Public Speaking (BEHIND THE SCENES) – How to choose THE RIGHT COACH

This is an AI generated transcript so please forgive any errors and spelling mistakes. 

Have you ever thought of employing a coach to work with you to help you get to the next level? Well, you know what? This is not going to be me selling myself as a coach for the next two or three minutes of this video. No, I want to share with you some considerations that you might want to put into practice before you choose the next coaching professional to work with you because I had an experience recently that I think is useful to share with you and I’m gonna do that in just a moment.

First of all, I want to share who I am. I’m Shola Kaye and I am a communication coach based in London. I work with individuals and also with organizations. I run master classes and training and keynote speaking. In addition, I work with individuals in particularly those who want to grow their business with speaking.

For the last six months I was working with a particular coach, I won’t mention any names or even the subject matter of this particular coach, and this coach clearly was able to get good results with certain people and I was hoping that she would get great results with me. However, it wasn’t the case and I want to share with you some of what I learned from that experience.

Public Speaking – finding a coach that suits your personality

I know a lot of you out there either you are coaches or you have coaches and it’s important to match up the right coach with the right student or the coachee, let’s call them. Not only because that coach he wants to achieve certain results but the important thing that I learned in this experience is that quite often the coachee wants to experience a result in a certain way in a way that’s authentic to their personality and to the way they like to do business and behave. Luckily for us these days there are so many different ways that we can do business online (within online we could use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin) we can do business in person and we can be speakers, go networking, use affiliates and joint ventures. There’s so many so many different ways that we can grow our businesses.

However, certain of those ways will be suited to certain personality types and others will suit other people better. So when you are choosing a coach I want you to not only look at the results that they have achieved for themselves, because of course that’s indicative of what they can achieve with you, and not only what they have achieved with their coachees, but I want you to drill down to another level and look at how they have achieved those things. What methods they use, how flexible is that coach in terms of if one particular style of working doesn’t suit you can they give you alternatives in the way of doing things that suit your personality better.

To share with you my experience I’ve been on a certain program which is kind of using digital marketing to build a business. I’ve been on that program… gosh for a while now probably for about a year or so. Because I’ve I have multiple things that I do, I didn’t follow it straight through. So when this particular coach came along and contacted me and it’s someone that was known to me because she’d worked with one of my clients, someone I know, and that person had got really good results. When this particular coach came along and positioned herself and said “I can help you” it was appealing to me because at that time I really wanted to work with somebody.

I didn’t just want to be on a program along with many others in a group, I wanted one-to-one help. But there was an element of me that was thinking twice. I kind of wish I’d listened to that person inside a little bit harder rather than being gung ho about working with this particular coach because it was a high-ticket coaching program that cost me many thousands of pounds. If I do regret working with this person, I think a large part of me does, because I think I could have achieved the results that I got with somebody else for a lot less money and achieve them in a way that was more in tune with the way I like to do business.

Public Speaking – make sure the method you’ll be learning works for you and your business

Not wanting to go into too much detail on this because I don’t want to reveal who this person is, but the main thing I think that I didn’t like, that didn’t work for me in this coach’s methods, was it was very much about hustle “be on the phone, etc” and that isn’t me. I like having a system and I like to be as efficient as I possibly can, which is possibly why I like public speaking, because I can speak once and touch many people whereas this particular coach her main recruitment method was by getting on the phone and doing a lot of stuff on the phone.

I understand if you’re selling something high ticket you need to speak on the phone to that person typically because it’s hard to sell high ticket in a one-to-many environment. But I’d expressed at the beginning when we were talking about working together that this sort of high ticket on the phone wasn’t my style and I was wanting to do webinars classes etc. I was led to believe that we could work in that particular way but when we started working together it was very much the expectation of this coach, or at least that’s what I felt was, that I fit with her way of working, her style. And that the reservations I had about how I wanted to work were kind of ignored or not considered as I wanted them to be.

That led me to, I guess waste quite a bit of time using strategies that I was hoping they’d be successful, but in hindsight I guess with my personality other strategies would have been more successful. I was doing things that didn’t particularly feel comfortable to me hoping that I’d get over the hump and then just sort of sail and enjoy it but I just found that I didn’t have enough of a system to make it work for me. I do not like to literally do things by numbers but I liked to be very methodical and very systematic about stuff and that wasn’t necessarily this this coach’s way of working.

That contributed to the fact that it didn’t really gel. I think the main thing for me that was just very much about hustle hustle hustle. I think a lot of this coach’s success was around her personality being suited to high energy hustle type outreach. As somebody who – not to hide behind being an introvert – but somebody who doesn’t  want a hustle. I want to have some energy back for myself and hustling for some people is invigorating. For me it’s draining so all that kind of hustle at least on the phone just was super draining.

The main thing I learned from this experience was that first of all about the methods. Just because someone gets big results and they can teach you their method it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get the same results. That method might invigorate them and they love it and it suits their personality might not suit your personality. You can, of course, try and push that to one side and just do the work but most people are in business for themselves because they want to do things, not  just to do it their way, but hey want to have that integrity regarding how they go about their daily lives, how they interact with people and they want to get away from someone telling them “right, you’ve got to do it this way even though it doesn’t suit you”. They want to find a way that gels with who they are. And so for me I just found that there wasn’t that kind of comfort in the methods that this person was using.

Whether that meant I wasn’t able to execute on them properly or whether it was just that my personality didn’t enable me to enjoy it, who knows? But it didn’t work for me. So check this person that your coaches methods not only that they get the results but also that the methods are methods that will suit you and suit your personality. If you’re using those methods six hours a day five days a week you better make sure that you enjoy it. It’s all very well to say “oh, I’ve got all these clients, I’ve got this money coming in” but if you had to do stuff that made you feel unhappy in doing that, doesn’t that defeat the object of having your own business? To my mind it does.

There was something else I was going to share on this about choosing a coach it’s kind of slipped my mind, so maybe it’s not so important. I’m sharing with this with you not to gripe but to let you know that before you make a decision about working with somebody especially if it’s high ticket find a way if you can to check them out a bit more.

Public Speaking – ask questions to make sure you’re getting all the details you need

One of the gripes I had with this particular coach is she had a high ticket one to one program but she also had a group program but on the sales conversation with her she didn’t even mention the group program. That would have been sufficient for me, I think. I wanted to find out the way that she did certain things and I would have found that out from the group rather than having to go to the expense.

Never be afraid to question potential coaches really aggressively but question them thoroughly “what programs do you have?, what are the prices of all your things?, you’ve offered me XYZ, what else do you have what do you have that’s lower cost?, what do you have that’s higher cost?, what about if I don’t want to work with you over six months or a year?, what about if I only work with you on a day it for a day on a VIP session?”. See, that could have worked better for me to do a VIP session with this woman and it probably would have cost me sort of half the amount and I’d have got what I needed and then gone off and done something else.

I’m not blaming anyone, if anything I blame myself for not having checked things out fully and understood these questions I’m sharing with you now that I think you should be putting to whoever it is that you’re entrusting with your business, your money, your time as you go forward. I’m hoping that you can learn from me and from the experience that I’ve had so that you question that next person adequately before you make a decision with your time and with your resources. I hope that helps.

In summary, I guess the two main things are first of all make sure that their methods suit you so it’s not just about the results it’s also about how they get things done. Now, you might be someone who’s just like “right, I don’t care even if I have to hate my life for the next six months I’m just gonna bloody do this”. That might be you and if they fantastic just go for it right. If you can see they can get you where you want to go from A to B go for it but if you know that you want to behave in a way that’s authentic to you and have integrity about the way you do business you know and how to feel good internally then question what they’re going to be getting you to do on a daily basis or on a monthly basis and check that that’s the right thing for you.

Public Speaking – find someone who will work with your strengths

There are many ways that we can build our businesses these days and don’t just take one method as being the only way for you. Then the second tip that I want to share is to make sure you ask them about all their stuff okay you may want to work with them but you might find there’s a way that you can work with them for a day or half a day or a week, rather than committing to yourself to six months or 12 months.

Initially this coach had offered me just 12 months, she didn’t even say there was a six-month option but it was only when I said no that she said “oh, there’s six months” so if I’d probably said no to that then she’d have said “well, there’s a group”. But I don’t want someone to just feed me one thing at a time I want to hear all the products under the umbrella so that I can make this decision based on all the knowledge not just on what I’m being drip fed. I’m being told about the most expensive thing first “oh no, that’s too much… no, I’ve got this one that’s cheaper” I want to hear everything.

You are within your rights to hear everything as well. So ask your coaches or potential coaches about everything they’ve got under their umbrella and then take the time that you need to take before you make a decision. People will use the tactics you know scarcity urgency, I’ve done it myself you know because it does force people to make a decision. But don’t be afraid of losing out on a couple of hundred pounds of discount if that gives you the extra time you need to do your due diligence and be sure that this is the right person to work with because that is the most important thing. Making sure you’ve chosen the right person who can help to get you the where you want to go but in a way that has integrity for you and that works for you.

We’re all different and we all flourish and have different strengths and weaknesses and you want it to work with your strengths. And obviously you’ll with a coach who’s going to help you to get even stronger or to work on some weaknesses. But you want it to just to work with you and with who you are in a holistic way.

That’s it for me it’s an uncharacteristically kind of sombre post and a kind of “be careful” sort of vlog this week but I hope that’s useful to you. Please feel free to PM me if you want to find out a little bit more. I won’t be sharing the name of the person but if you want to find out more information about what I learned from that experience because you’re on the verge of making a high-ticket decision yourself and you need a bit of help or assistance please do get in touch and I’ll help you if I possibly can.

That’s it from me and have a fantastic week and I’ll speak to you soon.

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P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you improve your speaking or grow your business:

1 – Get my free guide – 27 places to find speaking opportunities.

Find out where your next speaking opportunity might come from – whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or experienced speaker.

2 – Join my Facebook Group – Public Speaking for Female Coaches and Entrepreneurs.

Join us for tips, discussions and community!

3 – Are you an ambitious coach, consultant or small business owner? If you’d like to wow your audiences and find more speaking opportunities, then watch the FREE on-demand training video here: https://sholakaye.com/masterclass

4 – Find out about my VIP Days and private coaching. Book me for a VIP half or full-day session if you want to make some serious progress!