The following is taken from David’s interview with Philip Cohen in 10 Super Coaches.
Do you recommend offering free coaching?
Offering free coaching is one of the best techniques a new coach has to fill their practice. I suggest offering a free coaching session to anyone who is willing to take advantage of it. It’s a great way for a prospect to experience coaching and for the coach to get practice.
After the first session, I suggest the coach does what ever is necessary to fill their practice. Sometimes that means offering free coaching for several weeks or months, however I prefer the coach offers coaching at a reduced rate instead of coaching for free.
It’s important that the coach tell the client at the beginning of the relationship the amount of their usual fee and how long the reduced coaching will last.
The following is taken from David’s interview with Anna Dargitz in 10 Super Coaches.
What words of advice would you give to a coach starting out?
Coaching is more than a calling and more than a business. It transcends both because it’s about evolution. You are setting out to become a mentor for those who are ready and willing to evolve. Don’t take it lightly. It’s not as easy as it looks. And the rewards are more abundant than they appear.
Be prepared to dedicate your life to discovering, living and teaching others who you really are and who you really aren’t. Plan to learn and relish all kinds of truths about the underlying dynamics of people, situations and life. Plan to express yourself fully. The field of coaching is evolving fast: Plan to keep up.
Before you can help others evolve faster, you’ll need to immerse yourself in your own evolution. Don’t scrimp here. Find a good mentor. When you’ve given up all your attachments to how you thought you, life, others, coaching, and almost everything else is supposed to be, you’ll be ready for the noble role of Personal, Business and Professional Coach. And people will flock to you. Where are you now on that path?
The following is an excerpt from the CoachStart Manual.
Create product
Once you’re out there speaking, you’ll want products to sell. Create a tape series, book or video. Also partner with someone else who has something you don’t sell, so you sell their product and they sell yours. Give away one from the platform as a prize. If you have a speech, you have a tape. Once you get your talk perfect, go into a recording studio and record it, or even better – record it professionally during a live speech. Have it professionally packaged and sell it in the back of the room at all your talks.
The following is taken from David’s interview in 10 Super Coaches.
What top three methods, in order, did you use to get your clients in the first 2 years?
The first thing I did was use my current network. I called people I knew who might have an issue or that I wanted to work with, or who I thought might just do a session we me because they were a friend of mine. That was very important.
Another method that I used was public speaking, and I worked with a mentor coach, Christine McDougall. She helped me put together my speech and I went out to Rotary and I did the free speaking circuit and I actually got quite a few clients out of that, so I definitely thing that’s a very powerful way to go.
The third thing that I did was I developed my website and I spent a lot of time studying the search engines and working out how that all works and trying to get more and more traffic. I love playing with my website, and I get 95% of my business now through the web.
The following is an excerpt of an actual transaction between David and a client in Top Coaching Techniques.
David: Yeah. Groovy. Now I want to acknowledge you, too, because I think, yes, you can be hard on yourself. I’m seeing, from this form, that you are aware of what’s happening around you, and you’re making decisions and you’re making movements and you’re looking at your life.
Client: Absolutely.
David: That’s what I want for you, that you’re continually doing that. If you notice any conversation in your head about, ‘Oh, I’m terrible,’ or, ‘I’m not getting stuff done,’ or, ‘I’m not doing enough,’ or like that, firstly you can say, ‘Thanks for sharing,’ and let it go. But secondly, you can do what you’ve done here in the form. This is perfect. Write down the stuff that you intended to do, write down what you didn’t do, and write down what you’re going to do and then do it.
Client: Exactly.
David: That’s perfect.
Client: All right.
David: Great.
The following is an excerpt of an actual transaction between David and a client in Top Coaching Techniques.
David: You feel that you’re not achieving?
Client: Well, I feel that everything I am achieving is about making money, which is a good thing, because I need to make money and I’ve figure out how to make it. The problem is that then I start to feel I can’t do the fun stuff, because I’m not making money. That’s frustrating me and I need to deal with that.
David: Good. I would tend to agree with your strategy. Not doing fun stuff because it’s not the same priority as the money making stuff.
Client: Exactly.
David: Are you doing fine with the money making stuff? That’s working?
Client: Yeah. I’m doing fine with it.
David: And it’s working because you put your attention on that?
Client: Exactly.
David: There’s a managing director I’m working with who has this 7-stage plan for their life and their business, with a grid of different areas they’re going to achieve and by when. I liked it because it included things that wouldn’t normally be in a business plan. For example: one area someone put in was giving back, and he wrote he was going to sponsor a child. Another person’s area was goals they had for their kids. Another’s was life-changing experiences. I think one of them was to go and visit a morgue.
