coaching Archives

The True Value of Entrepreneurial Competitions

Winning is often celebrated as the ultimate success, but it’s essential to understand that it doesn’t predict long-term success in business.

As the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Rhodes College we run competitions to bring together our community to launch new ventures, but often we can lose sight of the true value of the work in the context of competition so I wrote this article to be shared with the campus community there, but it offers important lessons on business and competition generally so I wanted to post it here as well.

Entrepreneurial competitions, like an elevator pitch or venture challenge, are not just contests but milestones in a much larger journey.

Winning is often celebrated as the ultimate success, but it’s essential to understand that it doesn’t predict long-term success in business. Conversely, not winning isn’t a forecast of failure. Many businesses that launch come from individuals who will not clinch a prize.

Competition prizes are limited, but your potential is not.

You are limitless!

The purpose of these events extends beyond the immediate excitement. They are not merely contests, but collective endeavors to advance a multitude of ideas. We leverage these opportunities to help as many people as possible to refine their business ideas, articulate their visions, and network with like-minded individuals and mentors. It’s about creating a rally point where resources, feedback, and energy converge to propel everyone forward together – winning is independent of this and the least important outcome of the competition.

Competitions are objective platforms for growth and learning.

They serve as a practical exercise in the real-world dynamics of business pitching and development, offering a safe environment to experiment, learn, and evolve. Winning or not winning, every participant gains valuable insights into their entrepreneurial capabilities and the potential of their ideas.

We see these events as catalysts, not just for individual projects, but for fostering a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. They are about moving together, leveraging our collective strengths, and helping as many ideas as possible to advance and mature.

Remember, the journey of entrepreneurship is not linear.

It’s a path of constant learning, adapting, and persisting. Whether you’re in the spotlight of victory or not, what truly matters is the resilience to continue, the insights gained, the friends and advisors found, and the relentless pursuit of improvement.

Embrace these competitions as opportunities to rally together, support one another, and drive forward the spirit of innovation.

Why losing a business competition competition is good for your startup. https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/winners-curse-why-losing-a-b-school-biz-plan-competition-may-be-good-for-your-startup/

Booking Your First Coaching Session: Big Step in Transformation

Booking your coaching session starts a BIG journey of personal and professional transformation and signals that you not only possess the determination, but also are willing to invest in right the mentorship for change. Scheduling your initial coaching session is far from a mere formality; this meeting is the key to unlocking your potential. Let’s explore why this session is pivotal and how it can leverage it to catalyze growth in every facet of your life.

The Crucial First Coaching Session

The initial coaching session is more than an introduction—it’s the foundation of your transformation journey. Here’s why booking your coaching session is so vital:

Assess Compatibility: It’s your chance to see if the coach’s style and expertise match your needs.
Clarify Objectives: Together, you’ll pinpoint your goals, ensuring you and your coach are aligned from the start.
Strategic Planning: You’ll start to outline a plan tailored to your unique challenges, setting the path toward your objectives.
Trust Building: Establishing trust and rapport early on is essential for a fruitful coaching relationship.

Preparing for Your First Coaching Session

Now that you have booked your first coaching session it is time to make the most of this opportunity with preparation. Here are some strategies:

Goal Reflection: Clearly define your short-term and long-term goals. Specificity is your ally.
Challenge Identification: List your current challenges or areas where you feel stuck to give your coach a clear starting point.
Open Mindset: Come ready to explore and engage. The more open you are, the more you’ll gain.
Question Preparation: Arm yourself with questions about their coaching approach, experiences, and success stories.

Booking your first coaching session is the key to success

The Benefits of Booking a Coaching Session

Taking the step to schedule your first session can unlock numerous advantages:

Tailored Advice: Receive guidance specifically designed for your situation and goals.
Self-Awareness Boost: Uncover your strengths and areas for improvement, paving the way for targeted growth.
Actionable Plan: Leave with a clear strategy to propel you towards your objectives.
Motivation Surge: Begin your journey motivated and accountable, thanks to your coaching partnership.

Conclusion

Booking your initial coaching session is a significant leap toward achieving your personal and professional aspirations. It’s an investment in your future, promising personalized insights, strategic direction, and the support necessary for reaching your goals. By actively preparing for and participating in this session, you’re laying the groundwork for a transformative experience that can lead to remarkable success and growth.

Relevant Links:

Forbes – How To Build Trust With Your Coach

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/05/08/how-to-build-trust-with-your-coach/

MindTools – Setting Personal Goals

https://www.mindtools.com/page6.html

Trust in Coaching Relationships

Trust in coaching relationships is the most important element of transformation. It’s the conduit through which insights flow between the coach to the client, growth is nurtured, and a big transformation is realized. Trust facilitates effective coaching engagements and enables transformative outcomes.

Understanding Trust in Coaching

Trust in coaching goes way beyond mere confidence in a coach’s capabilities and knowledge; it encompasses a belief in the coaches intentions, confidentiality, and the process the coach uses. The client needs to not only feel safe, but also be safe to share vulnerabilities, challenges, and aspirations without fear of judgment. This foundation allows the coaching relationship to flourish, enabling open, honest dialogue and the exploration of deep-seated beliefs and behaviors that could be holding the client back.

Building Trust: The Coach’s Role

A coach’s ability to build and maintain trust is paramount. This involves:

Empathy and Active Listening: Demonstrating understanding and genuine care for the coaching client’s experiences and goals.
Consistency and Reliability: Being consistently present and dependable, meeting commitments, and following through on promises.
Confidentiality: Ensuring that all shared information remains private, reinforcing the safety of the coaching space.
Non-judgmental Support: Offering support without judgment, creating an environment where the coachee feels accepted and valued.

River of Trust in Coaching Relationships

The Impact of Trust in Coaching Relationship Outcomes

When trust is firmly established, the coaching relationship can lead to profound personal and professional transformations:

Openness and Honesty: Trust encourages coaching clients to share more openly, providing a fuller picture of their challenges and aspirations, which is crucial for effective coaching.
Deeper Insights: A trusted environment fosters self-reflection and the exploration of underlying beliefs, leading to more significant insights and breakthroughs.
Enhanced Commitment: Trust in the process and the coach increases the coachee’s commitment to taking bold steps and implementing changes.
Sustainable Growth: Trust facilitates a deeper, more impactful coaching experience, leading to sustainable personal and professional growth.

Nurturing Trust in Coaching Relationships

For those seeking coaching, finding a coach with whom you can build a trusting relationship is essential. Consider initial interactions as indicators of potential trustworthiness and pay attention to your instincts about the coach’s empathy, integrity, and professionalism.

Conclusion

Trust is not just a component of the coaching relationship; it is its very foundation of the coaching relationship that enables the open exchange of ideas, the vulnerability necessary for growth, and the courage to face challenges and be transformed. For coaches and coachees alike, investing in building and maintaining trust is the key to unlocking the full potential of the coaching journey, leading to lasting personal and professional transformation.

Relevant Links:

Harvard Business Review (HBR) – The Neuroscience of Trust

https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust

Famous Leaders Who Had Coaches

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/10/04/what-we-can-learn-from-five-famous-leaders-who-had-a-coach/

Maximizing Growth: Dual Impact of Seasoned Business Coaching

In the fast-paced realm of entrepreneurship, achieving peak personal and business growth transcends mere hard work. It demands the strategic insight and support of a seasoned business coach—a partnership that unlocks both personal and professional evolution.

The Essence of Business Coaching

At its core, business coaching is a bespoke journey, fostering personal and professional milestones through strategic guidance and accountability. This partnership is designed to navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and drive significant growth, blending innovative solutions with industry best practices for a holistic path to success.

Transformative Benefits of a Seasoned Business Coach

Strategic Decision-Making: Empowerment through critical evaluation tools, bolstering confidence and strategic acumen.
Boosted Productivity: Identification and elimination of bottlenecks, streamlining processes for operational excellence.
Personal Mastery: A deep dive into self-awareness, unlocking one’s full potential through personal growth.
Business Expansion: Goal-oriented strategies for scalable, competitive growth.
Leadership Excellence: Cultivation of leadership qualities, enhancing team dynamics and corporate culture.

Seasoned Business Coaching, an Abstract Visualization

Who Stands to Gain?

Business coaching is universally beneficial—tailored for entrepreneurs, startup visionaries, and corporate leaders alike, across all industries. It’s the catalyst for those aiming to scale heights, refine leadership prowess, or steer through transitions with precision.

Selecting Your Seasoned Business Coach

The impact of a business coach is profound, making the choice of coach pivotal. Consider:

Proven Success: A coach with a track record of success and relevant expertise.
Goal Alignment: A philosophy and approach that resonate with your objectives.
Relational Dynamics: Opt for a coach with whom you share a natural rapport and trust.

Conclusion

The path to personal and business growth is complex, demanding not just vision but strategic execution and a commitment to learning. Business coaching is a structured, empowering partnership that catalyzes your journey towards achieving ambitious goals. It’s a strategic move for those dedicated to transforming their personal capabilities and business ventures into remarkable successes. Get a seasoned business coach today to enhance your personal and professional life.

Relevant Links:

Forbes Coaches Council – Strategies for Scaling Your Business https://www.forbes.com/coaches-council/

Harvard Business Review (HBR) – The Value of Coaching

https://hbr.org/2009/01/what-can-coaches-do-for-you

International Coach Federation (ICF) – About Coaching

https://coachingfederation.org/about

Measuring the Wrong Things Right

You’ve heard the cliche in business meetings “If you can’t measure it, you cannot improve it.” It’s nice to sound smart in a business meeting, but be careful. It maybe time to be an anti-conformist with the cliche use. You can measure the wrong things right.

Be care to not measure the wrong things right.

3 Considerations in Measuring Things Right

Here are 3 considerations on measuring the wrong things right in your business and in life:

1) You can improve things without measurement. You can evaluate periodically and decide are things getting better. For instance you can evaluate whether or not you are becoming a better manager or coach. There aren’t a lot of object measures for improvement on these personal areas of development but by occasionally reflecting and evaluating you know you are getting better. No measurement needed. No wasted energy and resources. Evaluating is enough in some cases.

2) When you do end up measuring a thing, you might actually only be improving the measurement, and not actually be improving the underlying thing. So now you are wasting energy and resources focusing on the wrong thing and not making any real progress. We don’t want to get better a measuring.

3) You can end up measuring the wrong things right. In this case you start steering the business in the entirely wrong direction and make things far, far worse. This is a HUGE issue that is a silent killer of businesses.

Conformity creeps into everything and is the enemy of authentic and real leadership. We need the courage to think differently in our business meetings and not jump to cliche conclusions. Take a courageous path and not the well trodden pathway that has been portrayed as the road less traveled. Take the time to reflect and evaluate before you jump into measuring the wrong things right.

Grab some other new #personal and #professional #insights from me here: https://us17.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=d3a271ec25edc892d966d0973&id=3ffc1f5ae4

An Invitation

Deep down we all know that we can be more, much more.

There is a future picture of ourselves in each of us that is much bigger and more exciting than where we are now. But are we ready to take the courageous path to become that new version of ourselves?

“Wanting what you want” is not only about being free and living life based on great choices and new commitments, it is also about painting a much, much bigger picture for yourself and those you lead, while also getting on the right path that looks scary and full of unknowns.

Most of us are avoiding the courageous pathway to get us to that bigger future. What we are each missing is an invitation to become courageous — to become a new version of ourselves. Sadly, most will never get that invitation. But now I am extending that invitation to you. I’d like to invite you to take the remainder of this year to be much more so that you can swing through to a transformational 2023. I want you to be intellectually excited and emotionally committed to that new big future.

If you are reading this post, please know that I believe in you, perhaps more than you believe in yourself. As a result, I want you to dream of a bigger future for yourself and remember that in life you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve. You need to have courage to want what you want and at the same time eliminate lesser goals that are distracting you. I invite you to dream and take the right kind of risks that play to your distinctive strengths and discovery a bigger present.

Keep dreaming because when your future gets bigger, your present gets better.

When 10X Isn’t Enough

Most leaders understand the core elements of personal and professional achievement: write down goals, make a plan of action to achieve the goals, share the goals with a friend or coach, and have a weekly check-in with that friend or coach. This method has a 76% success rate. This is a great approach to living and growing. With a coach there to help you through these steps you could really see an appreciable difference over the course of a lifetime or even over the course of a couple of years in a specific realm of life. Some coaches go a bit further and go beyond obstacles to help address Beliefs and Inner Conflicts. These added realms of consideration could get you to a 10 X difference over a lifetime.

When I began thinking about what it would take to be a great coach I had a 10 X mindset. However, I wasn’t feeling great about it. Reflecting on my readings of the top coaches, top leaders, and how top athletes of the world operate and applying my learnings to my coaching practice, I sat unsatisfied. One night my brain kept me up, literally. I was chewing on this dissatisfaction. I was hitting back with advice I had already given to countless other people, particularly in the past 2 years of the pandemic: we are entitled to the limits we put on ourselves. That was the revelation I needed. 10 X growth seems like a lot and most leaders would be very satisfied with 10 X personal and professional growth. However 10 X isn’t extraordinary. We are in the age of unicorns and now have decacorns. We see multi-trillion dollar market caps in public companies built in our lifetimes. We have several multi-billionaires running multiple companies. Three of these went to space on their own rocket ships in 2021. Maybe we are leaving some life on the table with 10 X thinking.

It is not just about the money and fame. A life can be unlived in many ways. However, navigating blindly and with self-imposed limits – in a world where technology, knowledge access, and more allow us to experience and accomplish way more than prior generations – is flat out very hard. If you are reading this you have come face-to-face with yourself and your own life and even the truth that you may be “leaving life on the table.” We now understand that there is much more we can do than even our childhood selves could have imagined. There are way more people that we can help and impact. There is a bigger legacy or institution that we can leave behind. There is a daunting personal pursuit that we are avoiding.

An order of magnitude difference would have been fine, but now you know there is something else. Deep down you know there is a more courageous path that you are avoiding or have yet to discover. For those that understand this, 10 X mindsets just will not cut it.

You Can’t Give Something You Don’t Have

It’s hard to learn how to live and lead [a great life] while you are living, let alone consider leaving a legacy.

You know deep down you can be more . . . We all feel that way. We want to be more so that we have more to give.

And we want to become more in many dimensions of life, because a life can be unlived in so many ways.

What we are each missing is an invitation to take a courageous path.

And sadly most will never get that invitation.

I’m extending that invitation to you. Build your life, leadership, and legacy, because you can’t give something you don’t have.

Reach out to me anytime to learn more. If you have gotten this far, let’s talk for 30 minutes about life, leadership, and legacy. Let’s talk about your future and how coaching gets you there faster and how it is different than anything else you may have encountered.

How do we start a coaching relationship?

TL;DR: The first step in building a coaching-client relationship is scheduling up an introductory session of about an hour to learn more about each other, where you want to go, and how I can help. This introductory session doesn’t cost anything — you and I both co-invest our time and see where that takes us. At the same time, I can send a couple of digestible emails to give a little more background on my coaching . After this I can introduce the client to references if needed. You can set up a this introductory call to learn more here. Or if you are ready to dive in we can schedule up our first 1 hour coaching call by emailing me at eric@ericmathews.com.

More Background on Building Our Coaching Relationship

I like to crawl before I walk and walk before I run. I think it is incredibly important to be vulnerable and build trust for our relationship to work and for you to get the quantum leap level results desired. Building that relationship doesn’t come easy and sometimes it won’t arrive at all. And that’s ok. But we’ll want to figure that out quickly through structured “dating” and figuring out if our relationship will empower each other. I will see how self aware you are. You’ll see if I am self aware, too. We’ll make sure I know your strengths and weaknesses and you know mine. We will find our blind spots.

Some things we’ll want to cover and consider and even try out during the relationship building process:

What do you want to get out of coaching?
Can we see each other in a variety of contexts and enjoy each other’s company?
Are we adding energy to each other’s lives when we are together?
What are the quantum leaps and the big ideas?
Do we complement each other?
Are you coachable and am I the right coach?

Overall the right fit for those I work with looks like:

Willingness to dive deep and view all angles and aspects as contributing or holding us back from very big wins
Honesty
Humility
Grit and Perseverance
Willingness to go to the “gym” (all of the gyms) and do the hard work
Curiosity and openness to learn
Realizing the journey is the reward . . . to celebrate success and lift each other in defeat.

My job is to make you better and enable you to serve your team better through enhanced self awareness and quantum leaps of goals and action noting that we all must be a servant to something bigger than ourselves.

While I seek anti-bullshitters who work to end dishonesty with others and dishonesty with themselves, I am not without sensitivity to imposter syndrome and other fears that can hold us back. Our prior history shapes the present. We’ll sort it all out together.

Schedule you up a free 30 minute zoom call to learn more directly with me by clicking here.

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Tag: coaching

The True Value of Entrepreneurial Competitions