Your job is one that often involves long hours and great pressure. If your performance isn’t up to par, your business suffers. The stakes are high and there often aren’t quite enough hours in the day to get everything done. Or perhaps you’ve been at it so long that your energy runs out before the day does. Whichever situation you find yourself in, you can’t quite see the forest because you’re surrounded by trees. It’s next to impossible for you to see yourself and your situation from a bigger perspective because you’re just too close to the situation. Does your situation have to stay such a struggle or is there an easier way forward?
L-R: Alison Rothwell, Charles Ogwyn, Christine Gallagher. The three of us were featured on the Client Attraction Success Panel at the Trump International Resort in Miami Florida on September 26, 2011. Not shown are our marketing and mindset mentors – Fabienne Fredrickson and Derek Fredrickson.
A coach brings a bigger perspective to your situation. The coach’s perspective is not only the result of seeing your situation from a fresh vantage point but also based on the coach’s personal experience with similar situations and also with helping other businesses through the same issues. The result is that this fresh perspective and additional experience help you over the obstacles you’re currently facing and enable you to improve your performance.
Ease and grace
From birth I was hard-wired for entrepreneurship. As a small child I sold clover flowers and home-made clay artifacts in my neighborhood. In high school I had several employees in my candy sales business. As a freshman in college I sold refurbished bicycles. Later, as a marketing major in college, I started a web design business. Over 7 years I grew my business to the 6 figure mark. Success didn’t come easily. Instead it involved a lot of long days and long nights. As a result, I began to experience burn-out and started falling out of love with my business. There came a point where I put the business that I built into good hands and then I walked away from it.
Seven years later I returned to my entrepreneurial roots, but this time I did things differently – I began working with a highly successful coach. I had come to realize that just as a professional golfer relies on a coach to help him play a better game, I, too, would need a coach if I wanted to play a bigger and better game than before. And the results… Let’s just say that within six months of launching a new business, the results have been spectacular. In fact I was just featured on a success panel at the Trump International Resort in Miami, Florida, with two of my coaches and a handful of other high-performance entrepreneurs. Sharing the stage with my coaches and speaking to an audience of 1400 people was a great honor, but the best is still ahead.
To do over again
As I look back on my years in business and the lessons I’ve learned along the way, if I had to do it all over again, I would have started working with a coach from the very beginning. Having the right coach in your corner shaves years off of the learning curve and allows you to compress years of learning and results into just months. However, this was and is a very big commitment. When I chose self-employment right out of college, I wasn’t in a position to make this level of commitment. You have to work with what you have, not what you wish you had.
Working with what you have
Working with a private coach is a big commitment and frankly very few are able to make that type of commitment. A commitment to learning from others is the key to growing faster and easier than is possible on your own. Shorten your learning curve by learning from others who are ahead of where you are now. If you’re just starting out in business, develop the habit of reading great books (or listening to the audio version) on business development. You’ll be surprised at the difference that this makes in your business. Then, when you’re ready for big growth without all the stress and struggle, start working with a private coach. This investment in yourself and your success is one of the very best investments that you will ever make.
