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Class OverviewMost of what you learn in coaching certification programs is wrong and ineffective. Replace all that bad advice with what is proven to have you truly prosper as a coach. (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!) Large Your ProfessorLarge Steve Chandler is a master coach to top level professionals and coaches. He is the author of 30+ books that help people overcome their fears, master their time, and astonish through service.How to Be a Prosperous CoachConsider the sad fate of the unsuccessful success coach. He urges people to take him on as a coach. He even suggests that he can help them become successful at whatever their current project (issue, opportunity, problem) is. But both he and the prospective client notice that he himself is not successful. Physician heal thyself!   If you are a coach your bank account will be a reflection of how profoundly and how often you serve people. That sounds brutally materialistic and capitalistic. (Capitalism is a derisive term coined by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.)   But all successful coaches realize that the service formula is true.     When they are on their game and into the groove, their bank account reflects it. But only always.     So how to do this? How to take my love of coaching and transfer that love over to the “hard part” of this business,  sometimes known as selling? Won’t I myself become a term of derision?   Not when you swing it. Not when you love it. Not when you can dance with the devil by the light of the moon and see that he was just wearing a fun costume. The night is young. We are meant to have fun. You don’t have to have a coaching practice with any “hard part” in it. This I have experienced to be true…..it will work for you, when you USE these ten ideas as tools. The Top 10 Big Ideas1Sell the experience, not the concept. People buy the concept in most professions. They know what an accountant is, they know what an acupuncturist is, a carpet cleaner, a massage therapist. Tell me about a good one and I’ll go use them, no problem.But coaching is different. People don’t know what coaching is. Not really. Every coach is so different! So clients don’t have anything, really, to base their buying decision on. If you try to sell the CONCEPT of coaching by giving conceptual ideas…like what you charge, what your credentials are, how you work, what you promise, etc. people will not buy your coaching. (Have you noticed?)They need the experience. They need to know FOR SURE that this investment is a good one. And there are ways to do that. There are systems that are both fun and easy, and keep you out of the world of marketing and selling and REJECTION and into the world of giving and serving and enjoying every moment you spend with your prospects.2Stop believing in yourself. Trusting and believing are fool’s errands, especially in the world of coaching. They are also examples of very poor time management.You want certainty. Case histories. Facts. Reality. Reality is on your side. So you are going to ask questions and tell short stories. That’s how prospects become clients. They love the insights they get when they answer your questions, and they are reassured when you tell your stories about other people you have helped.You will want to keep an active and vibrant success journal that you refer to and read through prior to every call or meeting with a prospect. Someone sends you an email saying they have had a wonderful breakthrough because of a session with you and you will IMMEDIATELY  add that into your journal. This is reality. This does not involve the problematic Disneyesque activity of believing in yourself, trusting the universe or wishing on a star.Trying to believe in yourself just gets in your way and will eventually make you a nervous wreck. It’s also infantile and will arrest your development into being a prosperous adult professional.3Let your niche find YOU. Most coaching “certification” programs urge novice coaches to find and choose a niche…a specialty! I have never encountered such counter-productive nonsense. Most of the coaches I know who are extremely successful have no niche at all. A niche would limit them! It would shut them off from many categories of people who are yearning for their help. I know coaches who emerge from “certification” programs crowing about the niche they have chosen. They have no clients, but they have a niche! “I am going to coach rodeo clowns!” I mean, good luck! The only time I see a niche working in a coach’s favor is when it emerges on its own…..if you have a certain success in a certain category (and it can happen by accident) you can now go to other people in that category and they are more likely to listen to your success stories. But even then, you don’t have to let it restrict you.4Don’t just be good at what you do. Greatness is a job requirement in coaching. Just as it is in athletics and the performing arts like acting, singing and dancing. You must, every day, move toward absolute mastery and greatness.  Good enough is not good enough. But that’s good news. That makes this profession fun. You are now on a never-ending journey upward. You read books, watch classes on optimal living (while taking notes), and listen to audios on your walks and in your car. Why? Because you can always be better, wiser, more effective. You do this because your clients won’t. You read the book your client doesn’t have time or mindset to read. You take the class your client never took. You are the source of transformation for your client.  You learn from other coaches. You study their moves. You copy them and improve on them. You incorporate what they do into your own way of coaching and your very greatness is what eventually gets you clients… because, as in any other profession, when you reach greatness, people can’t stop telling their friends and colleagues about you. This profession is about seeing the greatness in other people and bringing it out. If you yourself are not doing that for yourself (developing your own greatness), then you will never be prosperous.5Stay in the prospect’s world. What should you say about yourself in an email or voicemail or in a phone conversation? Nothing. In an optimal world of effortless client-acquisition, you do not exist. Your email strikes a chord only WHEN IT IS ALL ABOUT THE RECIPIENT OF THE EMAIL.    Yet most coaches waste all their days selling, promoting, marketing, connecting, funnel-building, spamming, blitzing, swaggering, posting, crowing, scamming and personal branding. They don’t even know what it is to venture into the client’s world. They remain shriveled up inside a narcissistic personality-cocoon created from their own self-fascination and fear. Therefore they are always isolated and disconnected from the client. They are, “Lost and afraid in a world they never made.”    You want to be prosperous?  Enter the client’s world.6Die before going into battle. Like the Samurai do. They would die to themselves. In their minds. Then, in battle, they were now free to whirl and dance. Not fearing death, their movements were unexpected, imaginative, flowing, creative and they became nearly immortal.     You can do the same. You may need money, but you do not NEED THIS PERSON’S MONEY. Stop behaving as if you do. It makes you look needy. Needy is creepy. That’s why stalking is a crime. This class will show you how to replace stalking with serving. Your self-esteem will rise every day. Your self-esteem is a MAJOR factor in your client’s decision to hire you.7Generate and create referrals. Do not ask for referrals. I know, everyone teaches you to do that, but how has that worked for you?, other than lowering your self-esteem and making your client feel creepy.  Asking a person for a referral only tells that person that your calendar is wide open because you are not a good enough coach to have people lining up to hire you. It is a pathetic confession of failure, which is why it doesn’t work. Here’s an important rule to remember: do not be pathetic. In this class I’ll show you how to get referrals. Yes, you’ll talk about them, but YOU WILL NOT ASK FOR THEM ever again.8Let your own coach boost your success rate. A coach without a coach is like a doctor who won’t see a doctor. What if your doctor referred you to another doctor, a specialist, and you asked your doctor, “Would you go to him yourself?” And he says, “Oh, no. I don’t go to doctors, ever. They just screw you up.”       Keep interviewing coaches for yourself until you find one who will help you accelerate YOUR FINANCIAL SUCCESS…so that her fee is a total non issue.      No client trusts a coach who has no coach. And do you blame them? What are you going to tell them when they ask? You can’t afford one? (Inspiring!) Or you don’t believe coaching works? (Wow.)9Make sure you are coaching someone today. Most coaches make the mistake of holding out for big packages or large fees long before they have paid their spiritual dues. If you are beginning your coaching practice, do whatever it takes to be coaching people. Charge a dollar for an hour of coaching if that’s where you have to start. Because the more you coach, the better you get. And the better you get, the more people talk about how good you are. And the more people talk about you, the more their friends contact you to find out what all the talk is about. And when that happens, you raise your fees. Not before.10Learn to love the hard parts. If anything looks or feels hard as you move through your day as a coach, slow it down. Slow it WAY down. Find a way to make it easier and more fun. The more fun it is, the more you will love doing it, and the more successful and effective it will be. (My previous class in the Academy for Optimal Living, How to Serve and Grow Rich covers this subject and would be good for coaches to watch.) Take whatever is not fun and do it differently until it becomes fun. I will give examples of this in the class. Just know, it can be done with ANYTHING, and once it is, your effectiveness will soar.