"The only place you can coast is when you're going downhill (in business and life)!" This tidbit from the interview with Dr. Alan Weiss is a great reminder for current or future coaches or consultants who are looking to build their business, their program or their impact. As the author of Million Dollar Consultant, Dr. Weiss has helped thousands of individuals around the globe to improve their business outcomes. If you're heading up an internal health/wellness program, running your own business or considering starting your own business, this episode is a must.
Looking for weekly tips, tricks and turbo boosts to enhance your life? Sign up for the CATALYST COMPASS here, a brief weekly compilation of ideas, evidence-based concepts and encouragement to improve your personal and professional life!
Info re earning your health & wellness coaching certification, annual Rocky Mountain Coaching Retreat & Symposium & more via https://www.catalystcoachinginstitute.com/
Best-in-class coaching for Employers, EAPs & wellness providers https://catalystcoaching360.com/
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Contact us: Results@CatalystCoaching360.com
Twitter: @Catalyst2Thrive
Website: CatalystCoaching360.com
If you are a current or future health & wellness coach, please check out our Health & Wellness Coaching Community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/278207545599218. This is a wonderful group if you are looking for encouragement, ideas, resources and more.
"The only place you can coast is when you're going downhill (in business and life)!" This tidbit from the interview with Dr. Alan Weiss is a great reminder for current or future coaches or consultants who are looking to build their business, their program or their impact. As the author of Million Dollar Consultant, Dr. Weiss has helped thousands of individuals around the globe to improve their business outcomes. If you're heading up an internal health/wellness program, running your own business or considering starting your own business, this episode is a must.
Looking for weekly tips, tricks and turbo boosts to enhance your life? Sign up for the CATALYST COMPASS here, a brief weekly compilation of ideas, evidence-based concepts and encouragement to improve your personal and professional life!
Info re earning your health & wellness coaching certification, annual Rocky Mountain Coaching Retreat & Symposium & more via https://www.catalystcoachinginstitute.com/
Best-in-class coaching for Employers, EAPs & wellness providers https://catalystcoaching360.com/
YouTube Coaching Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/CoachingChannel
Contact us: Results@CatalystCoaching360.com
Twitter: @Catalyst2Thrive
Website: CatalystCoaching360.com
If you are a current or future health & wellness coach, please check out our Health & Wellness Coaching Community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/278207545599218. This is a wonderful group if you are looking for encouragement, ideas, resources and more.
Dr. Cooper: 0:09
Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Dr Bradford Cooper, and today we're gonna take a deeper dive into the business side of coaching and consulting with one of the best in the business, Dr Alan Weiss. Dr. Weiss is the author of the book $1,000,000 Consultant, a book I've recommended to literally hundreds, if not thousands of people for its practical guidance. And I think you;ll get a sense of that insightful, no nonsense approach to building your business regardless of what that business is in this interview. He's written over 60 books, spoken to audiences worldwide, and The New York Post called him one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in America.
Dr. Cooper: 0:55
If you've been pondering pursuing your wellness coach certification, by the way, it's time to make a decision, folks. The requirements for the NBHWC National board exam increase later this year. You're probably well aware of that. You don't have to pursue it now, but if you do, you'll save a lot of time and money. So we're encouraging folks that are on that fence to lean one way or the other at this point, because what it does is it allows you to sit for the exam under their current requirements, versus the increased requirements that kick in here in about 6-8 months. If you're wanting to do that, our next two fast track certifications are pretty critical for going that route. They're scheduled for April 4th and 5th and June 13th and 14th. You don't do both. You'd pick one of the other and you do everything else from back home. All the details at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com, and if you want to talk it through, we're happy to do so. Just reach out to us. Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com, we'll set up a call. We can talk through whatever questions you might have. Now let's tap into the insights of Dr Alan Weiss on this episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast. Welcome to the show, Alan.
Dr. Weiss: 2:13
Thank you Brad, good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Dr. Cooper: 2:16
So you've been called the finest entrepreneurial coach in the world. But, nobody exactly starts out that way. What were some of the critical moments in your career that led to the success that you now see as an author, consultant, coach, any of those areas.
Dr. Weiss: 2:30
Well, you know, they say there were three or four major events in most successful people's lives. You know, when I was in high school, I was an exchange student from an inner city school to Europe, which, you know, never happened in that school before, since I married my high school sweetheart. But, I mean, if you want to talk career, I spent 11 years in Princeton with a training firm, traveled around the world, learned the business. And then when I came up to be president of the consulting firm in Providence, I was fired after 15 months and that created who I am today. When people get fired, they either get distraught or they get angry. I got very angry and I said, no fool will ever fire me again. And here I am.
Dr. Cooper: 3:08
Wow, Wow, that's great. And I love that thought of the negative oftentimes turns into the biggest positive in our lives. That's something I think people see all the time.
Dr. Weiss: 3:17
Well, you know, passion is passion. You have to turn it toward the positive. There's a very thin line between love and hate when the question is where you address your energy.
Dr. Cooper: 3:26
Yeah, absolutely. All right, so, mistakes. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see coaches and consultants making that is messing up their business outcomes?
Dr. Weiss: 3:35
I'd say the biggest mistake is not understanding that this is a relationship business, and what you're selling is yourself. You're selling your credibility, your expertise, your value, your ability to help people. And if you get up in the morning and say I have value to offer and I would be remiss if I didn't offer to people. That's one thing. If you get up in the morning and say, oh my God, I have a mortgage to pay, I have bills. I have to make some sales. That's just a long, slow crawl through enemy territory. So your mindset about being able to help people is the first. The second is you need to charge based on that value. You don't charge based on the hour or the day. People who charge by time units are amateurs, and that includes attorneys. You charge based on your value. And the final thing is you need to talk to a buyer. Talking to anyone who's not a buyer, that is, someone who could actually invest money in you from their own budget is a waste of time.
Dr. Cooper: 4:29
How did these folks, especially coaches who are generally in a one on one situation. Sometimes they're working with employers. But how did they decipher that? How do they say, oh, that's a buyer. That's not a buyer, I'm wasting my time.
Dr. Weiss: 4:41
It's very simple. You say to somebody who's interested in your coaching, interested in your work. You say the following. I would love to know what your decision making process is. That is, do you have a budget to approve this kind of work, or do you have to talk to someone else? And if you do have to talk to someone else, they're gonna ask you questions that you can't answer, and it's very awkward to place you in a position of marketing me. So, why don't you introduce me to the person who makes that decision? And then, ethically, I can hear from that person what his and her expectations are and know if this is right or not.
Dr. Cooper: 5:15
I love that. And I think probably you're so used to doing that. It flows off your tongue so easily. Any tips for that person says, oh boy, Alan on that makes total sense. But I just I kinda get this feeling in my gut, I'm just not sure I can do that yet.
Dr. Weiss: 5:33
Well, I have three suggestions. The first suggestion is stop the negative self talk. Of course you can do it. It's just saying words that you believe in. The second thing is you have to stay in the moment and you can't be looking at some script or something down the road. You have to be in the moment, listen to what you're hearing and respond to it right there. And the third thing is that you cannot be afraid of losing business. Too many people don't get business because they were afraid of losing it. And they do whatever they can not to lose it. You have to be assertively trying to get business, and that means finding the buyer and convincing the buyer.
Dr. Cooper: 6:06
Nice. Very nice. All right, so if you were sitting down with someone who had just started their coaching business. We've got a lot of folks listening to this that are either thinking about going that route and their hurdle is, well, I don't know how I would grow it if I became a coach. What advice would you have for that complete beginner right out of the gate trying to get the ball rolling?
Dr. Weiss: 6:28
Well, if your brand new to the profession and you don't have the opportunity to work with a company or a small firm to learn that business, understand that the key here, the key to this business is marketing. Probably everyone listening is a decent coach or a great coach. But there are a lot of excellent coaches starving because they can't market. There are a lot of mediocre coaches making it cause they can market. And then there's some people who are excellent coaches and excellent marketers. So what you have to do out of the box, call everyone you know and tell them what you're doing and ascertain whether their someone who could buy from you or recommend you or do neither of the above. But for example, if you talk to professional people you know, for example a doctor, a dentist, a designer, an architect. People like that with whom you work. They know people who could use your help, even if they can't themselves. So if you look at the literature over the last 10 years, it's absolutely irrefutable. Executives make decisions based on peer level reference. Not the Internet, not advertising, not social media, peer level reference. And if you look at a guy like Jonah Berger wrote Contagion and Invisible Influence, who I've had speak at my conventions. His research over the Wharton School has shown that only 4% of that is Internet based. And so overwhelmingly think about how you make a decision. You ask a colleague for good doctor. You ask a colleague who you should see to buy a car. You ask a colleague who you trust for advice. The same thing happens in our profession.
Dr. Cooper: 7:58
Great. How about the person who has been doing it a couple of years and they just hit a plateau. They got out of the gate. They did some of things you talked about. It's gotten up to a point where they're doing okay.
Dr. Weiss: 8:09
Well, the fact is, if you are not climbing, if you are not growing, then you're not going to survive. Because plateaus erode because of the lords of entropy. And consequently, you know, the only place you can coast, Brad, is downhill. Nobody coasts uphill. To continue to grow, you have to innovate. So 75% of my income comes from things that didn't exist three years ago. At my stage, you know I have a global audience. You have to keep innovating.
Dr. Cooper: 8:39
I'm writing that down. The only place you can coast is downhill. That is perfect, my friend. That is fantastic. All right, so the plateau's erode. Do you have a strategy that you go in and you say okay once a year, I sit down and go through this and then quarterly I review to see how much is coming from new business. How much is coming from old business? Do you have a process for that? Is is more by gut, based on you've been doing this for a while?
Dr. Weiss: 9:00
No you can't have a process, it's the wrong way to do it. I'm a very spiritual person. I'm not talking about religion. I happen to be a religious person, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about being in touch with the world around you. And you have to, you know, look out the window. You have to look around when you're in office. You have to look around and say, what is there here that I can learn from and create something from that would be a value to others? I'm working with a woman right now who is a superb clinician. And I'm helping her write a book, and she believes the great leaders are both courageous and curious. You have to be, curious to be a great leader. And I think that people have to be curious in general. And when you are, you can invent things, you can innovate, you can create. If you put yourself on a schedule you'll never do it, you don't sit down and say, well, let me create something at four o'clock. So you have to look around. I was thinking of lobsters one day, and I realized that nobody knows how big and how old lobsters can be. Nobody knows. I mean, they've caught 80 pound lobsters. They estimated it was 100 years old, and what happens is a lobster has an exoskeleton, so it molts, and it grows a new skeleton on the outside. But when it molts it's very vulnerable, you know when it has a shell, you need a shark to give it a hard time. But when it molts it finds someplace to hide. And the bigger it is, the harder it is to hide. But I call it the lobster principle, and that is, if you want to grow, you have to be vulnerable, and you have to allow others to approach you and to give you feedback and so forth and accept it if you request it. So I coined the term the lobster principle and I talk about that. That's intellectual property, and that's how you create things.
Dr. Cooper: 10:36
So valuable. All right, so a big component of that, in that picture is the fear piece. So the lobster needs to hide, it's very vulnerable, etc, etc. How do you help that person breakthrough? Fear is such a driver in people's lives, unfortunately, and frankly, that's a lot of what coaches do is help people get through that in their personal lives. Any things you can help us with in terms of battling that fear professionally.
Dr. Weiss: 11:01
Well my next book comes out in about two or three weeks, that's called Fearless Leadership.
Dr. Cooper: 11:04
There we go.
Dr. Weiss: 11:05
I wrote it just about that topic, I think that is my 64th book or something. And, I agree with you. I mean people's self esteem is damaged many times, and their self esteem is damaged because they're fearful. And what you have to do is face your fears. For example, if you're thinking of something that's bothering you, this causing you fear, you have to understand it's just an image. That image can't do anything. You have to get rid of the image. You also have to say to yourself, nobody's shooting at me, you know. My father was in the first paratroop regiment ever formed. He was a volunteer. He jumped into the jungles of New Guinea against Japanese guns. Most of his unit was wiped out. You know, my father died at 99 years and 11 months about three years ago in his bed. We're not walking into guns. Nobody is shooting at us. You can't go into a buyer's office and come out with less money than you walked in. So we need perspective, and most of our fears are irrational fears.
Dr. Cooper: 11:56
Very good. All right. Let's flip to the person that's experienced. They've been doing this for a while. What are some of the common blind spots for the person that says, yeah, I got this dialed in. Yeah, I'm listening to podcasts with Alan Weiss, but frankly, I've got things figured out. What are some of the blind spots you see with those folks? Because I know you run into them all the time.
Dr. Weiss: 12:15
Yeah, well, please keep them away from me. Look, the first thing is this. When people hear a new idea, the people who are most successful are those who say this is a new idea, how do I make it work for me? The people who are least successful say, let me knock this down and let me show why this isn't true. Because I'm insecure. The second thing is you've got to be willing to fail. Nobody's got it all worked out. I fail all the time. You know, if you're not failing, you're not trying. So you know, Edison failed. All the great inventors have failed, and you have to fail in order to succeed. If you say you've never failed, either you failed and don't know it, or you've never tried anything worthwhile or you're lying. So you have to get rid of this fear of failure, which is one of the fears that's the worst, actually. The final thing is I'll give you three definitions. Confidence is the honest to God belief that you could help other people. Arrogance is the honest to God belief you have nothing left to learn yourself. And smugness is arrogance without the talent. So, you know, place yourself. Where are you on that scale?
Dr. Cooper: 13:17
Good, good. Can we personalize it just a little bit here? Maybe it will give some perspective to folks, maybe a failure that you've been through that kind of hit you from the blind spot somewhere and would help us bring this into more of a personalized perspective on things?
Dr. Weiss: 13:35
Here's one that come to top of mind. I have this global community, you know, a vast global community. I travel the world. People come to hear me wherever I go. My books are in 15 languages. So about five years ago, I thought I would launch the Alan Weiss' global network. Which means that people's consultants would come together and help each other internationally and participate and collaborate in business. So somebody's working with a multinational in Germany, which is also in, let's say, Greece or Mexico or the United States or Japan. Consultants would come together, work in those separate places and be much more powerful. And I thought that would be great. And so, you know, we've got about 24 consultants around the world who were willing to get in on this. I got them talking and, you know, over the next two years, exactly one thing happened. So, I learned my lesson. I mean, it sounded great on paper. So many things do, but it doesn't work in fact. So I just brushed it off and I said, okay. Lesson learned. Let me move on to something else. I propose workshops all the time, and, some of them are fantastically successful. And some of them, you know, two people signed up for and I cancel it. Okay, lesson learned.
Dr. Cooper: 14:44
So how do you know when to pull the plug? Because I think a lot of folks are listening saying, you know, they're just out of the gate. They've been trying a few things. It's not working, but they're like. No, I've gotta stick with that. I've got to make this happen. When do they say, alright, I need to redirect what I'm doing here.
Dr. Weiss: 15:00
Well, look, here's the deal. You know, once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. So if you find that consistently, buyers are not returning a call or they're not accepting a proposal or they're trying to get some unfavorable deal from you, it's not them. It's you. If it happens once, that's fine. Twice, okay, But if it happens consistently, the only commonality is you. And so when you hear four out of five buyers say I'm not interested or 4 out of 5 people don't return your call, you are doing something wrong. A lot of people come to me and say, Alan. I'm doing exactly what you told me, and I say, yeah, but you're not doing it well enough. So, I know my methods work. I've got people making seven figures all over the world, people making high six figures, people who have achieved the life they never thought they'd have. I know it works. So the issue is you have to be careful that the common denominator here is not you.
Dr. Cooper: 15:56
All right, let's talk about one of your books that changed my life in a lot of ways. I read the original edition of your book, $1,000,000 Consulting, published back in '92. I've probably recommended it to, I don't know, hundreds of people. The big concept that popped for me is, and you mentioned it right at the beginning of the interview today, is you charge for outcome rather than the hours. So that way you're not limited by your time. You're not limited by your hourly rate. Can you expand on that? Because I think that's very, very, very applicable to the folks listening to this.
Dr. Weiss: 16:24
Well, I pioneered value based fees for consultants, you know, in the '90s, and the fact is, besides limiting your time and your income, it's unethical. Because if I am only paid more the longer, I spend there, but the client is served best by a quick resolution, we're basically at odds. And I should be a partner with my buyer, not antithetical to his or her purposes. If I solve a great problem in 10 minutes, I should be paid a fortune. So we have to wean ourselves away from the stupid idea that our presence is important. And what I advise people is you have to get a conceptual agreement on objectives, which are the outcomes to be achieved. If you're coaching, it's behavioral outcomes, right? I want to get better evaluations. I wanna be better with the media I want to run meetings better, whatever it is but there are objectives, behavioral objectives. The second are metrics. How do I gauge and measure my progress to make sure I'm improving? And then the third is value. What's the impact? What's the importance of meeting those objectives? Objectives, measures value. And if you do that and it's in all my books, you'll be able to arrive at a fee that's about, you know, a ten to one or better return, and suddenly your fee becomes academic because the value is so high, but if we don't provide sufficient value, no fee is cheap enough.
Dr. Cooper: 17:39
And any tips, and obviously this will be area specific. But any tips on putting that fee together? That rate, and again rates the wrong word based on what we just talked about, but any suggestions on how to create that starting point of what they're gonna bill for that.
Dr. Weiss: 17:57
Yeah, well, what you want to do is for every objective, you wanna have a least three value statements. So if you have four objectives, you'll have 12 value statements, and half of those are to be monetized. What's this worth? How much will this save you? How much will it generate? And if your fee is at least a 10 to 1 return and in most consulting firms, 2.5 or 3 to 1 is a good return. You can have a great proposal. Now A, you have to be talking to a buyer, not somebody else. Never human resources, ever. And two you have to give the buyer options because you want to move this from should I do this? to how should I do it? So I advise you always have three options, each one higher in value and see what the buyer wants to do.
Dr. Cooper: 18:38
Very good, very good. Alright, last week you tweeted out this quote, cancel a business meeting before you go into it with poor health or under stress, you can make up a cancellation, but not a poor performance. As I've been reading your tweets, this is just one random sample of a whole bunch that you did on personal well being. Why is health and wellness so important for top performers?
Dr. Weiss: 19:01
You know, I just came from working out this morning. I work out three times a week with a professional trainer. If I don't have a professional trainer, I cheat. I hate working out. I mean, it's hard work, I hate it, but I need to do it. I'm in great shape. And if you're in great shape, health wise, you perform better. Once you're not in great shape, health wise. And I mean physical health, emotional health, psychological health. You have to be in great shape, health wise, to do a great job. So I think it's highly important. I'm not a big, you know, I don't believe in all these food crazes and everything. I mean, never put Kale in front of me or I'll burn down the restaurant. But the fact is, you have to eat healthy., you have to be healthy, and you have to exhibit health. And I think it's extraordinarily important that the three things that undermined the success in this business, are love, having a support system and loving relationships. Second, being healthy. And thirdly, having financial security. And I don't mean having, you know, a bank full of money. I do mean that you've got enough in the bank to support you for the next several months, just in case nothing happens. You know, a rainy day fund. So those are all intrinsically tied together. And it's very important not to show up frazzled or distracted or, you know, obviously in poor shape. And not only health, you should present yourself well. You should know how to dress. You should know how to groom and so on.
Dr. Cooper: 20:29
Talk about the love peace there. I just jotted that down as you said, the three key things are, love, healthy performance etc, and then financial security. I think the third one makes sense, but talk us through the first one.
Dr. Weiss: 20:39
Well, we all need intimacy. We need a support system. You need somebody who says to you, look what happened was a buyer did not buy from you today at that time in that place, it doesn't mean you're a lousy marketer. Don't generalize the negative. Here's what you should think about tomorrow. You need somebody to support you when things don't go right. You also need somebody who can rejoice in your victories, and not just say oh you got lucky with that sale. You need someone who says, that's great. You're such a fabulous resource for people. You did a great job. Now that could be a partner, it could be a wife or a spouse, a partner of some kind. It could be a colleague. It could be family members. I have a huge support community around the world where people can come to Alan's corner. But we all need that kind of support system. And I find that, I don't understand how people can get through life without loving, intimate relationships. Life is too strange. We need them.
Dr. Cooper: 21:31
Very good. Alright, let's flip the mirror just a little bit here. What's an area for your own growth? You talked about a personal trainer, you don't like Kale etc, etc. But what's an area right now in your own health and wellness, that as you look forward to the next year, you would like to shift it a little bit? You'd like to take a new direction.
Dr. Weiss: 21:48
My health and wellness are really good. I mean, I want to maintain what I'm doing. I don't need to innovate what I do. In other words, it would be dysfunctional for me to work out four or five times a week. I don't need it. And my muscles need some relaxation. It would be dysfunctional for me to go on some strange diet. I eat well and healthy, and I moderate my weight. I make sure that my weight stays within a certain range. I think the important thing for me is that I have about 10 or 12 hobbies I'm engaged in, my interests, and I probably over the next year, you know, would look to add another one or two because I find that they really increase my mental acumen. My physical involvement with them, is interesting. And it keeps me sharp. You know, I build models, and so I need dexterity in my hands. I have a huge model train layout, and so I need to figure out and then repair, you know, the various electrical problems and power problems and crashes I have. So that's how I look at life. And, I think that the issue is, if you look at, you know, a healthy regimen, there's no such thing as exceeding it because that becomes dysfunctional. What you need is a healthy arrangement. But, you know, gosh, 75 80% of the population, your listeners would know this better than I, are probably not at a healthy regimen.
Dr. Cooper: 23:04
Sure. Hobbies. 12 hobbies, you're looking at a new one. That fits really nicely into something we call the F5, the fields of play, the things that we're choosing to step onto the field. Can you talk a little bit about how those hobbies improve your professional pursuits? What positive impact do those things, because you do so many things professionally. And yet you just told us you have 12 and frankly you're looking at a 13th next year.
Dr. Weiss: 23:26
You have to be an object of interest to others, which means you need to be able to talk to people in a wide variety of subjects. You know, my wife says to me, look, she says, the amazing thing about you is you could talk to anybody about anything. Now I can't talk to nuclear physicists about nuclear physics. But I can talk to nuclear physicist about what it's like to be a scientist, and the need to manage or not manage or be a sole contributor and so forth. So you need to be an object of interest, and you get that way by having a wide interest. So I travel, my wife and I love to travel. We've been to Malta and Dubrovnik and Hanoi and Dubai this year. We're going to Australia in March and so we can talk to people on a global view. I collect stamps, I have for 50 years, I have a very advanced collection. And so stamps represent historical insight, if you don't just put pieces of paper in an album, you learn from that. Trying to create a model railroad forces you to understand that life's imperfect. And when Amtrak has a problem, you can understand why they do, because railroads are rather complex things and a lot of stuff can interfere with them. I build these models that teaches me about military history, you know and it teaches me about patience and I build models better today than I ever did before even though I'm older than when I started. So all of these things enable me to understand life better and to talk to a wide variety of people about this.
Dr. Cooper: 24:44
Very good. All right, last question. Any final words of wisdom you'd like to share with folks that are trying to grow their coaching and or consulting businesses? Just wide open, take it any direction you'd like.
Dr. Weiss: 24:55
You know, I would say two things. The first is be bold. You have to have courage. And no one wants to hire a timid or a humble consultant. Humility is really not about demeaning yourself. Humility is about elevating others, and we tend to confuse humility. And so being overly modest doesn't help. You know, no one ever said, get me a humble doctor. They want a doctor who thinks that he or she is God and can save you. They want a lawyer who is gonna win in court, not somebody who says, well, you know, I'm really not the best lawyer. You have to be bold in this profession. The second thing is, you need to work smart, not hard. Please stop telling me you're working hard. That's a bad symbol. So it's really a harbinger of problems. You need to work smart. If you work smart, you could reduce your labor. And here's the final thing I'd like to leave it with. Wealth is not money. Wealth is discretionary time, and you have to focus on being able to do what you want, when you want, where you want and then you're wealthy. But the harder you work, you might make more money, but you erode your real wealth.
Dr. Cooper: 26:00
Love it, love it. Let's briefly come back to the working smart, not hard. That's a phrase that's gotten a lot of play the last couple of decades. You hear that a lot. But what does it mean, like, what do we do with that? What is the person listening, who says yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I've been working, I've been grinding. I've been putting in the hours. I'm not getting the results. How do they shift that a little bit?
Dr. Weiss: 26:20
Let me give you a hard and fast example. You know, a lot of people listening to this do work with a client, some of which could be done by the client. And so I advise people all the time, think of the work you're doing that can be done by the client. Whether it's creating a report or facilitating a group or making notes during meetings or whatever it happens to be, collating things. Make sure you're not doing things that other people could be doing instead. And the second thing, the second hard example I'll give you is stay away from failure work. You know, perfection kills excellence. So stop rewriting things. Stop rethinking things before you say them. Stop having that fear. And failure work means you don't do something right the first time so you have to do a second or third time. Or worse, the client doesn't do it right, and you do it for the client. If the client fails, at something, tell the client to do it again. Don't do it yourself. Those are examples of working smart and not hard.
Dr. Cooper: 27:13
Fantastic, Alan, really appreciate it. How can folks keep up with you? What's the best way? Is it twitter? Is it your website? A combination?
Dr. Weiss: 27:19
Yeah, I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook, but my website is AlanWeiss.com. There are hundreds, hundreds, thousands maybe of free videos and audio and text. All free resources. I also put out five columns a month, a video a month, a podcast every week, and Monday morning memo every week, and you can sign up for all of those free on my site.
Dr. Cooper: 27:41
Fantastic. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Weiss: 27:43
Brad, I appreciate it too, have a good day.
Dr. Cooper: 27:55
The only time you can coast is when you're going downhill. Oh, wow. I love that, I have a feeling we'll all remember that one. Outstanding insights from Dr Weiss, really appreciate him joining us. Now you understand why I recommend his book to so many people. Again, it's called the $1,000,000 Consultant. You can access all of his books on his website, as he mentioned there at the end. On the topic of the business of coaching, that actually is one of the options available that you can pursue at the Rocky Mountain Coaching Retreat and Symposium, which is coming up September 18 to the 20th in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado. If you haven't registered yet, can find all the details pricing, etc. CatalystCoachingInstitute.com under the retreat tab, such an incredible weekend. You get to spend time with coaches from around the globe in one of the most beautiful and, frankly affordable, which is why we picked it, places on Earth. And the schedule, it's not just about learning. It's a chance to rest and recapture that spark. That thing that brought us into coaching in the first place. Feel free to reach out to us if you want to talk it through. Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Now let's go get better one step, one day, one purposeful decision at a time as we look to improve our own lives, but more importantly, the lives of those around us. Thanks for joining us. This is Dr Bradford Cooper signing off. Make it a great rest of your day and I'll speak with you soon on the next episode of The Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast.