Coaching for Daily Miracles
Raimon Samsó, Coach and author of “El Código del Dinero” (The Money Code)
An e-book for people who want to help others…
Win more clients, help people in a more meaningful way, and set the standard!
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Win more clients, gain freedom, set the standard and lead a richer way of life.
Chapter 1: Show the Power of Personal Example
Chapter 2: Avoid 12 Beginner Mistakes
Chapter 3: Attract More Clients Than You Can Imagine
Chapter 4: Choose Your Ideal Clients
Chapter 5: Apply Promotion 101: Simple Strategies
Chapter 6: Apply Promotion 201: Powerful Principles
Chapter 7: Apply Promotion 301: 100% Visibility
Chapter 8: Create Recommendations
Chapter 9: Use Your Personal Brand as the Reference Point
Chapter 10: Establish Market Credibility: 12 Ways to Do It
Chapter 11: Earn Passive Income: Making Your Products Irresistible to Others
Part 2: Coaching for Daily Miracles: Offering Meaningful Help to Others!
Chapter 12: The 7 Voices of a Conscious Coach
Chapter 13: Resistance to Change and How to Overcome It
Chapter 14: Problem Solving
Chapter 15: Healing the Healed
Chapter 16: Coaching for Daily Miracles: Understand its Purpose
Chapter 17: Process of Coaching for Daily Miracles
Chapter 18: The Coach-Client Relationship
Chapter 19: Coaching Fees
Chapter 20: Principles of Miracles (Develop Awareness)
Chapter 21: The Miracle Professionals
Chapter 22: Inspiration or Programming
Chapter 23: The Ho'oponopono Technique to Help Others
Additional Resources
About the Author
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“Coaching for daily miracles”
by Raimon Samsó
Published by Raimon Samsó at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 Raimon Samso
Version 1.0 (August 2011)
ISBN: 978-1-4661-6309-6
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Introduction
This e-book fully describes the proven techniques that people like you can use to help other people: coaches, social workers, educators, consultants, therapists and psychotherapists, counselors, mentors, support professionals, and trainers. It is an e-book that will make you more effective in helping and serving others.
In this e-book, I share what I have learned in the past seven years from my coaching practice with clients, none of which was taught to me by the schools I attended all my life.
Although I am not a therapist or consultant, I wrote this guide because it can serve as a useful and practical manual for people who care about others and who desire to help them.
For purposes of this e-book, I will use the term “coach” to refer to all those people who help others. While personal coaches have different methods of working with clients and their specific roles may vary from one client to the next, this term will be used universally for the sake of simplicity. Understand that using the term “coach” as a generalized notion is like describing the same practical emotions of your clients.
So each time you read the word "coach", remember that it applies to you if you are a therapist, adviser, counselor, educator, consultant, mentor, psychotherapist; in short, a "professional.” As for the term “client”, remember that it can refer to a patient, student, or someone seeking advice or needing assistance in some way.
What I have written comes from my professional experience as a coach. The principles that I have learned apply to all the professions I mentioned above.
Again, this e-book is for practitioners of various professions who share one thing in common: helping people make changes to improve their lives. You may not identify with the term "coach" but if you consider yourself a professional who provides help to others in any given context, this e-book can help you, regardless of the nature of your work.
When I use the word "conscious," I am not referring to the mental understanding of clients and their problems. I refer to their emotional and spiritual "understanding." From my point of view, "a conscious coach" does not rely solely on knowledge of the techniques of the profession acquired in a trade school, but is based on an understanding and awareness of your deepest self.
The conscious person is someone who has examined his inner self and has developed an inner life that will help in developing relationships with others.
"Coaching for Daily Miracles" is an e-book with a solid foundation, filled with both practical and spiritual guidance. As you can see, I have combined the pragmatic word - "coaching" – with another short spiritual word - "miracles."
I think life is a mixture of what is manifested and not manifested, or is a mixture of external and internal actions.
There is room for logic and magic!
From quantum physics I learned that matter is a product of consciousness and that which is not manifested constitutes the foundation and basis of what is manifested. Ancient wisdom books from the East have confirmed this. This highly interesting work condenses this fusion of the material and immaterial.
I have organized this book into two parts:
The first part consists of practical and tested material to jumpstart your successful career as a coach.
The second part is where I discuss - in depth – what kinds of people meaningfully help others, and how they do very well both professionally and personally because of this personal commitment to help others.
If you want to help others but do not know how, or fear that you’re not able to, this book will help you. The first part discusses how to do business with your clients; the second part is where you create miracles.
Before you finish reading this book, you will understand that it is necessary for people helping other people to develop a higher level of consciousness if they want to be effective and develop successful careers. There is no alternative.
Why did I write Coaching for Daily Miracles? This book was based in part on “A Course in Miracles” by the U.S. Foundation for Inner Peace. It has been my path towards personal transformation. It has helped me more as a person and has inspired my writings. It has helped me understand myself and my neighbors; it is the material I use most frequently in my professional coaching when clients come to my office (I use it even more than all the traditional techniques I learned in school and from all the books I've read on coaching).
This is why I decided on the title “Coaching for Daily Miracles”. I can assure you that I have witnessed many "miracles" after my clients made changes in their lives.
To me, a miracle happens when a perception changes about a problem and in which solutions are sought. Solutions are unnecessary because the problem disappears. The miracle here is that the problem never existed in the first place.
My three promises to you if you consistently apply the proven principles in this e-book:
Promise # 1: Your practice and client consultation will fill to capacity, and your professional coaching becomes a standard in the market, as it happened in my case. You will win more clients!
Promise # 2: You will double your income within 12 months, the way I have done over the years. You will earn more revenue.
Promise # 3: You will become more effective in your practice to help others, because you shorten the process of change and improvement in people, the way I did with myself by doing it daily. You become a more effective coach.
What you learn from this e-book will help you fill your professional consultation schedule with more clients, increase your sales significantly, and of course…your bank account!
But the most important thing is that your heart will be filled with satisfaction as you become passionate about helping others; from that point, your earning abilities and lifestyle will satisfy you emotionally. When you coach and help others, it no longer is a means of survival, but a super, emotionally rewarding life!
It saddens me when so many people with lots of goodwill and talent help others, but do not know how to help themselves when it comes to achieving economic progress and moving forward with a successful project. This is one reason I wrote this e-book.
I'd be very happy to leave my profession as a coach when this role turns irrelevant, and when everyone is fully capable in achieving their dreams without professional assistance. I consider my profession as a “conscious coach” temporary, but because I love it, I would like to continue doing it for a slightly longer period of time. When that happens, humans will no longer put limits and obstacles, or encounter barriers to their dreams and desires. Consequently, they enter into a phase where they achieve their dreams most naturally and spontaneously. The miracles shall cease to be commonplace and normal.
That's my big dream.
Raimon Samsó, author and coach for creating miracles and entrepreneurs with a heart.
http://www.elcodigodeldinero.com
http://www.coachingparamilagros.com
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"We work on ourselves
so we help others;
and we help others
so we can work on ourselves. "
(Pema Chödrön, Buddhist nun)
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Part 1
Win more clients, gain freedom, set the standard and lead a richer way of life
Chapter 1: Show the Power of Personal Example
What is the best way to help others? In my opinion, the best way is to lead by example. Setting examples is an approach that never fails when it is based on close and personal experiences. Nothing beats personal testimony. There is a compelling reason: facts do not lie, but words often do. He who does not practice what he preaches is a teacher to no one.
"How I did it" is the basis of this e-book. It is not based on "how I was told to do it.” For this reason, it is practical and non-theoretical. Teaching you to help me help others means I have learned from experience.
You've read enough theory books; the aim of this e-book will make you discover how to implement them.
In my years of experience as a coach, I have found that teaching by example helps my clients achieve better results. I've found out that it’s not what I know or do as a coach, but how I influence my clients.
This is what I call the "Principle of Conscious Coaching." It is learning by example and understanding through direct contact. At the other extreme is an arrogant coach who explains principles that he does not apply to his own life and who does not come across as an excellent example.
Being a "conscious coach" is much more powerful than being a "certified coach."
Many times when a client asks me how to deal with issues, I ask him to show me his schedule from last year; and then I can make a guess – with little or no margin of error – what his future will be like. It's easy. Everything - the facts, activities, and tasks are like seeds that will sprout in the short to medium term. I do not charge clients for guessing their future because it is too easy, I can give that away as a gift.
I charge my clients to help them invent the future they desire which is much better. As you can imagine, inventing is the best way to know - for sure - what’s going to happen.
Our life is the result of many decisions and actions we have taken before, and also the result of decisions and actions we never took!
When I’m coaching my clients, example has a higher value. They see what their coach does, and not what he says.
For example: if a coach advises his client to read more, but the client does not see books in the coach’s office (except perhaps for the Yellow Pages), what would the client think? Will he read more?
Another real life example: would you let an obese nutritionist advise you on your diet? I assure you there are many obese nutritionists!
It’s not what we say that will convince clients; it’s what we show them.
Coaches encourage people to dare undertake an exciting project that matches their values, requiring them to be creative, passionate, disciplined, persistent, human, scholarly, patient, helpful, independent, and free. These are what coaches teach their clients, nothing else.
All of these values and professional habits are the elements that will convince clients, not the thousand words in advertisements. It is not enough to know a lot about their field of specialization or to have a long list of diplomas and certificates. What truly matters is that they are able to apply their knowledge and be a living testimony of what they believe in.
Degrees and qualifications, while still necessary, make no difference and do not guarantee any career success. They can even be counterproductive when arguing for a promotion. Clients are not interested in paper work, they look for results.
The best advertisement for a coach or for a professional counselor is himself.
His life is his sales brochure.
What he is and how he goes about doing things is the measure of his professional worth. I once had a client from my practice whose turn it was to be certified as a coach. He told me that every thought and action of his private life went through the question: Can I explain to my clients what I think, say and do today? If the answer was yes, he kept going; if it runs to the contrary, it corrected itself. That's what I call "making your private life public.” Brilliant!
Words can convince, but like I said, nothing beats personal example. Let’s be the person we wish to see in the world, not who we think we should be, said Mr. Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world.
Chapter 2: Avoid 12 Beginner Mistakes
I trained as a coach in the International School of Coaching (TISOC, CoachVille Spain) where I learned the 101 errors to avoid in a coaching practice. I would like to share 12 with you:
1) Expecting too little from your client
You won’t know what your client can do until you ask him three times, each time with something bigger than what you initially asked. In other words, double or triple the goal and see what kind of response you get. Question your client again. In some cases, do not take "no" for an answer if you think the client is capable of much more but is afraid. Remember, they are your clients, not your children or friends. You get paid to expect much from them.
2) Relying on the client’s payment
If you’re just barely making it financially and you can’t afford to lose a client’s payment, you will not be fully capable of coaching clients. The trick is to have 50% more revenue than you need to cover your professional and personal expenses. This provides a good back-up, allowing you to coach from the heart, not from the wallet. When you care for a person, don’t worry about money, worry about that person.
3) Seeking your client’s recognition
Coaches never know exactly how their coaching helps their clients succeed. I find it easier not to seek recognition for my client’s success. I find it more useful to try to figure out what difference my guidance has made to my client. I used to feel belittled when clients did not appreciate or recognize the value of my role or wisdom, but that was in the past. Feel happy for your client and don’t seek recognition, even if you played a key role in his success.
4) Thinking that you have to have the answer
Sometimes you will respond to the needs, problems, and questions of your client and sometimes you will not. Do not feel pressured to have the answers, unless the client has hired you as an expert on the subject and your role is that of a consultant on that particular subject. If the client pressures you inappropriately, ask him to stop. Suggest that you work together so he can find the answers himself, or else refer him to someone who can help.
5) Getting emotionally involved with the client
It is one thing to care about your client, but it is another thing to get too close or too involved in his goals and problems that they become your goals and problems. Maintain professional distance but it’s important to still be compassionate and understanding. Bad coaches engage their clients emotionally because they remember a similar stage or situation in their past life, and tend to want to protect the client from feeling the pain, prevent him from making mistakes, or feel sorry for him because he missed an opportunity.
6) Creating dependency on the part of the client
Coaches create client dependence by doing too much for them, offering too much support, or getting too close emotionally with them. You have crossed the red line when the client’s goal or problem becomes yours. Challenge and support your client continuously so they create their own support structures, networks, community partners, etc; this way the coaching is clean, independent, and stimulating.
7) Considering the client as a source of revenue
Clients generate revenue, but if you fall into the trap of matching them to a check, they will perceive this as such and probably drop you as their coach. Coaching is a vocation, and is more than a "business." If you make it a business, your income could temporarily increase, but in the long term, it will fall. Coaching is also a relationship. The revenues that flow from it are just by-products of that relationship.
8) Not practicing what you preach
Your coaching is most effective when you practice what you preach. If not, something is wrong. Coaches tend to attract clients who are ready to reach the same level that their coach has attained (whatever the area or field is). Therefore, to get more and better quality clients, aim for the next level yourself through wisdom, evolution, skills, and professional development. That being said, ask the client to do more than you would do yourself. Why keep your clients at your own level of performance?
9) Not learning from your client
If you're too busy coaching, you will not learn much from your clients. Make it a point to learn interesting things about your clients:
· How do they think, who or what are their models of success?
• What limits them? What are their barriers to success?
· What are their technical skills, their knowledge of the Internet?
· What are their business ideas, their work habits?
The trick is to be interested in your clients, not to try to be interesting to them.
10) Not knowing who your ideal clients are
If you have not defined the qualities and desires of your ideal clients, you will not know who should be doing the coaching. It is certainly good to coach someone you feel you can help, but is also very important to know exactly who you prefer to coach, so that you can quickly identify a group of people, inform your contacts, milieu or target audience about client profiles you are seeking. This is one way you attract clients more easily.
11) Pushing the client too hard
How far you can push the client? To what point is the coaching relevant to his life and not to your life? You know you're pushing your client too hard when:
You feel tired after the session.
The client resists and fights your pressure.
When you’re convinced that your way will bring success.
You feel frustrated about your client’s slow reaction.
You get angry, fret and want to be right during your session with the client.
Solution? Talk it over with the client and/or withdraw. Give the client time to lead the coaching.
12) Applying the brakes on the client
In an effort to protect the client from failure, stress or pain, bad coaches sometimes slow down their clients or suggest that they lower the level of their goals or expectations. This is a difficult thing to do. I prefer to tell my clients about the potential risks of self-restraint, and ask their permission if I can be as blunt as necessary to see how far they can take it. The mistake we often make as coaches is to play God or to apply the brakes on a client on what he can do.
Chapter 3: Attract More Clients Than You Can Imagine
You perhaps imagined when you started coaching that clients would "fall in love" with you spontaneously, and would engage your services as soon as you handed them your business card.
Time to wake up, stop dreaming! Set out to do something concrete to attract more clients that you think you can handle. Having a business card, an office, a website, and taking all the fiscal steps to register your business are just the "theoretical" aspects. Until you make an actual sale, nothing has happened. It’s all theory, nothing else.
The purpose of this section is for you to learn how to have as many clients that you can assign to a team which you will form so that in the long term, they can replace you and work for you. How high you hoist up the flag is the measure of your ability. Short of that, your business will seem disjointed.
First, we’ll see what you can do to make your schedule overflow with more and more client requests. Second, see how you can personally give up some marathon sessions so you won’t get exhausted, eventually making you hate your profession. The third and final step is to develop trust in people and believe that they are as good as you, or at least good enough for you, so they can substitute for you. Do not believe that you are indispensable.
The best way to organize your business is to not appear as someone with titles or credentials.
The first thing I remember is that when people tend to be attached to titles, diplomas, college grades, certifications, accreditations and credentials, these titles do not constitute a reason for clients to want to work with you. Your clients bestow upon you the qualifications you take for granted. Your credentials are the minimum they ask for, but will not be their reason for choosing you as coach. Be clear about this. I have never been asked about my certifications (certifications that coaching schools sell at gold prices).
When it comes to helping others, all of us are tested every single day. If you help, it is worth something, if you don’t, it isn’t worth anything. It does not matter how good your titles say you are. Your clients rate you and believe me, they do it every day at every moment.
Ratings serve a purpose when taken in the context of schools and universities; that is, in the theoretical world. In real life, however, only value and utility carry worth, the rest is theory. Even in companies I worked for as an employee, they valued the photocopy of my college degree. I was tested, and employers reminded me that my performance would determine whether or not they would renew my job. This is how we live every single day: being tested.
If you are useful, clients will stay with you and will recommend you; otherwise, they leave you and don’t recommend you.
The second thing I recommend is to promote yourself. Do not tell your clients "what you do" and "how you do it," and what is coaching, etc. Tell them that you will advise them when they start working with you. Explain the benefits and tell them about the added value they will derive from your work as a coach, because that's all they care about. Talk about useful outcomes, instead of techniques.
Here is a task for you: write a list of benefits for your client. Try to make it long and interesting because it will be your selling argument. Let me remind you about the added value of tangible and intangible. The former – tangible - would change a habit, the second – intangible - would change an emotion. Do not make promises that you cannot deliver, or impress your clients with technical words that they do not understand.
Again: your clients want results, not certifications.
Your clients seek solutions to their personal and professional problems.
In fact, all personal problems are disguised as professional problems. You must therefore learn to deal with the problems of people because behind every situation are people with fears, limitations, and concerns. Work problems are personal problems in disguise. These two areas of life are interrelated and become a unit.
Third, set up your fee list and discount policy, and put them in an accessible and visible place. From this point, the fee list is un-disputed, as it becomes "house policy." Do not be flexible about your fee. Prospective clients may want to discuss rates, but they cannot dispute “house policy.” Try it and see that it is infallible.
By analogy, a law is questionable and can be interpreted in different ways, but the Constitution is undisputed until it is reformed. Your fee list is your Constitution: the law of laws. You will see that when you say the magic words – “it is house policy” - there will be a respectful silence and that will end the discussion.
Are you clear about your policy?
Are your fees absolutely clear?
I remember one case when a client, who was a nutrition therapist, showed her clients a complex table of services and fees , so complex that they could not understand. When she showed them to me, I did not understand any of it; the worst was she failed to answer my questions. Then she realized she was losing clients; they were leaving her office saying they would have to think about it (maybe even hiring a mathematician to make things clearer). At the end of the session, we conclude that she needed to simplify her fee schedule.
Set your fees. In this kind of market, there are people who are always willing to compete with the lowest fees. This situation is like war where everyone loses. The recipe for disaster is a fee policy that makes your clients choose you because of your lower fees!
Numerous businesses have closed because they engaged in absurd fee competitions. Let others sell at their low price. What must differentiate you from the competition is not your cheap rate. Quite the contrary.
Yes, hover around at the higher end of the fee structure, where you can compete in prestige. What about an average fee? The middle fee segment is interesting because it puts you in an "invisible" area as far as the market is concerned (where more supply is concentrated).
This e-book wants you to obtain 100% visibility!
A lower fee does not mean more clients. It just means being like the rest. In business, being equal to the competition is cheap. Do you want to be cheap?
If you're going to compete, compete on quality and differentiation. As I said, “price wars” always lead to a bad ending because they ruin all the contenders. If you compete, do so at the high end of rates, or find other reasons to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
In addition, a low fee creates distrust in the market. Would you buy cologne for six Euros? I'm afraid not. Value has its own price. It happens to everyone: cheap ends up being expensive. For God's sake, do not be a cheap professional product with a plain white label on the shelf in a large area. Differentiate yourself!
Chapter 4: Choose Your Ideal Clients
Do you choose your friends? Do you choose your partners? Of course! What a question. So I do not see why you wouldn’t also choose the people who will be an important part of your day: your clients. Have you figured out how much time you spend with them?
The first thing that must be clear in your mind is that you cannot offer a useful service to everyone, so you should carefully select your clientele.
Someone who has money does not make him the ideal client, be clear about this. Money is not the reason people work with you: no, no, and no!
Do not think anyone and everyone should be your client. Just think: if everyone were to be your client, then no one is your client. As the adage says, wanting to be everything to everyone will lead to nothing for all. Remove the people who you believe are not a priority, and devote your time instead to those you want to give priority to. Work only with clients who inspire you, and whom you wish to inspire. Work in such a way that this is optimized both ways.
Author David Maister was clear: "Why spend most of your life working with acceptable clients in matters that are ordinary and tolerable, when, with a little effort into client relations, marketing and sales, you could spend your days working on interesting people on exciting issues?"
You need to answer these questions first: Who is my ideal client? Who do I meet in my profession? I imagine that clients will take advantage of your work, no doubt about that.
Who is your ideal client?
Watch out for three characteristics:
1) They are asking for more services or products because they perceive that these services and products are valuable.
2) They make the best of you as a professional.
3) They refer other people to you.
You will know your ideal client because you enjoy the relationship and he does not decrease your energy levels.
If you love your clients, you will enjoy your profession. You'll be fine. If you feel uncomfortable with your clients, everything will go wrong. Professionals who enjoy their work feel good, improving and making the best of themselves because it is in their nature. They don’t see it as an obligation but as a necessity. Apply the Japanese technique of continuous improvement (kaizen).
If you enjoy your working relationships, you will feel good, things will go well, you help people, and you fill up your schedule.
You have to understand that you are your clients. I will repeat this just to be clear: you are your clients and your clients are you. It is a mutual reflection. Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what kind of person you are. Professionally, that’s 100% true.
Imagine that you are an image consultant. But you’re scruffy, unkempt, dirty, messy and untidy. And then you’re going around proudly telling everyone you're an image consultant. Just imagine what a walking advertisement you make. You’re ruined, you are bad press, a curse. You can’t afford to advertise like that!
Who would you like to be identified with?
Do not work with people who do not understand, value, appreciate and apply what you have worked on together. To whom would you refer a client who is not ideal? Exactly, another client is not ideal when he drains you of your energy. When all clients are "not ideal" business will close.