ARE YOU EVEN COACHABLE?

TOP REASONS TO HIRE A BUSINESS OR LIFE COACH!

As you can probably imagine, being a coaching company, in addition to running an appraisal firm, as well as some other businesses, we get inquiries fairly frequently about our coaching services and those inquiries, most of the time, lead to some kind of phone call or zoom call so we can get to know each other a bit better. Its during those calls that we will have a fairly common conversation that goes something like, “so tell me about you and your business”, “tell me about some of your struggles and challenges”, “talk to me about what you’d hope to achieve by working with us?”, and so on. We get to learn about you, you get to learn about me, we talk about how coaching works, some expectations for both sides, and there are usually some fairly common questions from the person on the other end of the call for me. These questions are so common, in fact, that we made them into an FAQ on our coaching website so that people perusing our site can have those questions answered during their research, and also maybe give them some insight into questions they should ask, but didn’t think to. So, with this episode, I’m going to go over the top questions I get from people thinking about hiring me as their coach.

Let’s jump right into question number one: why should I hire a coach? Of course, this is the first, and maybe most important question, the answer to which lays the foundation for pretty much every other question. Why would or should you hire a coach? I’ll tell you, by the way, this is the type of question people generally ask themselves during the research phase of the process. They don’t always ask me this one because, if they’re talking with me at this point, they’ve already thought about the reasons to hire a coach. They typically know at this point that they probably need a coach. However, whenever somebody does ask me this question on one of our calls, I’m generally listening for one of two words: the word ‘a’, as in, ‘why do you think I might need to hire ‘a’ coach?’, or ‘you’, as in, ‘why should I hire ‘you’ as a coach. Of course, the answer might be the same for both questions, but they could also be vastly different. If somebody asks me why they should hire me as their coach, I will typically try to push them off by saying, “well I’m not so sure you should hire me as your coach. I don’t know you well enough yet and I’m not sure if I’ll even accept you as a student. We might not be the right fit for each other, you may not be willing to do the work I suggest, and you might be more work than I’m willing to put in. It really all comes down to you in this situation.” And I truly feel that way. Most good coaches are not out on a hunt to wrangle up a bunch of coaching students that aren’t going to be good candidates for coaching. Most good coaches let potential students come to them based on something they heard, maybe the content the coach puts out to the world, maybe social proof (you know somebody who has been helped by the coach, etcetera. If somebody asked you why they should use your appraisal or real estate company and you could launch into a barrage of reasons why you think you’re the best. However, in my opinion, I’d rather start coaching right in that moment, and putting the ball back in that person’s court is the first coaching lesson. Instead of me telling you why you should hire me, how about you answer the more vital question, which is ‘why are you seeking a coach?’

Before you even set out on a journey to find the right coach for you, you’ll need to answer this question for yourself. “Why should I hire a coach?” Well, first and foremost, good coaches will help you get clarity on what you want. If you think you need to have this clarity before you hire a coach, let me put you at ease, you don’t. You just have to know that you could be doing better, faster and then let the coaching process help you get clarity. Of course, you might be looking for some kind of specific help in a specific area, and so you seek out a particular kind of coach. As an appraiser, you may be looking to be the best appraiser you can possibly be so you seek out a USPAP coach, or a con-ed teacher type of coach. You want very specific information and guidance in a very narrow area and there are coaches out there who do that very thing. If you want a specialist, the generalist wont do in that situation. However, in general, a good business coach is going to help you get very clear on the who, the what, the where, the when, and the why of it all. Clarity and perspective is the name of the game when it comes to the why of hiring a good coach. You might even be really good at goal setting, but you may still need a good coach to go through those with you to figure out if those are the right goals for you! I cant tell you how many times our coaching students find themselves changing their initial goals based on the clarity we help them achieve through the questioning process. There are few things worse than wasting your time on goals and plans that don’t match with your values and your vision. A good coach will help you get clarity on exactly what your values are, what your vision is, which goals and plans match those, how to marshal the most resources around those goals, and how to stay on a path. The reasons to hire a coach are numerous and should be based on the outcomes you’re seeking, so my recommendation is to think this question through first, decide what you’d ultimately like to gain from the coaching experience, and then start researching and interviewing potential coaches.

Now, if the word clarity doesn’t resonate with you, meaning its just not something you feel you need, then the other big reason to hire a coach is to cut the timeline drastically between what you want to achieve and actually achieving it. Why do we read non-fiction books? Why would you pick up a book written by, say, Steve Jobs? Well, most likely because you want to pick up some bits of wisdom that he might drop which will cut off some of the time it takes for you to achieve something. We’re hoping to have a revelation based on the years they struggled, invested, had wins and losses, and ultimately came out on top. For the cost of a $20 book, we can stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and see further than they could when they were trying to achieve something. Because of their toil, their journey, their dollars, and their investment of their time, not ours, we get to learn what maybe to avoid, which direction to head, what the best use of our time and resources might be. You read a book and cut off 3 years from a process because of the tips you picked up. What was the value of that saved time? Was it double the $20 you spent on the book? No, it was likely tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars saved, not to mention life energy saved.

Paul Tudor Jones is a multi-billionaire investment manager. He pays Tony Robbins $1 million per year to be his coach. Why? Presumably because Tony helps him get clarity on his decisions that will ultimately save him hundreds of times what he might lose if he makes the wrong decision because his mental state is clouded. He pays for the perspective, the clarity, the guidance, the advice, and the personal growth. His $1,000,000 investment has earned him, and saved him, billions, as well as helped him live a higher quality life. For him it’s well worth the money. Paul Tudor Jones is very clear on why he has a coach. Oprah Winfrey has a coach. Billionaire CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt has a coach and famously said, everyone needs a coach! Leonard DiCaprio has a coach. Hugh Jackman has a coach. I’m in the Eric Schmidt camp in that I truly believe everyone needs a coach. Does everyone need a business coach? Absolutely not! There are a variety of roles a good coach can play for you, and my experience as a life coach, a martial arts coach, a business coach, and a wealth coach, is that a good coach plays different roles for you based on where you are in that moment. I’m often hired as a business coach to help somebody with very specific goals, only to find myself helping the business owner work through some limited thinking issues, some issues with anxiety or depression, or some relationship issues that don’t seem to have anything to do with their business. However, as all of you can relate at some level, if you’re having issues in your key relationships your business is going to suffer.

So, the first reason to hire a coach, a mentor, an advisor, if you will, is for clarity, massive time savings, specific help in a specific area, to avoid life’s and business potholes, accountability, help in creating a bigger vision, help with perspective, and maybe even help with some very real life issues. The next question we get most often is, “should my coach be from the same industry as the one I’m in?” This is an excellent question with an easy answer: yes and no. lets deal with the ‘yes’ first. A good coach from within your industry will know what your daily struggles are. They’ll know what the daily minutiae requires. They’ll typically have some very specific advice for avoiding the potholes you’re likely to step in because they’ve been there. I’m a coach and advisor in several different industries because I built businesses in all of those industries. I know the techniques and tactics that work best in each of those. The goals and activities of a real estate appraiser will be different than the goals and activities we have a real estate agent working on. There is, of course, some cross-over, but some different activities as well. If I’m advising a martial arts school I’m working on some very specific things regarding their marketing, their time management, their class schedules, their teaching plans, their teacher training plans, and so forth. When I’m working with appraisal companies we’re also working on marketing plans, time management, and daily schedules, but we’re also working on the best ways to structure an office, the use of assistants, managing their finances, their appraisal fees, and growth plans specific to that industry. So, yes, it can definitely help to hire somebody within your specific industry if you feel their past successes can help you in the area you’d like to be better in.

Now let’s deal with the ‘no’ answer. The vast majority of issues most companies and business owners deal with are not industry specific. I hear this quite often from almost every industry, “our industry is different, its unique, it special, people outside of it wouldn’t understand what we deal with!” This, my friends, is simply not true. Somebody looking from the outside in to the appraisal world may need a little primer on USPAP, collateral underwriter, and AMCs, and some of the other specifics of the industry. However, do you think the appraisal world is the first to use middlemen? Absolutely not! Do you think the appraisal world is the first to have to deal with technology changing their business model? Absolutely not! Do you think the appraisal world is the only one that deals with a big, fat multi hundred page guide of ethics, principles, and practices? Get real! None of those things take that much of an explanation for a good coach to get a sense of what is needed in a business. When Jolene and I started dating I immediately began learning about the salon and spa industry. I started learning about the key numbers that run that business, the key issues facing it, the key influences and pressures it faces, and the biggest issues. A one hour conversation and an appraiser business coach is now a salon and spa business coach. How? Because almost all of the issues, influences, and pressures are human being related. Yes, it helps to learn the key financial drivers of that business, but then it always comes down to clarity, goals, management, human interactions, compressing your time and using it wisely, increasing your dollars per hour, utilizing assistants to do the low dollar tasks, awesome customer and client service, writing thank you cards, relationship management, managing inventory, utilizing technology, marketing, etcetera. Does your coach or advisor need to be from your industry? Absolutely not. My guess is that Roy Meyer can coach a whole slew of industries like a pro. I know Dustin Harris could coach dozens of different industries like an absolute pro because he understands business, he understands KPIs, he understands human nature, and whatever he needs to learn to be more knowledgeable on that industry he can learn in a few hours. Tony Robbins is not a billionaire investment company owner, yet he quite effectively coaches one of the wealthiest owners of that kind of company and has for many years. Don’t limit your search to only coaches and advisors in your specific industry since the right coach for you may exist outside of the industry.

The next question we often get is, ‘how do I choose a coach or advisor that’s right for me?’ These are people who have recognized the need, they know they want to grow faster and further than they believe they could on their own, and now they’re ready to hire an advisor. The advice I give on this one is the same advice I gave for 25 years running my martial arts and leadership academies. People would call, email, or stop into the school and inquire about classes and teachers. Instead of trying to sign them up right away, all of our staff was trained to say the same thing: “we recommend that you research a variety of the schools in our area offering the martial art you think you’d like to study. Stop in and watch a class or 3. Meet with the instructor and have a chat. Get a feel for how things work in each school, how each instructor teaches, and the overall feeling you get while sitting in each school. We know that we’re not necessarily the right school for everyone, and not everyone is right for our school. You’ll have a much better idea, and feel much better about your choice after seeing and feeling out all of your options.” Now, this flies in the face of traditional marketing in that industry. In that industry, the traditional thinking is to get them signed up at least for a free trial right away, get them into a uniform, get them on the floor or the mat as quickly as possible, and work them to sign a contract as soon as possible. While this may be the way to build a business with good cash flow, maybe even a decently profitable one, that method disregards human nature. It’s human nature to wonder what else is available. If somebody comes to you in that business without having checked out other options, the odds increase drastically that they’ll be a short term student. Instead, when you encourage them to do some research, visit other schools, and get a feeling, you’re actually teaching them their first lesson right then and there. You’re demonstrating, in that moment, just how much you care about the student more than your bottom line. You’re demonstrating high value. You’re letting them know that you only want them as a student if they feel you’re right for them.

As it turns out, the average turnover in a martial arts school is around 40-50% within a 3 to 6 month period. That means the average school loses around 50% of their students every 6 months. Can you imagine losing half of your clients every six months? That’s the average, which is made up of lots of stats, of course. We weren’t in the business for stats or averages. We understood the lifetime value of a student who was in the right place for them. Our average turnover was 10-12% per year. And, maybe even more valuable of a statistic, our students stayed with us, on average for 4 years or more. We had several black belts who were with us from when I opened my own school in 1994, until I sold the school to those students in 2015. And that came as a result of making sure that the right people were in the right place. I wanted students who would beat the averages. I wanted people to double opt in, knowing full well that kind of student would be more committed and likely stay longer with us. So, I could have a school where we sign everybody up, but they only stay for 6 months. Or, I could push people to do more research and have them come back to us more committed than ever because we gave them the right advice, and then keep them for 1 to 30 years. The advice is the same for somebody looking for an advisor or a coach. Do some research, check several out, get a feel for how they do things, see if it fits what you’re looking for and what you need, and then take action! We have potential coaching clients reach out to us and we tell them what we do and how we do it. We also tell them to call Dustin, Call Roy, and check out some other coaches that may not be industry specific. Sometimes they choose us, sometimes not. And that tells me its working exactly as its supposed to.

The next question to answer, and this one is tied in some way to the question of, ‘should your coach be from the industry’, and its, ‘should my coach be more successful than me to be a good coach’. This answer is multi-faceted because the definition of success is different for everyone. Do you mean more successfully financially? Do you mean they’ve built a bigger business than you? What is your definition of the word ‘successful’? Once you’ve answered that question, you then have to answer why you think that might matter for you, and for some it really matters and I get it! Ive had a variety of coaches over the decades and almost all of them were more successful than me in some area, although maybe not more successful in other areas. Some of them were more successful in their relationships than me. Some were more successful in terms of financial freedom and independence, although not doing anywhere near the amount of business I was doing. Some were more successful in terms of being grounded, centered, and worldly than I at the time. You have to decide what your definition of success is and why it may matter. I wont tell you that it shouldn’t matter, only that you have to get clear on what aspects of it matters. If you’re hiring a coach or advisor to help you build a very specific type of business, it may help if they’ve done it before, but, even then, I wouldn’t say its an absolute requirement for them to have done that in the same way. A good coach has the ability to see further than the student. A good coach doesn’t care if you like them or not, as long as you’re doing the work and they can get results for you. A good coach isnt afraid to tell you things that may hurt your feelings. Some of the best coaches in sports were not the best players, by a large margin. Some of them were, but the vast majority of well known winning coaches weren’t even players of significance in that sport. They played junior, maybe college, and then worked their way through the coaching ranks to be winning coaches getting results for, and from, their teams.

I had one coach in the past, he’s still something of a mentor of mine today, who’s big theory that he coached with is the ‘bigger pile’ theory. He believes wholeheartedly that to be a good coach, you have to have a bigger pile of money than the people you’re coaching. And he flaunts it a lot! He’s extremely good at sales, he’s extremely good at making money, he’s worth tens of millions, and he lets everybody know! To me, it’s a bit pretentious and an annoying personality trait, but then again, he’s built several very successful companies with a very grating personality. He’s a great guy with a big heart, and he really wants his coaching students to be super successful, but I believe his belief in this area is a tad skewed. I don’t think a good coach or advisor necessarily needs to have a bigger pile than their students, especially if your pile makes you a jerk. A good coach needs to be able to see things the student cant. A good coach needs to be able to hold you accountable. Of course, you have to have some faith in your coach or advisor that they can help you get the results you desire. If, in your mind, you believe your coach has to have a bigger pile of money than you, that’s what you’ll look for, and that’s ok. It just shouldn’t necessarily be the main thing you base your choice on since there is zero correlation between having a bigger pile of money, or being more successful in some way, and being somebody who can coach or advise others.

The next question I feel is important to answer is, ‘how much should good coaching cost me?’ I’ll answer this one first by asking a few questions: how much have bad decisions cost you over the years? How much has it cost you to struggle on your own and not make headway on a project? How much have poor habits cost you in lost time, money, and energy? How many years have you been trying to accomplish something, yet still spinning your wheels? Somebody spends years slowly getting out of shape and putting on extra weight. They decide its time to improve their health so they start looking for a health coach or a personal trainer. They find a good one and are ready to pull the trigger until they find out that this person charges $75 per session! “Are you kidding me?! $75 per session, that’s highway robbery!” is it? How much has your poor health cost you already? How much has your inability to do certain things because of your health and fitness level affected your life? $75 per session could be pennies if it improves your life in a big way. $75 per session could be considered an extremely low cost insurance premium if it helps you avoid a stroke or a heart attack. Anytime we want to price out something, we have to look at two things: what is the upside, and what is the downside. In essence, what is the potential return? We already know what the actual cost is, it’s whatever they charge for their services. What’s not known, and rarely calculated, is how many tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions in some cases, the lost opportunity cost is from doing things without advisors for so long. Instead of looking at just the cost of hiring an advisor, you need to look at what the opportunity cost is. There’s a line at the top of our coaching website that says, ‘good coaching doesn’t cost you, it pays you!’, and that’s because hiring a coach should net you results that far exceed your investment. By the way, I recommend budgeting, at a minimum, 10% of your income to growth and development like coaching, classes, seminars, etcetera. If you make $100,000 per year, at least $10,000 needs to be set aside for personal and professionals development. If you say to me, Blaine, I don’t make enough yet to invest in coaching, I would probably say the reason you don’t make enough is because you don’t understand the value yet of hiring advisors. Its why you’re not making the money you should be. A good coach should be able to get you a 5-20 time return on your investment right away. Returns on those kinds of things come by way of massive time savings, savings in processes and creating efficiencies, increased income from new opportunities, increased income from higher fees, increases in motivation, as well as accountability.

Whatever the cost, if you knew that your investment would come back multiplied 5, 10, or 20 times, what does it matter what it costs? I’m not saying cost is completely irrelevant, but it has to be weighed against how much time, effort, money, and health you may have already squandered leading up to the hiring of a good coach or advisor. If a good coach can help you accelerate a growth timeline, help you set better goals, help you get clarity in some areas which causes you to take action where you hadn’t in the past, help you make more money, and help you expand your vision, technically, they’re worth every penny you’ve saved, earned, and grown into for at least the first year. If you could add $10,000, $20,000 or $100,000 in income to your business by hiring a good advisor, in theory, the coach was worth all of that. The fact that they likely only charge a small fraction of that is simply icing on the cake for you! In fact, if you just got a one to one return on your investment, that’s a good return because all of your growth is yours to keep. Any growth in your revenue is yours forever. Any time savings from increased efficiencies and process improvements is yours to keep forever. If your accountant found an issue on your bank statement that you were spending $200 extra on something you didn’t need to, your accountant didn’t just save you $200. Your accountant just saved you $200 a month forever! That’s $2400 per year, $24,000 over ten years, and almost $50,000 in 20 years. When you take the money you just saved and you invest it into the market at a meager 7% interest compounded, your $2400 per year becomes $37,880 in ten years, and $107,676 over 20 years! Is this making sense to you? A good advisor doesn’t cost you, they pay you! A good coach helps you go from where you are to where you want to go and beyond. Whatever the cost of that is, it likely pales in comparison to what its costing you to stay where you are. A good coach could be the difference between becoming who you imagined you could be and not. Building the business you know you could and not. Building something even better than what you could imagine, and not.

The best investment you can ever make, in my opinion, is in yourself. When you hire a good coach or advisor, you’re not hiring a coach, per se, you’re making an investment in yourself. What’s the cost of investing in yourself? Let me explain this rather simple equation for you. The cost is relative to the lost opportunity cost of not doing something, plus the potential upside of any gains, time and money savings, and growth you will likely realize, multiplied by the number of years you have left to continue realizing those gains, multiplied the compounding of any of those gains in the market over time. I just gave you the $200 expense savings example. Finding a $200 expense that you can offload turns into $107,000 if you make good choices with that money. You paid your accountant or advisor $400 or $500, maybe $1000 for the help to find that $200. That’s quite a return, I would say. Would you trade your $1000 if you knew that $1000 would turn into $107,000 in 20 years? You’d be silly not to do it! The returns are not guaranteed, but the benefits tend to far exceed the cost. I’m so sold on the benefits that I back up our coaching with a 5X guarantee. We put in all of our marketing and content, if you aren’t realizing a 5 time return on your investment with us after 6 months, we’ll give you all your money back and you get to keep whatever you’ve learned, downloaded, or participated in up to that point, no questions asked! If you’re in one of our black belt coaching teams, you’re investing about $400 per month in your professional and personal development. 6 months of a $400 investment is $2400. 5 times $2400 is $12,000. I’m so confident that I can get you a return of $12,000 within 6 months that I’m willing to give you your money back if you don’t. Why am I so confident? Because I’ve seen it hundreds of times over the years. Again, your returns come in a variety of ways: cost savings, time savings, new business, increased profitability, investment gains, increases in your net worth, and a dozen other ways. And the reason I’m willing to give you your money back is because I’m not in this business for the money, I’m in it for the results I can get, if you’ll do the work. The money is more so that you have some skin in the game and find value in the process. I’ve said this before, its one of the only reasons we charge money for our services because coaching is something I absolutely would do for free. I did for many years and I still do today. We charge money because without that, people don’t find value in what they’re doing. As soon as they’re paying, they seek a return. In fact, studies have been done and they show that there is an absolute correlation between the amount of money one pays for a thing and their perception of its value. You pay less, you think less of it. You pay more, you’re more invested in realizing its value.

How much should good coaching cost you? Nothing! It should be getting you a fat return! Stop looking at the cost and, instead, look at the opportunity for gain.

Alright, lets wrap this discussion up with the last question that never gets asked, ever! I ask it so that I can answer if for you because, as I just mentioned, I’m in it for the returns and the gains I can help others realize. The most important question that’s never asked is, “how can I get the most out of my coaching experience?” Great question Blaine, thanks for asking it! You want to get the most bang for your buck? First and foremost, empty your cup. You’ve probably heard the zen parable about the two zen masters having a discussion about enlightenment when the host began filling the guest’s tea cup. When the tea reached the top of the cup he didn’t stop and the tea spilled over onto the table. The guest cried out and said, “stop! The cup is already full!” The host said in return, ‘your mind is like this cup, full of ideas and opinions, but not one drop of my teaching can enter until you empty your cup.’ A full cup of tea can receive more tea in it, it just can’t retain any of the new tea as it spills out. Full brains can’t receive new thoughts and ideas and hope to retain them, much less take action on them to realize some kind of benefits. If you want to get the most out of this kind of relationship, you must be willing to empty your mind of your preconceived notions and ideas of how things are to be done. If you’re cup is full, you will not get the most from an advisor’s suggestions. Right after being open and willing, you have to do the work! A good coach is going to give you things to work on, not for the benefit of the coach, for the benefit of the student. If you look at the assignment as homework that needs to be done for a grade, you might wait until the day before your coaching call to do the assignment. I guarantee that scrambling to do some kind of assignment the night before is not going to get you the benefits you’re looking for. We have these kinds of students, by the way. Oh yes! I’m talking to you all now! The assignments are not for me, they’re for you and your benefit! You may not fully grasp why the assignment has been given, but this goes back to being open and willing. You have to have a little trust and faith that the coach has a reason for giving you a particular thing to work on.

So being open, willing, emptying your cup, and the last part of this one is to always have something to work on on your coaching calls. Listen, you’re paying an advisor to be advised, offer opinions, give insight and perspective, and help you grow in some way. If you show up to coaching calls expecting the coach to do everything for you, you’re wasting your own time, as well as the coaches time. If you’re part of a coaching team, you’re wasting the other team members time as well. Have something that you want to work on, however big or small, so that the coach has something to work on with you. I cant tell you how many times I’ve had to have discussions with students, usually after they lament about something, that they’re not doing the work and they’re not bringing anything to the calls. When you’re focused on your growth and trying to get a return, you’ll put in the time to work on things. When you work on things, you run into barriers, blockades, and challenges that you can then bring to the coaching call. I’ll share an embarrassing story from my past on this topic to make my point. Back in my late twenties, I became a drummer. I sold one of my first properties and used some of the money to buy a drum set. After 2 days of banging around on the drums I realized if I wanted to get the most from these things, I should probably take some lessons. In essence, hire a coach! Quite fortunately for me, the drum store I bought my drums from was located directly across the street from my martial arts school. So, once per week I would walk over there from the dojo and take lessons. My first teacher, unbeknownst to me, was an unbelievably talented grad student from the Berklee School of Music. I didn’t even know what that was at the time. He would later go on to the drummer in a popular local band that I got to be the drum tech on tour for, which was an amazing learning experience. He then would go on to become of Neil Peart’s best friends and motorcycle riding partners. If you don’t know who Neil Peart is, he was the amazing drummer for the band, Rush. Sadly, the world lost Neil last January after a 3 year battle with brain cancer. 

My drum teacher, Chris Stankee, is now the sales rep for Sabian cymbals, which is how he came to be best friends with Neil Peart, and a slew of other great musicians. I didn’t know what I had in Chris at the time. All I knew was that I was dabbling at drumming while doing a bunch of other things. I was running three businesses, teaching, coaching, doing my own training, traveling around the world, getting married, etcetera. My drum lessons came 5th or 6th on the list of things to do and practice for. However, as you can imagine, when it comes to developing a skill, when the teacher gives you something to work on, its for a reason and its for your benefit. Each lesson also builds off of the last lesson. In drumming, you can’t work on more advanced sticking drills until you work on the basic rudiments like; left, right, left, right. Then you move to left, left, right, right. Then you move to left, left, right, left, left, right, left, right, right, and so on. You can’t move on until you’ve practiced each level and built a foundation with which to move on to more sophisticated concepts and movements. I practiced diligently for a couple years and got fairly decent. I would say I was a good student. As I got busier, I pushed my drum practice off until the last minute each week and my teacher could tell. Eventually he would tell me, “Blaine, if you’re not going to do the practice, we’ve come as far as we can with each other.” I would apologize, work diligently for a few weeks, and then slack off again. Eventually, Chris fired me. Well, he didn’t fire me, he quit being a drum teacher to pursue bigger and better things, but I think my lack of practice and growth was one of the catalysts that made him realize teaching drums was a waste of his valuable time, and it was because of people like me. Maybe not just me, but people like me that made him and his teaching a back burner priority. He wasn’t teaching me for his own benefit, he was teaching me hoping that I’d get better. He was pouring into me all of his years at Berklee, his years playing in bands, his years of toil behind the kit, his thousands of hours of practice, and I wasn’t taking it seriously after a certain point. I failed my drum coach, but most of all I failed myself, because I didn’t do the work.

Chris and I are still friends today and he’s gone on to do great things, and I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. If you’re not willing to do the work, don’t waste your time, or the teachers time. That’s time and very valuable knowledge and experience they could be pouring into somebody willing to do the work. You hire a coach to help you get results, but you have to do the work. You have to be open and willing, you have to come with stuff you want to work on, and then you have to do the work. If you want to hire me to just motivate you every month and tell you you’re doing a great job, I’m not for hire. There are people out there who will do that for you, by the way. You can pay people to boost your ego, tell you ‘you’re killing it superstar’, and send you on your way. A good coach wants to get results, however. A good coach wants to work with people when are going to do the work, put points on the board, remain open to things they still cant see yet, but do the hard work of pushing forward. You have to be willing to practice your chops, to use a drumming phrase. You have to build the foundation so the coach can keep pushing you forward. If you don’t practice last week’s drumming lesson, you’ll never build the foundational skills to add new lessons onto. At some point the teacher will just be trying to fill and overflowing cup. When you do the work, you’re emptying your cup so new ideas and perspectives can be poured in. Have something to work on, a problem you want help with, something for the coach to help you with so that they’re truly helping you grow. That’s also how you get those big returns for your investment.

We’re going to be putting out a free 30 day course soon, so be on the lookout for that. Check on our website at www.coachblaine.com for how to download it when it comes out. In the meantime, we always offer a 30 day free trial for our level 1 coaching and mastermind program, so if you’re ready to take things to the next level, just reach out to us and we’ll grant you access to it. As always, if you decide to stay after the 30 days, even then we back it with our 5X, 6 month guarantee. You literally have nothing to lose by giving it a try, we’ve lowered all of the barriers for you. We have monthly guest coaches teaching on a variety of topics. We have monthly video calls, we call Profit Sharing, where members get to share their wins, as well as get some coaching on their struggles and challenges. We have frequent discussions about appraisal topics, business and marketing topics, wealth building topics, time management, and a bunch of other things. Again, you can try it out with no obligation whatsoever, just reach out to me and we’ll let you in. So, until we see you over there, or until next week when we meet here again, I’m out…