Creating Clients Q&A 

Your clients will make or break your business no matter how good you think your plan is. In this episode, Adam Quiney hosts a Q&A to talk about the art of creating clients as a natural expression of your being and building a relationship with your clientele. Adam dives into the dual experience entrepreneurs undergo of doing what they love while doing something they hate. Get to know the pain points of selling and why everyone hates it. Tune in and grab the opportunity to convert the thing you hate to a natural expression of yourself and master creating clients. 

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Listen to the podcast here:

Creating Clients Q&A 

For this episode, we have something a little different for you. It is not a midweek coaching episode. We have plenty of those coming up. We’ve got some great guests lined up. In this episode, we’ve got a panel or a webinar that I hosted on the work of creating clients and sales as a natural expression of your being and you being in a relationship with people. The context for this, you’ll probably hear me repeat that so I apologize if it’s not something you want to hear twice. The context for this is that most people that find their way into entrepreneurial or sales–based work, maybe it’s service-based work, have this dual experience.  

On the one hand, there’s this thing that they love doing whatever the thing they get to do once they’ve made to sales. There’s this other thing that they hate doing, which is selling. I’ll cut to the chase here, the spoiler for this is selling sucks and everyone hates it. It’s not what the work is. It’s never the work. I promise. People tend to get creative. People find ways to, “How do I bypass the selling?” “How do I work around that or avoid that horrible thing that I hate doing?” “Maybe I can hire someone to do that for me.” “I’ll work at a company where they’ll give me people so I don’t have to create them,” which is fine. What we’re missing is the opportunity to integrate those two things to bring that thing we don’t like into seeing it as another natural expression of self.  

Everything grows out of a conversation with someone. Click To Tweet

When we do this, what we find is we fall in love. We’ve discovered that selling doesn’t have to be anything any different than all the rest of our life. You create this breakthrough in the notion of stuff work-life balance. It’s not wrong to think about things in those terms. It’s you transcend it. What would there even be to balance because I’m living my life as an integrated, fully expressed person in every aspect of it? This is the hallmark of transformation but what we’re talking about is creating that transformation of a specific area.  

If you’re a coach, if you’re someone in any entrepreneurial venture, if you’re a leader of any sort, and you’re thinking, “I would love to create a different experience and relationship to how I sell and how I create clients,” this is the episode for you. We cover a bunch of questions. We have a Creating Clients PDF. If you would like a copy of that, you send us an email at PR@AdamQuiney.com and say, “I want that PDF,” and we’ll send it to you free of charge. You won’t get put on a list unless you want to be. You’ll get that and it’ll break down these steps a little more clearly. I hope you enjoy this. It’s a bit of a longer conversation. If you enjoy this content, let us know by sending that email to PR@AdamQuiney.com. Let us know, “I love this content. I want to see more of this.” If you found this too long, let us know that too. It’s all helpful. We appreciate it when you reach out. Thanks so much. I hope you enjoy this conversation.  

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I am Adam Quiney. I live in Victoria, British Columbia and I’ve been a full-time coach for many years. Prior to this, I was a software engineer and lawyer briefly. I’ve spent about a few years leading coach training in various capacities and moved on from that. These days I still do that but rather than doing it with an organization, my wife and I tend to do that together. One of the big things we found and frankly, were trained in was that most coach training programs give you a bunch of skills and tools. They’re like, “Here you go.” The training you get in terms of creating clients is like, “Start thinking about your niche.” You’re like, “I’ll start thinking about it but it doesn’t seem the clients are coming to me.” Where we’re left in that is feeling a little bit dropped, not having been given any direction or any help or even any understanding of, “How do I do this? How do I create a client?”  

Consequently, we approach it the same way we approach most things that are sold to us, which is like, “I have to lure people to me and, and I got to talk about this thing. That feels gross, but I have to do it.” In general, client creation feels this crappy thing, this hurdle we have to get over to do the thing that we love doing. The context for our conversation is that’s not what you have to do and I believe in the possibility that client creation can become something sacred, an opportunity to deepen relationships with your client. It can be something that happens as a natural expression of you being in the world.  

You don’t have to figure out, “How do I finagle someone?” “How do I write content in the correct way so this person starts to relate to it?” I’ve found that if we do that work, we start to fall in love with all of what we get to do as a coach, rather than have them be two separate entities where we’re like, “I love this part. I hate this part. Maybe I can delegate the sales part and I can do the part I love.” You can do that but you’re missing out on some of the real juice that’s available. What we’re going to do is, I’m going to call your names for the panelists. Let’s get you off your mute and share where you’re at. Alex. 

My name is Alex Campbell. I’m also from Victoria, British Columbia. 

For those of you that saw Alex and I had a coaching conversation. If you want to know more about Alex, you can go read that. Darren. 

I’m Darren Farfan from Trinidad and Tobago. 

My commitment to you Darren is that I will do my best not to imitate your awesome accent. That is my self-control there. Lee. 

Lee Povey, Long Beach, California, as you can tell by my accent. 

A classic Long Beach accent. How long have you been in the States? 

A few years now. 

Which part of England are you from? 

Brighton of London. 

My dad’s a Brum and we have some other Brits too. Welcome. Lo.  

I am Lo. I’m from France in the south, not the south of France. 

Heather.  

Thanks. I’m Heather. I’m from Victoria as well. 

You don’t sound too excited about it, Heather. We’re trying to up Victoria here so you got to get some enthusiasm going for this. 

I’m totally excited. It’s the best place in the world. It’s lovely. 

Mia. 

My name is Mia and I am from Maidenhead in the United Kingdom. 

Welcome, everyone. It’s great to have you. I want to start by appreciating everyone that’s here as a panelist because you get to ask the questions. I want to start by honoring each of you for being here. Without people in your shoes or without someone saying, “I have a question. None of this goes anywhere.” It’s me talking and you get enough of that as it is hopefully. To start us off, I’d love to hear from three people a question that you’ve got or a place that you’re in, some situation that you’re up against, or something that you’d like to get some support on. Let me know that you’ve got something so I can call on you and I am more than willing to sit here in silence as long as it takes. Yes, Lee? 

Creating Clients: The pitfall is you stop expressing your art as an expression of your art, and you start expressing your art as an expression of trying to get people to reach out to you.

I don’t know how to best word this. I’m changing careers. I’ve been an elite cycling coach for the last couple of years. I was the US national team coach and COVID has changed that. I’ve always wanted to go into executive coaching. I was in men’s groups back in the UK for a long time so I started a men’s group before I even lost my employment. I also had a private coaching company before I started working for the US. They started off while I was still doing that. I would get people to come to me that wanted to work with me. I haven’t had to advertise for clients for a long time. It’s a big change to go from being a well-recognized person in my field to being a nobody. I used to have a real estate business, a previous career a long time ago, and I left that because I didn’t particularly enjoy sales anymore.  

I’ve come back into this and I’m thinking, “Great. People are going to want to work with me. This is going to be awesome.” I’m like, “Okay.” Everybody I’m talking to, and I’m on a coaching course with your friend and they’re like, “Are you going to do these connection calls and reach out to people?” I’m like, “Fuck, I hate that.” I’m having some discomfort around that. I’m enjoying the connection calls more than I thought I would, especially during COVID, because I’ve not seen people as much as I usually would. I’ve got this discomfort around the sales part of that. I can sell but I don’t find it enjoyable so I want to try to find some joy in it and how to pitch myself that feels in congruency with me. 

You got this point where you’re trying to connect with people but hate it. You’re finding that you don’t hate it quite as much as you thought you did but there’s this, “How do I get from there to the part where I pitch? How do I create that? How does that transition happen?” Is that more or less the question? 

Yes. I’m confident about what I do. I’ve been working as a coach for a long time. I didn’t realize until I started training more as an emotional coach how much emotional coaching I was doing. I was a huge part of what I was doing. I’m like, “I feel comfortable. This is good.” I’m uncomfortable I’ve got to offer. The guys in the men’s group love it. I’m working with a couple of people coaching individually, they love it. It’s that, “How do I sell myself as an emotional coach now?” There are lots of areas I want to work in so maybe some clarity around where I should be pitching myself. 

We won’t dive into that yet. I want to get some questions on the table first. That’s great. Thanks, Lee. Thanks for going first. Who else? Yes, Heather. 

I don’t want to say struggling. My challenge is around reaching out and connecting. My story is that I have this hidden agenda that isn’t about connecting. It’s about creating clients to vote but I feel like, when I let myself connect, I have good conversations and things are starting to flow from that. Behind that, I do struggle with who do I reach out to? I don’t know if that makes sense but I feel there’s a void of who do I know? 

There’s a bit of a combination. We’ve got two things. One is, I’ve got a bit of a hidden agenda when I am reaching out to them, which is I want to get you as a client. The other one is, who do I reach out to? Who are the people? Where are the people? Does that capture it?  

Yes.  

Excellent. Was there more? 

No. That’s good. Thank you. 

Darren. 

Both Heather and Lee touched on the questions I had so wanted to maybe layer them a little bit. In the case of Lee, I have a person that I’ve been coaching now for a while, but engaging and offering him free conversations. We’ve been dancing for a while for a couple of years. He came back to me, and it seems like he’s serious. We had an in-depth two–hour conversation, a powerful one. At the end of it, I transitioned to, “Let’s speak again, and let’s explore what it would look like for us to work together.”  

We did that and it was a powerful conversation, but I never transitioned it again. I’m trying to find out things like the stickiness in how he described at the beginning of the call. It’s like something inside of me gets uptight and stays away from that of tightness to stay in service to him to create a powerful experience and help him to break through or to create what it is he wants to create. I’m left with the want to transition it into a powerful coaching relationship that is two-way. I know that there’s something missing from the power of the conversation and me not taking it to that place. The second part that Heather touched on is around outreach. The question I have about that is how do you reach out to connect with an agenda and without an agenda? 

Would your agenda be the same one? 

I know this person, and a couple of years ago, we had a powerful conversation. I would like to reach out to him again and re-invite him to a conversation but I also want to be transparent, and be like, “I want to help you. I want to work with you.” I’m not sure if that is too direct. Is it too abrupt? Should I connect and be like, “How’s it going?” “What’s up with your business?” That type of thing. I find that’s inauthentic because he knows and I know that’s the service that I provide and that’s what I want but I also know that it’s approaching somebody with what I want is maybe too upfront about me and not about him. You get the point.  

We’ve got one, there’s a conversation where it sounds like you feel something’s been a bit left on the table. You can feel the next step. It’s not like you don’t know what it would be. You’re pretty clear but you have some resistance showing up to taking it to that next step with this person you had that powerful conversation with. Do I have that right? 

Yes. The next is making a proposal. 

I like how you got into two questions. Well played. It sounded so cool the way you did it. You can get away with anything with that accent. The second one is, I love the way you worded it, Darren, which is, how do I reach out with an agenda without an agenda? Do I have that right?  

Yes. Also, be authentic and free with it. 

Let’s start with Lee. Thanks, Darren, Lee, and Heather, for the first set of conversations. Lee, let me ask you. What would you say is the crux of, “If I could figure out how to act, what would that be?” 

Possibly get comfortable with asking people to coach them. 

We don’t know for sure. We don’t have the objective truth here.  

There are a million different ways you can create your art.  Click To Tweet

I’m not 100% sure because I also feel that I should be able to write decent posts and people are going to come to me. It’s more the resistance of me chasing people and reaching out to people. It feels uncomfortable, rather than wanting them to come to me because they’re excited to work with me, rather me going to them and saying, “You should work with me.” 

The heart of all of this, everything grows out of a conversation with someone. If we’re not in connection with someone, it’s rare that a client will pop into our world and be like, “I thought of getting a coach. I googled something, and your name showed up and now I would like to give you money to work with me.” That will sometimes happen when we’re charging a low, what I would call a Safe Fee. As soon as we’re charging a fee that’s going to serve to call forward someone’s commitment, there needs to be some connection in place, because there’s a game of trust showing up. It’s a vulnerable thing for them to say yes to their lives this way.  

Everything happens out of a conversation and often many of us are like, “Why do I have to reach out to people? It’s a little scary and I feel awkward doing that? Why can I write a great post and people reach out to connect with me?” The first thing is that’s a totally valid approach. It’s totally valid to create your art, whatever your art looks like, be at writing content, doing webinars, lives, podcasts, making music, or whatever you want to do. There are a million different ways you can create your art. If you do that, some people will reach out to you. That will happen inevitably.  

The downside to those approaches is we’re waiting for other people to come to us. It doesn’t mean that it can’t happen and it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. It means that the results of recruiting are a little bit at the effect of other people coming to us. The pitfall that can happen there is that we stop expressing our art as an expression of our art and we start expressing our art as an expression of trying to get people to reach out to us. Have you guys read those posts online, where you read it and you’re like, “This post was so clearly written with the last call to action paragraph in mind and they backfill everything else.” Do you know those posts? They might even be written well, but you can feel it. You’re like, “I get the call to action,” and you use emojis in the right way but that was where you were coming from first. Do what I’m talking about, Lee? 

As you’re talking about this, when I first thought about doing this, I thought, “I’m going to create this great website, people are going to find me on the website and that’s how our business is going to work.” Talking to other coaches, they’re like, “I’ll ring people up. I do this cold calling stuff and I make these connections.” I’m like, “I didn’t want to do that. That wasn’t what I was expecting.” It’s a real change in mindset about that. 

I’m intending to say that if you want to, you could create a website, and you could have people connect with you that way. It’s a choice and in every choice, whichever way we choose, has benefits, but also consequences. The benefit to that is, you get to put your attention on creating your art. You’re like, “I’m going to put it into the world and who knows, maybe that reaches one person, maybe it reaches 10,000 people and it does what it does. My work is to put my attention on how I better express my art each and every day.”  

The consequence of that approach is one, whether or not a particular person connects with us, we’re at the effect of them. We don’t have the power to go, “You’re awesome. I want to connect with you.” We’re hoping that they come by our stuff. We can do some stuff to try to enhance that like SEO or whatever. We’re a bit at the effect of them. That’s the first consequence. The second consequence, because we’re now at the effect of them coming to us, we can fall into that trap that I was talking about. Which is, “How do I write this so as to better reach out and grab that person,” rather than, “What would be the truest thing for me to write about at this moment?”  

As we spin out more and more towards, “How do I write this so it reaches out and grabs that person,” that will become the priority and we will be less focused on the expression of our art as we express it, which means that we end up again separated. We’re like, “I’ve got this website, and people come to me, but I don’t love doing that. I’m doing it so people come to me.” We’re back to that same place where it’s like, “This isn’t what I wanted. I’m doing this to get the result to do the thing that’s the expression of myself.”  

I don’t particularly enjoy the art side of it, either. I’m not a content creator or at least I don’t think I am. Maybe I need a bit of a change there. I work with the people. I want the people that come to me. That’s what I love doing. 

Can I ask you some questions, Lee? 

Sure. 

What is the expression of your art? If you were free to express yourself in the world, what would I see you doing? 

I wouldn’t be asking people what’s getting in the way of them being who they want to be. 

Take it outside of this conversation, even. For example, if you were to be like, “Adam, go do what you love doing.” You’d see me playing video games, you’d see me going to scotch tastings, you’d probably see me at parties, maybe dancing, and having a good time. What would I see you doing? 

Snowboarding, riding my bike, and learning.  

Did you guys notice even a shift in Lee’s countenance as he was describing that? Did you feel that, Lee? It was cool.  

Yes.  

That’s the expression of your art and what I’m hearing is it sounds like a story or a relationship to what connection has to look or what it means and therefore you’re like, “Here’s the stuff I’d love to do. Here’s the other part over here and how do I make this as good as it could possibly be even though it’s going to suck and I hate it.” Would that be fair? 

Yes. There’s definitely some story going on around, “I’m going to hate this.” “Why am I doing this?” 

Creating Clients: If the way you’re holding connection is that it’s something you have to do that’s separate from who you are naturally in the world, of course, you would hate it.

What I want to do is alleviate your feeling that’s wrong. That makes total sense because if the way you’re holding connection is that it’s something you have to do that’s separate from who you are naturally in the world, of course, you would hate it. Who wants to do that? What I want to do is I want to explore my passions and be fascinated about the people that are in those passions. If I can create a business that way, that’s heaven on earth. Whereas if I have to find the high performing people, and go talk to them like high performers do, why am I doing this? This isn’t an expression of me. It’s an expression of what I need to do to get those people and harpoon them as clients. 

There’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens on the other side of the connection and we’ll start to talk more about that as we address the other conversations here, the other questions are in the space. Once you’re connecting with people, we have to create some possibilities with them. Once we’re creating some possibilities with them, we have to invite them into a coaching conversation. The place I want to invite you to start noticing is, what would be the most organic way for you to meet people, the most enjoyable way for you to connect with people? I’m going to ask one more question before I move. What is the concern or the thought or the, “Yes, but,” that comes up when I give you that as the place to be looking? 

There’s a little bit of British conditioning. I noticed a big cultural difference between Britain and the UK. British people don’t like being sold to. I’m not sure anyone likes being sold to but it’s much more comfortable here. People are much more comfortable, “I do this. Do you want it?” That’s not something that rich people do as much. There’s a cultural thing that I’m still struggling with a little bit. I can be quite introverted so I can find it tiring to do a lot of that.  

On the flip side of that, COVID has taught me that connections are important to me. I hated FaceTime and Zoom before COVID. I didn’t want to do it and now I’m like, “I can’t wait to see somebody on Zoom.” My kids are real human beings. I’ve missed those. I want to see them, please. I learned more about myself during this time and what I can and can’t tolerate but there’s definitely for me an energy exchange in doing these things. In writing content, my wife gets energized by that but I don’t. I find that tiring. With lots of Zoom calls, by the end of that, I’m exhausted. She’s running around. I noticed that difference.  

What I heard was the first thing that came up was when I gave you that idea, that practice of focusing on what would be the most organic way to connect with people. What I heard showed up for you was people in the UK don’t like being sold to. First, I want to give you a helpful distinction, which no one likes being sold to. None of us. Canadians or US. We are all one on this planet. We hate it the worst. It’s interesting because what I’m pointing to as a starting point, I have a PDF that might be helpful. I’ll come to that in a second but the first step of creating a client is to create a connection with another human being.  

Where we get in the way of that as coaches are like, “I’ve got to connect with this person, but I’m going to need to sell to them here.” How do I connect with them? What do I say to them? What’s the right thing to do? How are they going to feel when I do that? All of which is in the way of us connecting with them. We’re no longer connecting with them. We’re strategizing. We’re worried, anxious and we’re thinking about that thing down the road. It’s not to say that there’s not some work further down the path where it’s like, “Lee’s now connecting reliably with people. How do we start to shift them into the later stages of creating a client?” What I noticed is because you’re so worried about this, you’re not able to create an effortless connection. There’s no joy in it for you. 

Which isn’t entirely true because there is when I do it. It’s a story of resistance rather than a reality because when I do, I love connecting with people. What’s been even more surprising for me is, “I’m going to bother them.” People are enjoying connecting with me and they’re interested in what I’m doing, “What you’re doing and why the change?” They’re curious about that. It’s this initial storytelling of I’m bothering people. My experience isn’t that in fact, it’s the opposite of that yet this story is so strong that it keeps coming up, even though my actual reality isn’t that. 

No one likes being sold to. Click To Tweet

I get it and I love that you are recognizing, “There’s a bit of a different experience that I can have. My job here is to some extent to reflect what I’m hearing to reflect your language back to you.” What I’m hearing is, as soon as I start talking about you organically connecting with people, the thing that shows up is people don’t like being sold to. That tells me, on some level, that there’s still some crossing of the wires where you think about connecting and it equates somehow it gets conflated in with selling. For you as a starting point, I would invite you to be in the practice of what I often advocate for. For you, Lee, as a starting point, the place I would have you work is to create pure joy and art in the best possible sense of the word, connecting with people that you find interesting. I promise that it’s not the end of the game. It’s not like, “Connect with people, and magically everything will happen.” There’s still a bunch of other stuff.  

If you start there, what I promise will happen is the rest of the steps will start to fall in place. Lee, notice there are six steps. We have to have a conversation with people. Everything happens out of a conversation. In that conversation, we then start to create possibilities with people. That’s the reason they would say yes to us working with them as a coach. Three, we invite them. We have to make an invitation.  

Often as coaches, we’re like, “Let me know if anytime, sometimes maybe you want to have a coaching conversation,” which isn’t a powerful invitation. It’s letting something hang out there and hoping for the best. We have to coach them, propose to them, and eventually support them to get to the yes. All of this stuff, steps 2 through 6, you don’t have to worry about until you’re reliably creating a connection. The place I’m inviting you is to fall in love with connecting with people. If you allow yourself to trust, “I’m going to get all of this.”  

There’s going to be time to do all that stuff, but where do I find the people that are fascinating to me like high-level elite cyclists, amazing snowboarders, people that have combined cycling and business, or something along those lines. I get curious about the people that if my job was to fall in love with connecting with people. Who would I be connecting with? Start to cultivate those connections. The reason we do that is it’s the bottom part of the pyramid. If we can create this foundation where we start to naturally, as an expression of our being, connected with other humans and get fascinated and curious about them, all of this other stuff becomes way easier because you’ve got an abundance of people you’re naturally connecting with. Does that make sense?  

Yes. It’s interesting when I look at this, 4, 5, and 6 don’t seem scary at all. I’m comfortable with those. It’s the first three that I’m having the issue with. If somebody says they’re interested I have no problem with coaching them and no problem with saying my fee. That’s comfortable. I truly believe I’m worth what I’m worth so that’s fine. It’s the bit where I get them to say, “Yes, I’m interested.” That’s the bit where I’m uncomfortable.  

Start with this. Start becoming powerful, reliable, and effortless in creating conversation. As we go with the other questions, you’ll start to see, “That’s how that fits into that.” For everyone here, I’ll share this PDF. You’ll have it, you can read through it and look at it.  

Thank you.  

Thank you, Lee. Next, we’ve got Heather. Heather, you’re saying, “I’ve got a hidden agenda, as well as who do I reach out to?” Is that right? 

Yes. I do have a hidden agenda, which seems to be an issue for me but the other thing is, sometimes I struggle with who I reach out to. Same with Lee, I’ve spent most of my life being, it’s not that I know his life but I am a loner. I’m comfortable not connecting which is not helpful. 

That’s relatable, first of all. There’s a reason that this set of shelves you can’t fully see here is covered with miniatures that I painted on a Friday night. It’s because it’s comfortable for me. I don’t mind doing that. I enjoy it. I find ways to entertain myself but there’s also a degree of safety in that for me because I’m not going to be let down by myself. At least I can be with my own letdown of what I did or didn’t do and that’s easier for me to be with. Whereas the intimacy of being in a relationship with another human being is a little edgier for me. What if they think I suck? What if they think I’m a dork? All of that stuff. Your voice may not be the same as my voice. My intention here is to normalize that I get that it’s more comfortable often to stay here.  

I’m way more comfortable in small groups or one-to-one conversations. I’m quite comfortable with that but it’s like, “How do I create that space?” Can I clarify something? Lee didn’t say that he was a loner, but I’m quite an introvert and I connect those together in that conversation when I said that. 

I have a hunch, a working hypothesis. In the hypothesis, I notice there’s a couple of things. You’ve been reading The Spectrum of Being. I sent you that book. Have you gone to the connection yet?  

No.  

You might look through that particular aspect of being. The quality of being of connection is something I embody, and most of you can probably get that about me, “I put this guy in the room and he doesn’t shut up.” Maybe on a good day, “At least he connects everyone else. The room starts talking more when Adam comes into it. When Adam leaves the room, a little bit less of that in the space.” This is what I call the quality of connection.  

I find that a lot of people drawn into coaching embody this. We’re curious about human beings. We’re interested in them. Someone’s like, “Humans suck. I don’t like them. I want to be with the beauty of computer code,” tend not to be drawn to this profession. They’re not that interested in it unless they’re here to make money and this is the worst profession to get into because you want to make money. It’ll eat you up and spit you out.  

A lot of us in the coaching profession innately embody connection, and find our way here, because it’s such a beautiful fit for it. You’re connecting with humans all day long. One of the shadows of connection looks like introversion. That is to say, growing up, we learned that in certain spaces, places, and situations, our connection, what was innate for us, was unwanted, unwelcome, or dangerous. When I connect with people, the teacher tells me to shut up and pay attention to the school. When he moves me to another section of the class and I start yakking with this person over here, I get even more trouble, I get sent home and I get lectured by my parents.  

Creating Clients: Once you’re connecting with people, you have to create some possibilities with them.

From that I learned in these situations that look this way, like the original training, don’t be the connection. Be quiet, stick to myself, and put my head in my book. I learned that initially as a strategy, and it becomes more and more automatic and more of an automatic reflex to any stimulus that occurs similar to the original training. Finally, I reached this point in my life where I’ve long since forgotten that any of that was put together and now, I say things like, “I’m an introvert.”  

It’s not to say that there’s not some truth to that because that strategy is safe, comfortable, and known. It’s that often when coaches tell me that, what I’m more present to underneath is the connection they are. I get that about you, Heather. I don’t have to be right but it’s part of what I get about you. This is a woman who’s curious, interested, loves people and wants to know more about them. 

The whole safety piece is relevant for me.  

The nice thing about that is now we’re in a different conversation. If we’re in a conversation where it’s scary to connect with people, that’s a different one from the conversation where it’s like, “I don’t like doing it. The way I’m structured is that I’m not good or able to connect with people.” 

I have that belief that I’m not good at it. 

There are two different forms of that belief, one is because, biologically, the structure of your DNA is that you’re not good at connecting. The other one is that you are not good at it because you trained out of it. You learned that in certain situations what was natural for you was not okay and then trained yourself differently. One, you’re a fixed object. There’s no hope for you. In that situation, this is a bad profession because what we’re doing is connecting with humans all day long. If it’s a little more like, “Maybe I trained myself out of what was innate for me,” then there’s an opportunity to unlearn your training.  

My clients see me as what you’re saying, it’s connecting when I haven’t built that relationship. Even when I first have a client, I don’t have that relationship. I build it but it’s reaching out and connecting to create that relationship, whatever that relationship is going to end up being. I’m trying to work it through. 

What I’m hearing is that there’s a moment, point, threshold, experience, or a situation where you now feel safe in the connection with them. It’s like Lee shared. Do you know that part when it’s awkward and we’re in small talk with each other? A lot of us have a judgment. It’s like, “This person is over here with their small talk.” What’s there is we’re both awkward. We’re in that state where we’re dogs sniffing each other’s butts. If that lets you have a sense of humor about it, it’s a little easier, “I’m sniffing this person’s butt. How does that smell? That’s weird. What are they doing? Why are they sniffing that way?” That’s small talk.  

That’s a place where, for Lee, you, or me, it’s a little scarier for us to be connected in the awkwardness. What we tend to do is retreat ourselves. We can retreat at the moment by hanging out in the small talk or by leaving or we can retreat more broadly by avoiding those situations altogether. We started reaching out, “Who do I reach out to?” Hidden agenda. We got more into this introversion, “I don’t like doing that.” I want to check-in. Does this give you somewhat of a different way to hold what’s showing up for you?  

Yes. Interestingly, the connection with my history, it makes total sense why I do recoil from that. 

What are you seeing?  

I didn’t grow up in a safe environment. Being quiet, going away and doing my own thing. I was involved in sports. I left home at fourteen. I buried myself in that. Those were all safer places to be. The voice and my thoughts or opinions were crushed. 

It’s not a safe place to share your art. When I talk about art, what I’m talking about for all of us is the expression of us into the world. Connection, no. Bad. 

It’s not safe. 

By itself or with someone that you can know. Once you’re like, “I’m clear. I can trust this person,” the connection becomes more available. What’s happening is that’s where you’ve learned from the training that it’s okay to be all of me once this point is reached. Prior to that, you got to be a little more reticent, slow down, do whatever the strategies are that you do.  

I see a major shift from where I was to where I am in that regard but getting that connection in that history makes movement probably even easier. 

It’s okay if it doesn’t occur the same way. We’re less interested in things like, “You are exactly like this person.” You can see a broad sense. If we can start to see a different way to relate to something, that’s going to open up more possibilities than were previously there. If my relationship to my resistance to connecting is that it’s the way I am, that doesn’t leave a lot of possibilities. Whereas if it’s like, “Maybe I could untrain something.” That gives us access to a little bit more. There’s still scary work to do. It doesn’t let us off the hook, but that work is now available. 

Labeling myself as an introvert, I am introverted, but that gives me that place that it’s okay because that’s who I am. It keeps me where I am, so to speak. 

Let me speak to when you have a hidden agenda. Darren also had that, like, “How do I reach out to someone with an agenda and without an agenda?” This speaks to that possibility part, the number two in our chart. Number one, we have to get into a conversation with people. Number two is to create possibility. I’m going to skip to this last part about the subject of creating possibility, which is, “Your job is to be genuinely interested and curious about the person you’re talking to and willing to ask these questions. This isn’t a trick. It’s about being connected with another human being.” 

When we ask these questions about the possibility of their lives, these are questions like, “What are you up to? What do you want to do next? Where do you want to be in five years? How’s that working out for you? What are you finding difficult about that?” We’re expanding what might be available in this person’s life. These are also questions that would answer the question, why would you work with me? People don’t hire a coach to achieve the results they’re already reliable to achieve. There’s no point. If I wanted to achieve a result, like, “Next year, I’m going to charge an extra $5,000 for my coaching.” I don’t need support with that. I can do that pretty much on my own. It might feel nice to be inspired or have my feathers fluffed but it’s not a requirement. I’m going to create that result.  

It’s okay for us to have an agenda and that agenda can be like, “I’m part of how I grow my work. I connect with human beings. I get fascinated by their possibility.” That does two things. One, it has me learn more about humans. That’s part of my job. Two, I get inspired about what people are up to and sometimes that benefits my other clients. Three, sometimes it turns out that there’s a great fit for us and they would support that person if we got into a relationship with each other.  

A lot of people in the coaching profession innately embody connection. Click To Tweet

Sometimes it doesn’t go that far. Sometimes all we end up doing is supporting them or we have a great conversation that inspires all of us. That’s an agenda that is okay to bring to someone. You don’t have to pretend, “The only reason I want to talk to you is to connect with you.” Why is this person as opposed to that person on the street that’s a stranger?” “That’s great if you want to talk to me, but I’ve got an allotted time. Go talk to that random that’s walking around. Talk to them. They seem to have some time.” I’d like to hear from Heather and Darren. What is the agenda that you’re both trying to hide? 

I can say that my agenda is to build a clientele. I feel like I’m not being honest and that’s why I say it’s hidden. This is what I want and I’m connecting so that I can get that. That’s what it feels like. 

What you want is to create a client. 

Yes. Ultimately, I want to build my clientele.  

What about you, Darren?  

Same. 

This is where having these steps broken down into six steps can be a little bit helpful. It’s natural. The reason we’re starting this process right here is that we want to get to this part right down here. We are doing this because, at the end of the day, we want to create a client. If we slow ourselves down, it gives us a lot more space. The reason we would invite someone into a coaching conversation is that we’re inspired by some possibility that is available in their life. Something that they’re committed to or that they want to see happen or something that they’ve got this dream that’s insane and you’re like, “That’s cool. I want to know about that.”  

Ideally, we would invite them into a coaching conversation, which would be amazing and then we would propose, and then we would support them, and then there would be a yes. We don’t have to run that far down the road. The reason I want to date someone is that, at some point, I’d like to end my life with them. I’d like to live 60 years of my life with them and have a kid and have great sex and go on cool journeys around the world. When I connect with someone on the street, it’s because I’m attracted to them. All of that other stuff is still true but I don’t leave with that. I’m like, “Sixty years down the road, I want to die on my deathbed with you holding my hand. How do I not tell you that?” We can slow it all down.  

If you can start to put your attention on what fascinates you about people? What are you desperately curious about in people? What would you love to know about people? All of that will lead to these other things. Can you put some attention on that thing right there? If people go like, “Why do you want to connect?” You can be honest. You can be like, “First and foremost, what I’m most interested in is people and learning about them. I’m interested in specific kinds of people, people in the working areas you’re in, people that do elite cycling, people that combine snowboarding with business, people that used to work in government and now are Mavericks with cool dyed hair and stuff like that.”  

It’s true that sometimes when I connect with people, there’s a way that I see that I can support them. Sometimes they become my clients but all of that is further down the road. We’re not there yet. The biggest reason I’m interested in connecting with you is that you’re up to something cool. I’m drawn to whatever is there that you’re doing in your life. From that place, would you like to connect and chat for 30 minutes? I’m going to take one step further and slow down even more, but does that give you a different place to hold this from? 

I’m going to say yes. To come at it from that angle and to invite them into the conversation is a different place. My mind started thinking, “Yes.” This is what I’m interested in. I could invite them to get their input on that or whatever. I’m a lot more excited now. 

That feeling of being more excited is what we’re aiming towards. You stop the anxiety caused by client creation. Where we trip over ourselves is, we’re focused on, “How do I propose? I need to coach them and they become clients.” If a child was trying to learn how to walk but you implanted in their brain that they’ve got to win a gold medal in sprinting at the Olympics, that walking thing is going to be miserable for them. They’re going to be all over the map. They’re going to be bumping into things. They’re going to feel a ton of pressure. It’s not that all there is to do to win a gold medal is to learn to walk but it is the first thing that we have to do and we want to put our attention all there and find joy in that and then find the next step.  

The last thing I’ll say on this point is that you don’t have to go. All we’re doing is deepening connections each step of the way. Deepening connection does not have to look like jumping on a phone call with them. It can be simply sending a message on LinkedIn after someone wrote an article about something you thought was interesting. It’s like, “That article is super cool. Can you tell me where that came from? I struggle with that. I’m often a little hesitant to post that. Can you tell me about your process?”  

We’re not jumping onto a phone call. We’re deepening the connection a little bit and then that allows us to take the next step. It also allows us to get to the point where we’re like, “This person is not that interesting to me anymore. I don’t feel inspired to continue this. I’m going to move on. I’m going to choose something different.” Does anyone in this conversation is like, “This doesn’t make any sense. I disagree. There’s no way that I can get on board.” Any strong, “Yes, but,” for us to speak to? 

It makes sense to me. I get that you can be deepening the connection over a period of time and that process will probably feel more natural and maybe lead to a better outcome. My struggle is that I’m in the beginning steps of building this career. I don’t have a foundation to rely on as far as income and the client roster. It makes sense once we get to that. I’m with you. I’m curious what does the initial steps or phase of this look like for someone new to this process? 

This is the part people don’t like hearing, which is we’re best served by having an income, job, runway, something so that we can give ourselves and the prospects the gift of abundance. If we are holding like, “Next month there’s no way I can eat unless I create a client.” That makes it hard to sit down and get comfortable in that first step. It’s hard to be like, “All I’ve got to do is connect with this person but if I don’t get to step six, my family starves to death.” There’s no nice, easy, super empowering way to say this. The more space you can give yourself in terms of your basic needs, financial needs, food-based needs, etc., the more space you’re going to have energetically to allow yourself to step and unfold into this process.  

I’d like to go back to thinking of that child walking. If you’re like, “There’s an army coming and they’re going to kill us. You better learn how to run quickly.” That’s going to be a lot of burden on that child. They may even learn how to run but they’re going to do so in a way that probably has a bunch of kinks in it. It’s not going to be the natural, organic way that child runs. It’s going to be with a bunch of burdens and pressure retained in their musculature as they run. At some point down the road, they’re going to have to unwind all of that. What we’re trying to do is get yourself to allow a space of abundance and some time. It doesn’t have to be a ton of time, but at least more than a month. That allows you to unpack all of the stuff that we’ve layered on top. We can then build this from a foundational point. First, can I love connecting with people? Can I start to learn how to create possibilities with them? Where does that answer leave you, Alex? 

It hits home. Even before I asked that, I was starting to think like, “Get the day job. Let the situation start while I’m going through this process or something to meet those needs.” As we do all this work, I’m like, “That doesn’t sound empowering. I should be able to do this in a month and be a superstar.” That hits home and that does feel like the way I would want to be with this process.  

I want to be clear that I’m not intending to take away the possibility that you can do this in a month. A farmer can grow a crop in a month. Sometimes there are boom years where the crops sprout and the weather happens to be right. They learned a great deal on that month of growing but the farmer that’s committed to being a farmer, that’s committed to a longer game knows, “I’m going to probably be able to do my best work if I don’t have my scarcity in the way of this.” We are all farmers in this game. We are playing a game of farming.  

When I first started this work years ago, in no way I wanted anything to do with law. I made a big pronouncement to my cohort at law school. I was like, “I’m not articling.” There’s probably a little bit like, “Fuck you all. I found the right thing and you’re dumb for what you’re doing.” There’s some layer of righteousness in that. I had to eat some humble pie because I realized partway through, “This doesn’t make sense. My wife needs to know that we’re going to be able to do all right with money.” I had to swallow some pride and come back and tell people, “I realized that’s not going to work. I do need work.” The amazing thing for me was when I empowered it from that place, when I took on, “I’m going to practice law for a while in service of the commitment I am to thrive as a coach.” Things shifted from there. I was no longer doing it because I had to. I was doing it because I knew it was a deeper service towards my commitment to do coaching full–time. That opened up a tremendous amount of abundance for me.  

Mia, in Zoom, shares, “I took a second job so I can pay all my bills and talk to people about money without having it go crazy, without all of that stuff.” Mia is a beautiful example of that. When she and I first talked, that wasn’t there. She got clear. She wants to do this. She went and got a second job so she could have some abundance. She created some space for herself. There is something magical. New coaches are the most resistant to getting a job or going back to the thing that they’re like, “I chose coaching because fuck that thing.” There’s usually a breakthrough to happen so they can empower that work from a different place. Shortly after that is when they start to create their clients because they’ve changed their relationship to abundance. They’ve started to create it as a function of how they’re showing up in the world and that allows a lot more to flow through.  

Jessie shares in the comments on Facebook, “This idea about enjoying connecting with people, it relieves a lot. It takes a lot of the burden off of our backs when we can allow that.” Tracy says, “It looks like I could end up having lots and lots of conversations without moving to the next step.” That’s perfect. We’re going to talk about that. This will speak a little bit towards like, “What do I do next? How do I connect? What if I hang out there forever and have nice conversations with people?” Step one, we want to get good at connecting with people. If all that you’re doing, Tracy, Lee, or anyone else, is connecting with people, way to go. You have achieved level one of creating a client. You’re now reliable for that. That is something you can do effortlessly. You’re ready to take the next step.  

The way most conversations happen with people, especially when we’re starting out, we have the default comfortable conversation. We have the conversation that is collectively being had everywhere. Those are like conversations about the weather, politics, how work is dumb, how your partner is being annoying, or whatever. It’s the conversation that’s there to have, the automatic conversation. A conversation like that doesn’t create or evoke any new possibility. What we often try to do is we have those conversations with people and then we’re like, “Would you like to have a powerful coaching conversation with me?” The person is like, “Why? I appreciate that we complained about Trump or Biden for the last hour, but I don’t understand.” In that situation, people aren’t enrolled in anything in their life. They’re not present to any new possibility. What they’re enrolled in when they say yes is not upsetting you. It’s not making you feel bad about your invitation or not feeling like, “I don’t know how to say no.” They’re enrolled in alleviating that discomfort for themselves.  

Creating Clients: If you can start to see a different way to relate to something, that’s going to open up more possibilities than were previously there.

None of those are powerful places to invite someone into a coaching conversation or for someone to say yes to a coaching conversation. What happens when people are enrolled in that is that it has a short half-life, it’s until you end the phone call and they’re like, “That discomfort is gone. Crap, I made that appointment.” This is why we see lots of people call you up last minute and be like, “You’re awesome. I loved our conversation, super powerful. Insert excuse, this is why I’m not going to have the conversation with you.” It’s because they haven’t been enrolled in any possibility of their lives aside from that narrow reason to say yes. What we want to start doing in these conversations is now that we’re naturally connecting with people, we’re getting into a conversation with people that are beyond our default nine or people that we normally talk to.  

We want to start asking questions that evoke possibility and these are the questions I mentioned earlier. There are questions like, “What are you up to in life?” If someone was like, “I work at a laundry company.” Our job as a coach is to get, in a way, curious about why they would work with us. Not so we can then trick them into working with us, but because that is the person’s possibility in our life. That is what our job is to be fascinated about. It’s like, “Working in the laundry. What could I be curious about when it comes to laundry?”  

As a starting point, I like to ask questions like, “What would I not know about that business?” That doesn’t necessarily evoke possibility, but it gets us talking about something outside of the default. We’ll be like, “The thing is that white is,” “Fascinating. I didn’t know that.” “Where do you see yourself going with that? Is this a five-year plan? Is there something else you want to do in your life?” “I’m a musician. I love that. The thing is I know that if you play music and you make it your job, that becomes your job and you lose your passion for it.”  

What we’re starting to hear in this conversation is that person might love to be a musician but there’s a reason why they can’t. The story, the belief that they live their life from is once you make your passion your job, you can never have passion doing that job. That tells us, “This is where this person’s life is kept. This is where they can’t go any further.” Now we can start asking questions to explore that like, “That’s interesting. What if you could? What if that wasn’t there? Was that what you would choose to do? Where else in your life is your passion and your job or money and passion in a conflict like that?”  

Now we’re asking questions that broaden the inquiry. It’s exploring a life outside of the life that they have resigned themselves to, so to speak. They may not feel resigned to it. They’re like, “Here’s the rule about how life is. Passion and job can never intermingle. Here’s the best configuration of my life based on that rule.” We’re asking questions that explore outside of that rule. Does the frown on your face, Lee, mean that you’re focused or that you got a distraction in your space or that you’re following along? 

This is where the conversation starts to do two things. First, your client will start to get present to some possibility that previously was unavailable in their life. They’re not even your client. They’re a person you’re talking to. You’re starting to ask these questions that explore something beyond it. It has the client start to think beyond a certain point. Two, it has you get present to like, “Why would I even invite this person to a coaching conversation?” The answer to those questions that you’re asking is that answer.  

The first step of creating a client is to create a connection with another human being. Click To Tweet

Once you start to get clear on this, you can be like, “First of all, that sounds fascinating to me. I didn’t even know you could do that with laundry. I had no idea that laundry could be this industry that has so much room for innovation and environmental change. I love that you’re committed to doing something in there. Would you like to have a coaching conversation about that? I hear that there’s stuff you want, there’s something in the way, and I’m fascinated by what you’re up to. What I do is I support people with that. We’d spend two hours together, it’s my gift to you. I would learn something cool. You would get a lot of movement and we could see where that left us. Would you like that?”  

We have a reason to invite them into coaching other than, “I need to get this person as a client.” We’re hoping that if we serve enough people in the world, we’ll eventually get clients that say yes to us but it doesn’t have to be our entire agenda. Our agenda can be, “I’m clear that when I serve people, that’s how clients come into my life. I’m also clear that I don’t have to have every single person I serve to become a client.” My commitment here at this moment, my agenda for you is I get to have an interesting conversation and we serve you and move the needle of your life forward. Would you be interested in that?  

I want to come to Lo’s question, which is how are these questions not coaching without permission? Lo asks, “How are these questions not coaching without permission?” First, what these questions are is inviting a little more intimacy. When you ask someone, “What’s in the way of that? What do you want to do with your life?” That’s a little more intimate than, “Don’t you hate the current political candidates?” There’s nothing intimate about that. That’s the conversation in the space right now. Whereas asking someone about their life is a little more intimate and asking them, “Where do you struggle with that? What’s in the way of that?” It’s a little more intimate. The process of creating a client, like a process of creating a lifelong romantic partner, is a process of deepening intimacy.  

If I was coaching someone, I would be a lot more pointed, I would ask a lot more penetrating questions, but that’s a far cry from being curious about this person’s life. This is my assumption. You can let me know if it’s not the case. My hunch is what you’re more concerned about is that the person feels uncomfortable with the question I’m asking them as opposed to like, “Am I on the line of doing coaching?” If the person felt comfortable with me asking these questions, they would probably be okay. More or less, we still might have that like, “But is it? How do we know?”  

What you can do is you can check in with the person you’re talking to. If I’m asking these questions that evoke a little more possibility, I might say, “First of all, what you’re doing is crazy. I didn’t know laundry had all this nuance to it. I’m fascinated. Do you mind if I ask you some questions about it and what you’re up to with it?” If they say yes, great. If they’re like, “Maybe not.” No worries. “What do you want to talk about instead?” I’m not attached to creating possibilities with them because I’m reliably creating a connection. If it’s not this person I create possibility with, it’ll be the next one and then the next one. By building that first foundational piece of creating a lot of connection, we can then have space for people to show up however they show up when we ask them a possibility. That’s the first part.

Creating Clients: Deepening connection does not have to look like jumping on a phone call with people. It can be simply sending a message on LinkedIn after someone wrote an article about something you thought was interesting.

The second part is that people will have some resistance to possibility. The reason we’ll have some resistance to possibility is that we’ve structured our lives such that there isn’t anything possible outside of what we’ve already decided is available for us. That person that says, “You can’t turn your passion into a job because then your passion becomes a job and there’s no joy left in it,” has created a life around them that’s a reflection of that. As soon as you start to ask a question like, “What if that wasn’t there?” There might be some gentle or strong resistance to it. Our job as a coach, not doing coaching at them but someone who’s a coach with people, is to recognize that might show up and that’s okay. We don’t even have to force them through it. We can notice that and be like, “There’s some resistance here. They’re committed to that story that your passion or your work cannot be together.”  

In all of that, our work is to meet the client where they’re at. The coach might start doing obnoxious things like, “I’ve got a reflection for you. I noticed that you’ve got passion put together and there’s no way they can coexist. Where else in your life does that show up?” It’s obnoxious. If we were being curious about them, we might be like, “That’s fascinating. Is that always how it’s been?” It’s a much softer question and we’re letting our curiosity guide us as opposed trying to be more poignant.  

The last piece I’m going to say is that this is a sliding scale. There is no point that I can direct you to where I’m like, “Right here is where the person started coaching and is no longer being curious.” You’ll have to learn this for yourself. The way you’ll learn this for yourself is you’ll make some messes because you’re practicing something new. It’s like a child learning to walk, you’re going to fall. Our job is to be willing to create some messes to come from a genuine place where our agenda is to be curious about this person’s possibility and then to be responsible if they’re like, “That question feels a little pointed. Excuse me, why are you asking?” We can be like, “I’m sorry. I’m genuinely curious. Your life sounds interesting. I didn’t mean any offense. Do you want to talk about something else?” That’s how we allow ourselves the freedom of not necessarily being restricted by a rule and we can learn where the space is.  

What will happen is you’ll learn to dance with the client based on where they are comfortable currently being with you. Some people might be like, “The conversation with this person is all up here. There’s no room for any deeper conversation right now. I’m going to hang out here with them.” You’ll start to feel them drop a little bit with you and then you can ask a deeper question, “We’re back up here. I’m going to hang out with them. They’re ready. I can ask that question.” We learn that dance by being willing to not do it perfectly. 

Could you speak to Lydia’s question, which is showing up as a coach everywhere? I’m speaking for Lydia but the question is interesting. 

I’ll answer that. I’m going to speak to what you said, Lee, concerned about getting caught in a cycle of coaching for free. That’s there for Darren too, his second part of the question. There’s a distinction between the being of coach and the doing of coaching. There’s overlap too because the being pervades all of it. When I’m with someone and they are like, “What you said there, I didn’t like that at all.” Internally, I can be like, “First of all, I’m taken aback. I’m feeling a little defensive. That’s my reaction. It sounds like I made a bit of a mess. I’m going to be responsible. I’m going to apologize for it.” That’s the being of a coach. I’m being a coach but I’m not doing any coaching. I’m bringing the way a coach be into the world. I’m being introspective. I’m distinguishing what’s showing up. I’m taking a look on my side and I’m being responsible for my impact as well as my intentions.  

Likewise, to your point, Lydia, it’s a little bit like the being of a coach is insatiably curious about people, fascinated about the possibility of every human being they come in contact with because that’s amazing. When you talk to these people that occur boring and you’re like, “Every human being is not boring. What is going on here?” As you dig, you start to be like, “What the heck. This is hiding underneath the surface? This is cool.” That gives people a different experience because people don’t relate to them that way. People relate to them as boring and it gives us a different experience because we get to be fascinated, curious, and delighted as we discover people anew.  

People don't hire a coach to achieve the results they're already reliable to achieve. Click To Tweet

The doing of coaching would be a little bit more like what Lo was speaking to and what I was pointing to there where someone would be like, “That offended me.” We might be like, “I’m sorry. What can you see about yourself?” We start to get into the way we would run a coaching conversation with a client, which is inappropriate when we don’t have a container set up for it. It’s not just inappropriate, but frankly, it’s obnoxious. I’ve got good empirical evidence of this from all of my friends that I did this to when I first started. I’ve got proof. If you need some, you can come and talk to me about all the mistakes I’ve made or any of them. Does that answer your question, Lydia? 

It does and it leads into other questions. Where this came from is, I had several coaching conversations with someone. Originally, I could see all this amazing stuff that he had going on and a huge defense and fieriness to protect it. He’s a super-achiever and all of these things but has a huge defense around his brilliance. He had shut a lot of people out. We were in a group together. I started a conversation with him because I was fascinated with what he is proposing bringing into the world.  

To go into what Lee was talking about, I gave him several free coaching sessions because, partly, it would be of service to him and because I was fascinated. I would coach him for free but it’s not serving either one of us and he knows that. I like when you brought it to the being of coaching because I got into the being of coaching with him and got stuck in the place of, “This is not serving either one of us if I keep giving him free coaching sessions.” For me, I love being in that place of being coached. Where is it that I need to look at? It’s not serving either one of us if I’m continually giving away what it is that I do? 

Is there a question there or is it that you’re distinguishing something for yourself? 

It was more distinguishing. I know in our training, it’s both showing up as a coach everywhere and I noticed that I also get stuck in the part of, “Am I giving my art away, so to speak?” There’s no question. I’m trying to distinguish where do I turn it on or where do I turn it off. 

Let’s shift the conversation there. I want to come to what Lee said and also what Darren is talking about, which is, “What about when I’m falling into that place where I’m coaching people for free all the time?” What’s happening typically in that situation is one of a couple of things. One is that we’re not looking at what would serve the client. We’re looking at, “How do I get this person as a client?” We’re like, “I got to keep coaching. I got to provide more and more value.” The attention is a little more on us rather than on them.  

The other reason is because we are not present. We’re not able to hold this client’s possibility so we’re like, “I would love to support this person, but I know they got furloughed or I know they don’t have any money. There’s no way they could afford my rates, so I’m going to coach them for free,” which is an example of a coach not standing for that client’s possibility. As soon as we know what the client is and is not capable of, that presents a limit on how much that client can step into their own possibility because you as a coach are not able to hold the space for them.  

Our whole job as a coach is to stand out beyond what is predictable for the client like, “You can create this. I know you can.” I want to be clear. There’s a difference between standing for someone’s possibility and saying, “I know that you haven’t worked for twenty years, but it’s $100,000 to work with me and I know you can do it, so figure out how to do it.” That’s a stretch that’s a bit different than what we’re talking about. There is some calibration. What is the level of possibility that will be a stretch for the client?  

Creating Clients: The process of creating a client, like a process of creating a lifelong romantic partner, is a process of deepening intimacy.

There’s a bunch more, but the last main reason that people are in a conversation where they’re coaching for free is because they’re afraid to make the proposal. It’s scary to make a proposal. “What if they say no? Maybe I’ll coach them one more time.” The alleviation to this, the way we let this go is by putting our attention on what would serve this client and the breakthrough they’re up to create. This is a Steve Hardison quote for those of you that know who that is. I heard this from my friend, Gary. He said, “There is a point where you will realize that the best way you can serve this client is supporting them to get into a paid coaching relationship with you.”  

To do this, we have to get that it’s a service to someone to get into that commitment with you. Not a time-based commitment. People waste their time constantly and will insist, “I commit with time, not money.” No, you won’t, and I sure won’t, so I’m not going to be able to hold you that way. It’s our money that is our commitment and I invite you to hold it this way. It’s not right. It’s a way to hold it. Our money is a proxy for what we are committed to in our lives. “I am committed to this house I live in because there’s a bunch of my money invested in it.” “I’m committed to my life and transformation because I send a bunch of money to my coach.” 

If we can hold our rates and the money that a client hands over in that light with that kind of relationship, then it becomes a different conversation. It’s not a conversation about, “Am I worth it? Can this client afford this?” It becomes a conversation of, “What is the level of commitment to their lives that would serve this person currently?” That person who hasn’t worked for twenty years and you’re like, “$100,000,” it’s not there for them. If someone’s like, “I’ve been scraping by. I’m doing not bad,” that person, I would suggest, could probably make $1,500 to commit to their lives over the course of three months. 

Most of us can find some way to do that. If you’re not sure about that, talk to people like Mia who have made commitments like this. I know this because Mia works with me. She’s in The Forge with us along with Heather here. She’s created this in her life. She’s had to get curious and create new things, but she’s found ways to do that. What your job as a coach is to stand for that possibility. What we want to do when we’re with someone is fill in to them like, “Is what’s going to serve this person another coaching conversation, or is that going to be more of us doing the same?”  

“Is there a point for me to share with them, ‘I’m 100% committed to you and your breakthroughs. I’m clear that the thing that’s going to serve you now is if I support you to get into a paid coaching relationship. Would you like my support doing that?’” That’s the crazy thing about coaching. You’re not saying, “You need to do this and I’m going to make it happen.” You’re telling them your truth. You’re offering it to them, and then you’re asking if they’d like support doing that. From there, the conversation starts to shift into the last one, step six.  

People will have some resistance to possibility.  Click To Tweet

We propose to them. We tell them, “Call forth me in terms of your commitment and I can support you to create that. I get it. You don’t know where that money is going to come from. You might not see that possibility. My job here is to support you in seeing what you want in your life, seeing the hurdles in the way, and then supporting you to not let those hurdles stop you and to create the results you want, even though they don’t necessarily seem possible at this moment. Would you like support doing that?” Does that give you a place to look, Lee and Darren, when it comes to like, “I am caught in this loop.” Is there a different place you might see to be with your clients there? 

I’m used to facilitating group calls. This has been a good chat for me. I want to concentrate on enjoying making more connections and I feel like from that, it’s going to happen anyway because I’m good at saying to people, “I’ve enjoyed this. Let’s make this a professional arrangement.” For me, it’s going to be much more about making more connection calls. Someone’s going to say, “I enjoyed this. That’s interesting,” and then I’m going to be comfortable saying, “Great. Let’s do more of this. Here’s my rate. When would you like to start?” 

That feels so great on you, for what it’s worth. Feeling you say that, I’m like, “If this man finds pleasure in connecting with people, there’s going to be a lot of shifts.” 

It’s that reframing of, “I do enjoy connecting to people. I don’t need to see it as a sales call. By connecting, there will automatically be, in some circumstances, a sales call. I wouldn’t need to force that. It will happen. The more connections I create, if I turn 10% of them into clients, I’m doing 5 or 10 of them a week, I’m going to be busy quickly.” It’s about doing that. 

If they don’t start creating it, then you can come back to this and be like, “Where’s the bottleneck now? They’re not saying yes to my invitations. Maybe I need to work on possibilities.” This is the magic of this layout and this approach. It’s like we’re building a pyramid up. What most of us do because we don’t have an abundance and we set ourselves up to be a little needy, we jump into that top part of the pyramid. We’re like, “I got to figure out how people say yes. Who are the people that will say yes?”  

We’re planning everything. It’s like driving on an iceberg when you can only see the top part of it over the water, and then we’re like, “Why doesn’t anything work? Why do I hate this?” People are telling us it’ll work, and then it all is miserable. If we can build these things up from the bottom up, it creates so much freedom and abundance. What will happen is that all of you will learn to create clients as a natural expression of you being in the world. You’re going to be like, “I go to cool events that I love being at. I connect with people and sometimes, I get curious about why this boring person is showing up as boring. I find out how fascinating they are.” 

From that, they have this experience of me that’s unique to the rest of the world, and then I ask them, “Do you want to have a conversation?” It’s all so easy. That’s the promise of this foundational work. It does require some trust because what the world is selling to us is, “Aim at this top thing. Do this.” There are people that can make money doing that. You’ll notice there’s not that much joy in their life or it feels something often feels off. 

I’m finding in this coaching community and maybe this is my stuff as well, all the coaches coach each other and there’s lots of talk about money like, “I’m charging $5,000. Now I’m charging $10,000.” That turns me off. That’s not my mission. My mission to create a better world by creating better men or enabling men to be better men, and then they’ll spread that out. That’s my internal mission. I’m having to maybe put my shield up a bit and go, “That’s fine. You can have an ego about that kind of stuff. I need to concentrate on what my mission is and not get drawn into it.” I’m naturally competitive. I’m like, “I want to get $20,000 a month,” and then you have to let go of that and concentrate. “Here’s what I want to do.” The money will be a byproduct of that. 

Thanks for sharing that, Lee. I’m going to come to Mia and then Lydia’s question. I want to say that I forget these steps all the time. When I look at my calendar and it looks empty, I go, “I have to figure out how to get a bunch of yeses.” I have to remind myself. I have to get supported by my coach sometimes or even distinguished for myself like, “Hold on, Adam. Get back to connecting with people. That’s where your job is. Put your attention there first. Are you connecting with people? Great. Is there a next step?”  

It’s not a one and done. It’s not something we should already know. It’s an act of building our ability to trust farming, so to speak, to trust ourselves in this work. We’re always coming back to this and reminding ourselves and relearning it. Mia, you said you have a one-off coaching conversation with someone and you’d love to work with them, but they didn’t ask to work with you. You had a conversation with them and you’re not sure is approaching her unethical? Is it about you or the possibility you can see for her? First, why would it be unethical? 

When she joined the call, she said, “I have two questions for you.” One is, is this being recorded? The second one is why are you doing this? I don’t annoyingly remember what I said, but I said something like, “I’m doing the 50 coaching conversation challenge.” Whatever I said, she comes like, “Okay.” I coached her in this one-off session and I found all the stuff that was available for her and just her so interesting, and then the call ended. She was like, “Thanks. Bye.” Now I’m like, “I would like to work with her. Would it be horrid if I popped back into her life?” I feel she was secretly asking me, “Are you trying to get me to be a client?” I was like, “No, I’m not.” That’s what was happening underneath, and then I went, “No. Ridiculous. Let me go to you.” I’d love her to be my client. How do I go back without doing this to her and make her my client? 

As always, your physicality is hilarious. I love this image. Right in that nerve right there. You initially approached her and she was like, “Why are you doing this?” It sounds like, “I want to coach,” or some reason, but it sounds like there was a truth underneath that was like, “I’m trying to create some clients.” 

It was the 50 coaching conversation challenge. 

Which you were doing so as to? 

I was going to say create clients, but it was to get into coaching conversations with an abundance of people. Some of them might become clients, but it was to be having coaching conversations every week and she approached me through Facebook. It’s her fault. 

First of all, this can be a little bit of the trouble with the 50 coaching conversations because it’s like a variation therapy. “I’m going to do it so I get into this.” It can work for that. When we’re asked this question, if we haven’t thought like, “What is my what for doing this? We then can get a little hamstrung.” We’re like, “I don’t know how to answer that question.”  

It can be helpful for us to get clear. These steps can be powerful where we can get like, “I’m committed to serving people. I’ve got some fear about coaching people. One, I’m trying to get over that fear. Two, I believe that if I serve people, that leads to creating clients. I have no idea, but maybe 1 of the 50 people I coach with, we’re both like, ‘Holy crap. This is amazing.’” A client gets created from that. I’m alright with that and it doesn’t have to be the case.  

We’re doing two things at the same time. We’re letting the client know, we’re not attached to this going anywhere, while simultaneously acknowledging that like, “I would love it if it came to the point where we both thought we were amazing and this partnership should work. I’m not attached to that. I don’t even know that will happen.” We’re owning both sides of it as opposed to one or the other, which is where we tend to get like, “I shouldn’t have any agenda that I want to have them as a client. Therefore, I can only be unattached,” and then it becomes weird when we’re like, “Holy crap. This person should be a client. They’re amazing.” 

The first thing is to be willing to own both sides of it, and to see how you can have your cake and eat it, too. “I’m okay if it doesn’t happen here, but I get that this is how my practice grows.” The second thing is from where you are, I don’t think it’s unethical. It’s totally alright to reach out and say, “I’ve thought a lot about you since we had our conversation. You’re amazing. I got present to what you’re up to. Do you want to explore what it would look like to work together?” You’re not hiding anything. You’re being honest about it. If she’s like, “How dare you,” then you got a mess to clean out. “I get it. I was working through something myself and I can’t get it that landed on you this way. My intention is not to bait and switch you.” When we’re willing to be transparent with people, it takes so much of the gamesmanship away. Do you know what I mean? 

Totally. Thank you so much. 

You’re welcome. Great question. Lydia, you asked, “What if knowing their own value financially as part of what the client is dealing with?” The way I understand that question is like, “What if I’m like, ‘It’s $2,000,’ and the client is like, ‘Yes, but I’m not worth $2,000 or whatever so there’s no way I could make that investment.’” Is that the question?  

Yes. 

This is our sixth step. This is the moment when the client tells you yes or no. This is the point where coaches leave their clients and abandon their clients at the most sacred moment of all of this. We won’t have a chance to go into the process of working through an objection, supporting clients to get to the yes, but I want to provide a bit of a context and how it typically goes. The way it typically goes is that we’re afraid of the client’s no and we’re afraid of being pushy. Our attention is on, “How am I going to be perceived? How is the client going to perceive me?” Rather than, “What would serve the client at this moment?”  

From that place, as soon as the client is like, “It’s a lot of money and I don’t think I have that money to make.” We’re like, “No problem. Let’s get you off this call.” Click end the call and then run, hide my head in a shoebox or something like that, whatever your flavor of that is. Forget that this has anything to do with hiring you. Imagine that we were in a conversation here where the client had already hired us and they were saying, “Lydia, I’ve got this project. The project is going to be amazing. If I can create this project, what’s going to happen is that cars are going to run on an alternative fuel source and they’ll exhaust water rather than carbon monoxide. It’s possible.”  

You’re like, “Great.” You’re enrolled in this project with them, and then you’re like, “What’s the next step?” They’re like, “I got to figure out what it’s going to take,” and then they come back to you next week and they go, “Here’s the thing. All of that stuff might be true, but what I’m clear on is it turns out it’s going to cost $2,000 and I don’t have that money. There’s no way I can create that money.” Imagine then at that moment, you as the coach went, “That’s too bad. Good coaching conversation. Let’s send this and we’ll talk next week.” That would suck. We’re abandoning the client at the moment when they’re up against the thing that there is for us to coach them through.  

The client’s sense of worth is absolutely something that will get in the way of them working with the coach. You know this to be true because it’s probably a thing getting in their way of creating the results they want out there in the real world. Whatever is blocking the client out there and the rest of their life is going to come into being in the way of them working with you. Sometimes, the way you’ll notice this is when you’re talking to a prospect initially and they’re like, “I’m going to do all this stuff but I want financial freedom first. I say no to a lot of stuff because of the costs.” When I hear that, I often know when it comes time to propose, if we get there, there’s probably going to be a money objection. 

I’m probably going to be supporting them to get over fear about money rather than expecting or hoping that doesn’t happen or trying to structure our proposal so that doesn’t happen. If I charge a low enough rate or if I charge pro bono, then that’ll never show up for the client. Instead, we want to welcome it. We want to get, “The thing that’s getting in their way everywhere is going to come up soon. It’s going to come up when I tell them the wall they have to climb over to create the result they want.” Our job is to get it and to understand in our heart, “I can serve this person here not because I’m committed to making money off of them, but because this is the same thing getting in their way everywhere else.”  

Creating Clients: On every particular platform, space, or situation you find yourself in, there tends to be a particular type of listening that you’re going to be speaking to.

We can say to them, “First of all, I get it. I got stuff like that in my own life. What I support people in doing is getting clear on what they want in their life, getting clear on what’s in the way, and then moving that thing that’s in the way out of the way so they can have it. It doesn’t always look easy. Sometimes, they have no idea how they’re going to move that out. That’s why I work with them. Would you like me to support you in doing that right now? It sounds like there’s a thing you want and happens to be called working with Lydia. There’s a thing in the way. Do you want to have a look at that from a coaching perspective?” 

What the possibility available in this is that we start to relate to those moments as the most sacred opportunity to coach that there is. We’re setting our own ego aside. We’re setting our own fears aside, and we’re serving that client even before they’ve paid us a cent. It might be like, “I’m okay. If we look at this and you get clear on the thing that’s in the way, create a breakthrough, and realize you’re still a no, awesome because I know you’re going to go into the world and you’re going to be different than where you started this conversation from. Would you like that support?” If we do that, then all of this becomes quite delicious because we’re like, “I’m coaching you the same way I coach this client. There’s no difference. There’s money to be made, but the money is going to come through. I already know that. I can trust in that.” Does that help a little bit, Lydia? 

It does. I did make the proposal and he came back and said, “This is great. I’m going to go off and find the money for this because I want to do this,” and then the next week, he came back and said he had done the things because I was helping him around speaking engagements. He wanted to do speaking, but he was doing them for free. We got to a place where you could get paid for it. He’s gone back into that place of, “As soon as I get to this place of making money, then I can hire you.” He sees the value, but he also has gone back into that place of his value financially. 

I would love to dive into this more, but this is more of its own conversation, which is how do we support people to get to that yes? Maybe we’ll do another webinar. My plan is to do this once a month, so maybe that’s what will make the next one be. How do we work with people in this? How do we not have that’d be scary, etc.? Jeff has a question for us, which is, “I’m making most of my connections these days on LinkedIn. Could you talk about engaging in the initial part of the connection process via messaging, email, etc.?” 

Thanks for the question, Jeff. Great question. I’m going to start by saying I suck at engaging with people on LinkedIn. I’ve tried it. I write stuff on LinkedIn. I get engagement from Jeff. Jeff Harmon is my guardian angel. He shares my stuff and he’s like, “This is amazing. You should read this. Adam is doing great stuff no one else does,” which is fine. The place I’ve learned best supports me in expressing my art is Facebook. That’s where I put my intention, and then I syndicate LinkedIn out there. That being said, connection is a universal thing as opposed to specific to a platform.  

It’s worth noting that on every particular platform or space or situation you find yourself in, there tends to be a particular type of listening that you’re going to be speaking to. What I mean by that is that when we’re on LinkedIn and someone reaches out to us, we have a different listening all ready for what they’re going to say versus when someone on Facebook reaches out to us. Versus when someone at a networking event comes up to talk to me as opposed to when someone at a bus stop comes up to talk to me.  

My listening at the bus stop is, “What’s this person up to?” My listening at the networking event is, “What is this person going to talk about?” At this point, they may even open their mouths, but my listening for them is tuned a certain way based on the surroundings that I’m in. LinkedIn may have a bit of a different listening. I’m not too tuned into it as opposed to Facebook. We want to be aware of that. Beyond that, we’re still in the act of connecting with people. I’m going to talk about this as though it’s Facebook because that’s where I’ve learned to do this work. 

Let me take a different approach. The crux of all of this is that ultimately what we’re doing is meeting people where they’re at, and then deepening connection from there always. That’s all we’re ever doing. What tends to happen is that on social media at large, one, where it’s not as much intimacy at the start as meeting someone in person. It’s not as much as there. The signal is weakened. We’re communicating over text as opposed to the richness of face-to-face or even feeling another subtle body in the same space as us.  

What people tend to do on these platforms is send you that initial message. My experience on LinkedIn is they’re like, “Adam, I love the work you’re doing for Evergrowth Coaching & Consulting Incorporated. I’d love to know more people like you.” I’m like, “Great,” or whatever. Accept, and then they’re like, “How’s it going?” I say, “It’s going great. How’s it going with you?” They say, “Good.” There’s this long message that follows and there’s a link to some webinar they’re doing, “I know that most coaches like you.” It’s totally fine that they’re doing that. There’s nothing wrong with any of this.  

What’s happening is they’re starting at that connection, and then they’re jumping all the way to a proposal right out of the gate. Maybe we would call it an invitation or they’re trying to invite me into coaching and they’ve done nothing to connect with me. We’re not connected or at least the level of intimacy at which we are currently connected is on a scale of 1 to 10,000, it’s a 1. They’ve reached out and we know each other’s name maybe. Sometimes, they even get that wrong.  

The work in these interactions is to feel into the relational space between you and that person and check-in like, “What’s the level of connection right now? Where do I feel I am with this person? Do I even know what their life is like? Do I know anything about them? Are they responding to me in a way that feels connected? Are they responding to me a bit like Adam does when you reach out to him on LinkedIn?” He’s responding, but he’s not engaged with you. When that’s the case, our work is to meet people where they’re at, and then take the next slight step down in terms of intimacy rather than jumping straight to the chase.  

We get impatient because we’re trying to play a numbers game or we’re trying to rush something and make something happen rather than hanging out in that connection and deepening from there. If we’re willing to slow down, be with people, and get into a conversation with them, the irony is this stuff speeds up because we start to create results a lot more easily. We’ve got the relationality than the space to then take the next step as opposed to stumbling over like, “I’m going to invite someone and I’ll keep inviting them until someone says, ‘Yes.’” That numbers game works when you’re trying to sell something like a widget or a webinar or something that’s got a low rate.  

You can blast people and enough people will say yes, and then you get high enough volume that the drop-off rate that happens from that lack of relationship is negligible. You can manage it. In a game like this one where I assert most of us are here to make a profound difference in someone’s life, that requires a lot more relationship work. The good news is that also demands a higher fee. It’s a higher level of commitment. If you’re willing to play this, learn this foundation, and build it up, where it leaves you is able to charge a much higher rate because you and your client are both enrolled in that and you’re clear on the possibilities available for them.  

Jeff asks if I can give one example from Facebook. Absolutely. Let me think of one. Andrew Mundy is someone who you’ve seen posting in the comments if you’ve been watching on Facebook. Andrew is in our Client Creation Course that I’m running. The way Andrew and I got introduced was initially a woman named Sherry who I knew from several years back put us in touch. She’s like, “You guys are in the same city.” I get lots of introductions like that. For the record, I love them. I love it when someone puts someone in touch with me. That’s not the only way I connect with people. Sometimes, people are like, “I love what you’re doing with your posts. Thanks for writing them.” It’s a simple, odd connection that way.  

Sometimes, I write people and I’m like, “I love what you’re doing with your posts. Thanks for writing them because I’m genuinely inspired by what they’re up to.” I can’t remember how it went. The first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to say, “How’s it going? What are you up to in your life? Tell me something about you. What’s your deal?” People will either answer in a way that’s short. They’ll be like, “It’s great. Life’s good. How about you?” I noticed when that’s the way they’re engaging with me, I’m not particularly inspired to go deeper myself like, “There’s a lot of people I’m connecting with. I’m in quite a bit of abundance that way. I’m not going to put more effort into this than you are.” 

Sometimes, people such as Andrew did, or send me a paragraph. They’re like, “This is what I’m up to. I started as a coach. I got two kids. I’m a new father.” I’m drawn in because this person is sharing more of themselves with me. I started to get curious about that like, “How long have you been doing this?” The questions I’m asking myself intuitively are like, “What makes this person’s life tick? How’s it going?” I’m always curious about how it’s going for new coaches because I remember that work. It’s not easy and it can be scary and challenging. Even if it’s not a new coach, if they were like, “I’m a plumber,” I’d be like, “How’s that? What’s that like during COVID? Do you have more demand or less demand? What am I curious about?”  

I would ask these questions and often there’s a point we reach where either I’m like, “This feels good,” or we’re both engaged in the conversation. They’re like, “How did you get started?” They might ask you a question like, “What was your path to this?” I might ask them, “What are you up to?” They’re like, “It’s a lot. It’s hard to tell you all in one sentence.” At which point, I would then take the next step, which would be, “Do you want to jump on a call? Do you want to chat for a half-hour? We’ll hop on the phone and share what we’re up to.” The agenda for that call would be to get to know each other for half an hour and when we got on that call, I’d be like, “Here’s my agenda. I’d love to know what you’re up to. I’d love you to share anything you’re curious about with me. Does that sound like a good agenda for you?” 

From there, you can see we might start to deepen further. At the end of that half-hour, it might be like, “It’s cool to get to know you. Let me know if I can ever support.” That’s where I’m going to end my interaction. Sometimes, we talk and they are like, “I love what I’m doing, but it’s tough.” I might feel called to serve them. Not always because what you’ll find is you create an abundance of connections and abundance of possibility that now you don’t need to serve people by coaching them. You might be like, “This person is cool. I’m stoked about what you’re up to. I don’t feel called at this moment to serve you. There are three other people that I’m feeling motivated to get in touch with, so I’m going to put my energy there.” 

That allows that spaciousness. The person can ask. If they were to say, “Can I have a coaching conversation?” The answer would probably be yes for me. All I’m doing from here forward is deepening connection, creating possibilities with them, and inviting them to a coaching conversation. I’ll take this all the way through to the end. The way at one with Andrew was we started talking and he was like, “What are you up to?” I shared about the course I created and he was like, “That sounds cool.” First, I shared about Intensive, the event I run every year, and then he was like, “I’m interested more in a course-like format. If you ever do anything like that, let me know.” 

A couple of months later, I said, “I’m doing this thing. Is that something you might be interested in?” We went from there. Andrews’ commented on Facebook, “I’m hooked on all the video content and coaching that Adam’s doing.” That’s a beautiful example because there was zero agenda for me and I don’t know that Andrew had an agenda. I wasn’t like, “How do I get this guy as a client?” I was like, “What’s this guy’s deal? What makes them tick?” We’ve deepened together and it’s happened quite organically. I want to thank everyone, but I first want to check in with all our panelists. I want to have you share a sentence. No more. No using a bunch of commas strung together to create a paragraph. I’ll have to use a bunch of hyphens, but something you’re leaving with. Darren? 

I’m going to have to use a little bit of my senses to say thanks, Adam. That was great. It took away so much. Four pieces of news. The biggest thing is about genuine, curiosity, and connection. You connect with people because you’re curious and you want to find out more. In relation to the coaching proposal piece, was to embody the knowledge that is an act of loving service to deepen the relationship. A place where they can create what they want. 

There's a distinction between the being of coach and the doing of coaching. Click To Tweet

Thanks for getting that. Thanks for being here, Darren. Lo? 

I love the analogy of when you meet someone, “I’m going to die with you next to me.” It’s like, “I connect. I feel the attachment I have for you and the curiosity I have for you. I’m that and I love this.” 

Thanks for getting that. Heather? 

For me, it’s totally been focused on being curious instead of what’s down the road. I want to say that I was at the dentist one time and I said to the dental hygienist, “What made you interested in this career?” That was coming from that place. You’re in the dentist so it’s hard to speak, but I’m trying to think that way more. 

It’s such a great model for bringing the being of curiosity without any agenda. Who knows what you’re going to discover? I promise, the upstream of all this is your interactions. People are going to get way more interesting because you’re going to be interested. You’re going to look for that stuff. Erica? 

Nice to be here, first of all. What I wanted to say was a nice reminder, of course, about creating a connection before creating capital. We have jobs that are about connection that always comes first. My job is full of asking questions between teaching and radio. It’s all about asking questions. That human connection is important first before the capital. 

Thanks for getting that. Thanks for being here. Alex? 

There’s so much great stuff. I have to say, Heather, my coach was a dental hygienist before he became a coach, so I love that you’re saying that. The single biggest thing for me is getting clear in working in my own scarcity and coming from abundance in this process of generating clients feels a whole lot better. 

Thanks for giving you and your clients that gift. It is a true gift to give them. Lydia? 

A lot of this stuff reminded me that I am on the right track when I’m working coming from curiosity and all those things. Sometimes, when I’m not getting the results, it feels like, “What’s missing?” There’s a lot of brilliant, great stuff here that we covered. It’s authentically coming from curiosity. I am fascinated by people, so that reminder was awesome. 

Thanks for sharing that. We do need reminders of this. It’s so easy. The world is doing so much work to tell us that the thing to do is to drive towards the results and the bottom line and all of that. If you forget that, it’s okay. It’s human to forget that in this work because we’re operating in a different way from the way the world is set up on the surface. What you’re doing is approaching the world from the way it is, but the surface doesn’t look that way. What that does are two things. One, it’s challenging because you’re going to feel like you’re going against the grain. The backside of it where it leaves you is that you are this anomaly in the best possible way in the world.  

People, when they’re with you, are like, “What the heck. The experience I have around Heather or Lo or Erica or whoever is totally different.” They don’t even maybe think that. They feel it in their bone marrow and that is the magic of this work, by being with someone in a unique way, that leaves them feeling more seen and heard than they ever have. It creates magic. Thanks, everyone for being here. I want to thank Alex, Lydia, Erica, Heather Darren, Lo, Lee, and Mia. Thanks to everyone that joined the panelists. Thank you, everyone, for coming and hanging out with us.  

When you're willing to be transparent with people, it takes so much of the gamesmanship away. Click To Tweet

I know it’s a lot, but I want to acknowledge everyone for coming. The thing that I’m most want to thank everyone for is that you serve and support me when you practice this because more of this work gets into the world and I get to be with the benefit of that as to you. The more of us are practicing this way, the more we are turning the tide against the drive towards the bottom line. The selling the means and the shiny look of all of that stuff. The more real transformation can happen, the more love gets to be put in the world. Deep thanks and honor and respect for everyone here. Have yourself an awesome weekend. We’ll see you all soon.  

Important links: 

• PR@AdamQuiney.com 
• Alex Campbell – Previous episode 
• Darren Farfan – LinkedIn 
• Lee Povey – LinkedIn 
• Steve Hardison 
• Andrew Mundy – LinkedIn 
• Client Creation Course 
• Intensive 

About Adam Quiney

I’m an obsessive perfectionist, high-performer, former lawyer, and now an Executive Mentor. I know what it’s like to succeed easily and quickly. To blindly put my happiness in the hands of achievement.

All the success, money and possessions in the world couldn’t cure my boredom. Couldn’t produce a loving, intimate relationship with my wife…and definitely couldn’t fulfill me.