The First Requirement For Coaching Success

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is The Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

The first requirement for coaching success, this actually applies to coaching or consulting. If you're going to go out as an entrepreneur, and I highly recommend you do, get specialized expertise to help you shortcut the lessons that we all have to learn and the things that we all have to do to be successful, because if you can go out and find someone who has been where you want to be, who has the knowledge you want, and who has been in that situation for you, it will be the biggest accelerator to your success. I know because it's been the biggest accelerator to my success throughout my career. Every time that I've invested in myself by giving someone money to help me learn a skill, or understand something better, or create momentum in my life in any way, when I've done it right, that investment of money was followed by a massive period of momentum and acceleration.

But I want you to know I've done it wrong too. Cadey and I, and me on my own, I've spent money with mentors, with coaches, with coaching programs, where I felt stuck, frustrated, irritated, plateaued like I wasn't moving forward, like I wasn't getting the results everyone else was. And in some cases, not all, in some cases I know that part of the problem was me. The challenge that I found was that I wasn't fully committed to the coaching relationship. In fact, that is the number one requirement for coaching success, is that you fully commit to what the coach is asking and telling you to do. Ask questions. Raise objections. But that you fully commit and understand what the coach is telling you to do, and you really know that it will help you grow your business, and that you take their advice and you apply it and you make it happen and you make it real. That is your responsibility in a coaching relationship.

But here's the challenge. And I want you to really think about this in the coaching relationships you've had in the past and the consulting relationships you've had in the past. In maybe the coaching or mentoring relationship that you're in right now, if you're not fully committed, my question for you is: Why? Why haven't you committed? Why haven't you said, "I'm all in"? Why haven't you just jumped in head first and taken everything that the coach says and used it? I've been in the situation where I didn't commit. Now I didn't commit because I didn't trust the coach. But here's the challenge. I shouldn't have ever been coached by that person in the first place.

Cadey and I spent a year in a coaching program like that. It was one where you have to fly up every quarter. You spend on day. We had to fly to Canada one day a quarter, or Chicago, one day a quarter. And you spend a day in a room with other entrepreneurs. And the coach or mentor basically went through the same presentation four times a year for us. And in the first time that we went, this was someone who was a grow and scale, a grow and scale coach like me. In fact, I was going to see, maybe I'm going to get some advice here that I haven't seen before. Maybe this'll help augment how I've grown my businesses. And this was a coach who professed that he showed people how to create self managing companies.

Well, in the first day that we went, I asked three or four questions, and I didn't just not get answers, I got like smart answers. I challenged a couple things, and the coach didn't answer back and didn't give me a strategic answer like I expected from that coach. And it frustrated me like crazy. And I didn't commit. We didn't really get a lot out of that program. But the mistake I made was, I should've read some of this coach's materials. I should've looked at some of what they had done. I should've talked to some other people and understood that I probably wasn't going to relate to it. And I probably was going to have a hard time with it because he was a coach that said you could build a business with no bureaucracy, no meetings, no routine measurements, none of those things, like there was this new way to run a company. And I'll be honest with you, I believe that that's complete BS.

In fact, what I found as we went through the years coaching company, or coaching, that a lot of the people who were really successful in his programs went to his program for the network, and had another coach that was helping them grow and scale their business, or understand how to put the right people on the team, or actually really grow a business. And so I have to take some of that responsibility. We didn't get a lot out of that program, but I didn't really commit to that program because I didn't trust it. It was my mistake for getting involved in the first place. So the first litmus test that anyone should make is: Am I fully committed to this? And I want you to think about it this way. Are you fully committed to the person who's coaching you? Are you fully committed to the outcomes and the process they use? And are you fully committed to ending up being more like them, to picking up their tendencies, their habits, the way that they do things, to picking up their opinions, to their idiosyncrasies? Because this will happen.

When you're around someone long enough, you will absorb from them. You will become more like them. And one of the reasons I didn't fully commit to that coaching program was, once we were in the course, I realized I did not want to be more like the person running it. In fact, it was the opposite. I wanted to be the polar opposite of how he ran not only his coaching program, but how he encouraged entrepreneurs to grow businesses. We help companies go. We've helped Alex and Layla. I just got a message from them today. It looks like they're going to hit around a $30 million run rate in the next few months, and we started working with them in July when they were at a $2 million run rate. So from July to March or April, they'll go from $2 million to $30 million a year. You don't do that with no meetings. You don't do that with no regular measurement. You don't do that with no routine. You don't do that without a really tight communications cadence that everyone understands and everyone knows where the organization's going.

And the dramatic irony of the company that we went up to in New York was that they had a self managing company, but every time I called up and asked anything, they would have to go check with one of the owners and get back to me. Even they were supposedly a $25 million company with a large team, they always would say, "Well, let me go check with," insert the name of the owner, "And then we'll get back to you." And we had challenges all the way through that year. Part of the reason was, we didn't commit. Now I also have the opposite of that story, and this is for me personally. In the past few years, we've had a hard time figuring out how to take our content, generate leads, and create a consistent result for clients. And we've had a hard time understanding how to take the content we have and create a massive pain killer that we can put out into the market and bring in business, and start contributing and actually really create a success.

And for the past for years, I've done a ton of speaking and a lot of private consulting. And we've still done relatively well, but we haven't figured out, or we hadn't figured out how to get out there and get the right amount of attention driven to the right products so that we can convert consistently and start building the movement that we want to build, entrepreneurs who are out changing the world. And so I looked at the market, and knowing that I had to fully commit, I went out looking for who could I learn marketing from. Who could I learn lead generation from? Who's the best person in the market today for me to go learn this discipline, this new skillset from? Because it got to the point where I realized I had to know enough about this that I could even coach a team to do it well.

And when I looked at everyone who plays that game in the market today, Russell Brunson was the obvious choice. I know him. He is an incredible business person. I looked at his background because I always look at the background of a coach. I want to know where they come from. I don't want somebody who was a financial consultant, or a financial advisor or something, or who's never run a larger business telling me how to grow and scale a business. And so I don't want somebody who hasn't really been a marketer showing me how to become a marketer. And Russell has been a marketer essentially his entire career. That's all he's ever done. And then I look at people's recent successes. What are they doing? How are they proving that they know what they're doing? Well, Russell has built what may be not a unicorn, but maybe the unicorn, click funnels. I think the most recent valuation I heard batted around was $350 million, but I think it's a complete underestimate of what it should be worth because that company, I think they're over $70 million a year now. And their cost of acquisition of a customer is a profit event. They make money every time they acquire a customer because Russell is so incredible at lead generation.

That's one of the big problems that click funnels has in getting valuations. Not that I think they need valuations, because I don't think they intend to sell. But one of the issues they have with getting valuations is venture capital firms don't know how to evaluation a software as a service company that doesn't pay to acquire customers because customer acquisition costs is part of a valuation model. So when you throw in that Russell makes $30, or $40, or $50 per customer he acquires, per lead he acquires, it throws off all the valuation models. When I heard that, I mean, it's so clear that Russell is the guy to go to for marketing.

And so then I had to ask myself. Can I fully commit to working with Russell? If he tells me to do something, if he has advice for me, am I actually going to do it? Am I going to commit to it? Well, I have to do a different evaluation then. I have to look and say, "What type of judgment does this person have? Do we have similar values? Do we see the world in a similar way?" And when I look at Russell, he's a bit younger than I am. But he has an incredible family and a loving wife. And if you watch him on Insta Stories, you will see all of his kids including Nora, his youngest kid, who's just amazing. I love hanging out with his family. And when you look at Russell and how he acts around the people that he's with and how he comports himself and how he conducts himself and how he treats his clients, there's nothing to throw a stone at because he lives in a way that he shows the values he has every single day.

He wants the world around him to know who he is and he's unapologetic. He's a faithful person who believes in his faith and supports his faith. And even though I'm not a part of the same faith, Russell's Mormon, I absolutely respect his piousness and his way of sharing who he is and being unapologetic about being Mormon and being unapologetic about telling the world around him that that is a massive part of his life and incredibly important to him. I respect that because he is transparent and he's who he is and he puts it out there and he's real. And so we chose Russell.

And earlier this year, we joined Russell's inner circle, and it was the complete opposite of the coaching program that I described to you up in Canada. We joined the inner circle. Within a few weeks, I got a call. Russell invited me to an event that we went to out in Las Vegas with a few of the inner circle members. We spent some time with Russell at that private event, which was an additional cost above the inner circle, but because Russell and I know each other, he invited us to go. We spent a week with other people in this membership, and in that week, I got more information and more strategy about what we should do with our business than I've ever gotten in such a short period of time. And coming out of that brief one week period, we launched our podcast. We launched our mastermind. We launched our momentum masterclass. And we've generated revenue like crazy. We have a mastermind that's exploding. Our podcast just hit 200,000 downloads, which by the way, thank you.

And here's why all of that happened, because Russell sat down with me and said, "Here's what I think you should do based on what I've seen." And he laid out a plan. Do the podcast, then do the momentum masterclass, and then have the higher end mastermind, and how it would all flow together, and what the initial few steps we should take were. And I fully committed. I went head first. Cadey and I, from the time that the podcast was suggested to the time that it was up on iTunes was less than two weeks. We pushed as hard as we could to get everything that Russell said done. And we're experiencing the success from it. But here's why. I was fully committed to the right coach. I was fully committed to somebody who knew exactly what they were talking about and had the information that I needed. I was fully committed to someone that I am proud to call one of my advisors, one of my friends, and the person who's showing me how to build our business when it comes to lead generation and marketing because I think when it comes to the world today, he's probably one of the top five guys in that world, and he might be the best.

So I fully committed. So for you, if you're one of those people who has tried to get help, you've tried to go out and get coaching, I want you to ask yourself. Did you follow the first requirement for coaching success? Did you fully commit? And if you didn't, I want you to ask yourself why because there may be a legitimate reason there. Did you not trust the coach? Or did you go with a coach who you personally didn't really align with, who your values didn't really align with, but you thought they could help you with your business? I want you to know something. That never works. The values alignment, the personal alignment, that's every bit as important as how someone can help you in your business because if you're not aligned, you will not fully commit. And if you don't commit 100%, you will not get the level of results you can.

And so if you're in a coaching relationship right now, I want you to just think right now. Are you fully 100% committed? Are you excited about that coaching that you're getting? Is that coach making you feel momentum in the process? Do you feel better every time you interact or connect with them? Do they always make you feel more comfortable like you're moving forward? Do they make you feel like they know the answers and they can help you on this journey? And are you fully committed? Because if you aren't, you're likely throwing away your money and your time and your effort and your energy and your focus. And I am unapologetically telling you that because if you're in a bad coaching relationship, you may not figure it out for years or months. And if you've spent any amount of time in a bad coaching relationship, you are going to stall out, plateau, be frustrated, and wonder why you're not making the progress that you were both promised and you wanted.

And it's most likely because you're not fully committed. You might've been committed when you signed up for the program. Maybe the coach has done something since then, or maybe the way that they acted, the way that they've behaved, or the way they've interacted with you has made it so you feel less committed. It doesn't matter the reason. If you are not fully committed, chances are it's not going to work. And so if you're in that situation right now, if you've had that issue, I want you to know something. Being in a coaching relationship where you aren't fully committed just because you've paid for it, it's kind of like eating food you don't like because you can't return it. None of us would do that. If you hate it, you hate it. If it doesn't taste good, you're not going to force yourself to eat it. So if you've invested in a coaching program where you're not fully committed, I have just a simple suggestion for you. Get out. Get over it. Move one and go find some momentum. Find a coach you can fully commit to.

Just consider the dollars lost. I've watched people stay in coaching relationships that they didn't like because they had three months, or six months, or nine months left on a contract. And the fact is, what you're doing is committing to stalling out and plateauing and being constrained for three, six, or nine months. That's crazy. Just move on because if you know in your heart you're not fully committed, then I want you to know you are not fully committed to getting the results you should, and the momentum just won't be there. Maybe it's time to move on.

The first requirement for coaching success is that you have to fully commit. Are you an entrepreneur who is doing a lot? You are working on your business, trying to spend time with your family, trying to do more for yourself. When we overwhelm ourselves, one of the first things we start doing is, we stop taking care of ourselves. And when we stop taking care of ourselves, we show up less than fully present. So if you are in that situation right now, I want you to do something. Go to getthirstynow.com, and I know there's a double entendre there. We did it on purpose.

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