Hey everyone,
So I was procrastinating on a deadline (as you do) and scrolling through Facebook (as you do), when something caught my attention. It was a graphic with this message:
Everyone looks at the cost of a book, a course, or a coach. Nobody considers the cost of being in the same place a year from now.
I sat there feeling pretty annoyed by this message because this kind of BS marketing is everywhere.
It’s almost meant as an inspirational message, except it’s a cheap marketing tactic that coaches use to “get you off the fence” and sign up to work with them.
Here’s the thing: I’ve hired many coaches and mentors in my business, sometimes extremely expensive ones, but I have never, not once, believed that I needed a book, a course, or a coach to take me to the next level in my life or in my business.
I was NEVER going to be in the same place next year because I never believed that one book, one course, or one coach was going to be my ticket to getting there. I’m always going to get to where I want to go. I hire coaches not because they’re going to hand me a magic ticket to get through the door, but because they’ll help me get out of my own way and achieve results faster.
This is also how I decide whether someone is the right fit for me or not when I’m offering coaching. I only want to work with people who have already decided that their dreams are non-negotiable. They’re going to get there with or without my help. They just know that my help will help them get there sooner, with less resistance, and with far less angst. I might be able to identify their blocks in a way that they themselves can’t.
I have learned, through difficult and painful experiences on both side of the coaching relationship, that if you expect a coach to solve your problems or give you the magic bullet that will save your career, you’re both going to end up disappointed.
You’re doing yourself a real disservice when you do this because you’re placing the power outside of yourself.
Listen, nobody’s coming to save you. No coach, no book, no course, no mentor has the power to do that. A good coach is not someone who tells you what to do; a good coach is someone who helps you discover the power and the ability you already have inside you.
Someone who helps you trust and believe that the magic is YOU.
I tell my clients at the beginning of our coaching time together that I don’t want to see them again after six weeks. I’m not the kind of coach who wants your repeat business. If I’ve done my job well, you leave at the end of our four or six or eight weeks together not only confident that the work you’ve done during our time together will yield results, but that you now have the confidence and the self trust to believe that you know how to figure out the next steps and do them well.
I never hire a mentors so that they can tell me what to do.
I hire mentors so that they can help me trust in my ability to know what to do.
The more I build trust in myself and have continued faith in my decisions, the faster I get to my goals.
Of course coaches help with the practical steps, too.
My mentor looks at my books and book proposals before I send them out; sometimes she even edits them. When I work with my coaching clients, I’ll critique their pitches, give them ideas on income generation, share exercises that will help them move through a block on a novel. But every pitch I critique and every journaling session I make them endure, I make sure that I help them see their patterns, point out where they struggle exactly so that they can take that issue and fix not just the surface level writing, but the mindset or the resistance that leads to it.
Ask me how many times a writer has sent me a thin pitch and when I make them dig deeper into why they’re not putting on page the story they’ve told me they want to tell, they’ve sheepishly admitted that this is what they think the editor will want to hear and that the true story might be too polarizing or makes them uncomfortable in some way.
The moment this realization happens, they’re off and running.
The story reveals itself, the pitch is great, and the sale is inevitable.
Would these clients have figured out these blocks on their own? Eventually, of course.
As I said, the kind of person I work with isn’t just sitting around waiting for things to happen. If they can’t work through a block, they’ll just find their way around it. It just takes a bit more time.
The magic is never the course, the mentor, or the strategy.
The magic is YOU.
You’re the reason you won’t be in the same place next year.
Remember that.
In fact, make sure you never forget it.
Cheers,
Natasha