A little under a year ago, Jonathan Wiggins decided to reinvent himself from an education administrator to a “business guru.” He locked himself away in his house doing a cook’s pantry inventory on all the skills needed, and thought long and hard about how to build a brand in this new arena. He looked at every website he could find on coaching, as well as every book he could lay his hands on. According to Jonathan, “That’s when I stumbled upon Robert Hargrove’s book, Masterful Coaching, which stood out from the crowd.”

Drawing an analogy he said, “If you take a taxi in New York and go with the best driver, and your friend goes with the second best driver, you might get there faster by a margin of 2 to 1. If you go to a gourmet pizza place, and then buy a frozen pizza, the gourmet pizza might taste better by a ratio of 2 to 1. Now, if you are starting a coaching business and you read Masterful Coaching versus anything else out there, the ratio is more like 25 to 1. Robert’s book is 25 times better, which is a big reason why I’ve been so successful.”

Jonathan took an introductory course on coaching and then realized he needed to have a coaching mentor to help get his new company off the ground. According to Jonathan, “I decided to call Robert Hargrove thinking that, if I wanted to accelerate my learning curve, why not study with a master at the same time as I built my business.”

He added, “I also liked what Robert said about master level coaches both making a difference and making money, and I wanted to learn both.” Jonathan began a weekly coach mentoring call with me, where he began to sharpen his skills, both as a coach and marketing maestro, which he seemed to have a natural aptitude for.

Where the vast majority of professional coaching programs are focused on “life coaching” or “leadership coaching” (based on corporate homogenized leadership competency lists), our coaching mentor program focuses specifically on “business coaching” measured by a dramatic increase in profitable revenue. We coach people on my Blueprint to a Billion, the 10 Multipliers of High Growth Companies to accomplish this. Of course accelerated leadership development goes hand in hand with this.

One of the things I shared with Jonathan was the 7 Breakthrough Strategies for building a coaching business that just about any coach or consultant can use. I had developed these strategies with a partner in Ottawa, Canada, Eric Deschamps of BreakthroughCoach, who himself has been highly successful in creating a thriving coaching business.

The 7 Breakthrough Strategies start with a brand differentiator, a website, e book, social media, which Eric had so masterfully used to create his own new clients. The key to creating a successful coaching business isn’t doing one of the breakthrough strategies exceptionally well; it is checking all seven boxes, which creates a synergistic effect that generates tremendous momentum.

For several months Jonathan faithfully applied the strategies to his own business and his business began to grow.  In one week in May of 2012, Jonathan added four new clients, taking his monthly revenue from $9k a month to $15k. “If I can become a successful business coach using these strategies,” Jonathan said to one candidate for the coach mentoring program, referring to his background in education, “I believe any professional can.”

Our Coach Mentoring program is ideal for people who may have taken a course that introduced them to the world of professional coaching, but who want to go to the next level, by apprenticing with a master in real time, with real clients.

I believe that the combination of offering professional coaches the skills needed to achieve both leadership and tangible business breakthroughs (that can be measured by economic performance) with the ability to build a successful coaching business in less than a year represents a breakthrough value proposition available nowhere else on the planet.

You can give me a call at 617-953-5252 to find out if a mentoring relationship, matched with what you already know about coaching, might bring a new power and velocity to your coaching business.

Thanks Chris for your question about coaching certification programs. Let me use a metaphor to answer you.

Imagine you went to a master level golf, tennis, or ski workshop for a week. How much information could you absorb in that amount of time that would result in you actually being able to play better? That’s what most of these coaching certification programs are like.

You might consider my Masterful Coaching Coach-Mentoring program which is similar to an apprenticeship with a master level person. Study a little, work a little with real clients until you move up the experience curve and eventually become a master yourself.

My very personalized coach program can be done for six months to a year (a year is advisable if you can afford it).

The Coach Mentoring Relationship involves:
1) Learning the Masterful Coaching Method as you practice with a real client or two
2) Building a successful coaching business that is earning you good money
3) Gaining insight into what you do that works or doesn’t work as a coach, as well as what’s missing that will make a difference

Some of the specific things you will learn are:
•  How to create more than enough paying clients by applying 7 critical success strategies
•  Creating a powerful partnership with your client where you become indispensable
•  Guiding clients to create a “Greater Goal” that will naturally accelerate leadership development
•  Coaching clients to build a high performance team
•  Doing 360 feedback interviews that produce an alteration, not just an assessment

How the coach mentorship program works is that you talk with me every week at a specific time for $1500 per month, or every other week for a cost of $750 per month.

It’s done one-to-one with me over Skype, so you don’t have to spend money on travel. It would be a great thing for you to do, if you can afford it.

Best of luck, Robert Hargrove

* * * * * *

Hello Ethan, that’s a real nice story about going to the library and reading my book Making Life Work and all. My other book Masterful Coaching 3rd edition would be a big help to you in getting an orientation toward coaching.

Real Business Experience I would advise, if you are a young guy, to spend a few years getting some real business experience where you are helping others build a company. It would also be helpful to take some kind of personal transformation or communication course, as this will help in transforming others. Another route could be a PhD or Masters in Psychology which would give you credibility.

Find a Niche Don’t just hang up your shingle and have it say COACH. Do find a small niche where you can be successful as a coach and where you leverage your passions, talents, and interests. Today, everybody and his dog is a leadership or business coach, and because of the competition, struggle for money.

Sell “Aspirins” Also, most coaches are selling “vitamins.” To be successful, you have to sell “aspirins” – you need to find the pain! Just look at the guy Cesar, the “dog whisperer.” He coaches people when their dogs have bad behavior and has no competition. He has tons of clients, a TV show, books and so on.

Certification Most of the coaching certification programs are not going to help you professionally at all. People just want to be able to say that some group has certified them. If that’s important to you, take an ICF certification program.

Getting Clients There are two ways to get clients, both are valuable. First, if you want to be successful, you need to be sales oriented in coaching. At the same time, if you get some clients and they like you, they will tell other people.

Best of Luck, Robert

This has resulted, not just in tremendous personal torment for all involved, but also in hard earned fortunes being cut in half. Busy executives also wind up making custody arrangements that permanently alter their relationship with the kids.

If you are thinking about the possibility of divorce, step back from your emotions and think again. Sure there are some marriages that have gone past the tipping point and divorce is in order, but a surprisingly high number of marriages can be saved.

My work as an executive counselor has led me to help many couples avoid soul searing, gut wrenching, family destroying breakups. A lot of clients tell me that they would like to try counseling, but can’t get their husband or wife to join.

Let me emphasize that it’s okay for just one of you to come for an initial consultation (or two or three) if that’s an issue. Why? Because long work in this field has taught me that it only takes one person to initiate a turnaround in a relationship.

A good counselor listens to your concerns and helps you shift your perspective so you can act with more emotional intelligence. Isn’t it at least worth a try?

Coaching is simply about engaging people, regardless of their station in life, in a conversation where they open up to you and start talking about dreams and aspirations that, if achieved, would make them immeasurably happy. For example, “I want to become CEO and transform the company,” or “I want to quit my job and become a football coach.”

It is also about getting people to open up and start talking about Gordian Knots (problems with no obvious answers) that are making them unhappy. For example, “I am married with two kids, I have just had an affair with someone in the company and she is pregnant. What do I do?”

As I often say, coaching happens in conversations. These conversations are more often than not about engaging people in thought provoking questions, versus telling them the answer.

Here are four good questions to ask yourself (or others) that, if you are willing to be a bit patient, can take people beyond answers and lead them to moments of true insight.

1) What would be an impossible dream or aspiration, that if you achieved it, would make you truly happy?

2) Who do you need to be and what do you need to do to achieve it?

3) What problem (Gordian Knot) is making you unhappy?

4) How are you looking at the Gordian Knot now? How do you need to look at it differently?

The entrepreneur has made $5 to $15 million yearly for the past fifteen years, but believe it or not, was in a cash flow crunch.

This fellow’s business has done brilliantly in the past, but the whole business environment and market has changed so radically that he can no longer afford to be who he has always been, or get the old business model to produce the kind of income it previously did.

Fred, a brilliant, marvelous guy, acknowledged that he felt like a Volkswagen with a Ferrari under the hood who was stuck in ten inches of mud. It was hard for him to break the grip of his old way of being and old paradigm.

I had been talking to the Jack weekly for several months now about the fact that, if he wanted to get different business results than he was currently getting, he had do to what Jeff Bezos of Amazon says: Be different, Do different.

I said, “Look Fred, you have the power to shift your way of being and to shift your business model.”

He said he felt reminded of the book Who Moved My Cheese. Another words, what worked before for him, no longer did.

Yet it was tempting to go right back to the same spot, looking for that cheese, even if it was no longer there.

He started to acknowledge that, as smart as he was, he was going after the wrong target market and wrong business.

He said, “I feel like I am swimming around in a puddle which is a larvae pool looking for dolphins where all there are there are mosquitoes.”

We started to build out a new leadership development plan, as well as a well-crafted new business strategy which he was very excited about.

At that point, I thought he might say “Well, Robert, I see what I have to do now and I don’t need coaching anymore.”

I preempted, “Fred, let’s get serious. Can you count on yourself to not go back to the old Fred? To not go back to your winning business strategy, especially after it was previously so successful?”

He replied, “Clearly not. It’s just too easy to fall back on my old winning strategy, especially if I can find a new deal or two and generate some cash flow.”

I told Jack, “Coaching is intervening. Let me give you a graphic image which will serve as metaphor to explain…

Imagine you are in the back yard of your wonderful house. Over there, sitting around a table, shaded by a beautiful Swiss umbrella, is a group of people who fit your old target market, old value proposition, and old business model.

You could go over there and schmooze with them for a while and maybe pick up a customer or two that would give you enough cash to last half a month.

Now, beyond the table is a beautiful kidney shaped swimming pool, and at the bottom of the pool is a photograph of the new you, as well as a waterproof chest with your new strategic business plan in it, along with some other tools.

It’s tempting isn’t it to just go back and be the old you and do the old thing, even though you know that, if you do, you are going to get lost and most likely give up on the new you and your new thing.

The idea of going over to the swimming pool and doing a deep dive into unknown waters to retrieve your picture and the small chest can be a little scary, even if you know it’s the right thing to do.

Coaching is intervening.

My job as your coach, when you start walking over to that table with a smile on your face to introduce yourself to the new prospects who represent your old target market and business model, is to intervene.

I am going to say, softly, but firmly, understanding what it demands of someone to make a change, “No…no…no. Jack, don’t go there. Let’s go over to the swimming pool and take a deep dive.”

I admit, I don’t see half the things that happen on the field that a true football intellectual would see, but I do have an eye for what makes a successful organization. It may sound cliché, but it comes down to individual and collective character, versus mere talent. (Everyone at this level has talent.)

There were several things that impressed me in the pre-game and post-game interviews.

First of all, Bob Kraft, who played a huge role in preventing a football strike this year due to the fact that he has the wisdom of Solomon, was asked about how he felt about going to the Super Bowl. Again Kraft, who is a nice Jewish man, the kind of guy you would want your daughter to marry, responded by not saying a word about football.

He started talking about his beloved wife Myra who he lost to cancer this year, and whose initials were sewn into the Jersey of every Patriots player. He said he believed in spiritual things very much, put his hand on his heart and the raised it up to God, “She is helping us,” he said, “from the other side.” (Myra was known in NE for her tremendous charitable work.)

Kraft then recounted how Tom Brady, his future Hall of Fame quarterback, had come up to him one day when he first arrived looking like a long, skinny string bean and said, “Hello Mr. Kraft. You probably don’t know who I am.” Kraft replied, “Yes I do. You’re Tom Brady, our 6th round draft pick.” (Brady was 200 overall in the draft.) Brady said, “That’s right and drafting me is going to be the best decision you’ve ever made.”

Kraft reflected, “Maybe it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” Kraft said, “but hiring Bill Belichick (the coach) was also one of my best decisions.” Brady and Belichick have had more playoff victories (17) than any other coach/quarterback combination in history. Kraft went on to acknowledge many other people in the organization who made a difference, even though you may not even know their names.

Later, after the gut wrenching game was over, with NE coming out on top 23 to 20, the trophy for the AFC Championship was handed to Mr. Kraft by former Pats’ quarterback Drew Bledsoe (the number one draft pick that Brady replaced). I was impressed by the fact that Bledsoe said to Kraft, “Hello Buddy” (no rancor) and then proceeded to give him a kiss on the cheek. Kraft asked for another kiss on the other cheek. He then talked about how proud he was of this team and everyone in the New England Patriots organization, including the fans who are part of a big family.

The camera then cut to Bill Belichick (usually deadpan serious 24/7), who was smiling happily like a little boy who just got a new train set. Asked what led to the Patriot’s victory in light of the fact that Tom Brady didn’t make one touchdown pass, he proclaimed, “Playing as a team.” He said, “We talk in the locker room about mental toughness. Mental toughness is giving your best to the team, when things aren’t going that well for you personally.” Wow, I thought.

Tom Brady, when interviewed, was asked about how he felt going to the Super Bowl again. You could see from Brady’s expression that he wasn’t happy at all. He said, “I feel good for the team, but I have to say that I really sucked today.” While Brady didn’t throw a touchdown pass, it was his goal line jump for a touchdown over the opposing line, bending his back into a weird banana shape that was enough to win the game. One fan said the next day, “he could have broken his back.”

Finally, Vince Wilfork, the Patriots’ all pro tackle, who sacked opposing quarterback Joe Flacco and stuffed opposing rushers seven times in the game, came onto the interview platform. He was asked if he felt amazed when the Baltimore Ravens’ field goal kicker choked on a 20 yard field goal which could have tied the game with seconds left. He answered with a shy smile, “yes.” Then Wilfork’s face took on a serious demeanor, showing respect for the kicker, “It’s a lot of pressure for someone in that situation, a lot of pressure. And it’s a painful way to lose a game.”

Wilfork, a mountain of a man, then proceeded to walk out of the locker room at an incredibly slow pace. He had given everything and more that day. There was nothing left in the tank. And that’s why I say, while it takes talent to be a great organization, it takes something else that at the end of the day may be the deciding factor…CHARACTER.

I have been reflecting lately on how much of the coaching work I do with business leaders is about helping people climb the ladder to becoming CEO and achieving stellar levels of compensation. This is all well and good, but there is a discrepancy between this and the heart of Masterful Coaching, which is about helping leaders do something to make a difference in their worlds.

This point of view is expressed well in the title of my latest book: Your First Hundred Days, (and I would like to emphasis the subtitle) Powerful First Steps on the Path to Greatness. This isn’t just about getting to the top by climbing over a pile of bodies and winning. It is about taking responsibility for throbbing human needs and wants and making a contribution. I would challenge leaders who are reading this blog to expand yourselves to include this dimension. I believe this is what being successful in politics, business, education, and medicine is all about.

It’s my belief that every human being was born to be great…wants to be great…not average or mediocre. When people are not great, I see three reasons: 1) no one has ever encouraged them to find greatness in their lives; 2) they don’t know what greatness looks like for them or how to get there; or 3) they haven’t had enough of an experience of operating in a stratospheric place.

The first step is to change your personal ideology from defining success in in terms of making a living to defining success in terms of making a difference. Your life is meant to be lived in the most meaningful way you can. This means in business parlance that you not only have to have a game changing strategy, product, and service that has an impact on life, but you also deploy it effectively into the market. If you don’t do this, you are stealing from yourself, your family, and all the people whose lives you could be enriching.

Steve Jobs was the best entrepreneur of our generation, leading a revolution no matter what he was doing—computers, iPods, iPhones, films, and so on. His life is a testimony to the fact that it is possible, if you have a commitment to building insanely great products and services, you can both make a difference and make money too. If he can do it, you can too.

The key to your success is going to be determined by how strategic you are, how you use your time to execute, and how you connect to other people. There are five philosophical pillars that every business leader should keep in mind.

1)    Personal Ideology. Why take a path to mediocrity when you and your company could take a path to greatness? You have the power to make, not just mediocre, but truly great products. You have the ability to not just sell people something that solves the problem in front of their noses, but also to transform theirs and their family’s lives for years to come, if not generations.

2)    Define an Impossible Future in Service of a Cause. In many ways, being great and making a difference is about helping people realize a goal or aspiration they didn’t know they had. Rattan Tata of Tata Motors realized that, given rising needs and aspirations, there was a huge car market for a car under $3000. With the introduction of the Nano, people who drove motor scooters in India and who were frequently getting in body-maiming accidents have been now able to purchase and drive a car. Tata now owns 17% of the car market in India.

3)    Strategy Innovation. To be great, you need to be strategic with respect to all the other “me too” competitors in your industry. If you do, your results will go from arithmetic to geometric. Most business people don’t have a game-changing strategy. They are absolutely tactical. Even if they have a game changing strategy, they don’t consistently deploy tactics that advance the strategy. Match your strategy to your cause, and implement tactics that support it.

4)    Marketing. Marketing isn’t about putting one over on people; it’s about educating the customer with messages about their aspirations and needs, and your company’s commitment to guide them to achieve that. Whether you are selling a college education, dream house, or smart phone, it’s the ability to provide people a vision that allows them to project forward where they can imagine having what you offer. It’s the ability to get them to trust you at an absolutely unquestioned level.

5)    Social Networking, Relational Capital, and Distribution. If the products and services you offer really do make a difference in people’s lives, it will be talked about over social networks. This gives you relational capital with all kinds of people and opens up relationships and distribution channels that were previously closed to you. In closing, a soon-to-be-famous entrepreneurial business leader once caught JP Morgan on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The entrepreneur said, “I have a great business idea, but I need capital.” JP Morgan said, “Ok, I like your idea. Just walk back and forth across the floor of the Stock Exchange with me four times, and when people see you with me and that I am interested in you, you will get all the capital you want.”

Yesterday, I visited a blockbuster exhibit at the MFA (Boston art museum) called “Degas and the Nude”. The gloves, or in this case, the tutus of Degas’ ballerinas are off at the new exhibit. Degas and the Nude reveals a more candid, dramatic theme: the beauty of unguarded moments.

The exhibit shows Degas to be a kind of voyeur who abandons the classical form of putting women on a pedestal in a drawing room in favor of catching them unguarded in their own time and setting, whether it’s a prostitute engaged in shockingly carnal acts or a women just stepping out of an ordinary bath.

I have always thought that one of the things that made me a natural as a coach was my own voyeuristic tendencies, which after long practice, allow me to catch people in unguarded moments, whether in a museum, coffee shop, or train, and gain insight into their souls.

I took a break after an hour from the almost exhaustive exhibit and had a coffee and corn muffin down the street at the Northeastern University Au Bon Pain coffee shop, where my instincts as a professional people watcher were immediately set on edge. I was struck, and indeed captivated, to see the utter indolence of the students, slumped in their chairs like over-ripe bananas, gazing into their smart phones like crystal balls, talking on Skype, nary a one studying.

I thought to myself that, for every young person sitting here just “hanging out,” there is a poor, fifty-year-old bastard slogging away at a soul stultifying job somewhere to come up with the $35,000 tuition so their kid can go to college, and have a shot at the American Dream. I suspected that little did they know about their kid’s lack of passion or purpose about the whole experience.

There was one young Chinese woman who stood out from the crowd, because she had such a purposeful demeanor. She sat straight up in a deep state of concentration, furiously taking notes from a book. She had come to America, perhaps from a poor family, to get a degree from a good school, find a good job, and to create a better life for herself and her parents.

Sitting at a table next to me were three female students, who sat chatting as they sent texts on their iPhones (another entitlement from their moms and dads). One of the girls, who was very well padded, got up and said, “I think I will go to the gym now.”

Even though the Korean economy is down right now, everyone seemed to be hustling about with “places to go and people to see,” whereas many Americans seemed to be hunkered down and glaciated.

I spoke to a friend the other day who went on and on complaining about Obama and the bad economy. “We need an election,” the friend said. His comment seemed to typify so many American people I meet who are using Obama and the economy as a lame excuse.

My repy, “We don’t need an election, we need passion and hustle.” Do you really think that the morning after the 2012 election that the economy is going to kick into high gear, and our dysfunctional government in Washington is suddenly going to start to work?

There is an old quotation I came across years ago from George Bernard Shaw, “If circumstances have knocked you down, get up and create the circumstances that you want.”