Get A Coach

104. Get a Coach.

This was a life changing Tool in my life. When I graduated valedictorian of my class and with a perfect 4.0 grade point average, it seemed just natural that all the other pieces would simply fall into place. The truth was that I was failing and considering the unfathomable possibility that I may have to close my practice. I am so glad that I swallowed my pride and realized while I may have known everything about being a doctor, I knew very little about running a practice.

I found a coach who helped me run my practice more efficiently, but more importantly helped me run my life more efficiently. If you take a look at the credits I give this book, I credit a man for saving my life. It is because of him I learned all that I am sharing with you and that I have restructured into a form that I believe can help so many more. Everyone in my opinion needs a coach.

Tiger Woods has a coach, Michael Jordan had a coach. These are the top two people in the history of their field and they both had coaches to help them achieve the highest levels they aspired to reach. There are two benefits to coaching. The first is coaches can identify troubled areas you are unable to see yourself. The second is coaches hold you to a higher level of accountability than you are holding yourself to. If coaching wasn’t important, then why wouldn’t teams just let the players run themselves? Yeah, I laughed out loud, too.

Finding a coach is not something you just look for in the phonebook. There are a couple of things that I believe are crucial to finding the right coach. The first is a simple question to ask yourself: Where do I need help? I mentioned in Tool 67 to compile a team of experts. These are people who help you with day-to-day activities. They can be considered all the support people of a team’s operations. But a coach is one that sets the tone and develops the strategies.

For many of you a life coach may be exactly what you need; someone who can start by overlooking everything. For others you may just need a coach to handle challenges in business, nutrition or exercise. Maybe you need a knitting coach, whatever the case may be find the area that you need to rise above and reach the top. It may also be the area of greatest struggle. Then I think it is nice to have a coach with similarities to your situation. When you best identify with someone, you are much more likely to follow their advice and give the extra effort needed to make that coach proud.

As you will learn, you do it for you, not the coach. All you have to do is follow those at the top, those who are the most successful have coaches who help them get there. Tiger has one, Jordan had one, I have one. Identify where you need the most help, exercise-trainer, nutrition-nutritionist, self-life coach. Once again, as I said in Tool 67, find experts to help you reach your goals. Identifying where you need help is a major part of the growth process. The next Tool will help put that into perspective.