative life is a life of action and huge
energy for achieving large and small goals; it's a life of happy flow. It's never your life that's not working.
It's always just you. But that's the best news there could ever be.

A coach’s job is to get the client to see that and act on it.

▪ Even though our business approaches are different the thing we have in common is that we have each
generated millions of dollars from business coaching. Steve’s books have been used by other coaches
worldwide as lead-generators and coaching “textbooks” for the last 10 years.

▪ So a key success principle arose: it wasn’t good enough to just have the business information on “how
to” succeed. I had to increase my self-motivational skills and “want to” succeed. I had to want to do the
application every day. I had to embrace ongoing daily improvement.

And I had to value execution. I had to consciously execute the good ideas I was learning.

▪ Many people go to seminars and read books and get excited about the ideas they learn but fail to
execute. That’s their fatal mistake. So, when you see something in this book you like, highlight it, and
copy it into a separate notebook you label, “EXECUTION.” Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t leave
good ideas in your mind. Put them into execution. In your mind, they will rot away and be replaced by
guilt and regret. But when you put them into action they will give you results. It’s a cause-and-effect
universe, but you must be the cause. Decide today that you will be the cause of your huge success.
That’s half the battle right there. That one decision you make.

▪ Quite often the higher up a person is in a company, the less feedback he or she receives on their
performance. And the feedback they do receive is often suspect. People in their company all come to
them with an agenda, and they know it. As a coach, you have no agenda, so you can tell them the truth
and they love hearing straight talk. It’s a refreshing change for them.

▪ It is your committed relationship to each other that provides the most value in a coaching relationship.
It’s what your client is really

▪ paying for. The commitment that flows both ways. What do you charge for that? (Not enough.) What is
it really worth? (It’s priceless.)

▪ Don’t think for a minute that anything you have failed at disqualifies you for coaching others. On the
contrary!

Failure suggests that you flew into something unknown to you and got rudely rejected. Like Elvis was
rejected by the Grand Ole Opry who, at first, told him to give up this singing career because he was just
too weird for country. Elvis also failed early in his career to make an impact in Las Vegas. Vegas was used
to the glitzy rat pack crowd, and when he first went there Elvis was down and dirty rhythm and blues
and rockabilly. He “failed.”

One of the wonderful things about failing is that you can re-gather yourself, pick yourself up, dust
yourself off and proceed. Now you know more. Now you’re wiser and stronger. And now you are losing
your fear of failure because you know you can take it.

▪ Here’s the primary principle behind coaching success: You get what you give. That’s the key to your
wealth. In any endeavor. You receive back exactly the value you deliver outward.
Most coaches do not spend a very high percentage of their day delivering value outward. They spend
their day spinning their wheels doing all kinds of things that do not result in client acquisition. Because
no value is being delivered.

▪ If you want money, give it. If you want love, give it. If you want companionship. Give it. If you want
more energy, expend more energy. Whatever you give to the universe you get back.

▪ If you can give your client the kind of turn-around that brings him a financial breakthrough, your own
life will receive a financial breakthrough as a result.

Most coaches do not do that. They don’t give financial turn-arounds. They don’t know how. They give
advice. They give their time. They give hand-holding. They give emotional support. But they don’t deliver
a true turn-around to the small business they are coaching.

Even though that is their fastest route to success!

Can you see how valuable it is to know how to do this?

Even “life coaches” would boost their earnings if they would take the time to learn to do small business
transformations.

▪ What our work in coaching has taught us is that there are nine potential energy blockages that stand
between a business and prosperity. Free those blockages, and a business succeeds. Try it, and you will
see the truth of this.

When we first talk to a small business owner, our job is to listen for, probe for and let them reveal to us
those blockages. So we and our clients can get the blocks out on the table. We have called those blocks
“the nine lies.”

▪ Businesses fail because their internal system is flawed. They do not fail because of external
circumstances. All that is needed is for the inner workings of a business to be realigned with external
circumstance so that there is harmony.

Yet most businesses, eight out of 10, do not see that. They, instead, keep focusing on external
circumstances as the source of their problems: finding good employees, the cost of advertising, the
competition, the mystery of customer behavior, bad location, economic climate, etc. etc.
▪ Once you learn the system we use, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can help a client get on track
to success. Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs occur in the first sessions you have. (Which is why you
must learn to charge by the result and not by the hour.)

And sometimes the turn-around takes a longer time, but your client can feel the new direction from the
beginning.

Typically not all nine lies are being swallowed at once by your struggling client at the same time. When
we wrote The Small Business Millionaire, which was a composite story drawn from many success stories
we’d gathered over the years, we had our fictional business owner suffering from five of the nine lies.
And that was more than enough to put him in danger of going out of business. Sometimes the belief in
just one of these lies is enough to put you out of business.

▪ (If you believe that something not true is true, you are immediately crippled. Your ability to get from
point A to point B is gone! If you believe, for example, that a car engine runs on water, and you put
water in your gas tank, that belief will keep you from getting to grandmother’s house for dinner. The
truth is a necessary prerequisite to success. If a coach can come show you that it’s not true that cars run
on water, and that it is true that cars run on gasoline, then you can now get from point A to point B. The
truth will set you free. Always.)

▪ The ultimate secret of business coaching success is that you grow your business by growing your
clients’ businesses. Once you learn a reliable method to grow your clients’ businesses, your own worries
will be over. You’ll have a base coaching practice that is bringing in an easy six figure income, and your
only pressing question will be how soon do you want to escalate that income.

▪ Your potential is not serving you if it’s always thought of as being associated with your future. Bring it
home. Recognize its true nature: it’s in you now. When people see your potential, they are seeing
something that’s already in you. Otherwise they couldn’t see it. People can’t see into the future. But
they can see something in you.

Your true potential is not on some faraway star in a distant galaxy out there in the future. It’s right here.
Right now. You can use it today. You can read this book and get your coaching practice elevated to a
new prosperity today. As fast as you can coach someone else to turn it around, you can coach yourself
to do the same thing.
▪ "Coaches motivate people to action. They help them prioritize their projects and goals. They help them
plan their work and work their plan!”

-- Janet Switzer

The Success Principles

▪ Every owner of every company is flying blind without a coach. With no accountability and no one to
answer to, the boss is at sea without a paddle. Every boss needs a boss. Every mentor needs a mentor.
(Even one-person, home-based companies need someone to lead the leader.)

Without a coach, the boss soon allows his own (or her own) emotions to run the show. Fear and
euphoria whipsaw the boss’s mental state throughout the day.

▪ Even larger businesses, like Home Depot, are realizing the power (and necessity!) of coaching. Home
Depot’s CEO Bob Nardelli recently said, “I believe that without a coach, people will never reach their
maximum capabilities".

▪ “If you are playing to win, you will have a coach because the coach is there to help you win. This is one
of the problems we have in our culture. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s also a challenge. The beautiful thing
is we’re self-motivated, can-do, we say, “Yes, I can do it and I can do it myself.” But the way the world is
today, you can’t do it alone. You have a big vision, you have a desire to do something with your life that
is very meaningful and you can’t do it alone.”

-- Dave Buck

CEO, CoachVille

▪ Show them that you mean it

“Formal education will make you a living.

Self-education will make you a fortune.”

-- Jim Rohn
Rule number one in successful business coaching is to get yourself a coach. There are three good
reasons you will want to do this:

First Good Reason Your coach will help your coaching business expand, multiply and prosper. He (or
she) will be able to show you perspectives and opportunities you can’t see yourself because you’re too
close to the action. Tiger Woods has a coach. So does anyone who is passionate about great
performance.

Second Good Reason Your clients will be reassured that coaching is really the way to go. Knowing that
you yourself have a coach -- and use a coach -- will be the ultimate sales closer for you on the value of
coaching.

Third Good Reason By experiencing coaching first-hand on a regular basis your own coaching will get
better. You will have a role model. You will be a continuous apprentice, always learning and growing
(and charging growing fees to your clients accordingly). You will be doing your own continuous
improvement. You will be learning at the feet of a master.

▪ The fastest way to reach prosperity as a coach is to keep learning how to make your client prosper. We
have no interest in the kind of “life-coaching” that features a lot of handholding and ultimately
becoming “therapy lite.” Our passion is teaching clients to succeed in measurable ways. We like to move
numbers with our work.

The more confident you get that you can actually help small businesses turn their fortunes around and
succeed, the easier it is to elevate your fees and prosper yourself.

Our own system for success in helping clients succeed is to walk them through “the nine lies” and lead
them to the truth about the power of business.

The truth is, anyone can succeed in business. Anyone can turn a failing small business around. But your
job as a coach is not to just show them how to do that. Your job is to also show them that they already
know how they can do that. Your job is help your client find the truth for themselves so they own each
and every breakthrough.

Anything your client realizes for himself is going to be a lasting adjustment toward success. So you, as a
skillful coach, are there to lead them to self-realization: they do have the power to succeed.

▪ By walking your client through each lie like

▪ that and allowing the underlying small business truth to emerge, the client, with your guidance, finds
his own way out of the struggle and into the light.

▪ We have been coaching businesses and individuals for many years. We’ve not only coached businesses
but we’ve also coached individual professionals -- writers, other coaches, golf pros, public speakers,
therapists, seminar leaders, actors, CEOs, major account sales reps and many more varied careers where
prosperity was the objective. Where each person was a personal, individual version of a small business.

▪ In our coaching practices we have found that people are always (and every single time) their own
worst enemies. They hold themselves back with limiting beliefs about money, marketing, relationships,
success and business. We’ve called the most common and fatal of those limiting beliefs “the nine lies,”
and we wrote a book called 9 Lies That Are Holding Your Business Back… and The Truth That Will Set It
Free as a tool for people to use to save their businesses.

▪ When prospective clients read that book it wakes them up. Many times the book itself is enough to
drive a turn-around. If you go on Amazon and read the customer reviews of the book, you’ll see that
people are already doing that. Also true with the customer reviews for the fictional version, The Small
Business Millionaire. (Take a minute to read these reviews.)

But most of the time the book is just a start. Clients still need a living version of the book. (They need
you.)

▪ First of all, start your day in this realization: people are already seeking you. What you are seeking is
seeking you. People are yearning and longing for what you offer. They just don’t know you yet. What
you are seeking is seeking you!

Aldous Huxley said, “It’s not very difficult to persuade people to do what they’re already longing to do.”

So the challenge is one of communication and revelation. You must reveal to the right people who you
are and what you do, and to do this well it must be done in ways that don’t suggest any neediness on
your part. Neediness repels clients. The universe hates it. It’s a form of stalking, among the creepiest of
crimes.

One very easy way to attract clients to your practice is to use a book instead of a business card. If you
give someone your business card you are now like any other needy, greedy schmoozer networking for
business and inviting sales resistance in return. Look at the difference in your prospective client’s
expression when you hand her a book instead of a card.
Ideally, this is a book written by you! But it doesn’t have to be. It can be a book written by your friends
or mentors. Or it can be a book written by Tom Peters or Tracy Goss or Michael Gerber. Have it be a
book that you know about and believe in, and that relates to how you coach peopl

▪ We have initiated many a coaching relationship by simply sending someone the 9 Lies book or The
Small Business Millionaire and allowing them to already begin the revolution in thinking that will turn
their business around.

In fact, we wrote those books for precisely that purpose. We took all the coaching we had done over the
past few years - coaching that worked - and we simplified it and compressed it into readable lessons in
the books. People will read a book, start having breakthroughs, and want more.

▪ Answering a non-client’s email question can be easy. But you might want to take your time (as if it
were difficult.) You might want to pause and ask yourself, “What can I communicate here to this person
that will inspire an urban legend about me and my coaching and my love for my work and my
excitement about turning lives and businesses around?”

We have opportunities for growing our coaching business every day that we let slip through our fingers.
Phone calls to return. Emails to answer. Each one of those communications can move our coaching
business forward if we take that extra moment to create. Create rather than react. Create your story.
For everyone who communicates with you. The inward flow of business to your coaching practice will
amaze you.

▪ Then make the hard part easy

Now, let’s make the hard things easy. When we take on the difficult tasks as if they were easy, it makes
them more fun to get started on. With an easygoing mindset, we can just waltz right in. The hardest part
of a difficult task is starting it, because our thoughts have clustered into a negative, resistant story. Now
what stands between the task and us is our story about the task, dark and dreary. That’s why Baltasar
Gracian is brilliant in his formulation above. Difficult tasks are only difficult because of what we think
about them. Therefore, if we can treat the task ahead as easy, and enter the task in an easy way, we’ve
bypassed the thinking that was in the way and can get some early relaxed momentum going.
▪ The first thing you want to do is truly and deeply get (and we mean to really get this at the level of your
deepest soul) that referrals benefit the person referring and the person being referred more than they
benefit you.

Most people don’t get that. Most people don’t like to ask for referrals because they have slipped back
into that old mindset that says “I shouldn’t ask for something that leads to me getting money. It’s rude.
It might look greedy.” And that mindset will do more to forestall your coaching wealth than any other
single factor!

Before asking for the referral get your head on straight! Remind yourself (and the person you are asking)
of the great breakthroughs that coaching produces. Realize that you are about to help another human
being get their life together. You are offering to save someone who has lost his way. You are agreeing to
assist someone in becoming happy and prosperous. Why be shy about that?

Also remember to acknowledge, in a humble way, your own limited and very precious time. You have a
few openings left for the coming months, and would be willing to help a family member, business
associate or friend of your client if they have anyone they know of who can benefit from the work.
Believe us, they know of people! They already know of many people who would benefit from your work!

You just have to learn, through practice, to get comfortable with this subject and stop making it hard for
yourself to do.

Another aspect - widely neglected - of referral-gathering is how you treat the person who refers
someone to you after the referral. This is a major secret key to business coaching wealth so pay
attention:

If Mary refers John to you as a coaching client, and now you are coaching John, a very important catalyst
to more referrals is how Mary comes to feel about having referred John. You can give her good

▪ feelings about it or no feelings about it. It’s up to you. So how you thank her is important. And how
often you thank her is important. Your thank-you communication might include a very, very strong
declaration of commitment by you to treat John like absolute gold. Mary ought to hear a very sincere
and passionate commitment from you. This makes Mary feel very good that she referred John. When
John thanks you for a session, and when John experiences the breakthroughs that you deliver, make
sure you talk to him about Mary and how she played a big part in getting you together and how Mary’s
commitment to John is what led to this. At your prompting, John then thanks Mary again for putting the
two of you together. When John is happy about all of this, you have an easy opening to discuss referrals
and how you have grown your practice that way. John listens carefully and before you can even finish he
says, “I’ve got somebody for you. I’ve got someone who could really use this work.” You write that name
down and promise John that that person will be treated like gold. When you get home there’s a phone
message from Mary. Mary has another client for you.
If you will stay with this, and keep the referral conversations relaxed and alive, you will be amazed at
how fast your practice fills up.

▪ There are many ways to connect to other coaches. To be a truly great coach, always growing in your
skill you must get coaching. At the very least, get yourself a coach. Find a coach who is coaching
successfully and let him or her coach you.

Some people think that’s a sign of weakness. But it’s the opposite! It’s a sign of strength, because you
are putting excellence ahead of ego. You care more about feeding your family than feeding your ego.

You care more about being good than looking good.

▪ You can leverage the success of your clients into getting more clients! And you can use the success
stories of your clients to create more interest in your coaching. And that’s one thing I’ve done a lot of.

▪ In fact, that’s a principle you can use from this moment on. It will improve your client-attraction rate
tremendously: become good at telling your clients’ success stories. Those stories will sell your coaching
faster than any other communication you can think of.

Most coaches, when they have an opportunity to communicate, talk about the benefits of coaching and
roll out their own biographies. Those approaches are very weak, and often even off-putting. Especially
when you compare them to the absolutely mesmerizing power of a client success story.

▪ Always create a psychological end point!

I really believe in the usefulness of something I call the “psychological end point.” Most coaches we’ve
worked with don’t even begin to understand this concept.

But all people in life operate with psychological end points. They move from one end point to another,
subconsciously respecting them deeply, and basing a lot of decisions on them. For example, the reason
most relationships end in December and the reason that most people fire people or lay people off in
December is because December is a psychological end point in our society. The end of the year is when
something finishes.

In school, the psychological end point is June. Kids start slacking off and getting out of the mindset
around May because they know that school is almost done -- “We’re in the clear now!”
A lot of coaches never establish a psychological end point with their clients. I’m not talking about setting
goals with clients -- I’m talking about an actual time line. You have to put your client on a psychological
end point level where they are progressing toward a certain sense of completion. They don’t feel
finished until they get to x number point.

▪ That’s why it’s never powerful to be imprecise with your client. It weakens your possibility for
transformation when you say, “We’ll just keep this coaching thing going until you don’t want to do it
anymore. We’ll just keep it going. Is it still useful to you?” That’s a very weak conversation.

You have much more power to transform your client when she knows an end point is near and she’d
better get in gear if she wants to maximize this disappearing opportunity to work with you. (I realized
that the car giveaway was just one of an infinite number of ways to do this.) Even if you are coaching a
person one-on-one, you’ll want to learn and implement this now! You will want to generate your own
psychological end point so that the person knows that when your coaching program approaches its end,
there are a lot of things that you are going to see her accomplish by then. Watch, near the end your
client will start using the sessions more seriously.

▪ That’s why it’s never powerful to be imprecise with your client. It weakens your possibility for
transformation when you say, “We’ll just keep this coaching thing going until you don’t want to do it
anymore. We’ll just keep it going. Is it still useful to you?” That’s a very weak conversation.

You have much more power to transform your client when she knows an end point is near and she’d
better get in gear if she wants to maximize this disappearing opportunity to work with you. (I realized
that the car giveaway was just one of an infinite number of ways to do this.) Even if you are coaching a
person one-on-one, you’ll want to learn and implement this now! You will want to generate your own
psychological end point so that the person knows that when your coaching program approaches its end,
there are a lot of things that you are going to see her accomplish by then. Watch, near the end your
client will start using the sessions more seriously.

The other added benefit of the psychological end point is that it makes renewal more attractive and
precise. Once they face the coaching being over, clients will think “I just can’t face the fact that this is
ending, and I know the next session is our last so I’ve gone to the bank and I’ve got a little extra that I
found and I want to renew for a year.”

In 2003, I decided I would stand out from all other business coaching by offering my clients the chance
to win a car! Why not? (Never be afraid to innovate and be unusual. Your clients love that. They want
you to lead the way in unorthodox, out of the box thinking.) So one of my clients was going to win a car
by improving their business with the ideas I had given. I decided to give away a Volkswagen bug
convertible over an 18 month period to the business I coached that had made the most improvement
over that time. The final decision was done by a vote, all by clients, who voted on who was most
improved. The final candidates stood up in front of the crowd of people and told their before-and-after
story covering the 18 month period. The votes were then calculated and the car was given away.

And that giveaway did a few beneficial things. First of all, it motivated people to implement the ideas I
was teaching for business success (there are certain basic ideas that - when implemented - will almost
guarantee business success in the world of small business).

▪ People can have internal motivation from just wanting their business to succeed, but having that
extrinsic motivation of winning a car provided a real extra boost. I really believe people are hooked on
reality TV and they want to win things and they want to compete and want their lives to be exciting.
That’s one of the elements most missing in a small business: the game element and the excitement that
goes along with it.

So the car giveaway gave them that motivation but it also kept people focused on the contest and
focused on the objective for a whole 18 months, which is nice because a lot of people in coaching have
clients who start strong, but over a three, four, or five month period start fizzling out. The coach doesn’t
seem as exciting and all-knowing to them after that time. That car giveaway is an unusual example, and
most coaches won’t use anything like it. However! Don’t miss the point! Because you must do
something to eliminate that fizzle-out factor that hits all coaching relationships. I’m about to give you
the key insight to avoiding that factor:

When I was first doing my 18 month thing, I thought “Oh, oh, what’s going to happen? I’ll keep these
guys in for 18 months with the psychological end point but after that what’s going to happen?” But over
a three year period I have 70% of my original clients with me! That’s a really high figure (when you have
hundreds of coaching clients as I do). After six months to a year into the process, people realized that
the extrinsic motivator of the car wasn’t all that important. It wasn’t about the car. It was about
something much bigger than that. It was about them. It was about their improvement. It was about their
lives! I had so many people say, “You know I started competing for the car and after a while I realized,
hey wait a second what I got is so much important than a car because I saw that I can actually be
successful in my business and I have control over my life and I actually feel good about things for the
first time in a long time, so I’m approaching my business with the same excitement that I had when I
started! It feels like I’m starting a new company and I think that’s something that’s terrific.”

So the car giveaway created the power of the psychological end point for me. By saying this is an 18
month process, people knew this transformational thing was going to take 18 months, they couldn’t quit
on it sooner.
▪ n. Psychological end points give structure to the coaching experience. They create a higher level of
conscious participation from your client.

▪ One way I gave a boost to my own coaching practice was to create the art of the 15 minute session. A
lot of coaches will immediately think 15 minutes is not long enough. They think you need a lot more
time. But I’ve been doing 15 minute sessions for the last three years and getting very good results.

In some respects, they work even better! First of all, you have to be organized. And your client has to be
organized and prepared. You’re not going to be dealing with every question under the sun. But my belief
is that you don’t want to take that much time talking anyway. I mean, you want to get at least two or
three specific problems solved and you want to give them action steps they can take on those problems.
If you have too long a session, my belief is that the information gets diluted. I’m not saying don’t do long
sessions, but I think the information can get diluted and the session can wander around into places that
lead the client away from the breakthrough he had in his first 15 minutes. On the other hand, if you give
them two action items to do in a 15 minute session, they are going to remember those and they are
going to do those because those are simple priorities.

Fifteen minute coaching (and I’m not saying you have to do it, I’m just offering it as one of an almost
infinite list of options open to you to increase your business coaching wealth) is just like a four minute
mile. Before Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile, no one thought that you could run a mile in less
than four minutes -- it was physically impossible, (that’s what the doctors said). But once Roger
Bannister did it, people started doing it more and more and now it is commonplace to get under four
minutes.

The reason most coaches are afraid of 15 minute sessions, is because the only way they know to bill is
by the hour. They can’t with a straight face get over the internal dialogue of worry: “Oh, I have to give an
hour coaching session because how can I possibly charge someone enough if they don’t feel they are
getting enough time out of it.” They think of coaching in the same terms of a massage or some kind of
session that is based by the hour.

However, your wealth increases once you realize that successful people, or potentially-successful
people, actually like it when you save them time. Start training yourself to realize that there are a lot of

▪ people out there who actually love the thought that you might be able to get this done for them in less
time.

▪ Much of the value of coaching is the accountability. The knowing that you have a spotter, making sure
you lift the weights that are in your workout plan. It’s like the personal trainer story we tell in our 9 Lies
book. The trainer says to her client, “I’ll work out with you at the gym. You meet me there. It’s going to
be Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I’ll be there in person one of those days but I won’t tell you
ahead of time which one.”

If you had a car that was broken down and it was towed into the shop and the mechanic said, “We can
fix it in three hours or we can fix it in half an hour,” which would you prefer? You would want the car
back! You would want to get on the road.

Remember that time is the new money. But coaches think that thought backwards! They think time is
the new money and it’s all I can bill. I make money by selling my time so I should try and sell as much
time as possible! But that is actually a flaw in thinking that’s going to hold the coach back. You can’t sell
just time to a person, you

▪ have to sell the result. You have to be willing to be an unusual coach and not just bill by the hour. Your
key statement is, “I can get the transformation done in half the amount of time or a third the amount of
time!” Clients will know the value they are going to get from you. So you will retain clients longer if you
are on a less time-intensive plan.

If you are meeting for four hours a month, after a while it can become wearying, rather than inspiring, to
meet with you. Soon your client is saying, “Oh, I’ve done so much with this person.” Soon clients start
missing their sessions because they can’t imagine pulling a full hour out of their day.

Whereas with 15 minute sessions, or even the five minute accountability sessions, any client has time
for that. They can’t be too busy for that. They can be in their car driving home on their cell phone.
Here’s your client: “I did my check in! I’m feeling great!”

Most coaches will never do this. And that’s a real problem for them. They bill by the hour and they see
the immediate limit to their income! After they get busy in their coaching practice they think, “Boy do I
really want two more clients? When I think of all the time that takes?” And they can’t get it into their
heads that you’re better off billing by the transformation - billing by the result.

▪ The self-improvement movement is also growing at an unstoppable rate. People are becoming more
aware of their need and ability to set big life goals and get expert advice on how to reach them. The age
of the brainless worker is over. Humans are becoming businesses unto themselves, whether they want
to or not! Large corporations are falling apart and small businesses are blossoming all over the world.
That’s why there is such a growing need for coaching.

▪ Secret #1 You need to have an original magnetic lure that makes high-value clients call you.
▪ The best hook we know of is a book or audio product that by itself begins to solve their business
problems. Once they see solutions happening, they are hooked.

Remember this: people are always looking for a solution.

Several business coaches offer free copies of books like: Think and Grow Rich, The E-Myth, Reinventing
Yourself, Good to Great and other books that address specific business and personal success problems.
When the prospects read these books, they become hooked on the idea of further growth.

▪ Secret #2 You must reveal a radical “turn-around” concept to your potential clients.

▪ When you are the coach that reveals a turn-around concept to a business owner, you automatically
win their attention and desire to do business with you. Your concepts must be radical and eye-opening.
You can’t just cruise in with “It’s just common sense” and hope to impress your prospects. Successful
coaching is a process of turning around a client’s belief system. You are there to reveal surprising truths
that can be used as tools for turn-around.

The most important factor in this secret is the turn-around itself. Do you - right now - know how to turn
your client’s business around?

▪ Do you have a proven, systematic way to do that? Or are you just a good listener? An intuitive coach
who may try this and that?

There is no more powerful way to grow your business than to learn a specific transformative process. In
the book 9 Lies, you will learn our own process. You will see exactly the nine steps we take clients
through to transform their businesses. (You can check out the effectiveness of this process by applying it
to your own coaching business! Many coaches have!)
Your clients’ success is what ultimately guarantees yours. And there is nothing that serves a coach more
than a fundamental philosophy and process for turning a business around.

▪ Secret #3 Become affiliated with proven credibility to avoid the “guidance counselor” syndrome.

▪ The easiest way to avoid the guidance counselor syndrome is to be a well-known success yourself! And
the next easiest way is to be affiliated and partnered with that kind of success.

▪ The best way, in our opinion, is to become affiliated with a credible source without giving up your
independence. To have an affiliation that provides the credibility of an established coach or author, but
lets you operate and bill the way you want.

What you want is an affiliation that lets you have the upside of transferred credibility and recognition
without the downside of high costs and restrictive operation requirements.

When Steve began his coaching and training career he became affiliated with well-known corporate
motivator Dennis Deaton and Quma Learning Systems and immediately inherited clients like Texas
Instruments, Motorola, Intel, Bank of America and American Express. As an associate of Dr. Deaton’s,
Chandler had instant credibility and power to teach. It is this kind of affiliation we are both
recommending and offering. You can get it with us or with someone else, but whomever you affiliate
with will put you on a faster track to success.

▪ Secret #4 You need to be part of something bigger than you, and sell prospective clients on being part
of something bigger, too.

▪ One of the key breakthroughs I made in my coaching practice was when I decided to sell more than
just me. When I gave my coaching clients access to the ideas of other top experts and consultants in
addition to myself I was able to attract more clients. And more importantly, I began to differentiate
myself from other small-time coaches and thereby charge more!
I used people like Dan Kennedy, Julie Morgenstern, Michael Gerber, Steve Chandler and many more
well-known success experts who had national bestsellers and were already widely admired by my
coaching clients. (In fact, that’s how I met Steve… I brought him to my clients as a guest expert in self-
motivation.)

One of my favorite sayings is “No one of us in smarter than all of us.” These days because of technology
it is easy to be connected to a group of colleagues and associates in your field and tap into that synergy.

What if you could sit down with a potential client and not just offer them your advice, but, through you
and only you, you could give them the advice of other top authors and coaches as well? In the past that
would have been impossible, but with today’s advances in communications and the Internet it is easy.

Business is full of universal problems. Fortunately, it is also full of universal solutions. The limit to being
an independent coach is that none of us will live long enough to experience every possible situation and
solution.

As a coach it is important to be connected to other coaches for your own ideas and for ideas for your
clients.

If you were a personal fitness trainer wouldn’t it be easier to sell your training if clients got access to a
full gym membership as a bonus when they hired you?

That’s the type of perceived value you want to create in your coaching practice.

▪ There’s another huge advantage in being part of something bigger than yourself and connecting your
clients to something bigger than yourself.

Duplication!
One limitation of coaching is that you are basically trading hours for dollars. If the only service you offer
as a coach is your hourly service, then you are automatically and immediately capped at the amount of
income you can generate.

You don’t want that. You want your potential income to be unlimited.

When I figured out the principle of connecting my clients to a program bigger than just myself I was able
to accommodate 400 clients that pay $187 per month! That was my base level program that gives clients
15 minutes of private consulting time with me each month and other benefits of a group program. If I
was just selling personal time with me, there is no way I could have broken out of the trading hours for
dollars cap.

I also have a high level program with 24 spaces where clients pay $10,000 per year to be a part of a
higher level networking group and get face to face time with me.

Building a coaching practice that is bigger than just your personal input is a key that can even out your
income, help you retain clients longer and help your coaching business prosper.

In a nutshell, those are our four secrets to making a large income from your coaching practice while still
having a life.

▪ The body leads the mind. We think it’s always the other way around. That the mind leads the body
around like an old hound dog. That the mind has to talk the body out of bed every morning. Well, all
that’s true but one of the secrets to mindshifting is that you can do it the other way. The body can move
the mind into a higher gear. Like Robert’s did.

Like yours will today when you go for a long swim or a long walk or play that fast-paced game of
racquetball with your friend. Your mind will not (and can not) stay in the same gear after that.

You hold the key. You are in charge. You can choose any response to life you want. You are not a victim
of anything.
▪ “Without that focus, you’ll fail. And you won’t end up helping anyone. You’ll become less effective
because of your own lack of money. You have to turn that around. Because the more money you make,
the more power you have to help others.”

▪ Most people in business work against wealth. Just as most employees in companies work against
promotion. They fear and resent their employers and therefore they do not advance. Or if they do, it’s
painful and with a lot of reservations.

If they were able to take all that negative emotion out of their work and just work on in good, neutral
spirits, they would win big.

But emotion creeps in.

When the great novelist Jonathan Swift said, “A wise man should have money in his head, not in his
heart,” he was on to something.

Once you have making money as your primary thinking objective, your clients will benefit and your
practice will take off. Why? Because you are finally living the truth! You are finally in alignment with
reality. You know where to focus when you wake up.

Most coaches don’t know where to focus when they wake up. They don’t allow themselves to wake up
into thoughts of money. So they wake up into thinking obsessively about the day’s challenges and their
clients’ problems. Therefore they wake up into confusion about what their priorities ought to be.

There can be no confusion in coaching success!

Your priority today is to make money coaching.

It’s time to wake up.

▪ Once you start waking up to that, you adjust your day accordingly and soon your long-neglected
prospecting and referral programs are sailing along beautifully and you are adding business every week.

▪ Money is worth focusing on. Even as much as your health, because it becomes your access to all the
expanded choices that determine what level of health you can achieve! It becomes the main factor in
choosing where you’re going to live. It becomes the key to whether your kids are going to have access to
a better education or not.

It’s not that important to you, you say?

Pretending that money’s not important to you will harm your coaching practice and your life.

Money even influences whether you’re going to get to see family members or not. It also determines
whether you can help people who are in trouble, or just kind of uselessly watch things happen.

▪ So money - if you don’t have enough of it - soon becomes everything!

Creating wealth through coaching others will positively affect every area of your life. It will continuously
widen your choices. The kind of choices that only financial power will bring to you.

Therefore it makes the most sense to invest in the resources that will allow you to learn how to earn
more money.

▪ Contrary to the movies and the media, wealth is not all about luck. It’s about what you can provide for
the people you coach. Wealth is about what you know about. If you are willing to go to a seminar in how
to make a small business successful, for example, a seminar like Michael Gerber’s E-Myth seminar, that’s
an investment in you and your ability to turn your clients’ businesses around and make money for
yourself.

▪ “Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night,

and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

-- Sun Tzu

▪ There is a valuable shift that coaches can make in their minds when they want to do better selling
themselves in any free market encounter. Whether they are selling coaching on the Internet, group
coaching, phone coaching or one-on-one coaching, they do better when they shift their attention from
themselves to the recipient of the coaching. When they become solvers of other people’s problems.

Success comes from shifting your attention to the fun and exciting problem to be solved.

▪ I asked him, “Who do you want to help?”

“What do you mean?”

▪ “You will bypass a lot of these branding and marketing steps in your equation by asking yourself, Who
do I want to help? And then, Where are they now?”

“Oh my goodness. I’m just thinking of how I’m coming across.”

Exactly.

Wrong focus.

▪ Allen’s mind was frozen in the belief that he himself had to be impressive and credible and worthy.
That all focus would be on the approval he would be winning at any given time. Coaches make that
mistake because they believe they have to win approval to succeed.

There’s a better, faster way, and that is to compassionately engage yourself in solving someone’s
problem for them. That works better and faster, but you have to shatter that old belief like ice. Most of
this book is about shattering old beliefs and getting into pure, direct action. Knowing you’re good, and
going for it.

Knowing you’re good is vital. Most don’t go for that. They go for making other people believe they’re
good. Just know you’re good and jump on that problem and solve it.

▪ He wanted his relationship with me to be a victory for him rather than a partnership. He wanted the
struggle. I walked away because I did not want to feed his struggle. I didn’t want to feed his habit.

He was offended when I walked away.

Actually I might better have written that he “felt” offended rather than to say that he “was offended.”
Because you can’t really be offended by anyone, just as you can’t really be rejected. Those are feelings,
not realities. You can feel offended and feel rejected, but those feelings are caused by your own
thoughts. Your thoughts are the only things that can reject and offend you. No one else can.

Knowing that as you venture forth to offer your services as a coach is very valuable. It clears the
mechanism and keeps you focused on creative action at all times.

▪ Actually I might better have written that he “felt” offended rather than to say that he “was offended.”
Because you can’t really be offended by anyone, just as you can’t really be rejected. Those are feelings,
not realities. You can feel offended and feel rejected, but those feelings are caused by your own
thoughts. Your thoughts are the only things that can reject and offend you. No one else can.
▪ All you need to do to get your coaching business going is to engage in a few conversations. Talk to
people who have small businesses and ask them questions. Ask them what they are achieving now
versus what they would like to achieve. Ask them what’s in the way. Talk to them. Get them to see that
their limiting beliefs are usually what’s in the way, and as their coach, you will free that up for them.

▪ When you use a book like 9 Lies to help a business owner transform their business you will help them
see how they have been victimizing themselves. Your job as a coach will be to return them to true
“owner” status. When your client is a true owner, his business is like a racehorse. An owner buys a
racehorse, and trains and cares for the racehorse, and then derives great pleasure from seeing the
racehorse race and win.

Your work is to transform victims into owners. Victims are victims of almost everything, most especially
their self-victimizing thinking.

The victim has also bought a horse, but the victim straps himself to the underside of the horse (his
business) and then is taken for a terrifying ride.

The owner uses his business to obtain wealth. The victim is used by his business, in fact used up by his
business, leaving it at the end of the day worn out and wondering “What was I thinking getting into this
business? It’s such a drain.”

The owner takes full responsibility for his business’s success. Full responsibility! The victim blames
circumstance for the business’s struggles.

The owner lives from the inside out, going deep inside to connect with his or her goals and dreams each
day. The victim lives from the outside in, going to work and fighting off fires and solving outside
problems pressing in on him, as if the business employed him instead of the other way around.

Owners take ownership of their energy and creativity as it is applied to their business. Owners own their
businesses! Owners own their business numbers, while victims often don’t even want to see them.

▪ Most people who will be your clients have no real objectivity in their lives. No one to bounce ideas off
of. Oh, yes, there are people all around them, but those people all have an agenda. Those people all
have some emotional ties to that business owner. You do not. You are pure reason. You represent the
truth. That alone makes your fee worthwhile.

Then you add in a second factor: you can see the owner’s strengths and draw them out. You can get the
owner to stop focusing on problems and start focusing on the customer. Your fee is earned 10 times
over every time you get your client to shift his attention from what he doesn’t want to what he really
wants. You are in charge of his attention!
It will become amazing to you as a coach that your client can increase whatever she wants in her life if
she only remembers to pay attention. She "pays" attention because she "invests" it.

▪ Anything you pay attention to expands. It grows. Pay attention to your house plants and they grow. Pay
attention to your favorite sport, and your passion for that sport grows. Attention is like that. Anywhere
you point it, the object of that attention grows.

When you have your initial conversations with your client or prospect, you will notice that their
attention is fastened on problems and obstacles. Your work will be easy. Shift that attention to the goal.
Shift it to the customer.

▪ As we say in the 9 Lies book, your prospect can stop being a victim and take ownership at any moment.
It is a miracle when it happens (a miracle we observe every day), but it is not all that difficult. It does not
require new traits and characteristics on the part of the owner, because it is a choice. The owner-victim
distinction lives at the level of

▪ Anyone can live like a victim, and anyone can live like an owner, it’s just a matter of the questions you
ask. We all live inside one inquiry or another. Is your inquiry there by choice? Or has it chosen you?
What questions do you want to be asking yourself? Those questions will determine whether you are
working in your business or on it. The inquiry you live inside is what determines your behavior.

▪ An owner asks these questions: “What can I do? How can I use this circumstance to my advantage?
How can I differentiate myself in the customer’s eyes? What’s something creative and exciting I can do
this week to get my people and my customers talking? What value can I add that would allow a price
increase and that the customer would really appreciate? What steps can I take to really grow this thing?
What outcome would I like to produce this month? What would be a creative and exciting way to get
that result? How can I help my people? How can I help my customer more?”

▪ When your prospect started his business he was living a dream. If you coach him to remember to
remain an owner, you will honor that dream every day. He will see his business growth as a form of lucid
dreaming. Each day he will use his and your imagination to craft more progress.

Owners dream all day long and turn each dream into an action plan.
▪ Owners seize the moment.

▪ while owners are focused on the next quantum leaps of success. (In small business life, what you focus
on grows.)

The owner does all these good things NOW. Now is when it all happens. And if it can’t literally happen
now, an owner sets precise deadlines. Sets the deadlines NOW. He or she sets the deadlines NOW, so
that they are still in the NOW. Deadlines soon become the owner’s best friend. Victims are victims of
their own cynicism. They bring a negative, fatalistic “What are you gonna do?” approach to work every
day and it becomes fatal to their business.

▪ Here are some points to keep in mind while coaching:

* People can take ownership of their own spirit and morale, or they can choose to think they are victims,
the choice is an internal one.

* Studies show that optimistic, ownership thoughts and communication lead to higher levels of
creativity and productivity.

▪ * Studies show that increases in ownership and optimistic thoughts and communication lead to higher
levels of physical and mental energy.

* Studies show that habitual victimized thoughts and language lead to low moods, decreased physical
and mental energy, and lower levels of creativity and productivity.

* Choosing to take ownership of how we respond to a situation or another person is the fundamental
internal choice of all people with free will.

* We are free to think anything we want about anything. It is our fundamental freedom. We are free to
think victim thoughts or the thoughts of ownership. The choice is always ours.
The joy of coaching comes when you restore your client to ownership and phase out all the victim
thinking.

Listen for language in those first conversations:

Owner Victim

You can count on it I will try

I’ll take the first small action This is so big

What can I do? Who can I blame?

We They

How can I use this? Why does this always happen?

I want to (intend to) I should

I use life Life uses me (life is unfair)

▪ Get from Get through

Commitment=decision Commitment=feeling (comes and goes)

I don’t need a reason to be happy People, places & things make me happy

If there’s a problem, I’m the problem There shouldn’t be problems

Who do I need to be right now? Why am I the way I am?

I’m focused I am swamped

Take the test... who are you?

Owner: “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

Victim: “We’ll see what happens.”

Owner: “How may I serve?”

Victim: “What would I get back?”

Owner: “I’m committed to making a difference.”

Victim: “What difference would it make?”

Here’s why coaching is such a lucrative profession. It was summed up years ago by the great sales
trainer Zig Ziglar, “You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they
want.”