Coaches' Corner~Improvement

The idea of a never-ending improvement looms high in the life of a coach.  Once you have seen improvement, you want more improvement.  You will never get to a place when you can stand pat and rest on your laurels.  We always want more money.  We want more love in our lives if we even have any at all.  It is the idea of improvement that drives us and having a new thing really makes us feel worthy.  The more sophisticated we are, the more sophisticated we want to be.  Like you, I find elaborate ways to feel good about myself and when I find one that works, I want another.  It does not have to be all that complicated but I must repeat the cycle that ends with me feeling a little better about me.  I recently shed a lot of weight and boy did I feel good about that!  Shedding weight brought with it some capabilities that I could only dream of.  I could pick up my keys when I dropped them using my thumb and the rest of my fingers.  Bending that extra millimeter or so that it took to use my thumb used to be so hard.  I could now get into my car without sitting in the seat sideways as I did when I was obese.  I could even sit at a booth in a restaurant without having my stomach pressed uncomfortably against the table.  Being able to speak on the telephone without hearing myself breath was eclipse by an ability to walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath.  It is that milestone I want to blog about today.

I was quite proud of myself for being in great enough shape to climb those stairs so easily and it has now been about 6 months since I lost the weight.  You would think I would be used to it by now but each time I did it, I found myself smiling at the top of the stairs because my breathing remained easy.  I had seen others take the elevator and people younger than I had a hard time with the task.  You can bet I felt great every time I saw that.  As far as I was concerned, I had really arrived.  The fact that I still needed to lose weight always escaped and for the purpose of this blog, I was leaving money on the table by resting on my laurels.  Then one day I was taking the stairs with a person who was eighteen years old.  Of course I expected him to have no trouble with the stairs.  I envisioned he and I walking up the stairs together conversing just like we converse walking on level ground.  Walk briskly up the stairs, he did.  Not only did he walk briskly up the stairs, he bolted up the stairs!  Not only did he bolt up the stairs, but he bolted up the stairs two at a time and was at the top of the stairs by the time I had taken 3 steps!  I only thought I was satisfied until I saw what he could do.  I know I am not eighteen years old but I can do better than what I am doing.

There is a finite amount of knowledge in business coaching and the principles all work the same.  How is it then, that some coaches are starving and others are making as much as $25,000 per month?  It is because the rest of are resting on our laurels making what we think is good enough.  Do I have the ability to take the stairs two-by-two?  You bet I have and the only reason I have not done it is that I chose to be happy with what I was doing.  Just as I have decided to up my game as far as physical fitness is concern, you can up your game as far as your fee is concerned.  Beginning today, you can raise your fees at least 10% and, of course, you are worth it.  If some clients cannot afford it, don’t worry, you will replace them.  The rule of the jungle is that for newness to arise, the old stuff has to move out.  The difference between you and the coach making $25,000 per client is that he asks for it.  Practice your new amount in the mirror and you will be amazed at how easily it comes when you ask your client for it.