Yearning For Yin

To the ancient Chinese, the Tao (or Dao) symbolized "the way of nature", a way of living wisely achieved by careful balancing of the "yin" and "yang" energies of life. To Taoists, the yang represents the energy of doing, of moving into action. The yin is the energy of being and going with the flow.

The ancient Chinese sages taught that too much time spent in either the yin or yang can lead to imbalance, and that the universe will always act to restore balance. While it is possible to be stuck in the yin energy (I think we all know a few world champion couch potatoes), in our modern culture it is far more common to be addicted to the yang energy. We are raised to; do, accomplish, overcome, strive, accumulate, achieve, exert, etc. While the yang energy is essential to the success of many endeavours, if it is not regularly balanced by yin activities, (truly restorative, reflective time), it can lead to trouble.

Nature teaches that if you want to build a muscle, it requires some stress, followed by a period of rest. If you choose to continuously stress the muscle it will lead to injury. In our busy lives, when we chronically stress ourselves the injury can show up in strained relationships and a general loss of joy, direction and meaning. We can become far more fearful, more compulsive and more reactive. If we continue to ignore the yin, burn out and physical illness can follow.

Most people would acknowledge the truth in this ancient teaching. However putting this wisdom into practice is an entirely different matter. When you are stuck in a particular energy, it is our human nature to stay with what we know. For example, a super high achieving "yangster" might seek "renewal" in an exhausting physical workout. (For many individuals the very idea of completely unplugging and relaxing on a daily basis can seem preposterous.)

Without sufficient yin time or balance, life can become one long, joyless, exertion; a constant act of will.

With balance comes greater clarity and alignment, and we move into action from a place of joy and enthusiasm. It is easier for us to access our deeper wisdom and creativity. It is from a balanced perspective that we can begin to strip away the layers of conditioning and fear and begin to truly open our heart. It is only with an open heart that we can become truly inspired in our life.

As simple as this concept of balance may sound, the impact of its practice can be profound.

Happiness Redux

Here is a great article on happiness, that succinctly summarizes all you really need to know.

http://pathwaytohappiness.com/happiness/2007/05/15/controlling-your-happiness/

Cheers,

Steve

AFRICA

Recently I had the pleasure of going on a small walking safari in Tanzania. For those of you who have expressed an interest in learning more about the trip, and seeing some of my pictures, you will find them at Africa.

Enjoy,

Steve

The Power of Inspiration

So there I was, alone, in the cold black February dawn. We had come to Long Beach on Vancouver Island to watch the winter storms. I had woken early and leaving my dear wife to her dreams, had decided to walk along the shore. The tide was out. The monster North Pacific waves thundered to shore a quarter mile to the west of me. I was alone with my thoughts as I walked along the endless sandbar. It was a very peaceful moment.
Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an extraordinary black shape speed past me, through the darkness. Startled, I squinted to see what other creature had invaded the remote beach.

Once the shock passed, I discerned the mystery shape to be a surfer, in a wetsuit, carrying a board. By the overall size, gait, and the zeal with which they approached the frigid water, it appeared to be a lone teenager.

I had a momentary thought to intervene. The waves were easily 10 feet high. It was freezing cold with a drizzle, and still too dark to see clearly. My thoughts raced. The surfer would be alone and beyond assistance should they get into trouble. Who knows what large sea creatures might be lurking out in the bay. But by the time I decided to check their mental capacity, it was too late. The surfer was long past me, in the water and paddling off to catch the first wave of the morning.

I couldn't help but watch out of concern. I grew up on the ocean and know its ways. I am a strong swimmer, and yet I knew that should anything happen to the lone surfer, there was no way I, or anyone else, could be of assistance. The distance was too long, the waves were too big, and the water too cold.

This kid was out there alone. I finished my walk and headed back to the lodge for breakfast.
As I sat in the cozy dining room of the Long Beach Lodge, enjoying a warm cup of tea, I reflected on what it takes to get a teenager out of their warm bed, overcome their fears, and endure the pain and discomfort (even in a wet suit this is no picnic) of a long winter swim.

I believe inspiration, is one of the most powerful motivating forces in the world. People have taken huge risks, and endured unfathomable discomfort, inspired and in pursuit of their vision. Inspiration in the heart of great teachers has changed the course of history. (Modern neuroscience is just beginning to understand the mechanisms by which these activating energies of the left-prefrontal cortex can override our usual cautious nature.)

If there is something you want to accomplish, no matter how impossible it might seem, if you can connect to an inspiring vision of the outcome you really want - you access the power to accomplish amazing things.

Sufficient inspiration, it seems, will always trump fear.

OUR GREATEST CHALLENGE

For someone with a degree in applied science, I should know better. Maybe it was just that as a resident of a northern climate, I didn’t see the problem with the earth warming up a couple of degrees over the next few decades. (I like the idea of warmer winters.)

Whatever my reasons I have to admit to being so tired of the drastic claims and alarms, and so unwilling to accept the possibility of the worse case scenario, that I simply tuned out the “debate” about global warming. (The world still looks fine out my window. Can these predictions of massive change really be true? Isn’t it possible that these are natural fluctuations of the earth’s climate?)

As much as I would like to believe there is still a “debate” about Global Warming, (I really do enjoy my lifestyle and don’t want to change if I don’t have to) the undeniable truth is that there is no longer any credible, independent, body of scientists that remain in doubt about what is happening. Consider the following:

Uncomfortable Realities

1 ) Is It Really Happening? - Contrary to what you might hear from many of our political leaders, there is no longer doubt that the climate is warming dramatically, and that it is caused by human activity. Here is an excerpt from Science Magazine that summarizes the science:

“The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].”

2) Who Cares If It Gets A Little Warmer? - Contrary to the widely held belief that a little global warming might hurt some, benefit others, and generally be manageable, the rising tide of independent science points to many unanticipated natural feedback loops that present catastrophic tipping points after which we simply cannot recover. For example, the rapidly receding ice caps are melting permafrost, which is releasing gigatons of methane into the atmosphere. As methane is 20 times worse a green house gas than carbon dioxide, its potential impact on the atmosphere is catastrophic. (The last time this happened, 251 million years ago, almost all life on earth was wiped out.)

Other emerging feedback loops that are accelerating warming concern two of the major mechanisms of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the oceans and the forests. As the oceans warm, their ability to absorb CO2 diminishes. As global warming changes traditional rain patterns, many of our larger forests (often called the lungs of the earth) are beginning to die off. The current severe drought in the Amazon is raising the possibility of a massive die off in the tropical forests.

So we are not talking about earth getting just a little warmer. What we are starting to realize is that we are in the midst of earth’s 6th mass extinction. There have been 5 mass extinction events in the last 500 million years. The last occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died off. This current extinction event is man-made and it is happening quickly. (Close to 70% of the biologists polled by the American Museum of Natural History believe we are in the middle of a mass extinction event. The normal rate of species loss is one every 5 years. We are currently losing over 25,000 species a year.)

3) Let Someone Else Worry About It – One of the unfortunate dividends of our materialist modern cultures is we are all too busy with our lives, careers and activities to get involved in bigger social/political/environmental issues.

We tend to delegate leadership and too many important decisions to our governments. (In the most recent Federal Elections close to 40% of eligible U.S. voters didn’t bother to voice their opinion - approx, 35% in Canada.) And it is my opinion that too many of our leaders, political and industrial, are too stuck in a win-lose mentality (maximize the wins for themselves of a narrowly defined “team”, even if it means a significant loss to others or the environment.) People are just too disconnected from each other and the world we live in to really see what is happening.

Clearly our existing leadership is not going to save us. We need to save ourselves.

What is Possible?

For over 400,000 years before the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere were in the rage of 190 – 290 PPM (parts per million). In the last hundred years they have risen to over 378 PPM. Many scientists feel that the atmospheric tipping point may be in the range of 450-550 PPM - as little as 24 years away at our current levels of production.

If we can all realize the severity of this threat, and act now, we may still have enough time to change direction. However our window of opportunity is small and closing quickly.

Other generations had their challenges. This generation is now waking up to the biggest challenge that ever faced humanity. Future generations will not forgive us if we fail to act.

What We Can Do?

Get informed - There is a lot of nonsense masquerading as science out there. To be a positive agent of change, you need to be well informed. Read. Listen. Watch. Learn. Come to your own informed conclusions on this important topic.

Get active – An issue this important and urgent cannot be left to others. We all need to take ownership of making change. Get involved. Support groups that are working on this issue. Raise money for political parties that are committed to initiate and support global (cross industry, multinational) initiatives for environmental change. (The cost per vote for the winning party in the last U.S. Presidential election was $5.92. To make a significant change in any election takes a lot of money.)

Walk the talk – Conserve energy wherever possible. Drive less, and if you have to drive, use more fuel efficient cars. At home, typically 60% of energy consumption is in the heating system, 22% in water usage, and 13% in lights. By shifting to more energy efficient technology you can dramatically reduce emissions. (By simply replacing my 18-year-old furnace, I cut the consumption of fossil fuels in my house in half.) Here are some other things you can do to conserve.

Raise Consciousness – Problems are always growth waiting to happen. Our biggest problem is that humanity’s power and knowledge has evolved faster than our collective wisdom and compassion.

We need to raise consciousness. We need to coach more people to begin to see how interdependent we all are, and how closely our own health and prosperity is linked to the health of the world as a whole.

Steve Mitten MCC

Life and Business Coach

WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT ARTICLE

Einstein once said that the greatest problems we face, cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.

This principle is at work in all our lives. The big, recurrent, problems we face (in our lives, careers, and relationships) cannot be solved being who we are now. We need to grow. Growth shifts our perspectives, raises our level of awareness, evolves our consciousness and allows us to
transcend our current problems.

At it deepest level, this is a journey of spirit.

Unfortunately, based on how little effort our culture actually focuses on these issues, their is a lot of evidence we are all fairly addicted to our current level of narcissism. (Which is not good news for the planet.)

However, if you are one of the few who are interested in learning more about your own evolution, I can recommend the recent article in WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT magazine.

http://www.wie.org/j33/guru-pandit.asp?ecp=WIEN-0608

It contains a powerful discussion between Philosopher Ken Wilbur and WIE Editor Andrew Cohen.

I think you will enjoy it.

Life and
Business Coach Steve Mitten MCC

GET FAMOUS FAST INTERVIEW

Here is the text of an interview with Tessa Stowe, for her program GET FAMOUS FAST. You can see the program at http://www.salesconversations.com/gkf-ordera.html.

Tessa: Steve Mitten is a master coach with over 25 years of business experience. As a CEO, Steve has led and conducted businesses all over the world. As an entrepreneur, he has started five companies and taken two through IPO. He’s internationally known as a top executive and leadership coach. Steve also served as the 2005 president of the International Coach Federation.

Welcome Steve!

Steve: Thank you very much.

Tessa: Steve, you’ve obviously tried a lot of strategies for getting known. Some have been more successful than others. Some of the strategies have obviously cost a lot more than others, both in terms of time and dollars. What I’d really appreciate from you today in this interview is your sharing these strategies.

Steve: Absolutely.

Tessa: Great, thank you. Steve, what have been the biggest benefits to you and your business from being known internationally as a top executive and leadership coach?

Steve: I think the biggest benefit for me has been that it has just opened doors and allowed me to connect with, and work with, a wider variety of clients. It has opened doors and allowed me to talk to many other coaches. It has allowed me to gain a perspective of what’s needed out in the marketplace and what’s happened in the young profession of coaching.

Tessa: So Steve, when you say being known has “opened doors” for you, it has saved you having to bash doors down, so to speak?

How Getting Known Can Be A Side Effect

Steve: Yes. Definitely. And what struck me, in preparation for talking with you today, is that in my business, I never started out, really, with the intent of getting known. I recognized it as a calling. It felt like the right place where my strengths, my experience, my passions met a need out in the marketplace. By just seeking to do that very well, by seeking to master the training – the art and science of coaching – you just get better and better at adding value to clients. That was really my goal, just to do what I loved and get very good at it. Along the way I think, if you do that well, the getting well known is like a dividend.

Tessa: So getting well known was a side effect, really, of what you did?

Steve: In my case, it most definitely was. It wasn’t a goal. My goal commercially was to find a group of clients that had big needs, that I loved to work with, that I knew coaching could add a lot of value to. That was my commercial goal – in other words, to find a niche where my strengths met a need out there. I found that fairly early on and got better and better at learning what the challenges of that niche are and how to best communicate with the niche.

Tessa: Right. Therefore, it wasn’t so much that you had strategies that you used to get known, but as a side effect of what you did, you got known.

Steve: In the coaching community, I got known just through volunteer work I did, starting very early on, by just offering a number of free classes. When I started coaching, it was a really young profession. I’d see a lot of people come into it who loved to do coaching but didn’t know enough about the marketing. I just started to give away free classes to different groups in the ICF, to help coaches learn about marketing, so that raised my profile a bit.

I was asked to serve as a director of the ICF. That increases your profile a little bit. Then I was asked to be their president. In that capacity, people see your name and you go out and speak at conferences and speak at ICF chapters; so, a fair bit of profile comes with that, but it certainly wasn’t a conscious intention. I did that work because I really believe in coaching and know that our young profession needs better standards and a higher profile.

Tessa: But even though it wasn’t a conscious strategy for getting known – as a consequence – like, particularly, being the president of the ICF – I mean, that really does raise your profile significantly, doesn’t it?

Steve: I didn’t go into the ICF with the express intention to get known. I had a successful business before that. It was just something I believed in and something that I knew had to happen, so that’s why I went there and volunteered my time. As a product of that, certainly, it raises your profile.

Do What You Love To Do

Tessa: Yes. I very much get, though, talking to you, Steve, that you’re coming from your heart and you’re coming from the right place. As a consequence of coming from your heart and the right place, the Universe has rewarded you with your getting well known. It’s just been a consequence, really.

Steve: I think when you do what you love to do, when you do what you’re good at, when you strive to add a lot of value to the world, it comes back to you.

Tessa: Yes.

Get Clear On Who You Love To WorkWith

Steve: So not every coach may want or have the opportunity to be president of the ICF, but when a coach gets really clear on who they love to work with and what those people need and want – coaching is such a young profession that most clients aren’t looking for a coach, they don’t know that coaching is a solution to their problems – but they all have challenges and changes and dreams and aspirations, and qualified prospects have things they’re spending money on now. So for coaches, if they can get really clear on who they want to work with, who they’re called to work with, and what are those problems their clients are willing to spend money on, then once you know that, you can package your coaching as a solution to those problems and look at the best ways to raise your profile in that marketplace.

Tessa: Right.

Find Yourself A Specific Focus

Steve: The challenge that I think a lot of coaches have, Tessa, is that – you know, by and large, most coaches are intuitive, feeling souls that love to work with lots and lots of people. As a result, in the early stages of their practice they just coach everybody, and it’s really hard to market to everybody if you don’t have a focus. If you don’t understand what your clients are using coaching for, it’s very hard to raise your profile and get noticed in your market.

Tessa: That’s right, because it is hard to build an identity in the whole wide world. It is virtually impossible.

Steve: There’s tens of millions of web pages, now, devoted to life coaching, and if you try to stand out in that sea of competition, it’s very, very hard; but if you find yourself a specific focus – if you pick a niche around adults with ADD or adult professionals with ADD – all of a sudden you have a much sharper focus and you can find out exactly what that group is looking for, you can find out what keywords they type into Google or Yahoo or any search engine. Then, as one means of raising your profile, you can have your website optimized to those keywords. When you know your niche well, it’s far easier to stand out.

Tessa: Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently from when you started out, so you could have gotten known faster or had your business accelerate faster?

Steve: Yes. I started coaching back in 1997, which was really early days for this profession. Coaches now think it’s a hard sell to go out and try to find coaching clients, but back in 1997, it was really “the bleeding edge” of the profession. It was MUCH harder. There just wasn’t a lot known about coaching and how to market it.

Over the years I’ve learned an awful lot about marketing coaching, and if I were doing it over again, I’d certainly benefit from those lessons. For sure, what I’d share with your listeners is – as early as you can – try to find a focus for your marketing. Don’t try to market to everyone, it’s impossible. You can’t stand out everywhere.

Find a group you love to work with, that you know has problems, and that you can reach in large numbers easily. For example, if you’re marketing to a particular group like dentists… they all belong to an association that has a monthly newsletter. They go to different conferences that you can speak at or write to. You can find the keywords to market to them online. Once you get a focus for your marketing, your ability to raise your profile and get known is far easier.

Tessa: Right, I’m very much getting that message from you, of focus, focus, focus, and – well, find a niche, isn’t it? Find a niche, and then focus.

Steve: Yes.

Tessa: So how much time should coaches devote to getting known in their first few years? What percentage of their working week?

Steve: That’s a good question. What I see happening is that, as coaches start out, they really don’t know who they want to work with yet. Most of their marketing is like a direct marketing approach of talking to individuals they meet at networking events and giving away complimentary sample sessions. I think that’s a very productive thing to do for six months or so while you get a feel for who you like to work with. With that marketing, on average it takes about five hours of marketing to get a client – three to five hours of direct marketing to get a client. So if you want ten clients, then you’ve got to put in fifty hours of marketing to get those clients.

Find Your Niche, Package A Solution, Raise Your Profile And Clients Start Coming To You

Once you find a niche or focus, and you know what your clients want – in other words, what problems they have to resolve – like, pretty much every small business wants more sales and less turnover – if your niche is a small business owner, then you develop a coaching program to help small business owners in a particular industry in a particular region build their sales and have less stress.

Once you have a program, my own gut feeling is that it’s ten times more effective to market to that group. So once you know who you’re marketing to and what they want and the best way to get a-hold of large numbers of them through speaking or writing or web marketing or networking, then, to get clients – I mean, they just start coming to you.

Once you have a focus, once you’ve raised your profile, they just start coming to you, and at that stage, your job is to continue to add value to that group in the most efficient way. For many people, they move into a permission marketing approach where, once they have an ideal client group, those clients are subscribed to their newsletter and they send their newsletter out twice a month giving them valuable information useful to, say, small business owners and telling them about your new coaching programs or workshops or whatever else that you’re selling. In that case, it really only takes maybe an hour a week of marketing to carry that off.

Tessa: That’s a big difference. So it’s basically find your niche, find their problems, then package up a solution, and…

Steve: Raise your profile.

Tessa: Yes. That’s just fantastic advice. Thank you! So, if someone does do what you suggested, how long do you think it would take a coach, realistically, to get known in their niche?

Steve: Well, there’s no average to this, but if you do a good job at choosing a niche – let’s say business owners of a high tech business who are seeking to build their business and have a family life, in a particular state or region – if that was your niche and you interviewed them and got to know what their problems and challenges are and how they view the marketplace and what they’ve spent money on, you’d be in a really good position to develop a coaching program for them.

In addition, when you’re doing those interviews, you can find out – what magazines do you read? What associations do you belong to? What conferences do you go to? When you know that about your clients, then you can say, “Well, you know what? I’m a good writer. They all read the same magazine. They’re all a part of this association that has a monthly magazine. So I’m going to read the last six back issues of this magazine and see what people are writing in to the editor and see what they want to know, and I’m going to write an article for that magazine.”

If you take that approach, then after two or three months of having articles written by you that gives them information they want, your clients are beginning to recognize your name; and so, at the bottom of your article, if you invite them to your website for a free report on the five biggest changes that the industry needs to make, you’ll get a lot of people that are going to start to come to you.

If it’s another niche and they meet at annual conferences and you can only talk to 20,000 of them once a year, then it takes a little longer to get focused. But you know, Tessa, one of the easiest ways for people to contact their niche these days and get well known is really through the Internet. There are 972,000,000 people online right now, and the demographics of the people that are online are fantastic for coaches.

If you find a niche, find out what they want, find out what their search phrases are, then you can choose to optimize your website in a way that the search phrases that your ideal clients type in to Google or Yahoo have you coming up in the top five responses. You can do that very quickly. Within a couple of months, you can have a website that begins to come up in some of the major search engines. If you know the keywords, you can use pay-per-click advertising to begin to experiment with connecting online with your clientele right away. I mean you can literally put a pay-per-click ad together in a matter of an hour. So there’s lots of ways to raise your profile once you know who your audience is.

Tessa: That’s the key. It’s the ‘once you know who your audience is,’ isn’t it? It’s that focus, again.

Steve: And what I’ve found is that coaches kind of resist finding a focus, for a couple of reasons. One is that they think, well I love coaching all these people, I wouldn’t want to say ‘no’ to a particular client, I’d hate to focus in a particular group. That’s a very common concern.

Say Yes To The People You’re Meant To Work With

The reality is – look, if you find a group that you’re a good fit for, it’s like falling in love! You feel like this is the group you’re meant to be with. You know that it’s a group you’d love to add value to, and you know it’s a good expression of yourself. So finding a focus, your niche, doesn’t mean you’ve got to say no to people. It’s about saying yes to the people you’re best meant to work with.

Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone

The other resistance that coaches have to getting well known is stepping out of their comfort zone. We’ve really got to step out of our comfort zone, and it’s very hard for coaches to do that – not just coaches, anybody – to step out of their comfort zone. We’re conditioned at a very young age to fit in. You know, our parents, our teachers, everybody kind of teaches us to fit in.

When you talk about getting well-known, you’ve got to move past some deeply ingrained conditioning. It’s not something you just kind of think yourself through. You really do need some help, some support, some good coaching to move past your doubts and fears that you’re not ready yet. Maybe I’m not good enough to do this, maybe I won’t add enough value – those are real roadblocks for many people stepping forth and sharing their gifts with the world.

Tessa: So before focusing on getting known, maybe get some coaching on what’s blocking you personally, as you say.

Find Your Internal Resistance

Steve: Yes. I guess the bottom line here is, it’s not that the coaching world doesn’t know how to get known. There are more and more resources out there about how to do that. The bigger impediment is the internal resistance to really stepping out and showing up more fully in your career. If you really want to get well known, it means you’ve got to grow and change and work through an awful lot of limiting thoughts and feelings you have about yourself, and that’s not easily done.

Tessa: Right, and that’s a very interesting perspective. Thank you for that. As far as the biggest mistake coaches make when it comes to getting known, from what you’ve been saying, it would be the fact that they don’t focus. Correct?

Steve: Yes.

Tessa: Any other mistakes that you see coaches making with respect to getting known?

Raise Your Profile In Terms Of Outcomes And Not About Being A Coach

Steve: Yes. They try to get known as a coach – such as, I’m a coach, I’m a business coach, I’m a life coach, I’m a whatever coach – and very few people are looking for a coach. I encourage coaches to stop – and I’m very proud of being a coach – but when you go out to market, people don’t know what a coach is – they’ve never hired one. Don’t try to go out and sell coaching, people aren’t wanting to buy it.

People have problems, they’ve got challenges, they’ve got changes they want to make, they’ve got goals. Find out the problems, challenges, and changes that your ideal audience has, and use coaching as a solution for them. But raise your profile in terms of helping your ideal clients get the outcomes they want, not just about being a coach.

Tessa: Yes, that’s a very important distinction there, isn’t it?

Steve: There are just a lot of coaches that knocked their heads against the wall raising their profile on being a coach. That’s great for the few percent of humanity who have already concluded that the solution to their problems is hiring a coach, but for the vast majority of the market, they don’t know that coaching is the best solution to their problem. They just know they’ve got a problem and they’re looking for a solution.

Tessa: And they don’t care that the tool that you use is coaching.

Steve: Once they experience coaching, they’ll love it and they’ll see that, wow, this is something that’s customized to me, that’s focused exactly on my needs, that’s going to support me week to week so I really do change my behavior. They’ve all tried reading self-help books and going to workshops that were great but they forgot it all a week later.

Coaching is something that meets them where they are and supports them and calls them forward, and a good coach can add extraordinary value to their life. One coaching session is all they need to experience that; but until they experience that, they don’t know that coaching is that powerful. So it’s kind of useless to go out there and try to sell coaching to people who don’t know its value.

Tessa: Absolutely. So Steve, you’ve covered a tremendous amount today, but if there was just one single piece of advice you could give coaches with respect to getting known fast, what would that one single piece of advice be?

Find The Place Where Your Passions And Strengths Meet The Greatest Unmet Needs In Your Market

Steve: It would be, before you attempt to get known, find the place where your passions and strengths meet the greatest unmet needs in your market, or in your world. When you find that place where your passions and strengths meet a huge need, you will fall in love with that group, you will know what their problems are, you will know how to reach large numbers of them, and it will be a much easier task to get yourself well known. Don’t start with the goal of getting well known.

Tessa: Right.

When You Focus On What You Do Extraordinarily Well, The Natural Outcome Is That You Get Well Known Quickly

Steve: It’s like, you know, you talk to children, and ‘what do you want to do when you grow up?’ When you talk to them at a very young age, they want to be a dentist or a fireman. When you talk to them when they’re teenagers, they all want to be rich or famous. Well if you just go after being rich or go after being famous, you know, that’s really not a terribly rewarding path. Those are the outcomes of doing something extraordinarily well. When you focus on finding what you do extraordinarily well and sharing that with people that really need it, then the natural outcome is you get well known quickly.

Tessa: Which is really – to come back to the beginning of our interview today – is really how you became really well known, wasn’t it? You found your passion and you found where it could meet the greatest needs, so that’s been your overall main successful strategy, yes?

Steve: It was just a recognition of what was happening around me more than some master plan strategy.

Tessa: Right.

Steve: I wish I could tell you that every great move in my life was carefully thought through, but it just wasn’t. Most of the big changes in my life have been, you know, just a recognition of here’s a path that has more heart in it, here’s a place that I really feel alive, here’s a place where I can make a difference. And if I tune into that, then I find myself going along paths that are far better than I would have ever planned for myself.

Tessa: Right. Someone’s obviously looking after you!

Steve: I think, when you follow your passions, the Universe looks after you.

Tessa: Yes, that’s good! Steve, before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Steve: Just good luck with what you’re doing here. The world needs more information about how to succeed commercially as a coach, and getting yourself known is a big piece of that. So good luck with what you’re doing!

Tessa: Thank you. And Steve, could you just tell people a little bit about your products and services and how they can get in touch with you?

Steve: My main website is www.acoach4u.com, and that’s got articles on how to become a coach and marketing. I’ve got a monthly newsletter on marketing and coaching skills. I wrote a book called “Marketing Essentials for Coaches.” I do teleclasses for affordable coach training. There’s a wide range of things I do for coaches, to help them find their way to commercial success. We’ve got a lot of good coaches out there. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the infrastructure industry that gives them the knowledge they need to succeed commercially, so I’ve devoted a chunk of my practice to putting together affordable things to help coaches do that.

Tessa: Great! Thank you so much, Steve, for coming along today. You’ve been inspirational, and I wish you all the very best. Thank you very much.

Life Coaching

Executive
Coaching

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Coaching