David Wood | Inner Firewalking

About David Wood

For 20 years David has helped entrepreneurs around the globe to grow their results, by growing themselves. A former consulting actuary to Fortune 50 companies in New York, David quit corporate life to pursue his inner journey, which now deeply influences his work. A digital nomad, David is currently dancing salsa, paragliding, and coaching his rock star entrepreneur clients from Colombia. His specialty is doubling your productivity and profits, while halving your stress. If you become a highly authentic and inspirational leader in the process, well….that can’t be helped.

Breaking Up and Moving On

The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.

Client: I feel a bit more if I probably don’t get in contact with her, that won’t be probably so bad.

David: Well I’d like to share a couple of thoughts on it. First, I think it’s great, so it sounds like you’re in a good place. What I can see happening is that she was meeting a need for you, she still is. You know, that email felt good, right?

Client: Yeah.

David: So she still is meeting that need for you, and that’s okay, as long as you recognize that when you’re pining, what you’re feeling is, ‘I’m not feeling loved. I want that reassurance from her.’ That’s okay as long as you know what’s going on. It sounds like you realize you weren’t getting everything you need from the relationship, so you made a conscious choice to leave, and then you’re like, ‘Hang on, but I was getting that need.’ What a lot of people do, and what I did for years, is I went back. I went back and got the need met again to the point where I got that filled up, and then thought, ‘What am I doing?’

Client: Yeah, exactly.

Anna Dargitz’s Methods For Finding Clients

The following is taken from David’s interview with Anna Dargitz in 10 Super Coaches.

What top three methods, in order, did you use to get your clients in the first 2 years?

Your question implies that I had lots of clients my first 2 years. I did not. I had about 5-6 per month generally, though they stayed with me for years.

My top method, at first, was asking friends and family because I didn’t have a ready-made network and position at my disposal. It wasn’t pretty. I felt needy and desperate with an overlay of optimism. And of course, it was all quite unconscious. What I was aware of was that I was a new coach in a new coaching industry. I had to do a lot of educating.

My second method was to attend networking events, especially Chamber of Commerce. This too felt dry. I was a fish out of water. I did my best to live up to some measure of success defined as “number of paying clients” and felt miserable about my lack of success.

My third method was asking for referrals, handing out brochures and business cards, public speaking and building a website on a shoe string budget, all with little success. Everything I read, everything I was told indicated that this was how it was done. I thought, “there must be something wrong with me”.

Finding The Right Person

The following is an excerpt of David’s interview in Top Coaching Techniques.

Ingrid: Okay. Now sometimes the hardest thing is to find out or try and work out who the right person is for you, what sort of person you’d like to spend the rest of your life with, or a big part of your life with. Where do you start with that?

David: Yes. Bear in mind, I’ll give you an answer but you can’t really do it properly because the head thinks it knows what it wants, and the head says, ‘Oh, I want this kind of person and this kind of person.’ Ultimately, you know, you may not want that at all, or that may not be right for you. There really is a bit of trust about the whole thing, but the head wants an answer so let’s give it one. What a great thing to do is take a piece of paper and list all the qualities – this is like relationship 101 – list all the qualities that you’re looking for in a relationship. You can talk about physical qualities, so if you’re a woman, how tall is this guy? Does he have to blond? Does he have to have a firm butt? What kind of job does this guy have? Is he really open and outgoing? Is he quiet and shy? Is he sensitive? Has he got a hard edge to him? You know, really list what you’re looking for, and then what I think is a wonderful thing is circle the things that you absolutely must have, that you would rather die alone, an old person, rather than pick anybody else.

Gaining Perspective After a Break Up

The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.

David: You’re on the road.

Client: On the road, mate.

David: Good for you. That’s a great perspective, you know? What I wrote down for you in coaching, because you wrote something about trying to win her back and stuff like that, and I don’t know whether to stay in contact, or whatever, we do that in life. We try and make a decision on it, and come up with this executive thing and follow it, and indeed, coaching is a lot about that. However, a wonderful thing to do sometimes is to go in each moment, and not make any decision on it now. But tomorrow, if at 3:00, you feel like calling her and having a chat about what she’s up to, then you can make that decision at that time.

Client: Yeah.

David: If you take a look and think, ‘Do I really want to, or is that just to make me feel a little bit better? Do I need that? Could I take a walk instead?’ You know, it’s whatever you go through, you’ll go through at that point. The next day, or five minutes later, you may feel different.

Integrity Coaching

The following is an excerpt of one of David’s coaching sessions in Top Coaching Techniques.

David: Okay let’s check something with you now. How did the dinner go?

Client: I didn’t do it.

David: Right.

Client: I’m bad.

David: Yeah, I call that a breakdown in the accountability, because you said that’s what you wanted and you’re not sticking to that. So do you still want accountability?

Client: Yep.

David: How can you reach – does she have a mobile?

Client: Yeah.

David: Have you got a mobile?

Client: Yeah.

David: Okay, how’d you like to give her a call now and tell her when you’re going to cook her dinner?

Client: Yeah, I could do that.

David: It’s called accountability.

Client: It’s just that I’ve got to be careful about why I’m calling her.

David: You can just say, ‘Hey, I want to cook you dinner.’

Client: You mean now now?

David: Yeah, now now. I’ll be happy to hold on.

Client: Let me get off the phone now.

David: I think now might be a little better.

Client: All right.

David: All right, are you willing to do that?

Client: Okay.

David: Great. I’ll hold on.

Client: I’ll put you on hold.

David: Yeah. Thanks.

[Interruption]

David: How are you?

Client: Good. It’s done.

David: Good.

Client: I had trouble getting her. I had to try another number.

David: Well done.

Client: But I did it.

David: That wasn’t so hard.

Client: No, it wasn’t hard at all.

Involve Your Freedom Buddy

The following is taken from Get Paid University.

Hiring a Web Wizard is a great time to collaborate with your Freedom Buddy! Your Freedom Buddy can act as a sounding board when you’re trying to make a decision and could offer another opinion on the “test” web pages your candidates pro- duce. In addition, you may want to team up with your buddy and hire a Web Wizard for both of you. You may be able to get a better deal since the project size will be double, and you won’t have to feel that you’re going through the hiring process alone.

Posts by David Wood

About David Wood

Breaking Up and Moving On

Anna Dargitz’s Methods For Finding Clients

Finding The Right Person

Gaining Perspective After a Break Up

Integrity Coaching

Involve Your Freedom Buddy