Session 4: Creating Action Plans Welcome, this is Christian Mickelsen. This is the Rapid Coaching Academy session. Tonight s session will be focusing on strategizing your actions. Before we dive in to this I want to just do a quick review. Actually, before we even do the quick review I just want to let everybody know that most of what we ve covered so far is very important stuff and has been really to lay the foundation for the coaching process, the overall coaching process. Now, we re going to be moving in to more and more with each session in to the heart and soul or the meat of the coaching process. That s going to be starting tonight with strategizing your actions and will continue even more in to upgrading your skills and optimizing your environment and mastering your psychology. All those things that we ll be covering in future sessions, we re really starting to roll of the sleeves and dig in to the coaching process. But, before we get going on our content tonight I want to just do a quick review of some of the things we ve covered so far. We re going to just kind of do that review in a little bit of a different way. I d like you guys to just share anything that you can remember that you ve learned from any of the previous sessions whether it was something from me specifically or perhaps even something you ve learned from another participant from getting together and doing some of the buddy coaching. You don t have to raise your hand to be called on here. Feel free to just go ahead and speak out loud anything that you can think of that you ve learned so far. Participant: For me it was the concept of direction. I just like the idea of direction and moving in a direction towards something that is coming but it s not locked in to a specific. Yeah, okay, right. Participant: It leaves it open for what unfolds but at the same time always going forward always in the same direction that I want to go. Yeah. Thank you, that s the direction versus goal. I actually didn t quite catch what you were saying right away but I get it. I remember when we had that discussion on the last call. Thank you for sharing that one. Someone else?
Participant: I ll second that one and I ll also add the indexing to disconnect from the feeling of pain. That was interesting. Yeah, the idea of instead of saying I, you say you. Good one. Someone else? Participant: One of the things I learned also was about going for your ideal. When we did the exercise on weight and how much weight lost, it really hit home about really going for what you want versus kind of being safe. Great. Someone else? Participant: For me one of the most valuable things I ve gotten so far I think came out of one of our sessions with other participants and that was the idea from Eric that I use each contact that I have in my taxi as a possible prospect as a possible client. I ve been doing that, passing out cards, explaining what coaching is and what can be done with it for the people who have my undivided attention. Great. Participant: I learned a lot but two big things that really stick out for me the one is relieving some of that pressure to perform. That having been coaching people on a month-to-month basis and only three sessions in the month that s like okay the first session has to be hot out of the gate. I really like requiring a longer commitment because coaching really does take change over time. Three weeks is hardly enough time to do lots of great drastic changes for people so I like that and I will be extending my requirement from month-to-month to at least three months, maybe even longer. The other thing is just that value in a person deciding to seek coaching in and of itself being a benefit to that person and they get value from coaching just from making that decision. Those were two real big things for me. Great. Awesome. Thank you. Participant: I ve learned the importance of reframing. I ve known it before but I saw it in action during our buddy coaching that when you see what could look like a list of negatives, percentages of coaches that don t make it, to reframe it and look at the percentages that are making it, it s just much more pleasant, much more hopeful. Also, the balanced reality check of yes it might be a stretch and that s okay
but remember there are those that do it and I m going to be one of those. High five over the phone to that one. I love it. Good. Let s just take a couple of more. Does anyone else have one that you d like to share? Participant: I have to say that my buddy coaching has been incredibly powerful and in just a couple of session we ve gotten together I ve learned a lot from both of them so I m very happy to have had the opportunity just to do the couple of sessions we ve done. I m really looking forward to the upcoming sessions, kind of knitting together some of the things we ve covered in class here and putting it in practice has been really, really exciting. That s fantastic. Now, are any of the three of you that are in your trio, have any of you had coach training in the past? Participant: I haven t, I know myself and Scott haven t. Eric is quite a skilled coach so don t let him tell you wrong. That s great. It sounded like everyone has not had previous coach training, right? Participant: Right. And already you guys are making a big impact on each other right? Participant: Right. The reason I m pointing this out is because this is a testament to the power of coaching regardless of who the coach is. Not to say that you guys aren t great coaches or don t have a lot to offer or don t already have the right stuff because obviously you do. But, I just wanted to reinforce that yeah this coaching stuff in and of itself is so powerful even though we re just barely even scratching the surface of all the things that you ll be learning and become more skilled and proficient at and you will be able to great even more value for your clients as you get more of this stuff under your belt. I think that s just a fantastic testament to the power of coaching. I m so happy to hear that you guys are kicking butt. I know obviously it s also a testament to those of you who are in this program and it s a testament to those of you who are in that specific trio. So great going.
Participant: I just have a quick question about that. Yeah. Participant: Do you think that the success of the individual trios is partially because the people who are in this program are drawn to coaching and so are by nature ideal coaching clients and so are willing to put forth the effort and kind of understand it? Do you think this is something that we should expect with other non-coach clients? Do you know what I m saying? Yeah, I do. That s a great question, I m so glad you asked it. That s just a great, great, great question. I m just going to resay the question so that it s even clearly hopefully for everybody. The idea is that coaches in this program may be more coachable, more open to coaching, more ready to put your heart on a sleeve open up and really go for it. The answer to that question is, of course that s true. They are more open and all that but, there s also a big difference in that when people hire you for coaching and are paying you money they also have a high level of desire for change and are willing to open up and go for it because whatever they want to change hasn t worked yet on their own. Participant: Yes. If they re willing to pay for it they re probably in some pain and willing to do whatever it takes to make a change. Now, will you ever get some people that have some resistance to coaching? Perhaps but, I ll also be teaching you guys and ladies and gentlemen, I ll be teaching you how to keep that resistance from even happening in the first place. Actually, we ve already talked about a lot of those things in the first few sessions. A lot of that is going to keep any resistance from even coming up in the first place. Most of what you guys already know will keep resistance from coming up in the first place but a lot of what you ll be learning coming up soon will teach you how when you notice resistance, what to do about it. Does that answer your question sufficiently? Especially when people are paying really good fees, they are pretty open to doing what needs to be done. Participant: I can answer that by saying that my experience over the last year and a half of coaching is yes, that s true when you have a client that pays I haven t seen much difference in the coaching trio by coaching other coaches or how we coach each other to what I ve experienced in my coaching with other clients. You get some that
are just as open and some that are a little bit harder to get to but there s a variety people out there probably both in coaches and non-coaches. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Okay, anything else anyone wants to share? Something that maybe you just remembered that you want to share to review what we ve learned previously? We ll take one last one if anyone has one. Participant: I would just like to underscore what you said about when you coach, I noticed that in our buddies coaching session today the power of coaching. It was my first time that I d experienced it. I have done a lot of change work as an organizational development consultant and I ve seen that but I ve not experienced coaching before and there is a difference. What s nice about it is to see that flow or momentum start to kick in is you really can get yourself out of the way and you really can start the process because there s something magical that s happening and it s beyond you, you don t have to get ego involved and it takes a lot of pressure off which is wonderful. I just wanted to share that that was my experience of seeing what was happening. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Excellent. I just want to also open this up before we jump in to our main content for today, I just want to open this up for any questions about anything that has happened so far, any questions that anyone has about anything I guess? Why is the sky blue? Participant: Or, why is it grey? Why is it grey? Well, right now it s dark here in San Diego, I m sure it s dark almost everywhere right now. Great, it seems like no one has questions, that s just fine. If you have any feel free to speak up and ask and you can certainly get in touch with me outside of the call to. Send me a quick email or make a quick phone call or whatever. So tonight s session is going to focus primarily on strategizing your actions. There s a five part methodology that this whole program is based on. I don t know if I ve actually mentioned it on these recordings yet, now that I think of it, I m thinking I might not have or maybe a little bit in the first session. But, the five part methodology is know where you are going, strategize your actions, upgrade your skills, optimize your environment and master your psychology. Today we re going to be talking about strategizing your actions.
You have already had one or two sessions with your buddy coaches for those of you who are participating in doing the buddy coaching in your trio format. For those of you who still want to and haven t, feel free to use the Yahoo Group and the contact list to get in touch with people. I haven t updated the list to remove people who are already in a trio yet. What I would say is still use the Yahoo Group because that seemed like that worked out really well. Did that work our really well for most of you? Participant: Yes, absolutely. Participant: Yes. If anyone is having trouble forming their trio just email me and I ll match you up with somebody else who might be having trouble. We ll find a way to make it work for you. Alright, so you ve had some coaching and on the last session we talked about setting goals and direction and going for the optimal goal and the difference between having goals and direction and they re both useful. Today we ll be talking about strategizing your actions. Once you know what you want then we need to figure out is how are we going to make it happen, how are we going to get it. There s a couple of important things and I want to just actually point out some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make just so you guys can skip that step. Participant: That would be wonderful. Participant: Thank you. Some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make with the whole strategizing your actions process is that the coach will tell the client how to do it. I see it a lot in different ways and in some topics more than others but let s say somebody has a goal of working less hours in their business or something like that and so the coach will say, Okay, here s what you need to do. You need to manage your time better so you can be more productive and work less hours. Does that make sense? The client is probably like, Well yeah, absolutely. Then the coach will tell the client exactly how they should manage their time, You should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you should do that. Some of them might be things that the client feels they can do easily and some of them are things that they may have heard before and tried before and struggled with and some of them may be things that sound like a great idea but then they re just not necessarily a really good fit for the client.
I guess I would characterize the mistake of strategizing your actions that coaches make is that you know the right way to get there for them. Now, coaches if you start coaching the same types of people, let s say you re a relationship coach or you re a sales coach, or a health coach or a weight loss coach, when you become more of an expert at something and really specialize, you may have sort of a formula for success that really works well. That plan that you might have for everybody may very well work for most people you ll just want to keep in mind that everybody is different, everybody has different strengths. Let s say I am a coach and I help coaches grow their coaching business, some people might be really strong at public speaking and that might be a great way of growing their coaching business, other people may be really good at writing and find that might be a great way to grow their coaching business, other people might like to use the Internet more, so whatever your strength is that s going to be really good we re going to want to go in that direction. Now, it may be important to do many different things but when we see that you have a strength in one area we re going to want to make the plan around that. We want to have their plan be customized and tailored to the potential client. We want to work with our clients to create a plan so we don t create the plan. That s kind of an important distinction here, the coach doesn t necessarily give the client the plan. Now, you may actually create a coaching plan so based on the goals that the client has and the challenges that they have you may say, Well, the first thing we re going to do in the first session is set some goals. The second thing we re going to do is we ll strategize your actions. The third thing we re going to do is we ll see if there are any skills that you ll need to upgrade. So you may create a little bit of a coaching plan, what you re going to do in your coaching and that is often times a really great idea to help the clients also see the value of your coaching, see where you re going, see that you re not just going to show up on the other end of the phone and wing it or figure things out or hope that they have something to bring up that you re going to coach them on that you can actually lay out somewhat of a plan of what you guys are going to be doing together. That s always a good idea. That s something that you ll be able to do more and more easily as you coach people more and more. You ll start seeing the patterns of clients and based on this, this and this you ll be able to kind of lay out a bit of a coaching plan. Not the same thing as the plan that
Participant: Yes. they re going to follow but the plan for how you guys are going to work together. Does that make sense? Any questions about creating a coaching plan? Participant: No. The only thing I would like to possibly add to that is I like when for example you have your one-to-one coaching but then you also offer products and services like this, Coaching Academy, things where you lay out in a group format for people that if they want to sign up for a formula to learn a formula that s a really cool thing. So like you get to do both, coach one on one and customize individually and kind of let the client come up with their own but then you also get to offer your expertise and your formula in another way. So, I think that s cool. Yeah, absolutely that is very cool. Thank you, that s a good little insight. Definitely the more that all of you coach you ll be creating your own formulas and you ll be creating your own group coaching programs. I highly recommend group coaching, maybe even training programs, I really see coaches as teachers and coaches. I m sure some people probably only like to coach and don t like to teach and some people maybe only like to teach and don t like to coach but I think there s a really huge overlap there. Creating products or programs and stuff like that, group coaching, teleclasses, teletraining, all of that stuff it will be a pretty natural easy process for most of you. That s an expectation that I want to lay out for you. When we create an actual action plan with our client, first of all I just want you guys to know that this doesn t have to be some big deal. When I work with a client creating an action plan I ll usually call it a strategic action plan because it sounds like a bigger deal, We ll create a strategic action plan. Well, strategic just means thought out and methodical, I didn t look up the definition of strategic in the dictionary but we all know what the word means. So it sounds like a really good word, we re going to work together to create a strategic action plan to get you in to the relationship of your dreams. We ll, create a strategic action plan to grow your business, we ll create a strategic action plan for losing the weight that you ve been struggling to lose for the last five years. We ll create a strategic action plan that will get you there in six months, or whatever. So strategic just makes it sound really good, doesn t it?
Participant: Yeah. Yeah, it s kind of a magical word that I want you to use but I want you to not be swayed by its magical powers. So, its magical powers are to make you feel like, Wow, that coach must know something that I must know, or, That coach must really be smart and have stuff figured out because they re going to create a strategic plan. That just sounds so impressive. It s magical but, on the flip side let go of that because as coaches if you re creating a plan it s a strategic plan. Just think of it as creating a plan doesn t have to be a big deal. In fact, sometimes I just tell my client to create their plan themselves and email it to me. It doesn t have to be like a big deal. I ll talk to my client and see if it is something that they need help with and if it is we ll coach on it, if it s not we won t, we won t waste our valuable coaching time creating a strategic action plan that they feel like they could do on their own. If they take 10 minutes to think about it after our session that they could type up a quick plan and email it to me. I kind of want to take any pressure off of thinking like it has to be some award winning, gold medal winning kind of a thing. Does everybody follow me there? Participant: Yes. Good. Does that help take any pressure off? Participant: Sure. Maybe there was none there to begin with so that s okay too. So when we do work with our clients to create a plan and also as you first start working with the client it probably would be something you would work on together the first time through. It may not be, it doesn t necessarily have to be but there s a good bet that it will be. Then, as they get the gist of it they ll kind of feel like it s something that they could whip up on their own or that they could do on their own. That being the case, and even if it wasn t the case, it still would be obviously great to have some good benchmarks or things to consider while you re creating a plan together because again, number one it is a plan that you re creating together, it s not your plan it s their plan so you want to work on it together. You want it to be something that they can feel comfortable with if possible. That s really another big factor. One of them that I mentioned is that we want to create a plan that caters to them and to their strengths and things like that but sometimes a coach might say, Well, here s what you need to do. You need to go out and give 10 speeches and that s how you re
going to get clients. Then the client might say, That sounds really good, and they ll be like, Okay, I ve got to go do this. Then, they don t go do it because they re scared as heck to speak in public or they re afraid to call up people to set up a presentation or anything like that. So, you can suggest ideas and you can ask questions and you can find out you can even ask them, How do you think you would make that happen? Whether that s losing weight or dada-dada-dada-da, How would you think you might go about making this happen? A simple question like that how do you think you might, that little wording there, that how do you think you might, that might instead of how would you do it, it takes a little pressure off of them to have to know the answer, it s like how do you think you might do it. It kind of softens it up a little bit. You could simply ask a question like that and let the client give you a plan. Now, the concern here that you will want to be aware of is when you ask a client to create a plan they may create a plan that they ve already tried to follow before. Like if I ask somebody, How do you think you might get yourself to your ideal body weight. They might say, Well, I need to exercise and I need to stop eating chocolate, and dada-dada-dada-da. Then, you re like, Okay, great then let s do that this week. Then the client shows up and they re upset with themselves and they might be ashamed that they didn t follow through. They might feel like they don t want to show up for the call even because they re like, I blew it again even though I have a coach. We want to head off any challenges before they even come up just by checking in and saying, Have you ever created a plan like this for yourself before and how did you do with following it? What were some of the challenges that you ran in to if any? I m guessing since you don t have what you want right now, if you ve created this plan before then either you didn t get there or you got there and now have fallen off the wagon. You want to check in. If you have them lead and create the plan you want to check in, Is this a plan that you ve followed before or tried to follow before? Something like that, you want to check in. That s another mistake that a lot of coaches make is that they have their client create a plan but the client often times, and here s another thing, the client often times will create a plan for himself or herself that they think is the right plan, that that is what they are suppose to do but it may not be again, something that they feel comfortable with doing. Like I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, I should do that but they don t really want to but they think that s what they re supposed to do. Or, it just might not be the best fit for them, it might not be the fastest way to get there so a lot of times clients either create a plan of something they ve done
Participant: Yes. before that didn t work or they create a plan for what they think they should be doing and maybe there are other ways to get there that would be more comfortable for them. So, you ll want to check in with them, does this plan feel good for you. They might still say, Yes. Is there any part of it that doesn t feel good? Is there anything that you re afraid of in carrying out this plan? Those are all really good questions to ask to make sure that they re comfortable with the plan and that it feels like a good fit for them. Any questions about that or comments? Everybody is with me? Participant: I just want to say wow to that. Okay. Participant: I had somebody who was like that. In fact, he stopped coaching because he was like, I m just embarrassed I can t come anymore because I just suck. I can t do this thing that I put together. I was like, If I was better, if I knew how to help you, I could. So, wow that s awesome. I love that. Yeah. As coaches, the best way to start things off is to start things out great. If you can avoid some of those things then remember also momentum, we want momentum so even if a client creates a plan if this is their first time having a coach, if this is a big goal for them then please take whatever plan they create and have them come up with three very, very easy things that they can do between sessions because, we want to help build up momentum. A new client that hasn t gone through a lot of these things there s a good chance that they re going to be like, Oh, okay I m going to make it all happen this week. Then, if they don t, or whatever their unconscious expectation is of what they should get done, they re going to go for that and then if they fall short of that they may judge themselves for it, get frustrated with themselves about it, beat themselves up about it, all sorts of things. We want to make sure that the overall plan will be a good fit for them but then once they feel comfortable with their overall plan then just get three easy things in your first few sessions. Make sure they are things that they feel like they can do. You might even create some small easy absolutely will get done lists, three small little things absolutely easy lists and then a more ambitious list. Like, Okay, these will be the three easy things and then extra
Participant: No. credit would be to do any of these things. If you get any of this done then I m going to be really proud of you and think you did a super, super job. If you just get the main thing done I ll be really proud of you. You get a gold start. Obviously be playful with them and not condescending with them in any way but have fun with it. Another important thing to do is that some goals you might want to break down into stages. Sometimes if it is a big goal, especially for business things that are big, big, big monster goals, sometimes it s good to say, Let s think if there were going to be there main stages for starting up your new magazine business what would those three stages be? Well, stage one would be maybe research, stage two would be creating a prototype and test marketing it and then stage three would be going out and marketing it and getting it out in to the world. I want to thank myself for doing that right there with that three stage thing because I actually have a magazine idea, a whole magazine business, completely different not related to coaching at all, I have this whole idea for this really cool magazine. Maybe I ll tell you guys about it down the road. But, I haven t been actively jumping on it because I have so many other things that I m working on but here you go I just broke it in to three main stages for myself and it feels a lot easier. That s something that you can do to help simplify the planning process. You don t have to plan out the whole thing. I don t have to plan all parts of that. I ve got three main stages and then I would take the first stage and I would say, Okay, research is the first stage so how could you create a plan for that? Or, What do you need to know to research? Or, things like that. So, three big chunks and then you take the first chunk and you could break that down even in to three smaller chunks to help the planning process. Any questions about that part? Participant: Christian, what occurs to me about that is you just pretty much demonstrated what is strategic, it s the more global, the overall and then when you break it down that s more tactical. It s like strategic air command versus tactical air command. Very good. I like that. A great distinction. You guys bring so much to this process. Thank you for all the comments. You re good. So, we want a plan that suits them, that plays to their strengths, their likes, we want it to be their plan. In our next session we ll be talking about what to do when they don t follow through on their plan. Like what s going on here, why didn t they get something done. Often
times that s where we have to step in to mastering your psychology, helping our clients master their psychology because once they know what they want and they know how to get it then the actual going out and making it happen part, that s where the rubber meets the road, that s where the most friction comes in, that s where the biggest disappointments, that s where they really come up against a lot of their stuff is in actual implementation. Part of the things might be that they re trying to do it but it s not working so maybe it s a skill thing. Like let s say they re in sales and they need to do cold calls or something like that, some of that might be mastering their psychology about how they feel about cold calling, some of it might be the actual skill set of making cold calls and how to go about that and getting comfortable with it as a skill set and process and bringing that up which we ll get to in upgrading your skills. This is something to make people aware of, skills take time to develop, skills get better over time. So, if somebody is starting something new, it s important for them to know that they re going to get better and better at it and not to feel like, I ve tried it once, it didn t work, I hate it, I m out. That can happen. So, we ll be working on that in future sessions. I know some of our sessions have gone really, really long I m going to do my best to keep tonight really, really short and give everybody a bit of a break. But, I want to teach everybody one more way to help someone create a plan. It s a really fun way and it s powerful because it engages another part of their brain, not just the linear part but it engages the more creative part of someone s mind and helps people to start thinking out of the box. It also helps people to instead of planning from where you are to where you want to be, it will be planning backwards starting from imaging where you want to be and looking backwards at how did you make it happen. This process is called the as if frame. This is a process that I learned in NLP hypnotherapy training. Actually, I could set it up and call it something else because I actually usually make it a little bit different and dress it up a little bit and make it a little more fun and playful. I usually call it the success magazine, I don t know if there is a success magazine, hopefully there s not but there could be. Is there a success magazine, does anybody know? Participant: I don t know, there might be. Participant: Yes, there is.
There is okay, yes there is. I might call it achievers magazine, or something like that interview. I ll usually dress it up as if I m interviewing someone who is now successful in this area and that is something I m going to be sharing with all my readers of my magazine. Basically I ll set it up as, Hey we re going to play a game and this is a different way to plan and what it does is it engages different parts of your mind. It helps you reach in to activate your more creative parts of your brain and it also will help you plan from a different place. Most people plan from where I am now when I don t have what I want and how do I get what I want. That s how most people plan. We re going to do it a little bit differently, we re going to look at if you were already there how could you have gotten there, what could you have done to get there. Participant: Yeah. Participant: Oh yeah. Participant: Yes. I ll tell them that and then I ll say, What we re going to do is we re going to play a game and I m going to be interviewing you. I m going to interview you as if you have already achieved your goal. Let s say they have a goal with a time line to get X by the end of the year or 12 months from now. Then I ll say, Okay, we re going to act as if we re 12 months from now. That it s the end of November of 2007 and I ll be talking to you as if it really is November of 2007 and we ll be talking about how did you go about getting to where you are and you ll be looking back. The whole time, one important thing is you need to maintain that framework or that frame of talking as if it has really happened. So for example if I asked you, Well, how did you do it? You would say, Well, what I did is. So instead of saying, What I think I ll do is. I ll just explain that and check in is that clear and then they ll say, Yes. I ll say, Do you have any questions about that? If they do then they ask them. Then I ll say, In a minute we re going to start the interview and form that point forward we re going to maintain that as if it has already happened, that as if frame. So, are you ready? They ll say, Yes. Then I ll be like, Okay, here we go. Then I ll introduce myself, I ll be like, Hi, this is Christian Mickelsen and I m here with, and have them say their name. I m going to be interviewing Joe about how he has become so successful at weight loss, or at creating a great relationship, or at earning a million a year or whatever it might be. Do you guys follow me?
Okay, so I need someone who would like to play with me here and I will take you through this process. Who has a nice goal, and actually I ll hear from a few of you maybe, three or four of you who would like to play with me on this and then just based on what your goal is and my intuitive feel for how might be the best example I will pick someone. So, who of you think you might want to volunteer and play with me on this one? Participant: Wow, we aren t all speaking at once. Okay, well here s something that is interesting. I figured we would have a ton of people volunteering and be like, Oh, Christian is going to coach me, Christian is going to coach me. Participant: We re all being too polite I think. They re either a little too polite or maybe they re a little afraid and I can understand that. It can feel a little silly to be interviewed this way. Participant: We know what the questions are going to be. Participant: I m willing. Participant: I want to volunteer. Great, great, great. Hopefully we ve diffused that a little bit. I heard two or three people, who was the first person that mentioned? Participant: David. David, tell me what your goal is that you d like to do this role play on. Participant: Well, my five to seven year goal is to lead personal growth seminars. Great, great. Excellent. Someone else tell me what it is that you want to work on? Who else wanted to play. Participant: Leslie. Okay.
Participant: I d like to be leading teleseminars and making money with them and related products from them. Great. Thanks. Participant: Were you looking for a third one? Yeah. Participant: Okay, I ll jump in. Eric, here. I want to have my think big expedition business making a ton of money and having fun at it. Alright. Let s here from one more person. Participant: This is Felicia. I want to have my life retreats up and running successfully about three times a year. Okay. Does anyone have a more personal goal that isn t business related? Not that I won t do pone of the business ones but I just want to see. Participant: This is David. I want to be in a successful personal relationship with a lady. Great. With a lady, okay. Any others? Participant: This is Leslie, my house needs what I would call updating. It s 15 years old and it s at the point where it needs some serious maintenance and upgrades like carpeting, painting and a variety of kind of major projects like that. I d like to tackle those in the next year or two. Great. Let s see if there s one more. Anyone else want to? Participant: I was talking away and I was on mute. I hate it when that happens. Participant: I was like pay attention to me. Nobody could hear me. Participant: This is Gayle, I have kind of a personal issue but it s kind of becoming a mission for me and that is for people to begin to accept themselves for who they are rather than for how they should be or who they have been told that they should be. But instead who are
they and what brings joy to their heart. I was talking to a women today, I did actually one of your sessions with her, your free sessions and she just got so deep so quickly and was just so aware of this yearning in her life and the fear that she can t move forward because she hasn t yet. I think there are just so many people like that. First of all I can really feel your passion about it and it is a mission for you. I can feel that. I look forward to watching you move along in your mission and really make a huge impact on the world. I can feel that, it almost feels like it s so strong that it s almost impossible for it not to happen in whatever way, shape or form that ends up coming to be. Participant: Yeah, that s the direction. The fine tuning isn t there yet. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Participant: But, thank you. You re welcome. See how I just made some comments there for Gayle about her goal. I don t know what the heck that was but I just felt that and I just shared what was there. That s a little unplanned coaching tip there, just however you feel about something that someone shares, if it feels appropriate then share that. I think it s good, clients like to hear that stuff, reinforce for them. Only share what s really true for you, don t make stuff up for people. Maybe you should make stuff up for people, I don t know, I m not recommending that. People will hear the genuineness and feel it. Let me just check in one last time, does anybody else want to throw their hat in the ring here? Going once, going twice, if you re on mute unmute. Participant: Yes. Okay, alright. Let s see I am going to just go ahead with David and you were actually the first one to go right? And you had two different ones, one was relationship and one was the business thing, right? Participant: Yes. Let s just go with the business one for right now. Tell us that again. Participant: My long term goal is to lead personal growth seminars.
Okay. Participant: Align people to grow. Okay. On that you had set some sort of a timeframe. What was that? Participant: Five to seven years. Five to seven years, okay. Now, for me I just feel like, Mmm, five to seven years. I feel like that s something that you could start doing maybe tomorrow even. That may be a little soon but I m wondering, tell me more, why five to seven years, why so far out? Participant: Actually, that s a good question. As a matter of fact, the seminar that I went to out in Cherry Valley I said to Al the leader, I said, Hey I can lead these seminars for you and we can get more of them out there. Yeah. Participant: The five to seven year thing was like I was thinking that in having to create my own seminar however, if somebody s already got a seminar that I can lead I don t need to wait that long. That s true. Even if you didn t have one that you could lead, being able to create your own content does that really need to take five to seven years? Participant: Probably not. I think that timeline presupposes that it will take me a while to get my coaching practice up and going and have freedom with which to do that. It is likely that in your program and the work that I do in getting this coaching program established will take less time than I think and it will shorten the timeline for creating seminars. Okay. Do you have to wait until your coaching business is going before you can start doing the seminar thing? Participant: I think so. Why do you think that? Participant: Because I have no other income plans other than this.
Okay. Is this something that you think you might be able to do together? Participant: Together with whom? Together with growing your coaching business? Participant: Oh yes, they re not exclusive by any means. It means that I could do coaching and that. Okay. So, if you thought about the timeline again does anything feel different? And if so, what feels like a good timeframe now? Participant: Maybe three to four. Okay. Participant: I m thinking that having the coaching business go well would take two and growing a seminar business would take at least one and possibly two more. Okay, okay. Participant: So that has shortened it from five to seven to three to four. Yeah, okay. Participant: That s a big difference. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think what we re going to do is we re going to probably even let go of any timeframe anyway when we do this as if frame. What I think we ll do is we ll do the interview as if it has happened and we don t even have to concern ourselves with any time frame. The reason I say that is because I just kind of having a feeling that A) it could happen faster than you think even still, it could happen even faster than you re thinking right now and B) it may very well take that long. The idea of building your coaching business first before having seminars, it s not a bad idea. Just based on my experience when I first got in to coaching I also go in to doing seminars which almost actually no one knows this about me but my first seminars were called Ultimate Strength Infinite Joy. It was when I first started coaching and I was not a business coach, I was just a generalist. But, I started doing just some personal growth seminars. I think I did two, maybe three of them and I found
Participant: Alright. it was a lot of work, it took just as much work to get someone to go to the seminar as it did to get someone to sign up for coaching and a seminar at the time, I was charging like $200, $200 to $300 and it was a onetime sale versus enrolling someone in coaching and then they d be paying $300 or more every month for however long. So, I think that s not a bad way to go with it. Now, on the flip side, some people do free seminars as a way to promote themselves and get clients or even sell other things. That might be another different way to look at it or a different way to go. I want you to kind of just sit with that for a moment. You don t have to do anything with it but just let it rattle around in your mind. We ll start the magazine interview in just a moment. I already explained the whole magazine idea. Is there any questions that you have about it? Participant: No. There was a question mark in that no that I heard. I did too. You know, that s actually another little aside teachable moment that I wouldn t have planned on teaching but, any time someone says something and it sounds like it s a question like he said, No, and he was like, No? Kind of like the question ending has a long up sound at the end. Something that someone is saying for sure usually ends more abruptly and on a down note like, Are you ready? Yes! Are you ready? Yes? This might be more of a question mark. So, whenever someone says it in a little tentative questioning way they don t feel absolutely certain about it so there could be something to look at there. If they say it confidently, you ll hear that. If they say a statement but it sounds like a question, there might be something to look at there. That s another little educational point for everybody. When I heard you say it though it sounded to me more like I don t know what s coming so no I don t have any questions but I don t know what s coming so there s a little uncertainty there. Was there something else besides that? Participant: Well, what it was about is I have no idea where I ll get this information that is going to come out of me. Yes, exactly. I don t know either. You ll get it from your creative part of your brain, you ll channel it from the heavens or you might even not know. Maybe you ll be like, I m not sure what I did back then. My memory is a little fuzzy on that one but I think what I did
was Who knows what will happen and anything that happens is totally okay, alright. Participant: I understand that. Okay. Any questions from you or anyone else? Okay, are you ready to get started? Participant: Yes. That was a confident yes. I m going to introduce myself and we ll get going. This is Christian Mickelsen and I have David Carpenter here with me and we re going to be interviewing David for my successful interview series. The reason for this interview is so not only to celebrate your success but also so that others may learn from your wisdom and some of the things that you have done could probably help a lot of our listeners. Thank you for being here with all of us David. Participant: Oh, you re most welcome Christian. So what I would like to do is just have you tell us all a little bit about what your business looks like today now that you have the seminar business that you ve been wanting along with your coaching business. Can you tell us a little bit about where your business is right now? Participant: Well, where it is right now Christian is that I lead perhaps 20 seminars per year all around the United States and some in Canada which are designed for each participant to experience breakthroughs in their lives in some area in which they ve felt stuck or they ve wanted to grow and were not able to. That s fantastic. How much money does that generate for you personally, after all the other expenses and stuff? Participant: After the expenses? Yeah. Participant: Well, I generally limit it to 120 participants per seminar and at 30 per year that s 120 times 30 is 3,600 people yearly who go through my seminar at $1,500 a session so what does that work out to be, zero, zero, whatever. A lot of money Christian.
Well, are we talking a million a year, are we talking a few hundred thousand a year? Where is your income? Just ballpark, you don t have to do the math. Participant: $3 or $4 million a year in seminars. Well, that s fantastic. Participant: Not to mention the other programs that I offer. Wow. That s fantastic. How great does it feel to be there? Participant: It really feels good. It s something that I wanted to do for a long, long time because I have benefitted so much from doing seminars myself and realized the value that s gotten in a seminar of this kind. What would you say is one of the surprising things, best things about being where you are in your business and with your income? What would you say that kind of surprised you about how great it is? Participant: Well, I think the surprising thing Christian is that I really love working. I mean I really don t feel bad about working long hours, I enjoy them all. Yeah, great. Participant: I have a great time. I have a lot of fun. I meet a lot of terrific people. Great. That s just fantastic. What would you say were the biggest challenges that you faced along the way and how did you overcome them? Participant: Well, I think the biggest challenge Christian was coming to believe that this could be accomplished by me. Tell me more about that. Participant: Well, if you ve driven a taxi in New Orleans for 30 years there is a perception that I have that a taxi driver couldn t do this kind of thing. It s like the connotation taxi driver has somewhat the same connotation as doorman or street walker or whatever that is less than the median of our society. Yeah. So, how did you overcome that?
Participant: Well, one of the things that happened several years ago. I had this fellow in my taxi and he told me a story about what he has accomplished in his life time to date. He s 42 years old, he grew up in the mean streets of New York, he was orphaned, he didn t have a home, he lived on the streets. He was then 42 years of age, had created a multimillion company that removed asbestos from government buildings and sold it and was able to pursue then any avenue that he wanted too. What he was doing was assisting people in the New Orleans area to get what they were deserving from insurance companies as a volunteer worker. Great. That inspired you it sounds like and kind of broke the mold for what you thought was possible? Participant: Yeah. His upbringing was so much worse than mine and the level of accomplishment that he had accomplished in 42 years and here I am or was then 67 just inspired me to know that anything is possible if I can just bring myself to believe. When I came to believe that it was possible for me then it became easy. Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. I think a lot of people can relate to that whether they re taxi drivers or whatever they are, our self perceptions, our limiting beliefs, things like that can really hold us hostage and keep us in a box. So, when you can break through that box you can start making more wonderful things happen for yourself and for the world. Awesome, great. Thank you for sharing that, that s very inspiring. Looking back to how you made it happen over the years, when you first got started what was like the first thing that you did back then? Participant: Well, the first thing that I did was I joined Toast Masters so that I became really comfortable with speaking in front of groups. Even though I m very good speaking individually or one-on-one or in small groups, I had never had any experiences speaking to large groups and being able to develop an interaction with the complete group by focusing on one person at a time. Great. Then, what did you do? Participant: Well, after that it became clear that I either had to develop a seminar of my own or find one that was already being given that someone wanted to enlarge or make more available and so I chose the second option. Then what did you do?
Participant: Well then, I just worked with Al in order to perfect the presentation that he already had and started leading. Wonderful. Cool. What did that lead to? What was like the next big step for you? Participant: Well, golly that might require some thought. Think about it for a second. Participant: I guess the next step for me Christian was when I decided that Al s seminars were good and useful and that I could develop my own seminar that could be more useful. Okay, so you started out and you were working with Al and doing his seminar, leading his seminar and that at some point you decided to branch off and go out on your own with your seminars. Participant: Well, I had been exploring many other avenues of personal growth that seemed to me to offer more, quicker, faster results. So you integrated a lot of that in to a new hybrid program that you taught? Participant: Yeah. Okay. That s fascinating and exciting. Participant: Yeah. Great, great. If there were three keys to your success what would you say were the three biggest keys to your success? Participant: I would say A) was overcoming the belief that I couldn t do it and coming to be committed to doing it no matter what. Awesome. What gave you that commitment? Participant: Well, it s a commitment that I made with myself. Great. Awesome. Do you remember when you made that commitment? Participant: Yeah.