How We Coach Our Clients (Our Promise)
Some people hire coaches and think that by the action of hiring the coach their life will be different.
Then they don’t implement and complain about their lack of results.
Investing in a coaching and mentorship program involves two parties.
I get people all the time that say “well what sort of guarantee can you give me that I’ll get XYZ result”.
My response is “what sort of guarantee will you give me that you’ll do the work that matters?”
Tip - Anyone that says is likely going to be a horrible client to work with because they are looking for an out before they even get started. We usually don’t even work with people like that.
I want no part of it.
If you want to know what it’s like to work with me, you’ll probably want to know a bit about my “coaching style”.
Someone asked me about this in our free group recently and I thought it was a great question.
So, I put together this video walking you through what you can expect from myself and my team if we were to coach you.
Transcript / MP3
What's good, everybody. Greg Hickman here. And in this episode I want to break down how we coach and one of the members in our free Facebook group, the scalable service provider as soon to be renamed, depending upon when you're watching us, uh, which is linked up below, asked to for me to create an episode breaking down like how we coach. And I thought it was a really interesting question. Uh, and we have some coaching principles, some of which are our own, some of which we've adopted from other people we've worked with, mentors, et cetera, that okay.
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You know, sometimes there's, you work with someone that they articulate something that you've been embodying or been demonstrating but just didn't have a good way to articulate it. And so then you say, Oh my God, like I've been doing it that way. I'm going to, you know, borrow that, uh, with proper attribution. So,
okay,
in this video I'm going to break down, um, what we call our coaching promise. And I'm actually gonna take you through a couple slides going one by one through kind of our coaching promise, which really shares with our new clients as a part of our onboarding process, how we coach and what we sort of expect of them and what they can expect from us as coaches and mentors. So let's jump in and
let's share a coaching promise here at the agency. When you join our programs, we, we expect you to show up a certain way just as we, we want to show up a certain way for you. You know, our goal is to help you. So, uh, I want to break down sort of what I will call our coaching promise and uh, you'll see that I have, you know, quotations around the word promise because to me this is more of like an agreement that we're making with you. And also, um, sort of like a contract. Now you have obviously, you know, if you're in our program, you've already signed a contract, but like this is like the, Hey, we're, we're coming at it from a place where we want you to be most successful. And for us to be most successful together and help you and help you hit all your goals.
These things are going, this is how we're going to do it, how we're going to show up. So like if you are questioning maybe our behavior or whatnot at any point, because like maybe we're giving you some hashtag real talk, which is one of our, you know, core values or, um, you know, we're giving you some tough love. Know that this is where we're coming from when we do it. Now. Um, you'll see a couple of these points that come from, you'll see at the bottom right, adopted from, uh, Steven J. Larson, uh, someone who had been following. I've been listening to his podcast sales funnel radio for a little while and he's one of those individuals that has sort of said a few things, uh, that in his podcast. I just, I wrote them down. I was like, Oh my God. That's how, that's how we show up.
And we've said similar things to our clients. He's just said it way better. Uh, so, uh, kudos and shout to, to Steven, Jay Larson. Um, for, for those, uh, we very much appreciate, uh, you and what you do in this world. Um, so let's jump in first. Number one, uh, where you're coaching your mentors first, where your friends second. Um, you know, I personally can say I love our clients and we build relationships with them. They're the types of people that if you are a client, like I would welcome you into our home and have dinner with you. Like those, that's how I select, you know, who we select from as a client. Like not everybody gets to work with us even that wants to work with us because there are some people that I don't jive well with or there's things about them that you know, I don't necessarily agree with or what have you.
So like when doing that, when coming from a position where I feel like you could be my friend and we are friends, um, I don't want that to get in the way of what we're here to do together, which is to help help you hit a lot of your business and life goals through applying systems and transforming your business. And how you do business. And that being said, then we are your coach and your mentors first, your friends second. So when we hop on that Facebook messenger, you know, conversation on the weekend and we're talking about family, like I'm literally talking to you as a friend. Um, but when we're, you know, working hours, um, and sometimes out of hours when I need to be your coach, I'll and mentor, I'll be, I'll do that. But like there'll be moments where I'm acting as more as your friend, but don't get it twisted when we're working on your business working hours, we're focused on what's at hand.
I will always be your coach first. And this is what we preach to our, our team of coaches as well. So this is not just the Greg show, this is if you are working with any of the coaches on our team, Lisa, Ryan, Josh, whoever, like they are going to approach this the same way. Next one, if you will do the work, we will show you the work that matters. Again, does this from Steven J. Larson. Um, and I think it, you know, we talk a lot and he, when he said this, it reminded me of how we talk about sequence. Like it's really easy to solve the right problems in the wrong order and we want to help you solve the right problems in the right order. And so when we're guiding you on doing certain things, we're guiding you on this stuff because we know that the things we're guiding you on is what actually matters and make a difference.
If you do that work and you're willing to do the work, we're going to show you like, how to prioritize. Like what is more important now than later, what is in sequence and out of sequence. So if you will do the work, we will show you the work that matters. Caveat, this also means that when we see you doing something that you, we believe is not work that matters, we will be the first to tell you and we will expect you to stop. Um, because again, we've seen, we can see around corners for you. So, uh, many of the things that, all the things that you're trying to accomplish and the specifically in the program, like we've already done so I can, and I've made plenty of mistakes. So I want to help you avoid those mistakes. So if you will do the work, we will show you the work that matters.
If you show up hungry, we'll match your hunger. We cannot want this more than you. Like when you say what your goals are, I can't want that more than you want it for yourself. And this one's really hard for me because like, oftentimes I find myself, I'm like, why aren't you just going a little bit stronger, a little bit harder when it's like they're just not. And I can't if, if we want it more than you want it, there's a problem. And so, um, like how this plays out I think in a lot of cases is if you go off the radar and you're not getting the help, and we'll talk about this in another upcoming, you know, point is, and then you're like, Hey, well where have you been? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, if you haven't been engaging, you haven't been asking for help.
You haven't been doing the work that matters and you've been following the instructions that we've provided. Like we literally give you a step by step roadmap if you're not doing that. Like, how am I supposed to serve you best? Right? So if you show up hungry, we will match your hunger. Okay. Run towards us. Not a way. We can't save someone that is running away from the one running away from us. I think Steve actually had one like this where it's like swim a swim towards us, not away. Which I think from an analogy probably makes visually makes more sense. If you're in the ocean and you need to save someone, if they're swimming away from you, you're both in danger, right? If I'm trying to swim after you to catch you to save you, that's going to be a problem. Um, so if you're unclear on something, if something's not going according to your plan, um, we say and guide you to do something that maybe feels uncomfortable, do not run away, right?
We can't help you if you're running away from us. So if you're doing that, like expect that there's going to be some sort of repercussions of like, Hey, like, well obviously you didn't get the result that you're looking for because you never asked for help, right? You, all you did was when we reached out to you, you ignored us or you ran away. Like that's not going to help you achieve the result. Okay. We're not here to be babysitters. So run towards us. Not a way we can't save someone that is running away from us. Um, which leads me to, to the point that I think might be uncomfortable for some of you, but is the real talk and you should do this exact same thing for your clients, is that we are responsible to you. We are not responsible for you. Again, we are all adults here.
We are responsible to be there, to support you when you need help, to provide the resources that we've and to show up. Um, you know, in all of these ways that we want to show up for you and we're responsible to you to do those things, to help you get the results that you're looking for, giving you what we said we were going to give you, answer the questions when you have them. But we're not responsible for your results because I can't do the work for you. I can't be on your sales calls and have those sales conversations. I can't make you wake up early in the morning and focus on yourself so that you have all the energy in the world to S to best serve your clients. Okay? Like, I can't be there in the moments that offer a lot of the moments that will matter for how you show up every single day in your life, in business.
So for that, I am not responsible for you and your results. Okay? Um, we are responsible to you to provide everything that we can to help you get to those results. So I hope you understand that. And the second you adopt this and understand this for you and your clients and realize that you're not a savior. If your clients are expecting you to be a savior, that's a huge red flag. And also if you are constantly saving them and you're a huge now here, like if you're basically their business, like say your agency has become their marketing department and you're the one responsible for all of their revenue and you even do maybe some of their sales, like you should be, have a skin in the game. Like you should actually be partners with them, right? And so, um, you need to kind of show up to your clients in a way where you're responsible to them but not for them.
Next piece, it's part two. You're not allowed to use your current or past situation as an excuse. And again, this one's adopted from Steve as well. Um, we see this time and time again. Uh, and look, we've been, we've been guilty of this in our, in our own lives. And so again, it's like this is something that we not only impart on you but we also are living. And so you are not allowed to use your current or past excuse or situation as an excuse because now that we've worked with like over, you know, at the time of recording this like close to 200 clients, we've seen pretty much just about every situation, right? So we've, we've seen the, the single parents with multiple kids, we've seen the person that is, you know, trying to escape their corporate job and doing this on the side.
We've seen people that have experienced, you know, tragedies in their family while going through this process. Like, well we have seen it all. Okay, but if we allow you to make those excuses, we are not serving you. Right? So sometimes something might happen and we might show up and say like, okay, like we got to get over this and move forward because we know that the feedback and the results that you want are on the other side of moving through this. So yes, we all have the same time in the same day. You, you have, you might have some sort of situation, might feel unique to you. Likely we've seen it before and if we haven't seen it before, there is likely someone else in the world that has dealt with it. There are many very successful, very successful people that have come from worse off situations and dealt with way worse than you're dealing with regardless.
So this is not to downplay any experience that you might have. We are obviously very, uh, very much with you in times of tragedy. Obviously. Hopefully that doesn't happen for you as you work with us. Um, but like family members situations, like things like that. Like, look, life still happens while we're working together and you're still building a business and you still go home at night to your family and there's things outside of work that are hard. Okay, we get it. We have the same, same problems and challenges in our own life, but we can't always blame those things as to why we're not getting somewhere. So you're not allowed to use your current or past situation as an excuse and we won't let you, um, if, and this kind of ties into the next one, if you will not make someone else responsible for your results, we promised to not do it for you.
Um, again, Steve said this really great, but this kind of comes from, um, the, uh, methodology we use in our coaching called gestalt. And gestalt is experienced based sharing. And we do this more in our in-person environment than in virtual. You know, when you're going through our training programs online, like we're showing you step by step, but when we're helping you make decisions, we're often, often we always strive to, um, again, not perfect something this is very hard to do gestalt if you're unfamiliar with gestalt, but gestalt is experienced based sharing. So when you have a question or you're looking for advice, I need to show you, um, and share my experience and let you come to your own decision. And other people in our community, other coaches and mentors you work with will share their experiences. And so what I find is if we tell you to do something and it doesn't work, you'll be like, Oh, well, Greg said to do and it didn't work.
And the reality would ha what ends up happening there is that you didn't own it. You didn't take ownership over it. So that would be you making me responsible for your result because I may be guided you to do something, but you were still the one to do it. And so yes, I want to show you the step-by-step, yes, I want to give you a roadmap, but you can't make other people responsible for where you're at right now. And the results that you get where you at are at right now. And where are you will be a year from now, are always going to come down to the actions that you take and the decisions that you make. Okay? So I'm not gonna, I'm not, I promise not to allow you to, you know, make someone else responsible for your results. So if you will not make someone else responsible for your results results, we will promise not to do it for you.
Okay? Um, if you will be polite to your naysayers, we will be your safe house again. Steve crushed it on this one. Said it better that we could like, you're gonna get trolls. You're gonna have people comment negatively on your ads. You're going to have people talk shit about you at some point. Um, and look, if you're doing that, if you're receiving some of that feedback, you need to understand that it's usually the other person's problem, not yours. And it's hard to receive some of that feedback. Sometimes I wear my heart on my sleeve, so I personally take offense to a lot of things. But if that happens to you, we want you to use us and the community as a place to vent that out. Don't retaliate or go back and forth with any sort of trolls or any sort of, any sort of that like that is not going to serve you at all.
It's going to, uh, it's going to negatively impact you in the long run and probably really impact you like in your, in your, the growth in the results you can get from working with us if you actually do it in the moment. So if you will be polite to your naysayers, your trolls, your haters, you're going to get them. We will be your safe house. Um, if you only compare you to you, then we will only compare you to you seem pretty self explanatory. Like I know that it's very easy to compare ourselves to others. It's easy to compare, you know, your season one to someone else's. See season 17 and then get down in the dumps. So we don't want you to compare yourself to other people. We want you to compare you to you. We compare us to us and if you have a challenge with that, like we're going to help you and remind you that look, you're in season one, they're in season 17.
Like let's look at where you're at right now and where you were and where you're going to be. And like, let's always compare you to you. And lastly, um, if you will make, this goes back to the gestalt. If you will make an own your own decisions, we will show you a framework for making them, but we will not make them for you. Okay? We can't make it for you. Um, if we're always telling you what to do work, you're going to become dependent on us to make important decisions in your business. And I want to teach you and we want to teach you how to fish, right? Um, because we won't always be around. Yes, we want to bring you into our other programs and work with you longterm, you know, multiple years, which is really what this takes and the long game. But like, we still need to enable you to make decisions for yourself.
So we'll give you a framework for making decisions. Um, we'll, we'll show you how we do it. We'll, we'll share our experiences, but we're going to expect you to make your own decisions and own those decisions. Because again, your success is gonna fall on what you do. So that's it. My friends, that's kind of our coaching promise, coaching agreement, count, contract, whatever you want to call it, what we expect of you, what we expect of ourselves and our coaching team as we serve you. Uh, and then for those of you that are watching this through, you know, our, our, our show, our all agency show, uh, this is how we operate. And you know, it's not for everybody, but we believe that it's what gets the best out of our clients and um, what they need from us and a mentor and a coach in order to become the leader in their own life and business the way they want to and the way that will best serve them.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you're interested in learning more about what we do, if you're new to the channel one, subscribe, check, check it out, leave us a review. If you're enjoying this content and you can check out the links below to reach out to us, learn a little bit more about us, and schedule a call to chat with our team to see if we can help you design an all agency toxin. If I give you five to 10 new clients, would you or your agency break? If so, your current [inaudible] agency model is broken. I struggle with this too, until I found a better way. By adding online programs, training, and coaching to our agency, we doubled profits without adding more hours. If you want to work directly with me and my team to transform your agency, visit my scalable business.com to learn more.
