The Effective Coach’s Handbook
Get your first client in 14 days
Hamza Ahmed
Table of Contents
How this handbook is laid out. 3
The Business Side. 4
Getting your first client within 14 days – The practical steps. 5
How do coaches make money?. 8
Getting more clients. 9
The problem with coaching – A fundamentally limited business. 10
Productivity tips – Free up your time, increase your income. 12
Income, expenses & taxes. 14
Do you need a coaching certificate?. 15
The Business Side Recap. 16
Becoming an Effective Coach. 17
More than just a listener. 18
Education. 19
Motivation. 22
Challenge. 24
Support. 26
Inspiring change. 28
Becoming an Effective Coach recap. 30
Wrapping up. 31
How this handbook is laid out
This handbook begins with ‘The Business Side’ which will walk you through practical steps
that’ll get your coaching business started far quicker than you think. It is highly
recommended to follow along with these practical steps, even if you don’t feel ready to have
your service available online. The Business Side will light a fire under your ass forcing you to
act and immediately discover if coaching is for you.
The Business Side is followed by the Becoming an Effective Coach section in which you’ll
learn all the tried and tested methods, principles and techniques that’ll level up your
coaching skills. This part of the book is the most important. An effective coach who can get
their clients to improve their behaviours and/or mindset is far better off in the competitive
market of coaching. Coaches successful at helping their clients will make more money for
their service, get better results and happier clients.
To have a profitable and fulfilling future in coaching you must become influential. Gone are
the days that clients happily pay for a sympathetic ear to listen to their problems. They want
results. And you will learn how to lead them to those desired results by reading this entire
book.
The Business Side
Coaching has become a lucrative career with many great benefits:
·
Run your business from the comfort of your own home (considerable time saved by
removing the need to get ready and commute to the office)
·
Develop your influence and leadership skills with interesting experience that is attractive
to future employers – “I ran my own coaching business and led 30 young men out of
depression”
·
Make money online which means you are location independent and can travel freely
(digital nomad lifestyle anyone?)
·
Increase your confidence by directly helping people who often look up to you
·
Fulfilment through seeing the progress your clients make and how happy they become
This chapter will cover the business side, specifically getting your first client and making
money online within 14 days. It is particularly important however, that you continue reading
on to the Becoming an Effective Coach part of this handbook.
Starting your business and seeing the first pay check is extremely exciting however many
new coaches quit in their first month as they do not see the results they are after. They focus
on the business side, trying hard to get clients, and forget about honing their skills to improve
their influence and leadership.
In this chapter, be sure to implement the practical steps to get your coaching business off the
ground immediately. Taking action is the behaviour coaches want to invoke in their clients
and so coaches must follow their own advice and act immediately, even when they do not
feel ready.
It is best practice to get your first client as soon as possible so you know if the process,
problems, and rewards of the coaching business is something you want to keep in your life.
There’s no point doing extensive planning and thinking before getting your first client as
authentic experience cannot be matched.
Once The Business Side’s practical steps have been followed and you are sure coaching is
for you, continue reading the handbook to become an effective coach.
Effective coaches make more money. Fact.
Coaches who can profoundly influence positive behaviour changes in their clients will have
repeat clients, better reviews and testimonials and greater levels of confidence to charge
more money for their service, all of which, promote the business side to grow.
Getting your first client within 14 days – The practical
steps
The information in this handbook will only improve your life if you follow the steps outlined in
this section as you read along to them. Invest in your future self by taking action here, even if
you don’t feel like it.
How do you go from knowing whether this business is for you or not? By getting your first
few clients and having a ‘practice’ run of the client calls. We want this process to be quick,
so you know immediately if this is for you. It also gets the ball rolling much faster than
waiting around because you don’t feel ready to coach your first client yet.
Getting your first client is all about putting the offer in front of people. In all types of business
this is the point where most people procrastinate. They spend too long thinking and not
doing. They invest too much of their valuable time overthinking minor details, logistics and
unimportant decisions - “What logo should I use?”
Not you. You’re going to take action and do it differently.
You’re going to get your first client within 14 days by following the practical steps below:
1.
Sign up to https://www.fiverr.com/
2.
Switch to the selling mode and create a new gig
3.
Fill out the gig details:
Category: Lifestyle – Life Coaching.
Fill out the minor details (not important at this stage and you can come back to update them
later).
For pricing use the 3-package option with the first package being set to the lowest price of
$5 (90% off sale) and then set the two other packages at a reasonable price for your time
and the service you provide. The packages could be $5, $80, $150 for example.
We’re setting the first package at this low price just for your first one or two clients so you
can ensure you enjoy the process of coaching in the fastest way, and then increase your
price once you know this is a business you enjoy and want to continue.
For the first package details write “30-minute coaching call”. The second and third options
can be longer term packages for example 2-week coaching, 4-week coaching (weekly calls
with daily communication by text).
Fill out the rest of the details and publish your gig. Congratulations. You have a live offer for
your coaching business. Now it’s time to get visitors to view this gig. Use the process below:
1.
Create content on a social media platform (YouTube is the best for this)
2.
Give terrific value in that content (teach them something – read below)
3.
Include a strong call to action to the Fiverr coaching link in the description/bio – “Click
the link in the description right now and you won’t be alone with life’s struggles”
4.
Share this content to other social media platforms (Share the YouTube video onto
Reddit and Instagram)
Why create content for social media when you wanted to be a coach and not a Youtuber?
This is a great, perhaps the best method of getting clients. Building up an audience online
and then directing your audience to your coaching service.
How do you build up that online audience? Through giving free value first. Attention is a
valuable currency and people won’t invest their attention dollars into you unless it’s worth it.
There’s two ways to get the attention of people online: entertain them or teach them
something.
If you’re not a great entertainer with a funny personality who can tune people in, be the
teacher instead. Teach your potential audience valuable self-improvement advice. Talk them
through getting fit, reducing social media use, improving their diet, increasing productivity,
anything.
There is a massive market for this knowledge online. People are hungry for it. If you feed
them what they are hungry for they will reimburse you with attention that grows your
audience size leading to a small percentage of your audience converting into coaching
clients.
The content you make for your desired platform is easier and less time consuming than you
think. Some of the biggest self-improvement YouTube channels have extremely simple
videos recorded on their phones with minimal to no editing. You simply sit there and talk
about a topic you know a lot about.
See this video below as an example for the content you could upload. Notice the logistics of
making the video are as simple as recording yourself on your mobile phone. No fancy editing
or ‘Youtuber personality’ is needed when teaching self-improvement advice:
https://youtu.be/kSfKdiacyhk
YouTube is by far the best platform to host this content on. It has a highly active
self-improvement audience constantly searching for a video that makes it ‘click’ for them.
Could it be yours? Could something you say, something you explain, something you show
change it all for someone and get them taking the right steps in life? It’s likely.
In every piece of content, you upload online, give a strong ‘call to action’. This refers to
telling the audience to do something immediately, in this case clicking on the link to your
coaching gig on Fiverr.com. Call to actions are important. A small, insignificant number of the
audience looks through the video’s description or Instagram profile bio unless they are
specifically told to do so. Simply say/write this sentence “If you want help with ………. click
the coaching link in the description right now”.
Give free value. Call to action. That’s the simple 2 step framework to remember.
What if your content gets 0 views? With how much content is uploaded online, this is highly
likely. Therefore, we need the 4th step of the process above - Share this content to other
social media platforms (share the YouTube video onto Reddit and Instagram).
Cross post your content onto multiple social media platforms to increase the likelihood of
building an audience and getting that first client.
This process, including the content creation, will take no more than 2 hours out of your day
and will serve as a source of organic client acquisition.
Put your focus entirely on giving the best value you can on the social media platform, value
that could change someone’s life. Carry on giving free value, sharing your knowledge of
overcoming the struggles of life and give a call to action to the Fiverr coaching link.
You’ll get your first client and it’ll be time to read up on the important skills and mentalities to
be the best, influential coach you can be.
The importance of getting your first client as soon as possible is significant. Too often
potential coaches procrastinate with starting their business. They wait ‘until the moment is
right’ or until they ‘are ready’. The moment will never be right, and you will never suddenly be
ready unless you take action and start with your first client. You must discover if this is a
viable business for you and you may as well do that as quickly as possible instead of
researching and holding of for weeks first.
Get your first client within 14 days and just ‘wing it’ for the first client call. You’ll know
immediately if this is something you want to invest time and effort into making yourself a
more effective coach.
After you get your first client you can adjust the price on Fiverr to better reflect your service.
If you continue coaching, you will need to learn how to make it into a profitable business.
How do coaches make money?
Although this sounds like a basic question, the answer goes further than just “clients”.
The volatile competitiveness of making money online means you must follow one golden rule
if you wish to have control over your finances in all circumstances…
Develop multiple streams of income
This golden rule is hugely important and should be in your mind frequently. Shit happens.
You could lose all your clients from 1 critical review. You could be kicked off the site you use
to host your coaching services. Your account on the platform where you grow your audience
(YouTube, Instagram etc) could be deleted. And just like that, if you only had one stream of
income (clients), you would be effectively unemployed with no further money coming in to
pay the bills.
Should’ve followed the golden rule.
Developing multiple streams of income can be defined by one word: diversification. The
smart investor diversifies his money into different funds so that if one tanks and loses its
value, he hasn’t lost all his investment.
And so, must you become a smart investor. Invest your time and energy into multiple
streams of income. Multiple platforms, multiple ways to get clients, multiple ways to get paid
into your bank account. Produce multiple creative projects that supplement your income like
eBooks, video courses and YouTube tutorials. Everything you learn from your experience in
this business is marketable to other would-be coaches who would happily pay money to
improve their business. Hell, you can even author a book or tutorial based on what you’ve
learnt from this handbook.
The most successful coaches make just a fraction of their income from their 1 to 1 coaching
sessions. Most of the income comes from massive seminars they host and books they’ve
wrote.
Do more. Spread your investments out so all your eggs are not in one basket. Just having
clients is a very risky and less profitable way of running a coaching business.
However, if you’re just beginning your coaching journey, start with the clients. Put your focus
into getting your first client within 14 days. When you gain a better understanding of this field
and have the knowledge others want, you can diversify your attention into projects that will
supplement your income. At the start, the clients will be the bulk, if not the entirety of your
income as few people at this point will buy your creative projects.
Getting more clients
A coach just starting their business makes the majority, if not all their income from the client
sessions. So how do you book more clients in?
Following the same framework as earlier. Focus on building your online audience by giving
free educational value to your viewers. Then direct those viewers to the coaching link in the
description with a strong call to action.
At this stage it is highly recommended to focus your efforts on growing the loyal online
audience that appreciates your work. This is easier said than done however the size of the
online audience needed to sign up enough clients is far smaller than you think.
The most important piece of information on building an online audience is the ‘1000 True
Fans’ article by Kevin Kelly:
https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
You do not need millions or even thousands of loyal fans to make a living online. At most
you’ll need 1000 ‘true fans’ who love your work. True fans are those people you have
drastically helped with your content.
These true fans are the people who will sign up to your coaching.
Focusing on providing fantastic value to your audience is a sure-fire way of converting an
ordinary subscriber/follower into a true fan. Change their lives for the better and they will be
committed to you.
Increasing your number of true fans = Increasing your number of clients
This is a realistic way of increasing your number of clients that does not rely on luck or
‘shoutouts’ from established people. All it takes is your time and effort in providing value that
helps your audience.
At this point is when you should be thinking about improving your skills as a coach to
become more effective, increase your influence and become a leader who can invoke a
positive behaviour change in your clients. Remember, if you can get your client making real
progress in life, their review/testimonials will be better, and you’ll be able to justify a higher
price for your service.
There’s just one problem regarding coaching as a money-making method we must discuss.
The problem with coaching – A fundamentally limited
business
Coaching defies one of the most important entrepreneurial commandments:
Do not trade your time for money
Trading your time for money, whether that be in a standard 9-5 job or a business such as
coaching, is fundamentally limited. There’s only so many hours in the day and you only have
the ‘brain power’ for so much work. The income ceiling is capped drastically meaning it is not
scalable.
How many clients could you call and help in a single day? Chances are that the potential
income you could make from that number of clients would be significant enough for you to
feel like trading time for money is not an issue. However, unless you want to work all day,
every day, there will come a point when you cannot take on more clients and cannot justify
increasing your prices further, and thus your income has reached the ceiling.
What can you do now?
Remember the golden rule we talked about earlier?
Develop multiple streams of income
This rule is important to keep increasing your income and the profitability of your business.
Since we’ve established that your income coming directly from your clients is capped as you
can only see a limited number of clients every day, you must consider developing multiple
streams of income.
You may now understand why building your online audience was such a crucial method in
acquiring the clients. At the stage where you have more clients than you can handle, you
would have built up a significant audience that will be generating income directly on the
social media platform (YouTube AdSense from viewer watch time, Instagram promotions
etc).
Even better, you now have the option to start creative projects you can encourage your
audience to purchase with a call to action in your next video/post. This is where the real
money is made in coaching, and this money is separated from your time.
You could draft a book such as this one, refer to it often in your YouTube videos and see the
book sales trickle in, making you money whilst you sleep and even whilst you are seeing a
client.
You could identify the most common life hurdles your audience and clients are going through
and make a detailed video course that guides them through it.
These options would require you to invest time and effort however the time and effort are just
the initial ‘start up’ costs. Once a digital product such as an eBook or video course has been
made, it requires almost no further work other than referring to it often with call to actions in
social media posts and some very minor occasional technical adjustments.
The mindset should be held that making money online from your creative projects is an
enriching, freedom promoting way of making a living in this world. This income is not directly
tied to your time, allows you to diversify your efforts and pursue a whole different industry
which can be interesting. And you get to do all that whilst having the time to see a few clients
every day.
At this point however, you may find it difficult to manage your time. With increased workload
comes the increased need for productivity…
Productivity tips – Free up your time, increase your
income
Understanding that a coach’s income (directly from coaching itself) is limited by the time they
have; coaches may seek to improve productivity to free up time to increase the number of
clients they can help in a day.
If you free up an hour of your time from unimportant activities, you have an extra hour to see
clients (or you have that hour to invest into your self-care and education which are equally as
important)
There are two powerhouse productivity tips that will free up at least 1 hour of your day, if not
more.
Pareto’s Principle – The 80/20 Rule
There are actions that give you the ‘most bang for your buck’ and there are actions done for
the sake of being busy. 20% of actions leads to 80% of the results we want. That means that
the other 80% of actions yield just 20% of the results. Figure out the important 20% in all
aspects of life. Journaling your thoughts down on paper is beneficial practice to do so.
Here are questions to get you started:
What 20% of tasks will get me 80% of the results I want?
What 80% of tasks give me just 20% of the results I want?
Can I stop doing these 80% of tasks or at least reduce the time spent on them?
What 20% of fun activities give me 80% of the pleasure?
What 80% of fun activities give me just 20% of the pleasure?
Can I stop spending so much time on these 80% of fun activities and spend that time on the
20% of fun activities that yield more pleasure?
What 20% of activities are causing 80% of my stress?
What 20% of chores cause 80% of my feelings of being overworked?
Can I ‘outsource’ these activities and chores by paying someone to do them?
Answering these questions truthfully and trying to narrow your efforts into the 20% of input
that results in 80% of the desired output will save you significant daily effort and time.
Parkinson’s Law – Deadlines are powerful
Tasks swell up in the required time to complete depending on how much time has been
allocated to them. Many students know the feeling of having a month to complete an essay,
only to complete it the night before it was due to be submitted.
Set a short deadline, and you’ll achieve the desired output much faster than being lenient.
Lenient deadlines promote procrastination. Imminent deadlines promote taking action.
Use both the 80/20 rule and Parkinson’s law in conjunction to fly through tasks at a
significantly faster pace.
Less time spent on daily tasks (especially unimportant tasks not leading to remarkable
results) means more time for clients and that means more money in your pocket and faster
business growth.
In the competitive market of coaching and making money online, an extra hour a day could
mean the difference between a profitable business and one that never takes off the ground.
Income, expenses & taxes
Profit from coaching is taxable meaning an income statement should be kept to avoid
headaches. The amount you pay in tax is calculated from your profit which means your total
income (money-in) minus expenses (money-out).
Don’t worry, this is as simple as inputting income and expenses into a spreadsheet as you
go along the tax year so you can report the final figures when the annual self-assessment is
due.
Coaching, in the method advised in this handbook, is considered self-employment meaning
you must fill out your own self-assessment every year or pay a professional to do so. The
process is quick and simple enough to follow along using free online resources and guides
specific to your country and/or state.
There are important questions to which you must know the answer to:
What counts as income?
All money received (money-in) in the coaching business including direct payments from
clients, social media monetisation (YouTube AdSense etc), product sales (books, courses),
affiliate marketing and even tips given by happy clients.
What counts as expenses?
Read over the following site for reasonable expenses:
https://www.gov.uk/expenses-if-youre-self-employed
Money-out that is solely used for business is considered expenses. These expenses are
taken off your income to calculate your yearly profit, which is then taxed.
How much tax will I have to pay?
The tax you owe is a % based on how much total profit you made from all businesses and
incomes. Due to significant differences in tax, it is too difficult to give an accurate figure,
however as a very general, safe figure, remember 30% of profits may be owed for tax.
Therefore, it is vital to keep aside roughly 30% of profits (in a separate bank account for best
practice) to pay the tax man. Many new business owners disregard taxes in their
calculations and plans, resulting in headache, mis-budgeting, and debt when they cannot
afford to pay their taxes because they spent that 30%. Set the 30% aside and save yourself
the headache.
Do you need a coaching certificate?
Coaching certification is not an absolute requirement. It is worth investing in an accredited
program to receive a qualification however this can be done after a new coach has decided
the coaching business is for them, after weeks or months.
The benefits of an official certification are twofold:
1.
Increase your coaching effectiveness through education better helping your clients
2.
Attract new clients who may look out for qualified coaches
As you can start your coaching business without an official qualification or certification, it is
recommended to get your first few clients first, so you know coaching is for you.
A costly mistake many people make with all kinds of formal education is investing in the
education first (college degrees, courses etc) without having direct experience of the position
they wish to secure with that education. This is a common regret amongst young people in
all career fields and results in a feeling of wasted time and money, if they realise the job
wasn’t for them.
The public knows little about coaching certifications. Most of your clients will be first time
clients (meaning they have never had a coach before), converted simply because they saw
your social media content and were interested in learning from you. Your unofficial
qualification comes from the value you give for free on the social media platform of your
choice. If something you say strikes out to a potential client, they may believe you have
enough knowledge to help them over life’s hurdles.
Should you get a coaching certificate? This would be a better question to ask.
The answer is… it depends.
You are investing in that education which will benefit your clients and getting an official
qualification which will attract even more clients, growing your business. Once you have put
your foot in the door in your coaching business and discovered this is for you, that you enjoy
the process and the problems that arise in this business and want to become an even better
coach for your clients, invest in your education by getting an official qualification.
However, until that point where you are ready to invest in your education, knowledge can
always be learnt online, for free and far more efficiently than any formal education system.
Break down the key areas you want to improve (goal setting, listening, influencing behaviour
changes etc) and research these areas online and read books on them. There is no reason
to wait until you get onto an official educational program to learn. Anyone who wants to
achieve in life should be continuously learning out of interest and curiosity.
The Business Side Recap
It is vital to get your first client fast, even before you feel ‘ready’. This plan of action counters
procrastination and quickly determines whether coaching is for you, instead of wasting
weeks or even months on thinking and over planning.
Get your first client within 14 days following the procedure above, knowing you can increase
prices and improve your coaching effectiveness. At this stage all that matters is getting your
foot in the door to begin the first one or two coaching sessions.
Once you have experienced your first client interaction and determine this is a business you
would like to grow, it’s time to get more clients. Provide value in education and knowledge on
a social media platform of your choosing. Teach your target market things that would
improve their lives. In every piece of content you release online, include a strong call to
action to the coaching offer linked in the description (“Click the link below right now to
become my coaching client, it’s 90% off for 2 days!”).
By this time, it’s important to improve your coaching skills to give your clients the best help
(read the chapter below).
Consider the framework of developing multiple streams of income. Income from clients
directly is capped to your limited time. Instead pursue growth on your social media platform
by consistently providing value. Convert the audience into true fans by helping them with the
problems you know your target market are experiencing. True fans become clients.
Develop some creative projects which act as additional sources of income. Write books,
make video tutorials, courses etc. The need for productivity will become greater. Use the
80/20 rule to calculate the ‘biggest bang for your buck’ activities yielding most of the results
you want and home in on them. Use Parkinson’s Law by setting deadlines for these
important 20% of activities, ensuring to set a deadline that seems unreasonably short. This
will kick you into action and drive your business success.
When you have released these creative projects, let your audience know through strong call
to actions in the content you upload.
At this stage you should have a steady stream of clients and passive income from your
creative projects. Well done, goal accomplished.
Becoming an Effective Coach
Most ‘How to be a coach’ guides revolve solely around asking the right questions at the right
time. This is a binary approach to coaching. It goes much further than that.
Effective coaches have developed the leadership and influential skills needed to invoke a
positive behaviour change in their clients. You must understand the success of your
coaching is simply whether your client preforms the right actions that would get them to their
goals.
To aid them to preform those desired actions a coach must have learnt and practiced being a
leader and being an influencer.
In this chapter you will learn how to become an effective coach by developing the skillset
and following a framework heavily effective in getting a client to their desired result.
More than just a listener
A coaches’ job is not just to sit there, listen and ask questions. There are no amount of
empathetic listening skills nor magical questions that would suddenly get a client out of their
rut and taking action.
Admittedly being a great listener is important, especially in midst of the loneliness epidemic
we find ourselves in. Although being a great listener makes the client feel good about your
interaction, it is not enough to rely on listening skills and ‘life coaching questions’ to empower
the client into taking real action. A client taking action is the success a coach desires. If you
get your client exercising 3 times a week, increasing their productivity, meditating
consistently, you have done a wonderful job.
Action and results are measurable, observable and profitable. Limiting your coaching skills to
just listening and asking questions drastically reduces the influence you could have on your
clients.
If you wish to become an effective coach who can get their clients to take action and make
real progress in their lives, follow the below framework:
Education
Motivation
Challenge
Support
Education
You must start with education. But we’re not talking about educating the client just yet, you
must educate yourself.
Hopefully, you have established a drive for self-learning. You are participating in self-learning
right now by reading this resource. The more you educate yourself, the greater your
coaching skills and the more your business grows.
There are two ‘must read’ books for anyone wishing to be effective in a role that benefits
from influencing behaviour changes:
The first book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This a world-renowned book for social success. The last chapter contains 9 principles for
being a leader:
1.
Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2.
Call attention to peoples mistakes indirectly
3.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person
4.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
5.
Let the other person save face
6.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement
7.
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
8.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9.
Make the other person happy about doing the things you suggest
An effective coach makes use of all 9 principles to empower their clients to act. To learn the
principles in more detail and improve your coaching skills you can purchase the book from
Amazon by clicking this link right now:
https://amzn.to/2VxkEe8
The second book is Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change by Joseph Grenny,
Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillian, Al Switzler.
This book is the coach’s bible. It breaks down the research backed methods of improving
your skills as an influencer by setting clear, measurable goals for vital behaviours. You’ll
learn about the 6 sources of influence that determine one’s behaviours. They are:
1.
Personal Motivation – Help them love what they hate
2.
Personal Ability – Help them do what they can’t
3.
Social Motivation – Provide Encouragement
4.
Social Ability – Provide Assistance
5.
Structural Motivation – Change their economy
6.
Structural Ability – Change their space
Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change is an entire book based on helping
someone perform vital behaviours. Vital behaviours are the most important behaviours that
drive the results one desires. These behaviours follow the 80/20 rule because they are the
‘biggest bang for your buck’ in terms of effort and adherence needed. An effective coach
invests their efforts on getting their clients to perform the vital behaviours through setting
clear and compelling goals with accurate measures. The most effective coaches use all 6
sources of influence to help their clients.
Learn more about the 6 sources of influence, promoting vital behaviours and the influencer
research that’s been carried out worldwide by purchasing Influencer: The New Science of
Leading Change from Amazon:
https://amzn.to/3lC3kiw
Investing in your own learning is crucial to becoming an effective coach as the next part of
the framework is to educate your clients. No matter what their vital behaviours or goals are,
more education would cause greater performance. You must have the ability to teach your
clients a thing or two in every interaction. Assuming the role of the teacher empowers your
clients with ongoing learning that improves their adherence and motivation.
You’ll see it in your clients face when you share knowledge relevant to their struggles. It’s a
lightbulb moment where it just ‘clicks’ for them and they now realise exactly what to do to
overcome the task at hand.
A large part of coaching is helping your clients delay gratification. The traps of modern life
have us addicted to instant gratification that pushes us away from our goals.
All vital behaviours you want your clients to perform are forms of delayed gratification. These
are difficult and uncomfortable right now yet lead to significant rewards, like exercise (This is
the opposite of instant gratification where the behaviour is easy and comfortable immediately
however leads to long term detriments, like eating junk food).
Watch The Marshmallow Test to get an interesting understanding of this concept:
https://youtu.be/mZUTZKbe4hI
In short: The Marshmallow Test studied children’s ability to delay gratification for a bigger
reward. The ability to delay gratification can be learnt and can be simplified to distracting
oneself by focusing on the activity instead of the result.
Consider a man who wants to lose weight. If he becomes obsessed with wanting to lose
10lbs of fat, he is like the children in the Marshmallow Experiment who fixated on the
marshmallow and inevitably chose instant over delayed gratification. The same can be said
in a micro-level when the man is weighing up the decision to eat a doughnut. One must
distract themselves from the instant gratification and instead focus specifically on the activity
that would yield the delayed gratification, in this example, exercising. The man who
obsesses over wanting to lose 10lbs is far less likely to achieve his goal than the man who
obsesses over the activity (exercising and dieting) that would get him there.
The practical application of this experiment for coaches is to drill into clients the obsession of
the activity itself, rather than the reward that comes from it. Get them obsessed with the
meditation session, rather than the mindfulness that results from it. Get them obsessed with
the weightlifting exercises, rather than the muscle that results from it. Get them obsessed
with productivity and working smart, rather than the promotion that results from it.
Education is hugely important in one’s path to self-improvement and a coach can teach their
clients mentalities (mental concepts and belief systems) that could change the clients
outlook on life. This is far greater than just being a great listener and then setting the client
off with a goal they have repeatedly failed. Clients have often tried to improve the areas of
their lives often before getting a coach’s help. Unless the client’s mentality is rewired, they
will produce the same results time and time again.
Consider a client who wants to lose weight, but binge eats often. Their previous coach (who
the client saw no results with) solely focused on listening to the client and asking questions.
Although the client uncovered psychological reasons for their binge eating (as a combat to
stress), no progress was made, and the client even gained weight.
Being a great listener and asking ‘coaching questions’ was not enough to make a drastic
behaviour change that was required. The effective coach takes a different approach. He
educates the client, teaching them how sugar intake spikes insulin which then blocks the
leptin signals to our brain. The effective coach explains this process is exactly why we
overeat junk food, as our brain never gets the signal we are full.
The effective coach teaches their client this in detail and now, equipped with further
education, the client drastically reduces their sugar intake and has not binged once since
that session. The client feels full and satiated with enough energy to exercise a few times a
week. A fantastic improvement solely due to the education they received.
Educated clients get successful results.
Motivation
Although the ideal scenario is one in which the client acts out of discipline with or without
motivation, an effective coach understands that invoking motivation in their clients is
necessary for the inevitable down periods where levels of discipline are low.
Having the skill to motivate your client into taking action is extremely powerful and necessary
as all vital behaviours are forms of delayed gratification. Effective coaches motivate their
clients to get them investing upfront effort and commitment for later reward.
So how do you do it? Invoking motivation into someone else can be simplified into 2 parts:
1.
Remind them of the benefits (with enthusiasm)
2.
Make it easy for them (just show up mentality)
Telling your client a meaningful story is one research backed way of invoking personal
motivation discussed in the Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change book
mentioned above. Remind clients, with enthusiasm, how good it felt after you committed to
the delayed gratification vital behaviour that led you to accomplishing your own goals. Tell
them the story of the younger version of yourself that was in the client’s current position. Tell
them what your thought patterns were like, what you struggled with and how you overcame
that yourself. Your clients look up to you as a leader and hearing how you have
accomplished the same vital behaviour empowers them to believe it’s possible.
Ask your client to visualize the success they are after. Visualization serves as a powerful
technique in reminding oneself of the end result we are working for.
Appeal to their nobler motives (a principle from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and
Influence People book) by mentioning that your client could help their loved ones to take the
same action once they have accomplished it themselves as an additional benefit for their
demanding work.
Make it easy for them refers to that initial difficulty and discomfort of delayed gratification.
Implement the ‘just show up’ mentality which means reducing the vital behaviour to the first
step: A gym workout gets reduced to just hitting 1 set, a productive day at work gets reduced
to just getting into work on time.
Most people struggle to start a delayed gratification activity but once started find themselves
enjoying it and completing the activity to an acceptable standard. It’s just starting the activity
that is difficult, especially when starting the delayed gratification activity means the client
needs to stop the instant gratification activity they are doing (stopping Netflix binge-watching
to go to the gym). It is vital therefore that a coach implements the ‘just show up’ mentality to
ease the client into the delayed gratification activity.
An effective coach recognises the significance of consistency over intensity, especially in the
beginning stages of a new habit. Getting your client to exercise for 10 minutes every day is
far better than pushing them to hit a 2-hour workout which causes feelings of overwhelm and
potentially pushes them away from the new exercise habit.
Consistency reigns king and effective coaches know that drilling the importance of
consistency into their clients is vital for long term growth.
A behaviour tracker can be implemented to promote consistency. It is a simple page in a
notepad that states the desired daily behaviours at the top and the days of the month on the
side. Checkboxes encourage the feelings of consistency and release a hit of dopamine (the
feel-good hormone) when ticked.
Get your clients to create their own behaviour tracker and encourage the clients to keep the
behaviour tracker on their desk or anywhere that remains in sight often. Seeing an unticked
box for a certain behaviour will encourage the client to take action (just show up) to get that
dopamine hit.
It can, however, be argued that motivation is a myth. Do you need motivation to do
something? Sure, it helps when you feel like it. But do you need to want to do something, to
do it? An important mentality effective coaches drill into their clients is “do the challenging
work even if you don’t feel like it”. Too often we wait until the circumstances are right. If we
don’t feel like exercising, we don’t go to the gym. But then before you know it, it’s been over
a week since you wanted to exercise, and that belt is getting tighter and tighter.
Ask anyone who has committed themselves to any delayed gratification behaviour
(exercising, meditation, making a business, learning an instrument/language etc) and they
will tell you they did the work often when they weren’t feeling it. Even the most enthusiastic
athletes would miss half their workouts if they only trained when they felt like it. So, your
clients must do the demanding work even if they don’t feel like it. Again, this benefits from
you reminding them of the benefits and then making the vital behaviour easy enough using
the ‘just show up’ mentality.
Challenge
An effective coach must challenge their clients and encourage them to chase discomfort by
setting goals. The discomfort of delayed gratification is neutralised when paired with the
pride of working towards a goal.
High performers work towards goals all year round to achieve success. This goes for all
fields and ambitions. The goals a person sets and works towards are the great dividers
between mediocrity and success.
Those who regularly set ‘SMART goals’ achieve more and remain consistent longer than
those who do not set any goals or those that set output/results goals.
What are SMART goals? How are they different to output/results goals?
SMART stands for:
Specific: Be specific. Compare these goals: “I want to eat healthy” / “I want to more fruit or
vegetables everyday”
Measurable: The desired input must be quantified. Compare these goals: “I want to exercise
more” / “I want to do three 30-minute workouts every week”
Achievable – The client must believe they can realistically complete the goal. Compare these
goals: “I want to make £1000 a month freelancing.” / “I want to make 20 million a year,
dream big!!!!”
Relative – Goals must relate to the bigger picture. Think of a client who wants to prioritise
their mental health and compare these goals: “To work 60 hours a week with superior
performance and get a promotion” / “To meditate for 20 minutes at least 5 days a week”
Timebound: Goals must have a realistic, perhaps short deadline (Parkinson’s Law).
Compare these goals: “To lose 10lbs of fat” / “To lose 10lbs of fat in 10 weeks”.
SMART goals require more intention to create which promotes adherence. A well thought
out goal is achievable, motivating and slightly challenging.
Effective coaches create SMART goals for their client’s vital behaviours and constantly
remind them of these goals throughout the week, encouraging them to work towards the
goal even when the client does not feel like it.
The biggest issue a client will face, that a coach must help them overcome, is overcoming
the need for motivation. Although an important driver for action and success, motivation is
unnecessary. Effective coaches educate and train their clients to take action even when they
do not feel like it. Teaching clients to separate actions from feelings empowers them with the
realisation they can perform the delayed gratification activities at any point, whether they
have motivation to do so. This is a crucial point coaches must remember. Taking action is
easy when one wants to do so. However, with the distractions of modern life we often find
ourselves not wanting to do the challenging work. And so, effective coaches train their
clients to become mindful of this situation, slowly overcoming a lack of motivation one
challenging step at a time.
Support
It is inevitable for a client to fail the challenge a coach has set for them. Effective coaches
use strategies to minimise the ‘down period’ or rut of failure to get clients back on track
making progress.
It may be difficult to support a client when they need it most. They may be debating whether
coaching is working, fallen back to old habits of instant gratification and this is the point
where a client’s previous addiction (drugs, junk food, porn, video games etc) resurface
causing a greater need for support. Simply put this down period occurs when a client
chooses instant gratification over delayed gratification.
Sometimes clients may fall off their vital behaviour for weeks or even months. This is a
challenging time for both the client and the coach however the best coaches take 100%
responsibility for this period. These effective coaches ensure they keep up their own
education to learn the effective strategies that support clients.
Before this inevitable down period happens in the first place it’s important to build resilience
into your clients by gradually increasing the required effort and persistence for vital
behaviours (just show up mentality starts to demand a little more from them). It is vital to let
the clients feel small intermittent defeats in the preliminary stages of your coaching, so they
realise “setbacks aren’t permanent roadblocks but rather, signals that they need to keep
learning”.
Once the down period has begun and the need for support has arose, repeat the 4-step
framework (Education – Motivation – Challenge – Support) in order. Effective coaches allow
the client to speak out their mind at this point and slowly direct the conversation to starting
an educational discussion about the hurdles the client faces. Discuss the problem as one of
the worlds or societies instead of an individual problem the client is facing. The down period
probably has been caused by a problem which effects millions of people (laziness, internet
addiction etc).
Discuss how the world has made it so easy to fall into these traps of modern addictions and
unproductiveness. When the client joins in on this discussion, they essentially educate
themselves and take the position of a teacher, referring to the rest of the population as
people unaware of the modern traps you are discussing here. This discussion acts as a form
of education.
Follow it through motivating the client by adhering to the 2 parts of motivation:
1.
Remind them of the benefits (with enthusiasm)
2.
Make it easy for them (just show up mentality)
Make the client mindful of how they feel in this down period and compare that to how they
felt when performing the vital behaviours. They probably were far more fulfilled and happier
just a few weeks ago when they were making progress. This serves as reminding them of
the benefits of chasing discomfort through delayed gratification. Clarify it to the client that
their previous levels of happiness (that was likely much higher compared to during this down
period) was solely due to the feeling of making progress. Tell them a meaningful story about
the importance of consistently making progress in life.
Reduce the required vital behaviours to invoke the ‘just show up’ mentality again. The client
needs to be reminded that making progress from this down period is as easy as just starting
the vital behaviour, without the intensity they had worked up to (getting into the gym and
hitting just 1 set is progress when they have done no exercise at all for the past few weeks).
Following the 4-step framework it’s time to challenge the client again with an important note:
Challenges should always be difficult relative to where the client is right now. Trying to
continue old SMART goals may be counterintuitive if they were set when the client was in a
better space mentally and physically. An effective coach understands that challenges must
remember the current capabilities of the clients, ensuring that challenges are constantly
updated to reflect how the client is feeling. At this stage of a down period, the challenges and
SMART goals set should be significantly easier than just a few weeks ago when the client
was performing better and better.
The challenge is followed by the inevitable need for support and thus the cycle of helping a
client to take action continues. Every repetition of this cycle should have the client at a better
state than the previous one. The ups and downs of the short term are negated by a general
trend upwards towards success on the long term.
Inspiring change
Principle 7 of being a leader (How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie):
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
This empowers the clients to believe it is possible to make the changes required of them.
There are two ways to perform this principle:
1.
Set a fantastic example for your clients
2.
Act like your client already possess the characteristics needed of them to perform vital
behaviours (hard working, disciplined, passionate etc)
Setting a fantastic example for the clients refers to a coach working hard on their own
self-improvement. Your advice as a coach is limited by how much you follow it yourself.
Imagine a personal trainer who is overweight and unfit, would clients trust his advice if it
seems like he doesn’t follow that same advice himself? It’s unlikely, the personal trainer
would lose credibility just as a coach who isn’t very productive or disciplined.
You too must follow your own advice by working on yourself. This serves 4 huge benefits:
1.
You improve your own life and enjoy the rewards of delayed gratification, accomplishing
goals and overcoming challenges
2.
You inspire change in your clients by showing them what’s possible with arduous work
3.
You increase how much your clients look up to you as a capable leader, promoting
adherence to your advice
4.
Your online audience size increases leading to more clients and higher income (having
proof of your own self-improvement will lead to more people watching your social media
content, following you and converting into true fans)
Let these 4 benefits serve as extra motivation for you to commit to your own
self-improvement ventures. The more you level up your personal level, the more your
coaching business levels up too.
Acting like your client already possess the characteristics needed of them to perform vital
behaviours acts as a psychological tool to promote hard work. Dale Carnegie mentions in his
book “Give them a fine reputation to live up to, and they will make prodigious efforts rather
than see you disillusioned.”
No one likes to let down people who believed in them. Sometimes we place a bigger
emphasis on success to impress others rather than ourselves. Whilst clients should be
encouraged to work hard for themselves, a client working hard to impress their coach is as
important.
Make it clear to your client that you believe in their ability to perform the vital behaviours that
would get them to their goals. Act as if there isn’t even a possibility for them to fail the
challenge that’s been set (moving onto the support part of the 4-step framework above when
they do however fail a challenge). The confidence you place in the client will undeniably
improve their self-thought and therefore their actions.
Yet another principle from How to Win Friends and Influence People that is hugely beneficial
for coaches is principle 6 of being a leader:
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be ‘hearty in your
approbation and lavish in your praise.’
An effective coach can inspire change in their clients through an understanding of
psychological concepts. Again, the importance of educating oneself (part 1 of the 4-step
framework above) on effective leadership and influence skills cannot be understated.
Praise acts as a positive reinforcement, a term coined by psychologist B. F. Skinner in his
work on operant conditioning. Positive reinforcement such as praise strengthens a behaviour
and makes the person more likely to perform that same behaviour again.
Coaches can use positive reinforcement by praising clients who have performed a vital
behaviour. This makes the clients more motivated to repeat the same behaviour hoping to
experience the positive reinforcement (praise) again.
The effect of a coach’s positive reinforcement is strongly tied to the clients view of the coach.
If your client views you as a strong leader they will be more likely to place a higher value on
your positive reinforcement. This is yet another benefit of setting a fantastic example for your
clients through your own self-improvement.
Here is a quick video with real life applications of positive reinforcement to further your
education in this area:
https://youtu.be/xC4wSO3IDYg
Becoming an Effective Coach recap
Investing the time and effort to become an effective coach will pay off. Coaches who can
influence positive behaviour changes in their clients will become more successful.
Effective coaching is not limited to being a great listener and asking the right questions.
Follow the 4-step framework to get clients taking action on their vital behaviours:
Education
Start by educating yourself, continuously learning more and more about leadership and
influencer skills. Learn vital information about delayed vs instant gratification.
Then implement the skills you have learnt to your client interactions and teach them in an
easy-to-understand way how committing to delayed gratification will aid them.
Motivation
Motivate clients by reminding them of the benefits they will experience if they commit to
delayed gratification and by making it easier for them through implementing the ‘just show
up’ mentality.
Help your clients understand that motivation and the ‘right feelings’ are not needed to take
action, that one can take action even if they don’t feel like it.
Challenge
Set SMART goals based on the client’s vital behaviours and remind them of these goals
often.
Support
Inevitably the client will experience a rut of inferior performance, help them through it by
restarting this 4-step framework. Educate them on why they are in a rut (choosing instant
over delayed gratification), motivate them by reminding them how they felt just weeks ago
when they were making progress and make it easier for them to get started by reintroducing
the ‘just show up’ mentality. Finally set the client a challenge (SMART goal) that relates to
their current mental and physical ability.
Keep up your own self-improvement in your personal time by achieving your own SMART
goals. An effective coach has clients looking up to them. The more your clients look up to
you, the better their adherence to your advice. Set a fantastic example for them to follow.
Wrapping up
Making money online is more accessible than ever. You are now equipped with the
knowledge to start your own coaching business, making a living through a fulfilling means
which provides immense value to others.
Use what you learnt in this handbook to excel your coaching skills. Coaches who continue
their own self learning can better help their clients achieve the results they are after. And
remember, results are profitable.