Do Coaches Need Coaches?

Your goal is to ensure your clients reach their goals and become best version of themselves, so why not have a coach to help you achieve your goals?

The best coaches and personal trainers have their own coaches and mentors. I’d go so far as to say that you can’t reach your full potential without getting coaching of your own.

Our own business depends on making other people hire us as their training coach to improve their fitness and health. You help clients focus on their habits and bring out what they didn’t think they could achieve before. If we follow this reasoning, shouldn’t we hire a coach for ourselves either to improve our own business or health?

As the Sir Isaac Newton quote goes:
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Truer words have never been spoken: none of us achieves success alone. And there’s also an intellectual honesty issue. If you don’t use coaching yourself, how can you preach its virtues to clients?

The Qualities of a Good Coach

When you look for a coach, it could be solely for growing your business, your own training and nutrition, or something of similar nature. But there are a few qualities to look for.

With a coach, your ideal coach would have a worldview that’s been born from having worked with half-dozen or more experts, coaches, or clients of his own. This means you also benefit from the influence of those people who’ve helped him succeed. Using this vast experience, your coach would accelerate your learning curve to be more successful, faster by helping you focus on what’s called a “zone of genius,” or simply what you do best.

They would have a good attitude and be able to “see the big picture.” They would have patience, but also would be very determined and persistent. But most of all, they need to be accessible, transparent, and willing to freely share their knowledge. It sounds obvious, but many “bad coaches” may make promises to tell you the “secrets to success” if you’d just pay up to be a part of his secret club. If you get the feeling that they might be “holding something back,” that’s a sign of trust and transparency issues.

And finally, a good coach must be able to keep you accountable. After all, isn’t that one of the reasons clients hire us, too? Sometimes even we need to have someone hold us to our words and goals.

Finding Your Coach

The best coaches I’ve met and worked with have all sought extreme mentorship early in their careers. And most of my coaches still have coaches of their own.

Finding quality ones isn’t easy, and they can be costly. But investing in a coach doesn’t have to mean dropping ten grand in the vague hope something good might happen. First, some questions to ask yourself:

• What is it specifically that you hope a coach will help you accomplish? It can’t be everything.
• What have they done or accomplished that appeals to you? Your coach must obviously walk the walk.
• What kind of coaching would suit you best? Tough love? Constant motivation?
• How many services does this person provide? It’s better to specialize than to try to offer your dreams on a silver platter. Those who offer “everything” should be viewed with more skepticism.

If you’re looking for a high-end business coach, then reach out to the top coaches in the industry via their website or social media and ask them who helped them reach that high-level of success in their career. Attend conferences and research the presenters–do they have a coaching program? If so, inquire for more information.

That means if you want to build an online business, find a coach who’s helped great online coaches build their business. If you’re looking to become a strength coach, find the industry leaders and seek them out for advice.

When shopping around, be sure to ask your prospective coaches how much time they have for you, how closely they’ll work with you, their schedule and accessibility, how they plan to keep you accountable and reach your goals, and if they’re actually willing to open up their network to you. These are some of the more important points that need to be made clear from the beginning.

To truly help more people and build a long-term sustainable business, coaches need coaches. Once you have one locked down, take action, put in the work, and level up your business.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash