Fly the friendly skies of Coaching.
by Jay Conrad Levinson

Every world champion has had a coach. Here's why the coaching industry growing so fast and how it can make you a champion, too.

Scared to fly these days? Taxing your patience with long lines at airport security? Pressed for time so that you can't attend seminars that can give you the information to add profits to your business? The solution to these problems is summarized in one word: coaching.

I make a presentation and watch as the audience takes careful notes, nods in agreement with what I say, then rises to its feet with applause. But deep in my heart, I know that only 5 percent of the people in the audience will actually take action based upon what they have learned.

These are bright people, motivated people, but the vast majority of them are just too busy or too overwhelmed by day-to-day business matters to implement the changes they know they must make. They have everything it takes to succeed except for one thing - follow-up.

It's that lack of follow-up that has led to the explosive growth of the coaching industry. And "explosive" might be an understatement. Fortune magazine agrees: "The hottest thing in management today is the executive coach." Newsweek magazine chimes in with their take on coaching: ""They're part therapist, part consultant--and they sure know how to succeed in business." The Harvard Business Review tells us, "The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization's valuable resources." Executive Female is even more specific: "Coaching is having a dedicated mentor; it's getting knowledgeable support and encouragement and a new way of looking at things when you need it."

Forget flying, taking the train or traveling. Forget going to someone else's office to energize your business. Instead, imagine closing the door to your office for 30 minutes and having your own private success coach right there. Or perhaps the perfect time is on your cellular phone during that tedious commute to and from work. In fact you can call from any state in the country.

What happens in a coaching session? Together you and your coach work together to create better, more effective goals and agree to reach those goals in a timely manner. A good coach encourages you and helps you to stay on track by helping you understand roadblocks to change and creating a solid support structure for you to stay motivated and proactive.

Success at marketing means you're part of a process and not merely engaging in an event. Have you ever attended an excellent training program, perhaps a full day or weekend seminar? The speaker is great, the information is valuable and you take eight pads full notes. You come back to your business and you're lucky if you implement even one idea. Why?

Consider this analogy from the world of sports. Let's say you decide you want to become a tennis player. You take a tennis lesson. No matter how great that tennis lesson is, you do not become an overnight tennis champion. It takes a process to create a tennis champion, and it takes a process to create a profitable company. Coaching is a process training experience designed to have a dramatic impact on your business.

The entire design of a any good coaching program is to get you to take action and then to stay with you to assure the proper follow-up. If a coach is nothing else, he's a master of implementation, and if he's a winning coach, he'll impart that mastery to you.

When I write a book, I know it has only two parts: starting it and completing it. When you opened your business, you had the same two parts. Coaching exists to help you with that second part. Coaching exists to provide the objectivity and extra energy that champions possess.

If you're interested in learning more, just check out the explosive growth of the coaching industry as a whole, and if you're interested in participating, now you can do it as a guerrilla and gear up to be a champion yourself.

To be one, now you don't even need a boarding pass.