PUT ME IN COACH!- PART 2

TOP 10 REASONS TO HIRE A BUSINESS COACH- PART 2

In last week’s episode, I went over the first 5 reasons somebody might consider hiring a coach so, in this episode I’ll wrap up the last 5 of the top 10. As I mentioned in the last episode, there are way more than 10, which is why I called this episode ‘Top 10 Reasons’, and not ‘the only reasons’ you might want to hire a coach. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, I recommend that you do, of course, although you can listen to this episode before that one and still get a ton of value from the information. We got a bunch of feedback, by the way, on this episode, almost all of it positive. As is almost always the case, there are some folks whose glasses are half empty all the time and will never find anything good or positive in anything they do in life. The appraiser world is absolutely filled with those kinds of individuals which is one of the reasons guys like me do what we do. I own and run a killer appraisal firm doing stuff in our market that almost nobody even considers doing because their minds are simply closed and, as I have said countless times on this show, those are the ones to watch out for, not just in whatever industry or industries you may work in, but in life as well.

Alright! With a little mind training out of the way, lets get into the sixth reason to hire a good coach! The sixth reason to hire a good coach, not just any coach, but a good coach is the zero BS factor. A good coach simply wont put up with your bullshit. Plain and simple. I could stop right here and go to number seven but I want to explain a little bit. We all have patterns. We just got done talking about patterns and our own limitations and the way those typically manifest is by spewing bull shit. We make excuses why we cant start until tomorrow, why we’re too fat, too short, too skinny, not strong enough, not smart enough, born under the wrong star, or whatever other bullshit story we tell ourselves, and the world, about why we cant. A good coach says, in essence, ‘Ef You! Get over yourself! This is a no bullshit allowed zone so if you want to spew, you get 60 seconds to dump all your BS excuses and then we’re done with that phase of the call. After that, you never get to use those excuses again!’ And again, when you’re paying to be told that, you’re much more likely to listen and eliminate the negative thinking patterns or limiting thoughts than if, say, your husband or wife were to tell you the same thing. The coach is objective and has no vested interest in whether you change or not, accept to the degree that the coach values their record of success. We all care about our coaching students and members. We all value our record of helping people earn tons of money, start new ventures, save tons of money, find their core purpose, and all of the other things good coaches help with. We all want every single student to experience success and receive whatever each coach may claim to help provide, like a 5X return on investment in our case. However, as I’ve also said, the coach isnt you and its not to the coaches job to do the work for you. The coach can only provide insight, suggestions, guidance, ideas, accountability, and maybe even some revelations about you that you weren’t even aware of. You have to do the work to get a return. If you’re not ready to have your BS thrown back at you, don’t hire a coach. While I was going through marriage counseling many years ago my wife at the time chose this particular therapist based on a referral. It was a man, which I was totally cool with since I figured he’d be more likely to be on my side, and I wanted to see if it was going to help. We weren’t 20 minutes into the first session when the therapist said to me, ‘how long have you been such an asshole?’ Needless to say, I was shocked, but in an almost comical way. I thought it was hilarious that this guy would say this to me because, up to that point, I had been the one telling others they were being assholes. I wasn’t offended, however, I was almost immediately enamored with the process because I knew in that very instant that that was the kind of therapist I needed or I’d run right over them. I ended up going to that guy for a couple years on my own, almost as a coach instead of a therapist because there was no way he was going to keep my marriage together, and I did so because he would call me on my bullshit whenever he sensed it. I couldn’t hide and that was immensely valuable for me at that time. Now I have some other good coaches that are the same way. A good coach calls you on your bullshit.

The seventh reason to hire a good coach is, quite simply, to figure out what’s next! There are many of you out there who have done quite well, and have done it more or less on your own. I won’t say they did it completely on their own because the ones who have built really nice businesses are usually big readers, Podcast listeners, and learners so they have had, in a sense, coaches along the way, just maybe not a direct coach they were in contact with on a regular basis. They learn by osmosis and by constantly growing through the information they take in during their studies. Nevertheless, even the ones who have seemingly ‘figured it out’ will, quite often, hit a point in their growth where they simply stop and say, ‘what next?’ ‘I don’t know what to do or where to go from here!’ This happens at all levels, by the way, not just the big and fairly successful ones. This can happen, and often does, in the one person shop where they max out on capacity and don’t know how to handle it all and keep up. In fact, we see this all the time in some of the questions in the online forums and social media groups. Somebody will pop in and say, ‘I’m struggling here! One person shop, maxed out, slammed busy, no software like Spark or Datamaster to help me with input, what do I do?!!’ This is the classic ‘what’s next’ situation. This is where a good coach can play a really valuable role. And maybe you don’t even need a coach on a long term basis. Maybe you just need a few calls with somebody really good at asking you the right questions that will help uncover your motivations, what you truly want to be doing, what you’re good at and not good at, and then offer some guidance on how to get you moving in the direction you’re best suited to, as well as some tactical advice on fixing problems, increasing efficiency, or whatever else somebody like that may need. It really doesn’t matter the level of income, the level of revenue, the number of letters after their name, everybody should have a good coach. It’s simply how we keep growing in life and business. Understand that many of us have had coaches all along the way in life. We have had parents and family guiding us, we may have had older siblings that give us advice, we have had friends who slip in and out of the coaching role at times in our lives, we’ve had actual coaches for athletics, many of whom act as far more than athletic coaches for the young men and women under their guidance (I mean that in the most positive way, not they creepy ‘taking advantage of’ way), and a whole host of others throughout our lives that have acted as a life or business coach without you even knowing it. The problem is that those people can only take you so far because of the relationship. They may be biased, and more importantly, you may be biased based on the relationship that person has with you. The information and advice gets filtered based on the relationship. Its at that point that an unbiased and experienced coach can bring tremendous value to help move you to the next level in your journey…if you’ll allow it. A good coach can help you figure out whats next, and it may not be anything that you initially imagined it was going to be!

The eight reason to hire a good coach, and this is a huge one, is to expedite your progress! Expedite means to speed something up and make it happen sooner. When you hire a good coach you are making the decision to expedite the process of growth, profitability, reduced stress, maybe weight loss or strength gains, or whatever it is you are hiring that coach for. In some cases, you are hiring that specific coach because they have accomplished what you seek to accomplish, or something similar. You are paying to stand on the shoulders of the coach, so to speak, and avoid all of the traps, pitfalls, struggles, and roadblocks that they may have faced on their own journey. A good coach, in that instance, is potentially saving you years of struggle, untold amounts of money, untold and an incalculable amount of stress, and more rapidly getting you to where you seek to be. Its in those cases where the math is almost impossible to calculate and the coach is likely not getting paid anywhere near what their services are worth. When you think about a year or 10 of struggle and what it cost you in terms of life energy lost, the cost of the struggle, the cost of failure in some cases, the cost of lost relationships that could have been saved or even avoided. Its simply incalculable because you cant put a dollar figure on stress, anxiety, and relationships. If you could save even a year of time with the guidance of a good coach, that alone could be worth tens of thousands of dollars, if not much more, and an untold amount of grief, pain, and suffering saved in the process. So many people struggle through things on their own, and they never considered hiring somebody, even for a period of time, to walk them through difficult periods and places in life and they don’t consider it because they think about the cost. If a good coach costs $500, or $1000, or $5000 per month, or maybe they charge $100 or $200 an hour to chat, most will look only at that and think, ‘too rich for my blood!’, without doing the calculation of what their struggles have already cost them and what continuing on in the same fashion is costing them. We see this all the time where an appraiser or an agent is struggling with growing or getting past a certain point in their business. They may be complaining to co-workers, or even complete strangers, about their inability to handle their current business or grow to the next level or to solve some specific problem and they’ll look high and low for all the free advice they can get and, do you know what they do with it? ZERO, ZILCH, NADA! They do nothing with the advice because its free! I don’t know why people even respond to those types of questions anymore on social media! Nobody does anything with the advice because its free folks! As I mentioned in a previous point, until you start investing in yourself, you wont take any action because action is optional! Once you hire somebody and your own money is on the line, most will do everything in their power to get a return on that investment which means they’ll take action and follow the guidance of the coach. A good coach can literally save you years in struggling to do what they’ve already done. They can help you shave off 10 years of pain and suffering, in some cases, not to mention untold amounts of wasted money in the process. You hire a good coach to expedite the process and speed up the path you’re on. We have lots of very experienced appraisers in our coaching program. Almost all of the members we work with have years of experience and have reached high levels of success. They hire us to take them to the next level. The ones I’d love to see more of are the newly licensed appraisers, the ones who absolutely need it the most! The ones who could, not only save tens of thousands of dollars in struggle on the way up, they could literally rapidly advance their incomes as a result of hiring a good coach that can help steer them in the right direction. You hire a good coach to expedite the process my friends!

The ninth reason to hire a good coach is tracking and measuring. Now, not all coaching programs will include a tracking and measuring component but, in my opinion, this is one of the most valuable pieces in a good business coaching program. Its absolutely required in a health and wellness coaching program or a sport specific or athletic coaching program, so why not in a business coaching program? When you hire a good coach for your life or business, you are hopefully hiring somebody that can teach you all of the metrics the need to be analyzed, measured, and then tracked in order to reveal to you the all important numbers and important variables in your growth. If it’s an athletic trainer, you’re going to be measuring calories in and out, body mass index, energy output, recovery time, VO2 mins and max, your starting weight, your one rep max for a variety of life and activities, and a bunch of other things. Without those numbers and metrics, you simply don’t know what to do, how to do do it properly, what not to do, and whether or not you are on plan from day to day, week to week. A good business coach is going to help you figure out the most valuable metrics within your business and then how to track and measure them on the regular. Without those, you’re just drifting. By the way, there are lots of appraisers and agents out there who are busy. Many of you think that busy equates to good. It doesn’t. Busy equates to busy, that’s it. Its says nothing about whether you’re busy because you’re inefficient, busy because you work too slow, busy because you don’t have help, busy with $7 an hour shit, it says nothing other than you’re busy. Busy doesn’t tell us about profit and loss, about cost of service provided, gross and net per order, time on each file, what your expenses are etcetera. I’ve worked with a bunch of appraisers who were busier than they could ever imagine and churning big numbers! When I say big, I mean numbers bigger than almost every one of you has or will even see in your business. High six and seven figure businesses. And some of them making as much, or less, than somebody doing a fraction of what they are producing but doing it more efficiently and profitably. As I’ve said in previous episodes, you may find that you’re much better off producing $300,000 per year and netting 50% of that than producing $600,000 but only netting 20%. Not only are you netting more in the first example, you are likely dealing with considerably less stress, less people, less overhead, fewer deadlines, and on the list goes. You don’t know that until somebody holds you accountable to the tracking and measuring task within every single business, and shows you what is important to track and measure! A good coach will help you define and refine what it is you should be tracking and measuring and then hold you accountable to those metrics. The act of which will make you considerably more profitable and, I dare say, make your business more enjoyable. An important point in this category is that the cost of hiring a coach is almost always recovered and then some in this category alone. That doesn’t include any increases in business, higher fees, better business gained, more life gained, becoming the authority in your market, or any other benefits gained by hiring a coach. The reason one of my coaches costs $3500 per month is because the students in that program are increasing their incomes by hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of the tracking and measuring of their activities each and every month. The fact that somebody is holding them accountable to prospecting, networking, follow up, thank you cards, letters from the heart, monthly happy hours, and several other things that get tracked, is the sole reason people pay what they pay and, more importantly, earn what they earn! If you want to go to the next level of business, life, and profitability, you absolutely need to be tracking and measuring the key metrics in both. A good coach will show you what those are, how to measure them, and then hold you accountable to doing the tracking and measuring.

The tenth, but certainly not the final reason to hire a good coach, is that a good coach will have the ability to see potential where you may not. I say this one with a bit of hesitation because not all coaches are trained or good at this part of the coaching process. The good ones are and that’s why I’ve been using the words ‘good coach’ to clarify what I mean. A good coach is also a good leader and good leaders help bring out the best in those who follow their leadership. A good coach, just like a good leader, often cares more about the success and safety of the student than their own success. Good coaches have the ability to ask the right questions, listen deeply to your answers, see through your bullshit, and get to the core of who you really are. From there they can generally see potential that you are likely unaware of or, in many cases, have simply repressed and pushed down out of some kind of fear. A good coach helps you move past that fear, realize your true strengths, and release that hidden potential. Again, not all coaches have this ability and you wouldn’t necessarily hire all coaches for this purpose. However, even if you aren’t seeking that from the coach you hire, be open to any suggestions or revelations that may come through in your coaching sessions because a good coach will point out things about yourself that could be very valuable aspects of your personality, your experience, you goals, dreams, and desires, and your true strengths. A good athletic coach sees potential in everybody and that often defines the difference between good coaching and mediocre coaching in sports. Good coaches see latent and untapped potential in players and athletes. They see people who may have been placed in a position on a team for one reason, only to move them to a completely different position and reveal a superstar in that position. We see professional athletes all the time that are average on one team and superstars on the team they’ve been traded to. This often comes down to the coaching and the ability of the rest of the team to work together in their best roles. In essence, a good coach helps unleash the best you possible to be in the best role possible to help you live the best life and run the best business possible. Having been an Aikido instructor who took on the role of guiding a multitude of live-in students through multi year journeys of growth and discovery, I know the value that a good, caring individual can be bring to somebody’s life and business, especially when that person sees potential where the individual doesn’t. Some of the students who went through that program stated at as meek, extremely unconfident individuals with low self esteem and little physical talent. Several of them run very successful martial arts businesses today leading their own leadership programs and coaching others in the same way. Several of them have gone on to start other businesses and do things nobody would have ever thought possible had they met these people even five years prior. It wasn’t because of me that they are successful, they always had the ability in them. They just needed somebody to recognize it, believe in them, give them some personal tools, some things to track and measure, some guidance, some key mindset guidance and training, and then an opportunity to practice leadership. It’s a formula that works every time. Of course, the main component, the student, determines the ultimate outcome because a good coach can only help reveal and guide a student but, as I’ve said many times through this episode, its up to the student to apply and test the suggestions. The reason those live in students did exponentially better than that average student came down to two primary things: the number of hours they trained as live-in students versus a student who only trains an hour or two per week, and the fact that they were paying exponentially more to be a live in student under my constant guidance which made them much more open to the guidance I was offering. A good coach can see potential where you don’t.

There it is my friends, the top 10 reasons you may just want to hire a coach! In no particular order of importance and certainly not an exhaustive list! Just 10 really good reasons to do so. Now, as I said in the last episode, and many times prior to that, I didn’t start coaching people because I thought they needed to be coached. I started a coaching company because I, too, am coached and have had some of the best coaches a human being could possibly ever ask for, and I didn’t even realize it at the time. I was extremely fortunate to have a father who was an entrepreneur and one of my first coaches, both in life and in business. I then had my Aikido and Zen teacher, Mr. Toyoda, as one of the hardest life and business coaches one could ever imagine having. From there I found myself attracting a variety of coaches into my life and it has never stopped! My first mentor was one of the greatest life and business coaches I could have ever asked for, and in fact, I didn’t. I simply went to work for him and then partnered with him. However, he was such a huge thinker and expanded my mind in so many different ways that I couldn’t help but see him a coach. I know have a few different life and business coaches and one of the key factors in choosing these people is in how big they think. When you come across a big thinker and somebody who has actually ‘done it’, you know that they’ve removed all of the rocks in their box that would have held them down in that regard. They may have other rocks in their box that need excavating, but most of those people have coaches in their lives helping them do just that. Hiring a coach is an investment, my friends. Its one of the greatest investments one can make in themselves because the tools, the lessons, the insights, the rock removal, the vision, and all of the other things a good coach can bring to your life and business are yours to keep. Once those rocks are removed, its up to you to keep them out of your box and then fill it with more tools and parts to build bigger and better bridges or steps to get you to the next levels. Its an investment in your ‘today’, but an even bigger investment in your ‘tomorrow’.

If you have questions about coaching and whether or not its right for you, I have put the contact information for 3 of the best coaches the appraisal industry has to offer in the show notes of this episode. There’s my good friend and fellow coach and podcaster, the Appraiser Coach, Dustin Harris. All of his contact info is there. There is my other good friend and fellow coach, Roy Meyer. All of his contact info is there. And, of course, if you’d like to chat and see if our programs are right for you, you can reach out to us at realvaluegroup.com/coaching, or call us at the number you’ll find there. We’ll chat with you and answer all of your questions, as will Dustin and Roy. Not every coach is right for every person, and every person is not right for every coach and coaching program. That’s why I recommend you check out everybody to see where the best fit exists. You may find that you want to look outside of the industry for a good coach. I fully support any and all efforts to propel yourself higher in that regard. Thank you all for being part of this journey with me and, until next week my friends, I’m out…