1. GETTING PAID TO HELP OTHERS:
How to Overcome Self Imposed Limitations!
An Interview with David Oliver and Glenn Livingston
(This is a Transcript of a Free Full Length Audio Available for Download Below)
http://www.coachcertificationacademy.com/SendToO.htm?n=1
Glenn Livingston's companies have sold over $20,000,000 in
consulting and/or coaching services. Glenn has worked with over
1,000 coaching clients and directly supervised many coaches and
psychotherapists, and his company's work and theories have
appeared in dozens of major media.
David Oliver is a Yale University graduate who serves a difficult
set of niches in mental health with lay-coaching systems. (He also
sells DVDs, CDs, Books, and eBooks). Mr. Oliver has done
literally thousands of coaching sessions, and has gathered over
11,000 testimonials from raving fans at last count...all while
competing with major drug companies (as essentially a lone-wolf
coach and small business person with less than 15 employees) for
share of voice. David has also developed creative coaching
techniques and systems which work with families in serious
emotional and financial turmoil.
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1
2. TRANSCRIPT
Getting Paid to Help Others
(Overcoming Self-Imposed Limitations)
Glenn: Hey, this is Dr. Glenn Livingston. I very much appreciate your time and attention to learn
about how you might get paid for your love of helping others. I won't beat around the bush.
This is about coaching which is kind of an exciting industry which has very few barriers to
entry because you don’t necessarily need a background in psychology or counseling. You
could refer to other people, requires very little money to start. You'd need an Internet
connection and a telephone. You can work with clients from all around the world because
you are the product. There really aren’t any start-up cost like inventory or franchise fees or
just compared with some other cost of other traditional businesses.
What I did today is I got a lay person who is one of the most successful coaches that I
know who has literally made a fortune in coaching, has done literally thousands if not tens
of thousands of sessions, also sells CDs and books and ebooks on the topic. He actually
serves a population of mental health supporters with lay coaching systems. His name is
David Oliver. David, how are you today?
David: Good, I’m doing great, Glenn. Thanks for having me today.
Glenn: I am really excited to have you here. David, is what I just said true in your experience?
Did you have any trouble building a coaching business given that you didn’t have a
background in psychology or counseling or human resources or anything like that?
David: If I could take it back even 10 years before that, I mean 15 years, a couple of things. I was
coached from people. I was coached, I played football, I wrestled. But what I learned over
the years in high school and college and stuff, there were some coaches that were
amazing, that never even really played the game. They were just very good. They were
very good at what they did. Some of these folks - I remember the guy who coached on
baseball. When I asked, they called it a limited career and yeah, I played freshman and
sophomore year in high school. He was a great coach in baseball. I guess that kind of
stuck in my head and I’ve been coached by a lot of great people that - there are no
limitations really. It’s all in your own head.
I’ve naturally just seen the people who are doing coaching on this mass scale. You look at
Oprah and even Dr. Phil. Even though he’s a doctor, he’s coaching people on weight loss
which -- he was heavy and it didn’t matter that he wasn’t a doctor specifically for weight
loss. You look at Oprah. You look at some of these self-help individuals. If you really look
at their background, they’re "men are from mars guys". You know, these are
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00:02:28]
people that went to school for these things, that had a million degrees.
Glenn: Even Tony Robbins. I’m not saying he’s the greatest or the worst or anything like that. But
even Tony Robbins, if you listen to his back story, the way he credentializes himself is that
he wasn’t happy with his life. He sat down and he read like 700 books and he figured this
all out. Then he got all these great results and this is what happened. It felt like he went
out and had a PhD in psychology or counseling or was part of a large coaching
3. organization or things like that. He just kind of got up and said, “Hey, I’m good at this. I
know what I’m doing. I did it for myself and I can do it for you.”
David: Right. I think that’s so important. The first thing that people have to beat into their heads
and they have to keep telling themselves that it’s just like, “There are no limits. I don’t
need to have someone bless me. I don’t need to have someone --.” I don’t mean in the
religious sense. “I don’t need somebody else to tell me I can do it per se.”
The reality is, what I find when you’re in the frontlines, “I’m in mental health so I’ve done
stuff, a lot of stuff in network marketing.” You learn on the job. You learn as you're going.
You have this foundational base that you learned from and then from there, you learn as
you’re doing it. That’s where you get your experience and stuff like that.
Like in my case, I didn’t need to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist to be a coach. In my
market, people were looking for that because they kind of had it with dealing with
psychiatrist and stuff. They wanted someone who knew what they were going through;
they could tell them the ins and outs of how to deal with loved ones with serious mental
illnesses and what to do. That really works to my advantage! I can look across the board,
right?
You look at individuals that now coach people on fighting and self defense. Some of them
lived in bad neighborhoods and that’s now, that’s they’re doing. You look at people
coaching people into the Amazon, I mean that sounds crazy but I met a guy doing that.
People coaching people how to climb 14,000-foot mountains… when you talk to these
people, they were regular people who just had a passion for something and they decided
to turn it in a way to make money.
[00:04:48]
Glenn: Right. Gosh, I have a whole bunch of things coming up which you’re talking about so far.
Then I want to ask you a specific question. I think we both wholeheartedly agree that
people tend to be their own worst enemies and place the worst limitations on themselves.
A lot of the best coaches that we know really come out of a lay background without any
necessarily professional training.
We run a training and certification academy and we want to help people get trained and
credential with us. They always ask me well, “Is it legally required that I get certified?” The
answer to that is “No, it’s not legally required.” At least to the best of my own legal
research (and of course you should consult your own attorney because obviously I'm not
an attorney and this is not legal advice) There ARE laws that require that you to document
your competence in whatever profession you choose to advertise to the public. Getting
certified and trained with a credible organization like ours is one way that you might want to
document your competence but it’s not the only way that you can document your
competence. There are certainly no laws that require you to get a certification if you want
to be a coach.
Similarly, there are no government agencies that backup any particular coaching school or
anything like that. There really is no state accreditation or anything like that. This is really
a wide-open field which makes it possible for anyone to enter.
3
4. The thing that I wanted to ask you about, which you have glossed over a little bit was you
jumped from having been coached in sports and athletics to doing a type of talking
coaching; that the kind of coaching that you’re doing with supporters of people that have
serious mental health issues and serious mental health diagnoses. First of all you never
tell people, “Hey come to my coaching. Don’t see a psychiatrist. Don’t see a
psychologist.” You actually do in addition to it. As a matter of fact, a lot of your coaching is
to help them be okay about finding the right one and complying with that.
This is all talking. You’re not getting your clients out on the football field. You’re not
getting your clients to go to the weightlifting gym or go to the Amazon or anything like that.
This is a very specific problem in life which you have observations and experience about.
You’ve gone out there, had gotten the word out, solicited people who are having problems
with family members or loved ones who have these serious diagnoses instead, “Hey, let’s
talk about it and I can help you.” I’m wondering, can you talk a little bit more about that
leap? How did you go from the experience in sports coaching and how good that was for
you to talk coaching?
David: Basically, what happened was I had coaches and to sum up, they were very motivational.
They were very tough. They'd yell at you. They had a basic set of principles that they
created and that’s what made them win. Then they
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00:07:05]
would just keep beating it into your head. After I helped my mom with her situation with
bipolar disorder, I wrote a book on it. I want people to understand that it had really nothing
to do with the book. I just wrote a book on it. What I mean write a book, let me explain so
you don’t think the thing, “Oh, he wrote a book. Its in Barnes and Noble.” I put together an
outline and some thoughts so to speak on what it took to help my mom get well. That’s
what I did. I put in a MicrosoftWord Document and put in a title in 24 point font that said
The Bipolar Supporter Manual and put my name. That’s what I called the book. It was an
ebook. I asked some people interested and they said, “Oh, I want to talk to you one-on-one.”
I thought that it was, “Oh, that’s great.” I said, “Okay.” So I started talking to people.
I started realizing that these people have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. They
literally have no clue. They reminded me of timid football players where a coach is going
to say, “Come on, let’s go. We can win. You’re not a loser. Let’s go.” You know.
Glenn: Interesting.
David: That's what these people needed. More than anything, they were looking for someone to
say, “My loved one need to go to a psychiatrist.” They’ve been walking around saying, “I
kind of think that Jenny needs to go to a psychiatrist but I’m not really sure.” They get on
the phone with me. This is the way my initial coaching session went.
In the beginning, so here I am, right? I didn’t even know what I was going to do so I just
knew I had a certain set of principles that work for my mom. They made complete sense.
She had to go to a psychiatrist. We had to find a good psychiatrist. She had to listen to
what the psychiatrist said. The psychiatrist was going to tell her take medications, she
needed to do that. If she didn’t do that, I wasn’t going to talk to her ever again. She
5. needed to do a couple of other things and that she’d most likely be fine over time. Very,
very simple stuff.
When I got on my first coaching sessions with people, I said, “I’m not a doctor and I’m not a
psychiatrist.” They said, “Oh no, I understand that." I said but I’m going to tell you what
some of the keys to success are. Then they'd tell you that you need to get moving.” So
they would ask. I said, “Okay, tell me your situation. This is how it is” Well, and then it
would be some long rambling story which I'd cut off. Well, you know, I met Jimmy 19 years
ago. Then we found out 16 years ago, he had bipolar. We did this. Then he quit his job
and he robbed a bank. He flipped over a car. He need drugs and blah, blah, blah. I say,
“All right, that’s enough. Done. I got it.” Because I already heard the same story. I said,
5
00:09:30]
“What did you do to get this better?” Then it would be some rambling, “Well you know, we
sort of, he doesn’t really want to go for medications. Oh, doctors, you know, they just want
to medicate her.” This is how our sessions have been. I'd say, “Let me ask you a question.
Jimmy threw a phone at you the other day, what do you think Jimmy needs? He needs a
hug? You tell me what does Jimmy needs. He needs either restraint or he needs
medication?” “Well, yeah, you know, you're kind of right.” I said, “Now, with your timid
attitude, do you think you’re contributing to the problem?” They're like, “Well, what do you
mean?” I said, “Well, you don’t even think Jimmy should go to the psychiatrist." That’s
crazy. That’s literally crazy. Jimmy has a reason to be crazy. He’s not on medications?
You know, what’s your excuse?” We would have these sessions. Then by the end, I’m
beating up people a little bit. At the end, they’re like, “You know what? You’re right. I need
to go find a doctor. You know what? We can afford a doctor. You know what? I’m not
going to take Jimmy throwing the phone at me every other week. That’s crazy. You know
what? I’m going to tell Jimmy. Jimmy, you know what? You need to get your act together.
We’re going to a psychiatrist or I’m done.”
A lot of my talks were, “Let me ask you a question. How long have you been supporting
your loved one? Fourteen years? Okay, great. You would have what I call is a losing
team. For 14 years, in my mind, your whole management style, you’re the coach and
you’ve been losing for 14 years. Do you think you need to do more of the same?” “What
do you mean?” “Well, if you had another 14 years to make it 28 years, do you think Jimmy
would get any better?” “Well, no.” “Then you need to do something different. You need to
take action today.”
Part of the action, I would tell people, we need to find a great psychiatrist. That is the key
to success. Then we need to understand that psychiatrists are helpful. We need to give
them all the information they need about Jimmy so they can make an informed decision
about of his diagnoses and treatment. Then we need to make sure Jimmy complies.
We’re not going to enable Jimmy. If Jimmy won't cooperate and say, "I won't take these
meds", then you know what? You’re going to have to walk away because you’ve already
tried it for 14 years and it hasn’t work just like a football team tries the same plays and they
keep losing for 14 years and wondering why they’re not doing well.
Glenn: David, I want to underscore some of the things that you say. I want to template them so
that maybe some people listening and saying. "Well, this sounds terrific but I’m not really
an expert in bipolar illness.” Or “I’m not really an expert in mental health."
6. [00:11:59]
David: Let’s talk about that. Great.
Glenn: Essentially, what you did, and this is what most good coaches have in common. You had
the desire to share and spare. That’s why you wrote that ebook to start with. You had this
experience, you had some success, it was a very painful thing in your life. You really had
figured out a couple of principles that worked. You looked around you and you said, “Well,
why isn’t everybody doing this?Why isn’t anybody telling you to do this?” You kind of pick
this one problem, you went after it and said, “I’m going to share my experience to try to
spare others from the pain I’ve been through.” That’s the question I want everybody in the
audience to be asking themselves is what is it that I've experienced that I’ve really solved
in my life? I mean, maybe I’m not successful in this, I’m not successful in that but there’s
something that I really know how to do that I’ve really solved. Why do I think that is and
how can I spare others from going through that? How could I do that?”
They are the piece of what you did is you picked a very specific problem. I think that most
potential coaches overwhelm themselves in thinking about, “How in the world am I ever
going to get clients? How am I going to get good at being to coach people? There are
such a world of different problems that anybody can come to me with.” They don’t realize
that it’s actually much more effective to pick a very specific problem and go after that
specific problem. Because like you said, you’d heard this story a thousand times before,
right?
The other impact of doing that is when you’re approaching the same problem over and
over again, you get confident a lot more quickly. It’s really confidence that I think builds a
coach’s practice in the long run because if you’re confident that you can give clients the
solution to the problem that’s ailing them and you’ve heard the same stories over and over
again. You know you’re going to be able to keep them long enough for them to achieve
the results.
Well, at a certain critical volume, there’s going to be people that notice the results that
you’re providing. They’re going to other people about it. You start to get referrals. I don’t
mean to imply that this is the only way to get the word out. I wouldn’t want you to rely on
referrals alone or from you clients alone as the way to build your practice because you do
need to build a critical mass. But ultimately, sharing your experience, sparing others from
the problem and picking that specific problem to go after are two very critical components
of a successful coaching practice.
6
[00:14:02]
Would you agree? Do you think there’s something else that I missed in your story that
would help people understand how they can apply their life experience in what they want to
help people with?
David: No, that’s exactly it. It’s the same thing. Some of them might say, you know, people
looking for a way out instead of a way in. What I mean by that and as a part of coaching,
people are looking for the reason they can’t do this. They’re going to say, “Oh, I don’t have
7. a mom with bipolar. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do that. I don’t know mental health.” So let’s
talk about coaches for anything.
Glenn: David, you know what? In a few days after people get this audio, I’m going to send them a
free ebook called "101 Real Coaching Niches". What we did is we had a researcher go out
and find areas that real coaches were successfully working in. She wrote up exactly what
they’re doing, who they're serving, how it’s going. Here are just some examples that you
might not think. There's academic coaching - helping parents whose kids might not be
getting the best grades who want to get into college or helping students themselves,
helping college students or graduate students to do better. There’s diabetes coaching.
There is life goal coaching. There is nursing coaching, helping nurses to develop their
careers. There is self-esteem coaching. There is relationship coaching. There is divorce
coaching. There is family coaching, ethics coaching, end-of-life coaching, adoption
coaching, artist coaching, conflict coaching, your heart’s desire coaching, personal power
coaching, women’s empowerment coaching, men’s empowerment coaching, coaching
entrepreneurs, coaching people who own dogs and they’re having trouble with their dogs
or a specific breed of dog. I mean it just goes on and on and on and on. Really, whatever
life area is of most interest to you where you feel the most passion, that’s probably where
you should start.
The other thing I'll say is that you don’t have to marry a coaching niche. You don’t have to
say, “Oh my God, I can’t choose because I’m going to have to stay with this niche forever.
What if it’s the wrong one?” What you need to do is choose one, learn the skills, cut your
teeth, develop the confidence, see that you can absorb the problems in that area, learn
how to talk to people about it, watch how you build clients in that area. That’s a very
transferrable skill if you want to move to a different niche later on. Really, there are
hundreds of niches to choose from and that dramatically narrows your field of competition,
kind of speeds your path to success.
There are not as many coaches as people might have imagined either. As of this
recording, there is about 20,000 active coaches in North America which if you do the math,
it’s about one for every 15,000 people and not
7
[00:16:26]
everybody wants a coach of course. But the prevalence in value of coaching is really
becoming more in the forefront as the years go by which is kind of think of some of the
reality shows like Biggest Loser or The Voice or all of these shows have coaches and you
watch people get better and you see the interaction with the coach. We're really talking
about a trend that’s on the upswing.
But compare those 20,000 active coaches to hundreds of thousands of counselors and
psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers and the human resource workers, you’ll
see that between the fewer number of coaches and the fact that there’s so many niches to
choose from that you really don’t have to be as concerned with competition as most people
are going into it. That’s just another example of limitations that people put on themselves
that they don’t necessarily have to. Make sense?
David: Absolutely. That is so true. In everything you can think of, there are people coaching.
Even the weirdest things like, I have a friend who coaches people how to get in shape
8. using tires, rocks, cinder blocks, rods, and pieces of wood and all kinds of bizarre things.
Do you want to hear some crazy? Who do you think the target market is?
Glenn: Some type of crazy, macho muscle head. Maybe the same guys that take their kids to the
8
monster truck rallies?
David: He has a ton of moms.
Glenn: Really?
David: Yeah.
Glenn: No kidding.
David: Yeah. Kids who are like 12, 14, 15, 16. Isn’t that interesting?When he told me about it, I
was like, “This is crazy.” Yeah, he gets the young kids in there, the moms in there. I don’t
know why but it works. He has no degree in that like it's all made up. Yeah, I guess you
could say well, there's science to exercise but you know what I’m saying?
Glenn: Yeah.
David: Another coach is in-home childbirth. I met that person. They’re doing really well. I mean,
really it's infinite. It’s only constrained with your imagination.
[00:18:15]
Glenn: It really is. There’s so much information available online for free, like people are just
blurting out what’s on their mind in all these different areas. You can just like go over,
search.Twitter.com or search on Facebook and look and see what people are posting.
Like let’s say you’re chocolate addiction coach. You could go over to the Facebook search
and search for I hate chocolate or I can’t stop eating chocolate. It’ll search the 900 million
Facebook accounts to see whose posting, "I can’t stop eating chocolate". When you find
those people, can’t you just go and connect with them or offer them something or have a
little audio or pamphlet or ebook that you can give to them as a way of making an
introduction? That’s just an example of how easy it can be to market to a very niched
problem where you can search and identify who these people are.
Besides being able to identify who they are, since they say everything on their mind, you
can identify the nuances of what they want. They'll talk about what happened before they
couldn’t stop eating chocolate, what happened afterwards, what they were thinking. You
look at their conversations with their friends about it, they’ll tweet about it, they’ll blog about
it. It’s just ridiculous how much good information you can get about a specific problem
these days. But you have to be willing to pick that problem and stand up and say, “Yes, I
am a chocolate addiction coach.” “Yes, I am a mental health supporter coach.” "Yes, I am
a bowling coach”, or whatever it happens to be.
But what other limitations do you think people put on themselves? Why do they think that
they can’t make money for helping people? I think sometimes people, they just feel guilty.
They feel like maybe their religion taught them that they’re only supposed to help people
9. for free or maybe their parents wouldn’t think well of them for charging people to talk to
them or help them out. What do you think about that?
David: I don’t hear that. What I hear is just people don’t believe they can do it. I’ve been really
cracking down some of my friends here, soon to be ex-friends unless they change their
attitudes. I’m not even kidding. I have a friend, right? I'll tell you, he could be a baseball
coach, a batting cage coach, a fighting coach, fighting in terms of kickboxing and stuff, a
whole bunch of things. Five years ago, I told him to set up effectively a coaching practice
for kids who wanted to play baseball and get into college and all the stuff, five years ago.
This other guy, in the last two years that he knew and he quite frankly had told me, “Oh,
that guy's a loser.” That guy set up his coaching practice. In two years, he set up the
coaching practice, he has other coaches and he just built his own batting cage.
Glenn: Right.
[00:20:33]
David: My friend, he has told me at least 250 reasons why he couldn’t do it, everything. “I don’t
have the money. I don’t do -- it’s the wrong part in Pennsylvania, this, that, the other
thing.” The big takeaway people could listen is to this. Is that that there’s no limit. Don’t
train your brain to think of why it won’t work, train you brain to think of how to make it work.
Glenn: Right.
David: That’s the big problem. I don’t find people say, “Well, you know, I’m opposed to making
money.” They just say, “Oh, no one will pay for that. Nope, they wouldn’t." This is crazy.
I've talked to people about coaching and the same market, the same niche, in two to three
hours. One person had told me that people and they already didn’t have enough money.
Another person told me they were in New Jersey. They said, “Oh my God, these people
had too much money. They wouldn’t pay. They had too much money and it’s above that,
in the same niche!”
Glenn: I know. Speaking about the local market objection, yes, it’s nice to be able to coach people
in person but because the audience opens up so much wider and because when you focus
on a specific problem, it’s easier to reach people all over the world. The whole Internet is
open to you to connect with people. You know, like there are people on Australia that have
problems too. There are people in Australia who have spouses with bipolar or some type
of mental health problem that David, you can coach them and I think you do. There are
people in New Zealand. Then there are people in England and people in countries that
speak other languages if you happen to speak Spanish or Portuguese or Chinese or
Japanese. The whole world is open to you. There’s no reason to limit yourself to thinking,
“I have to coach locally.” Because also when you coach locally, you kind of need to have
an office and that starts to create some rent and overhead that you don’t really want to
have in the beginning. You’d rather put that money in time into getting the word out and
into your training and studying and certification and things like that. I think people have all
sorts of reasons why they think they can’t do it. “I don’t have enough time.” Well, could
you make half an hour a day?
David: I have a different counter for that because I just heard that from my friend. “I don’t have
enough time. What’s your plan?” I ask them, “What do you mean?” So I’m like a coach to
him. I just said I'm not doing too well with my life coaching part is not doing well.”
9
10. [laughter]. But this guy, in 5 years…. I said, “What you’re going to do? You’re getting
older. Every year, all I hear is hear your complaints so what's your other
10
00:22:41]
plan? You say you don’t have time. You don’t have this. You don’t have the money.
What’re you going to do?” It was really this conversation I think that in the last week that
got him to say like, “Yeah, you know what? I got to make time.”
Glenn: Sometimes, a critical question at the right time like that can make all the difference in
someone’s life because people actually do walk around not knowing they need to have a
plan. It’s like they’re living life on a horse without reign, just like letting the horse take them
wherever the horse feels like going. When you’re intervening at that moment and you’re
going to ask him a critical question like, “Well, what is your plan? What are you going to
do? How are you going to make this better?” A lot of people, inside they go, “Wow, I
guess I should have a plan.” [laughter] It’s easier to kind of make fun of them but we’ve all
experienced some of that kind of living unconsciously at some point in our lives in various
areas. Becoming more conscious is always a part of life’s process.
But one of the great things about coaching, the one I’m trying to point out, is you can make
a dramatic difference in people’s lives when you catch them at the right time with the right
questions phrased in the right way. Sometimes it’s the really tough love that David
presents. Sometimes it's a quiet kind of company keeping that makes them feel cared
about or loved if they didn’t feel cared about or loved. Sometimes, it’s the threat of
withdrawing your time and attention that they’ll be willing to change for. Everybody's
different but you can have a dramatic impact on people.
Here’s another limitation, David. People say not only, “Do I think I can do it? Do I think I
can get paid? Is it believable?" But, "Am I worthy? Am I a worthy person to help others and
get paid for it?” My counter to that is that it’s the wrong question. If you’re willing to be
someone who stands up and studies specific problems and says, “I am the expert in this
area or an expert in this area and I’m willing to pour my heart and soul into paying attention
to you and helping you fix this problem.” Then the question really isn’t, “Are you worthy?”
The question is “Are they worthy of you?” Because that client can suck up a lot of time and
energy and morale.
When you get good at this, if you do, we'll tell you, you really should get good at this. You
should have more clients than you can handle sooner than you think that it will be. I know
that sounds like, “Well dude, that’s a good problem to have” or “maybe we’re selling to you”
or something like that. I guess we are selling a little bit. But I really think that people have
to guard their practices and be very careful about taking people on who are going to be
very difficult to deal with and not grateful and mostly complainers.
[00:24:53]
I think that the real question is, “Are these people worthy of you?” I think when you start
asking that question, your whole attitude changes. Your whole perspective changes and
that limitation just melts away. Make sense?
11. David: Yeah. I want to add to that. That’s when the certification comes in, make a dime off of
Glenn's certification. What I’ve realized that may just tell people just do it, there’s a
platform they need and that’s why certification makes sense because this is a lot of the
stuff that you talked about, a whole bunch of other stuff that get you this foundational
knowledge that a lot of people really do need. It is true. I know that a lot of people who
just jump into coaching, they don’t have that foundational knowledge especially about who
not to take on and who to cut off; they’re going to go crazy half the time.
Glenn: Thank you, David. I appreciate you saying it. The other reason that this certification and
training is important, there’s a couple of reasons. One is that inevitably coaches make
mistakes in the beginning. It can be a very isolating profession. If you just go at there by
yourself and you don’t really have someone who’s worked with thousands of clients and
really made a living out of this and supervises people, if you don’t have that kind of expert
feedback in the beginning, it could be kind of disheartening. Because even though, just
like David when you’re coaching bipolar supporters, there’s really just a handful of
principles that distinguish success from failure to help people to stop being so timid, get
into a psychiatrist, give them a couple of strategies to get them to a psychiatrist to kind of
motivate them, make it toxic for them to keep doing what they’re doing and just make the
status quo toxic so they move forward. You figured out there’s a couple of principles.
There are really just a handful of principles that coaches need to know in order to be
successful. But if you don’t have someone to feed those principles to you and point out to
you when you’re varying from those principles and motivate you to do what sometimes is
not human nature, like it’s only human nature to ask, “Gee, I don’t think I’m worthy.” It’s
only human nature to take anybody who knocks on your door. It’s only human nature to
just pick up the phone and answer when someone, a perspective client is calling. All those
things are wrong from the perspective of a coach who really wants to build their practice.
Going through a formal certification and training for a few months at a very reasonable
price and getting feedback from not only master coaches but also from your peers and
looking what they struggled with and having the opportunity to observe other people
making mistakes and getting gentle feedback to correct them,
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[00:27:12]
it’s a learning environment you really can’t replicate. You just can’t replicate that on your
own.
The other reason is that when you adopt a niched coaching philosophy, you wind up
building a referral-based more quickly because let’s say, there’s 12 other people in your
class. It’s a very interactive class so people really got to know each other well and we do
exercises together and we practice and we interview each other and give each other
feedback and all that kind of thing. Let’s say that one of them is an adoption coach,
another one is a chocolate addiction coach and another one is a general weight loss coach
and another one is a hiking coach, right? You all get to know each other’s specialties. You
get to know each other’s elevator pitches, you get know each other’s points of difference
and real reasons that it’s good to work with you as opposed to anybody else in the world.
You start referring to each other. It’s in some ways easier to go out and look for clients for
someone else than it is to look for clients for yourself. You start to build a referral-based,
you make connections with people who really become a support network for you for the
rest of your coaching career if not your life. You get the training and certification to develop
12. confidence quickly. As compared to other certifications, we’re a lot more affordable. I think
we’re a lot more credible.
Now, if you’re interested in having your clients look to see where you got certified, we have
a board of people from very prestigious universities and organizations and people from
Yale and Harvard. Not that that’s really the most critical thing. I mean, I think that’s really
more about image for clients that don’t know you. Once the clients know, they really
shouldn’t care about those kinds of things. But when you kind of need some credibility to
fall back on, it’s nice to know that it’s there. We have a guarantee that’s unmatched by
most if not all of our competitors. Head on over to www.becomearealcoach.com and read
about the details of our program, what we have to offer and what are our guarantee is. I
think you’d be hard-pressed to find the training elsewhere.
I know that there are a lot of choices out there. I know that people are comparing and
contrasting a lot of things but I think if you listen to the kinds of things you hear in this audio
and some of the future audios to come and the cheat sheets and transcripts and you just
kind of look at the depth of free materials that we give, you might want to ask yourself,
“Well, if they give so much to me for free, how much more are they going to give me in the
certification itself?” Whereas, do you believe that the other organizations who are mostly
just doing selling for free? Do you believe that they’re going to suddenly turned generous
when they get into the certification and training? I don’t think so.
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[00:29:33]
This is really a mission for us. It’s kind of what I was born and bred to do. I came from a
family of 17 therapists and counselors and social workers. What they didn’t know at the
time was that after people sent them as resolved, they actually kind of kept them. They
called it therapy but things really changed coaching like goal setting and resolving
obstacles to those goals, kind of moving forward as opposed to healing. I’m kind of born
and bred with this. I’m born and bred with the helping profession in my soul. This is what I
meant to do. This is what I really want to give people. This is what I want to share and
spare others from having to suffer with because there are a lot of simple obstacles that can
prevent people from succeeding. I really know how to teach people how to overcome them
and that’s why I’m willing to guarantee it. I guess that’s all I really have to say about this.
Excuse me for being a immodest and maybe tooting my own horn for a little bit. But David,
do you have anything else you like to add?
David: One thing I wanted to say, go backwards a little bit because I think one objection because I
really want people to get into coaching. You really should. The world needs coaches.
One thing that people have been saying to me when I’ve been telling people to get into
coaching is, “Oh, there’s too much, so much free stuff in the Internet.” That’s great
because what’s happening is there’s so much free stuff on the Internet that’s somebody
needs to bear it through and tells them what the bottom line. My dad has a whole bunch of
medical problems. I wish I could go call a coach who would just -- not even a doctor that
would tell me, “Read this article, go to that guy, think this way”, because it’s very confusing.
The fact that there’s so much more information is only going to help your coaching
business.
13. Glenn: What I tell people is that first of all, if the answers to people’s problems were as readily
available in the free information online as you thought that they were, then the average
number of searches when someone logged on to Google would be one because they’d
searched for what they wanted and they'd finally answer and they would read it and they
would be done. But it’s not true. The average numbers between five and seven in the last
study that I saw so there’s a tremendous amount of frustration online.
People don’t like to search, they like to solve. What everybody really wants is like a loving
uncle or an aunt or older brother or older sister to sit down with them and say, “You know,
Joe, this is the way it is. You’re having this problem. This is what you need to do. I know
because I’ve done it. I’ve helped all these other people do it. You can really trust me. If
you have any questions about it, why don’t you ask me and I’ll explain it to you?” People
really prefer - most people, some very erudite, educated people prefer to
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[00:31:57]
lock themselves in the library and figure it out themselves but for the most part, the masses
prefer to be coached. They prefer to have an intimate communication with another human
being that they trust, get the answers, solve the problems, and then asked themselves
what else can this person solve for you? That’s the last thing I wanted to mention.
Because what I forgot to mention when we’re talking about niching yourself was that when
you work with a given client, let’s say I’m a chocolate addiction coach and let’s say I
worked with a person and I helped them get off chocolate. They lose 30 pounds and
they’re really happy. Most people think that well, that’s the end. For some clients it is.
Some clients that’s all they really wanted. Maybe talk to them a little about maintenance so
you have a couple of maintenance sessions. But most people, when you solve a very
significant problem for them and you did it in the context of a constructive, communicative,
somewhat intimate relationship, it’s only natural for them to think, “Well, what else you got?
What else can you help me with?” That’s when you turn to the different areas of your life.
You ask them to describe other problems. You rely on your more general problem-solving
skills. You can kind of evolve to being more of the life coach that everybody seems to want
to be. It’s just that the way that you bring people in and the initial problems that you solve
are really more focused and short-term. But if you keep at it, you wind up with the practice
full of people that talk to you about all sorts of things and really give you the opportunity to
help them with their lives in amazing ways, amazing, amazing ways. It really enriches you.
I used to think the best thing about being a coach was going to be that I can just live where
I wanted to and work when I wanted to from wherever I wanted to on my own schedule and
make a really good income, that kind of thing. But I think, really the best thing about being
a coach are the stories that get inside you because in the course of listening to people
about their particular problem that they have, they tell you things they'll tell nobody else in
the world. You hear how they have solved other problems in their life in ways that nobody
else has solved them. It makes you stronger and stronger and stronger. It just makes you
feel more solid inside and kind of better about what you’re doing. Then better able to help
other people with those stories.
I just think it’s an amazing profession. I don’t understand why more people aren’t doing it.
I think the limitations and roadblocks people put up are mostly of their own making. You
know, like Togue said, “I’ve met the enemy and he is me, she is me.” I really would hope
that people at the very, very least, go over to www.becomearealcoach.com . Have a look
14. at what we have to offer. It’s guaranteed. It’s affordable. In just a few months, you can be
a certified professional coach with the ability to build a
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[00:34:20]
thriving practice from anywhere, guaranteed.
David, anything else that I left out?
David: No. I wanted to tell you one last success story too. I coached a lady. She actually had
bipolar disorder so she became a coach for people that wanted to have green grass.
Glenn: Really?
David: Yeah. People shouldn’t think that’s crazy because there are a lot of people who want
green grass. You think about it, right? I mean, you don’t really want yellow grass.
Glenn: No. It impacts the value of your house if you’re reselling it. It impacts the value of the
neighborhood houses. People bother you if you don’t have green grass. There are a lot
people out there with lawns.
David: Right.
Glenn: It’s a pretty big market. That’s a very interesting area. She was successful?
David: Yeah.
Glenn: Very cool. Okay. Well, David, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate the
interview. I hope you’ll come back sometime.
David: Absolutely. Any time.
Glenn: Okay. Head on over to BecomeARealCoach.com everybody,
www.BecomeARealCoach.com. Thanks.
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