Library - Coaching for Individuals
10 reasons to have a Personal Coach
10 reasons to have a Personal Coach
Here are 10 reasons, in alphabetical order, to have a personal coach:
- Accountability: as a coach I will hold you to account, check on your progress, care about you, support, champion and challenge you. Self-help books are great, but they don’t do follow-up.
- Agenda: a coach will normally work on anything you want – however small or random. Not everyone who sees a coach wants to become a CEO or a Member or Partner in a law firm. Some people just want to find the motivation to tidy their room, get on better with a relative, stick to a fitness goal, explore what really matters in life, or just make a change. You set the agenda in coaching and I commit to supporting you.
- Feelgood factor: coaching isn’t like sitting an exam. There’s no right answer. In fact, it’s exciting, stimulating and fun to be coached. I’m entirely comfortable using humour while offering you support, praise and challenge. You should expect to leave every coaching session feeling more resourceful than you did when you started.
- Fresh Start: I have no preconceptions about you. There is no agenda and no history to cloud my view of you. Unlike anyone else in your life, I see you as you show up in front of me – not as your job title or as a parent, child or someone I’ve known for years. I see you as you are and as who you could be. Then I hold up a mirror to you so you can see you too.
- Individual solutions: coaching is not one-size-fits-all. I don’t impose solutions. Instead, I appreciate the uniqueness of each person and know that everyone has a different mix of beliefs, conditioning, needs, strengths, values, wants etc. As a coach I help you understand yourself: what motivates you, what holds you back, what excites you, what gives you purpose.
- Listening: coaches know how to listen. When was the last time you were really listened to, without interruption, so that you could hear yourself think? There’s a reason for asking: “How Do I Know What I’m Thinking Until I’ve Heard Myself Speak?”. It’s not the same as talking to yourself when you’re driving or out for a walk. Neuroscience has found that having attention from another human floods the brain with chemicals that improve your thinking and reduce stress.
- Questioning: I will ask you questions – sometimes tricky ones – to help you find the solutions or goals that are right for you and your blend of attributes and traits. And then you (not I) will find solutions that are right for you. Coaching is like having a bespoke suit that only fits you!
- You: you pay for my time, expertise and ability to partner you in your thinking. We don’t have to take turns in a conversation – you can just indulge in pure “me time” and I may not speak much. When was the last time you weren’t interrupted and thrown off your train of thought?
- Yourself: perhaps for the first time in your life you can be entirely yourself. You can let go of trying to be perfect, people-pleasing, or other habits you have acquired. I create an adult-to-adult relationship in which you will learn that ‘being perfect’ doesn’t exist and also isn’t necessary. Instead, you will learn to accept and even celebrate your minor flaws! What’s wrong with being idiosyncratic? You will learn self-awareness and self-management skills that last.
- Effectiveness: behind every successful sportsperson is a coach. Behind many successful business persons there is a coach. Behind many successful individuals there is a coach. High achievers know they can’t do it all on their own. And there’s nothing wrong in accepting that you can often do more or better with support.
10 Reasons to have a Personal Coach
How do I grow my business?
What is a Business Growth System?
You grow your business by having a Business Growth System in place.
A business growth system involves developing a series of business-related habits that create a methodology. This then generates more profit, which in turn not only brings your business more money, but also gives you more time to focus on those parts of your business that interest you most, as well as more leisure time when you can dispose of that money or do other things.
There are four (or five if you think long-term) elements to a business growth system. They’re called (1) Find Your Gap;(2) Do The Basics; (3) Define Your Message; (4) Know Your Numbers; and (5) Consolidation. Each element has several sub-elements that need to be methodically address if the synergy of all five elements are to result in the overall benefits mentioned earlier. Each of them comprises a separate part of the Coaching for Businesses program offered by WynLewisCoaching.
- Find your Gap: is where we start to understand:
- you and your business;
- where you want to get to;
- where you are now;
- the difference between here and there (this is your Gap);
- what you need (financially, personally, practically and in other ways) to bridge your Gap
- a clear goal;
- a sense check of your goal (is it even possible?)
- Do The Basics: this is where we establish the basic requirements of a successful business:
- as the business owner, it’s your responsibility (nobody else’s) to get and keep more clients/customers;
- if you don’t get and keep customers, your business will fail;
- most business owners don’t understand the direct link between:
- rhythmic business growth activity; and
- the rhythmic acquisition of clients/customers as a result;
- being reactive on an “everything will work out fine” basis isn’t enough;
- haphazard “spray and pray” marketing, with no follow-up, doesn’t work;
- to become a (more) professional business person you have to:
- introduce, develop, monitor, refine and leverage systems that result in leads, prospects and clients/customers;
- know your numbers (how much does it cost you to get a client/customer? what is the lifetime value of a customer? what are your margins? what work is most profitable?)
- you have to act and think like an investor with a plan to exit your business a few years’ time.
- the basic requirements for a successful business include:
- a marketing assets audit;
- activating Google Business;
- following up clients/customers;
- re-marketing;
- price review;
- getting reviews;
- publishing content in social media and other places; and
- having arrangements that capture enquiries.
Once you have the basics, all you need to do then is monitor and refine them every so often. But getting the basics in place is often overlooked.
- Define Your Message: this is where we focus on marketing your products or services so that you:
- understand your ideal buyer;
- present your business in a way that makes it memorable and needed;
- explain what your business does;
- think like a potential client/customer – why should they care about your personal circumstances – your product is more important than you are;
- establish your business as the place to go for your product or service;
- create an offer that a potential client/customer would be silly to resist;
- assess and work out the most effective marketing;
- follow up
- don’t focus on selling – focus instead on others buying.
Marketing and messaging don’t have to be “sales-y”. All that it involves is supplying information to people who are already looking to buy something. They key point is to do this in a targeted way. Then do it again. And again. And again. That then creates a rhythm, which creates a habit, which makes marketing easier, which results in business growth.
- Know Your Numbers: this is when we identify, understand and know how to manipulate your management financial data: it’s Business Maths…. The reason it’s important is that:
- most small business live from week to week / month to month / year to year and then send their data to their accountants to get their annual accounts done. But they (i.e. your accountants) only process your data – they don’t understand how your business works;
- many small businesses are OK if there is enough money in current account to pay for overheads, remuneration, tax and some contingencies;
- and most small businesses have no idea of the numbers that would let those businesses flourish and profit, such as:
- how much money did you make in the last 12 months?
- how many clients/customers/sales did you add this year?
- how much does it cost you to get a new client/customer/sale?
- how much is your average client/customer/sale worth to you?
- what is your most profitable work (i.e. which takes you least time and effort to produce the highest profit)?
- which bit of what you do or provide creates the most profit for the least effort?
There are also 12 key numbers you need to know. These are:
- your leads;
- your lead conversion rate;
- your prospects
- your prospects conversion rate;
- your sales;
- your average order value;
- your total revenue;
- your gross margin;
- your gross profit;
- your overheads;
- your remuneration; and
- your net profit.
These numbers let you know how much money you need to spend to make more profit and how effective is that to bridge your Gap. The extent to which you know these numbers will determine whether you focus on “busy-ness” or whether you are a business person. You need to know your numbers. If you don’t know the score, you won’t know your status.
- Consolidation: this is when we accept that business growth isn’t something that can be done once and then forgotten about. Instead, it’s an ongoing process that needs to be developed and refined and, sometimes, changed entirely. It has three stages:
- Stage 1: involves putting everything in place so that you know more about your business and can manage it better. This is what the first four stages are all about:
- Stage 2: involves improving, refining and generally polishing what you now have in place, so that (part of) your business can run itself; this then leaves you free to focus on other things; and lets you build (not create) your business: optimisation.
- Stage 3: is what happens when you have stabilised and maximised. It’s when you can expand your reach, your client/customer base, your products/services:
Everything that’s mentioned above is part of a system, rather than a series of one-of activities. Each activity builds on and/or is related to other activities to build and benefit from the system. It’s having a system that result in someone owning a business, rather than owning a job.
What is a Business Growth System
The Solicitor's Roadmap
The Solicitor's Roadmap
A version of this blog was first published here on 28th July 2022.
Dorothy Gale followed the Yellow Brick Road…
… and, although challenged and exhilarated by several diversions in Munchkinland, was ostensibly disappointed by what she encountered on reaching the Emerald City: a charlatan wizard.
There are, of course, other analyses of The Wizard of Oz, one of the most well-known of which, attributed to Mr. Rick Polito, is this:
- “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”
But there’s more to the film than this…
… although you may well be wondering, given the title to this Article, what any of this has to do with planning and controlling your career as a solicitor.
I’ll explain.
There are at least three elements you have to think about in the context of your career:
- the first is that, whatever stage of your own (yellow brick road) career path you’re on, you’ll be wondering (and if you’re not, you should be) how things will progress – both next and eventually;
- the second is that, if you don’t go beyond wondering and, instead, consciously assess where you are and where you want to get to and then take steps to control how you get there, you’ll end up somewhere else – which may be suboptimal;
- the third is that, at every stage of your own (yellow brick road) career path, you have to make strategic decisions, but wonder if you have the resources, the support and the time to do so (or, even worse, you drift along without making any decisions at all).
This is where two rarely-remembered features of The Wizard of Oz are relevant:
- the first is when the Wizard gives each of the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man a token that symbolizes the qualities they thought they wanted, but didn’t realise they always had: courage, intellect and passion respectively.
So perhaps the Wizard wasn’t a charlatan at all, but was an early-day career or life coach.
- The second is that, in contrast, Dorothy herself was consistent and persistent about her goal: getting to the Emerald City, which is a goal she achieved.
But even she had the benefit of being guided by the good witch, Glinda.
Career coaching involves applying the principles of The Wizard of Oz to your career as a solicitor:
- me being a bit like Glinda: not directing you, but listening, observing, questioning, suggesting, summarising and supporting you;
- you being a bit like Dorothy: taking time to ask yourself where you are, where you want to get to, how you can do that, what resources you already have, what resources you need and not being distracted from your goal by the intermediate demands of others.
I have three programs that form the framework for solicitors at different stages of their careers: the Uncertain Solicitor; the Rising Star Solicitor; and the v2.0 Solicitor. One of those will apply to you.
The benefit to you of recognising that you’re at one of those stages and then working out what to do next is that, later on, you can choose what you do on your terms, rather than on someone else’s terms.
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What can I be coached on?
What can I be coached on?
The range of coaching topics is limitless. You can be coached on whatever you want to think about.
It can be something that’s bothering you (or your employer). Or it can be something that excites you (or your employer).
There is no video that accompanies this Answer, but you’ll see below the aspirations, concerns, hopes, ideas, issues and thoughts about actual and potential coaching topics:
- Accountability | acting up | alternatives | ambition | anxiety | authority | autonomy
- Board membership responsibilities | business development | business growth
- Career guidance | career management | change | clarity | client relationships | coaching | colleague relationships | confidence | conflicts | CVs
- Decision-making | delegating | diary management | difficult conversations | difficult people | director duties | doing, not talking
- Employed to self-employed status | being an expert
- Female executives | first 100 days in a role | fitting in | flexible working | friends and family | future-proofing
- Goals | grief | groups
- Home v. office-based working | hot-desking
- Impact | independence | interviews | interview practice | interview skills
- Job-related issues | job-hunting | juggling work with everything else
- Kindness
- Leadership | leadership styles | leadership trends | liking yourself | listening
- Managing yourself | managing colleagues | making a difference | marketing | maternity | mentoring | mergers | messaging | metrics
- Negotiating | networking | new colleagues | new job (first 100 days( | new job (your predecessor) | new business owner
- Onboarding | organisational issues | outplacement
- Perfectionism | personal development | power | power politics | presentation skills | procrastination | productivity | promotion
- Questioning | quitting
- Recognition | redundancy | relationships | responsibility | resilience | retirement | returning to work
- Self-employment | shyness | stepping up | stuck in a rut | stuckness | succession planning | systems
- Team members | team-working | terms and conditions | thinking time | time management
- Uncertainty | understanding – not just responding
- Values | visualising | VUCA world
- Wellbeing | what could be | work-life balance
- Xyrophobia | other things beginning with an x
- You – and what that means
- Zooming-in techniques | Zone of Deference behaviour | Gen-Z
One, at least, of the coaching topics mentioned above is theoretical, rather than one I’ve actually coached on. See if you can guess which one it is.