Harnessing Knowledge and Feedback for Sustainable Growth

Faisal: The process of coaching helped me become more confident in myself, which was very interesting. Not just being coached, but coaching others helped me become much more confident in what I was doing.

That gave me the confidence to start reaching out. So while I was doing that, I was still promoting myself solely. Yeah. So whether that's at, at your job or at a contract, and I mean, you know, when I transition out of one of my major contracts, I was okay to do that because I had built some skillsets in the background while I was working in that contract.

Daniel: Hmm. You make me think of something that, one of the reasons that I didn't make progress fast enough is partly because it was so hard and the reason was so hard was it was multi-factor. It wasn't just one thing that was in the way. It was like, you know how they say like if you have a boat attached to the dock, you use lots of ropes, and if you cut a couple of ropes, the boat is still attached.

It's not gonna sail unless you cut all the ropes. And so like, I had a whole bunch, I was maybe cutting, I was like working on cutting one rope, thinking it was the only rope. Like, okay, so I need to build a website, but there are still 20 other ropes. And the biggest ropes were emotional and lack of knowledge of the business.

And so even if I were able to successfully do something, it didn't cover the other problem. Like, so for example, I didn't know anything about. What I wanted, I didn't know anything about what kind of business I wanted to create. I didn't know anything about the types of clients I wanted to coach. I didn't also have confidence as a coach.

I didn't have confidence that somebody would sign up with me. I didn't have confidence in my process to sell them I didn't have, I didn't understand that selling can be a positive thing. There are so many different ropes on my boat and I was maybe working on one of them without realizing they're all important.

And so, so like you can build a website, but like if you don't know who you wanna. A website's probably not gonna be very useful. You can create a sales, a sales page or you can even improve your sales process. But if you don't how to find clients, that's not gonna be very useful. So you can put a ton of effort into the thing that looks like the one, but like there are so many pieces of this, you can't take a higher level of view and think about what are all the pieces of this that are gonna matter in the way that I want a business to be?

Yeah. And then which ones do I need to work on first? And knowing. Just cause I get that one somewhere doesn't mean it's gonna automatically make the rest work. It's like a car, like, oh, I know I need a tire. Okay, but don't you need a steering wheel? Oh, okay, now I got a steering wheel. But don't you need a break?

And don't you need a door? You have to know how to build a little bit of a car. You can build a crappy car with just the right parts, and that's a great start, but you still need some basic minimum things to reach. 

Faisal: I'm gonna make it worse because you know what a car looks like,

I know. Most coaches don't know what a business looks like, and that's true. We actually had a session where we did our 90-day challenge session. I knew what questions to ask because I've been on this journey. And so a couple of our new members that, and what I wanted to know is like, where are their clients gonna come?

And he's like, well, yeah, I just, I'm excited I'm doing this. I'm like, tell me what, like what, how are you, how are you doing this? Like, what's your strategy for creating clients? And it was the same exact thing I was thinking about seven years ago. it hasn't changed. Oh, I'm gonna put, I'm gonna, I'm creating my website.

I'm gonna put content. I'm like, help me build the connection. 

Daniel: I'm gonna make a business card. 

Faisal: I'm gonna make a. So he is telling, I'm like, help me build the bridge between you putting out content to you having clients. Like, what, what is your, like, what, what are you trying to do in there? And he is like, and I knew what he was thinking.

So I paused for a while. He, he didn't know what, because he didn't have like, clarity on it. I'm like, are you hoping? And I had to say, are you hoping that because you're putting content, somebody's gonna reach out to you and tell you what to do with the strategy session? He didn't think of it that way, but That's a good hole,

Daniel: That's exactly what they're thinking. Yeah. But that's an easy thing to think cuz you don't understand the other pieces. Like when you don't see half the equation. If I don't see the car, I don't know if there's an engine. If I don't understand how a car works, I don't know. There's an engine inside.

Faisal: Yeah. So coaches don't know what actually business looks like. That's why I keep going back to business. And business has some central components that need to be in place. So for example, especially when you're starting out as a coach, prospecting will become the most important thing. And even within prospecting, you need to understand who you are.

Who are you reaching out to? Where are you gonna focus your efforts? To who are you gonna reach out to? How are you gonna what is gonna be the medium you're gonna use? What's gonna be your effort? How are you gonna track that? Who's gonna keep you accountable for that? This is where. You need a few components in there because you can't, you don't know what the car looks like, aka a business looks like you need somebody who's able to see that you need other people who are either on the journey of building the car or people who have built the car, or, and people who are, who have built multiple cars, whatever that looks like.

With that analogy, you need to be part of a community, a mentorship program, a coach, somebody that's gonna help direct you as you are building this stuff. So all the stuff that we're talking about, like putting out content is not a negative thing. That's a positive thing that helps you build your confidence in sharing your message.

Building a website is a positive thing, so it's just that. Which ones are gonna give you the best ROI? And at the beginning stages, you need to be prospecting, you need to be reaching out to people, and you need to be booking calls for you to do that, or you need to make a mixed decision.

Is that okay? No, maybe I need to find a job or a contract that I'm gonna be in while I'm building that thing. And those, that require you to kind of look at the more long term, like what is gonna be a strategy as you move forward? Because if you go into the prospecting and you don't understand. How sales work.

You need to build your sales process. You need to get better at the conversion. You need to understand who you're gonna reach out to. That's gonna take a little bit of time to build while that's happening, let's say six months, one year, a year and a half, are you gonna run out of financial and emotional bandwidth in that time?

Daniel: Yeah. This is actually really important. Content isn't a bad thing, and it might, might be exactly the right thing depending on what stage of business you're in. Yeah. If you're at the early stages, that might actually hurt you because of the emotional bandwidth and, and time you're taking up to do that.

That's if it's not aligned with getting you into the coaching conversations and the prospect, if it's not directly connected to prospecting at the beginning of your business, you need to focus. To get prospecting done, which honestly just could mean having conversations with people. Yeah.Right. 

Faisal: And this, I mean, it can just be so, like I was sharing when I was doing Uber, I was having a lot of conversation. It was just they didn't 

Daniel: prospecting, but you were not, you were pro. So one thing about the Uber method, I actually really liked that method for two reasons. I'm glad you brought it up.

Cause I never thought about it this one until now, which is if you were in conversations with people frequently. You can have those prospecting conversations and be paid to do it in an Uber. You can actually learn pretty quickly the kinds of people you do like talking to and you don't like talking to, and you're like, if you're like, oh, I like talking to everybody, you need to think more carefully about that question, right?

There's gonna be some clients that are gonna be right for you and some clients that are not gonna be right for you. You wanna coach everybody and you're probably gonna coach nobody, right? So, so 

Faisal: I'm a pretty, pretty open person. I don't like talking to everybody. 

Daniel: right? Yeah. , so, But the thing that I like about the Uber method, which I'm not recommending, I'm just saying the thing I like about it is you're getting into a lot of conversations early in your coaching career and you're seeing different aspects of different people, and it's a wide cross-section.

So what you're able to do is you're casting a really wide net so that you can learn who are the people that are better for you to be talking to in coaching too, that you would enjoy and they would get a lot out of. And then the, the thing you're missing though, is like, hey, at the end of the conversation, hey, did you like this conversation?

Would you like to continue? Here's how you continue with me. You sign up right here, it's, you know, 50 million for your next session or whatever. Yeah. Being able to make that transition to the sale and the conversion part is really important. Right. 

Faisal: So I've learned two things and it just hit me when I was reading the prosperous coach in one, virtually when I think it was Rich Lebri, wasn't Steve Shaler, one of them who said never get into a coaching conversation without asking first.

And I was doing that. That's so true. All the time I was doing that, I was coaching everybody, which was, I wouldn't do that now. Like you even know, when I was at the, when we were at the house, I was like, when Rob was sharing something, I was like, this is really getting me to go into coaching mode.

I'm not getting it totally. And I looked at Rob I'm like, you wanna do a session? Not just because I want him to be part of my program. Like we need to be in that space. For us to do this. So like what I would tweak there if I were to go back, let's say, I would know what to tell my old self.

Exactly. I'm like, you're doing a lot of stuff. You can leverage what you're doing. So let's say Uber, I'll share a couple of things. It would be more around asking a couple of questions, giving him some perspective. It'd be like, Hey, I'd love to do a one-hour session with you.

Would you be open to that? 

Daniel: Now we're talking. Yeah. 

Faisal: Now it's becoming, a coaching thing. And like, can, can you just share, go here and just fill out this form? Or can you share your phone number with me and we can book a call afterward? Yeah. And I can help you through with that, that thing that would make it a, like, I would have, let's say I had a hundred conversations in a week out of that I booked

10 people in a conversation out of that, I would very likely have one or two clients out of that, but I didn't do that because I didn't know to do that. 

Daniel: But you also have to know how to make them into clients too. Like, so, so I'm not, I wasn't saying sell 'em in the car. I was just sort of using that as an example to say like, you're having tons of conversations.

Yeah. Which is really where you wanna be at. Cause you want to gather the data. Who are the right people for you? 

Faisal: Yeah, definitely. I agree. You there's, there's, it gives you a lot of perspective and insight as to who are the people that you want to connect with. But I'm looking at it from a more business side.

Like if I were to go back, I would just, that one tweak will help me leverage the time that I was doing. But if you are not, if you don't know that, you are not gonna do that. You're just gonna do random things. And it's not gonna give you the. 

Daniel: And most of them are gonna be behind a computer instead of in front of people talking to them.

Faisal: Yeah. And, and it's, what I've learned is actually much fast, much easier, and much faster to connect with people in person than it is I would've done a lot more in-person things like I would've created meetups or gatherings, and stuff, but I, I didn't know that was better. And even if I did, I didn't have the support to, like, how would I do that?

How would I structure that? 

Daniel: And then you gotta deal with emotional challenges of like, what if you're not, you don't feel like really comfortable in a group, or what if you don't feel comfortable networking or prospecting. Yeah. It's like, well, you have to start getting okay with those things. 

Faisal: Yeah. and then, the reason we're sharing this, is not to make, make you scared of the journey, we're just being candid with that.

it is a lot. But for me at least, I don't know where the turnaround was for you, but for me, there were two turnarounds. The biggest turnaround was actually being part of, like, I had to decide at some point that it's not work, like realize that being in my own corner was not working. I didn't know enough about the industry.

I didn't know what other coaches were doing. And so when, when Jeff put out that that message a few years back I was, I was really, I was like, okay, well I'm trying all this stuff. It's like giving me half-assed results. This won't hurt. And I started getting around other coaches who were trying different things that helped me.

So, you know what, going back to the car analogy, it helped me create a better picture of the car. I had a picture of a quarter of a car, but the rest of it was invisible to my mind. It helped me create a picture of what I'm trying to create. And it started with us talking about just like, what are you doing in your coaching?

Like, what's working for you? What's not working? Because I didn't even have enough confidence to try some of the things that I was trying. And then solely as we got more courageous, we started talking about the business. So what are you doing to get clients? Oh, well, I'm reaching out to people here and there, and I was doing webinars, like I didn't know, I was kind of secretly doing webinars.

There were a few people showing up and, and I'll be like, yeah, I'm trying this thing. Oh, that's incredible. I've never tried that. What do you do then? And then I'm like, maybe that's working. So I started doing more of that, but I would've given up on that in a month if I didn't talk to somebody.

So it was, it started building up a picture. Even, even though most of us at the time when we started out, none of us had a proper business. Now, like at least the coaching master community is in a place where some of us are building really profitable businesses. We're trying different things. So it's bringing up more data.

And, and that's why I think it's essential for coaches to be around the community, a set of supporters, mentors that will help you kind of move forward, slowly, help you build a picture, and help deal with so many variables that we've kind of laid out here that, that it doesn't look like it's a lot, but there's a lot in there.

Daniel: There is a lot in there just as we've been talking about. And one thing I love about CMC is when you join CMC, it's like you're committing to staying in the game. It's like, and all of a sudden you have a group of people around you who you can ping and you can ask for multiple people's feedback. You can come to the Mastermind, you can come to the client challenge.

On Mondays when we focus on getting you your next five figures, we want you to succeed. And it’s because we know, we've been through the journey. it's a hard one, especially if you're alone. And it's also very complex. There are a lot of different pieces of it for different people and it's different for everybody.

And some people, their path is gonna be to get a job coaching. And for some, their path is gonna be to get a part-time job coaching. For some people, it's gonna be building your business. For some people, it's gonna be both. For some people, it's gonna be completely different, right? For some people, it's gonna be building a community.

It depends on you. And I don't want people to think there's only one type of car out there, right? Yeah. And there isn't time to think about your car more consciously. You might not know what you're building. And then that makes it really hard to actually build it. 

Faisal: Yeah. and one of the things to believe is you can, like, there are so many creative ways you can build your business there.

You're not gonna run out of ways to prospect, you're not gonna run out of ways to, to structure business, whether starting with group coaching or one-on-one coaching or doing pieces of training, or courses, however, you do it. And the important thing is that, are you getting feedback? and like where I was getting my feedback initially, friends and family, like the worst place to get feedback from.

I don't know how to explain the thing that I don't know how to explain. And then they're telling me, maybe you should try this thing, try that thing. Maybe you should, like, that's not helpful. 

Daniel: Or maybe you think it is helpful when you go try it and you're like, oh, that was a dead-end.

Like they're not at all part of the, they, it's like I'm trying to build a car and you go to somebody who is A lemonade stand vendor and is like, you should try this. And you're like, okay, thanks. And you go do that thing. 

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