Breaking Performance Barriers: The Science Behind Why Coaching Works

Foreign Wadell and welcome to the Big Hitter podcast. Let's talk about why should you pay for coaching when there's so much free information out there? Well, you know, the world is divided out there into the high achievers. It's two groups and it's the group. You have one group that are paying for coaching, getting coaching, and they understand. Then you have the other people on the outside and they don't understand, they don't do it, they don't feel it's for me. And it's a fair question. And what we want to talk about here is why you should pay when there is so much free information of what is exactly, what do you exactly get and what do they exactly get? And so let's dive in. Why is it that every great athlete is still paying for coaching? Why? Why are there so many coaches running up and down the sidelines at every position? Think that some of the greatest teams seem to have the most coaches. They make coaches for nutrition, not only defensive and, you know, line coaches, defensive back coaches in football, but they've got the nutrition coaches, they've got the mental coaches, they've got all kind of coaches. So speed coaching, they don't have coaching for speed. And so why do CEOs running billion dollar companies still hire coaches? Don't they have, I mean, aren't they hired for their expertise? How are they supposed to know? Aren't they supposed to be trained? Well, here's why. Because nobody, and I mean nobody, can see their own blind spots. It's like you can get by. You could give yourself your own haircut, but you know, it's just not the same as when you have a pro doing it. You know, it's like hard to give yourself a great massage. You just can't get the angles. You don't have the, you know, the strength, you don't have the experience and things like that. You can do it, but it's not the same. The truth is people need coaches for one reason. You can't see what you can't see. You don't know what you don't know. And a coach will give you three things you can't give for yourself. Experience that you don't have yet. Perspective that you can't see yet. And you know where the perspective is. You know, the forest for the trees. When you're in the middle of forest, all you can see is trees. You can't see the forest. You don't have. It's not because you're an idiot, not because you don't have the ability. It's because you do not have the perspective. And so accountability, you can't enforce on yourself. Not everybody can. Not everybody's a genius at holding their own feet to the fire. And so most people perform better when they've got someone looking over their shoulder. I remember when I went into one of the times out in Greensboro, North Carolina. I got at a new gym, and it was one of these heavyweight. Lots of big guys in there. They had free weights and they had the rough old customer behind the desk. And I remember when I would walk in, he had one thing that he would say and I kept because I knew he was going to ask when I walk in the door, I watched everything I ate because I knew when I walked in the door, all he was going to say to me is, did you eat right? Did you eat? Did you eat right? Did you eat right? And, you know, he didn't say how many calories this, that, and the other. It was just like he was holding me accountable to make sure I ate right. Because those macronutrients are as important to you getting in shape as doing the workout. So when you're left alone, the common tendency is you drift. It's not because you're procrastinate, hesitate, and it's not because you don't have the ability. It's because it's easy to get sidetracked. And what happens is you go through your life making the same mistakes over and over and over and occur. Coach interrupts that cycle. A coach is an anchor, forces clarity, direction, momentum. And so you have the investment. Why pay for it? Well, free advice rarely moves people. That's what your relatives are for, free advice. That's what your friends are for, free advice. But free advice rarely moves the needle dramatically. Now, occasionally you can hear something. Grandmother said something to me, and all of a sudden I got ser. You know, I was, you know, I was drinking too much, and my child came up to me and said something to me, and all of a sudden I got serious about it. But, you know, rarely is that going to happen on a consistent basis. You know, that's just kind of a random. You win the lottery, you hear the right thing at the right time, and you make changes. But what a good coach will really give you is more value than the money you spend because they shorten your learning curve. They save you from years of trial and error. They help you hit your goals and faster. Because, you know, trial and error is the greatest teacher. It's the greatest. There's no question. But it doesn't have to be all your trial and error. And it's an expensive way to learn. You know, you don't want to learn how to become a brain surgeon with trial and error. There's going to be a lot of dead bodies along the highway to you becoming an expert. And so why not learn from the trial and errors of others? Why make all these mistakes yourself? That's what coaching is. You're not buying talk, you're buying speed, you're buying clarity, you're buying confidence, you're buying results. And think about it this way, as a reality check. Athletes still at the top of their game, they pay for coaches all high. Not all high achievers, but pretty much most high achievers. Even the CEOs of billion dollar companies still pay for coaches. Because if you're growing, if you're improving in life, you're moving up to levels where you're dealing with things you've never had to deal with before. And thanks to that great way life is structured, even if you're in the same business doing the same thing, your conditions change, the economy changes, your core group of people around you change. Your products are not necessarily as popular as they were last year. Sometimes you gotta come up with a new product mix. And so sometimes you have more challenged from your competition. Things change. Life is changing all the darn time. We're on a spinning globe, folks. And so that's why even if you're a CEO, even if you've, you know, you're the top of your world, you know, even if you're president of the United States, there's a reason presidents of the United States will go around and try and get opinions from constantly. That's what they're doing. You know, they call. You know, that's why they have these phone calls with each other where with other leaders around the world, they're getting insights so they can stay at the top of their game because they're facing challenges they never had to deal with before. So, you know, you're not exempt just because you're some super duper success. You're a gold medal winner, you're a top golfer in the, you know, for the fifth year in a row, you're Scotty Scheffler. You know, in golf, you're, you know, the top tennis players. You know, it's like everybody's got coaches. Sooner or later you can climb the ladder. But even Tiger woods had coaches. And so the reason is nobody outgrows a need for guidance, feedback and accountability. So the real question is not why pay for coaching? The real question is how much longer do you want to pay the price of not having it? How long do you want to go alone? So how much? It's a matter of how much time you've got to waste. And so here's five situations where coaching gives you a big return on your investment. Let's just say business growth. You're an entrepreneur, you're running a business. You got stuck working in the business instead of on the business. You're hustling, but you've hit a plateau because there's not enough areas that you're improving in. And what a coach. You can bring in a coach and they'll help you design system, sharpen your strategy, keep you accountable for execution. They can quiz you on what, how you're spending your time, who your key people are doing how, if they're performing up to your standards and are your key areas of your business performing up to the way you want? Or have you settled into a thing where you're just putting up with it? And so a lot of times you don't realize it because it happens over a period of time. And a coach, an outside voice, outside eyes, forest for the trees. Again, if you get outside the forest, you can see the forest. And if you bring somebody who's outside of your company, they can see things that, especially if they work with a lot of different companies, you know, these things fall into patterns. And so if you, in a business situation, you got a plateau, you want to keep moving, a coach could make a difference. And actually, all through industries, coaches make a difference. And if you're getting beat, your competitors are climbing the ladder and chasing you down. And you wonder, where are they getting this energy? Chances are they've got access to some coaching, some input, and they're getting some fresh ideas that if you had your hands on, you could do the same thing. And so instead of wandering in circles for years, you can get, there is no secret. This, that and the other, millions of secrets, but there's no one secret. But there are straight lines to the top, and they get you out of wandering in circles. And you can find where's the straight line? Where's the direct line? How can I get out of this thing? To profits, straight lines to growth, straight lines to more freedom. And so anyway, in golf, you could, let's just say in golf you could keep. You could have a little glitch in your fundamentals for years. And a coach can, the right coach can fix your fundamentals in minutes. Now, that doesn't mean you can't do well. But, you know, like gary player, he's 90 something years old now, and he's a phenomenal human being and in phenomenal shape. But he said, you know, it wasn't until he's 70, he said there was one thing I learned about keeping my elbow and my right arm on my backswing, keeping it engaged with my core, that I did not learn until I was 70 years old that took all the variable out of swinging through. And he said if I had known that, he said, I could have won twice as many majors. He won, I think seven or seven majors or so in the regular tour and about another seven majors on the senior tour. So he's won a lot of tournaments. But he said he was kicking himself. He said, if I could have found a coach, you could have showed that to me while I was playing. He said, man, I could have won an incredible amount of tournaments. So, you know, the deal is, how can you get the most for what you're doing? And so let's talk about your career. You feel restless, stuck, baby, burned out. You know there's more for you. You can't see the movement you need to make clearly. And so a coach can help you decide faster. They can help you get out of the burned out mode that you're stuck in, help you free yourself up from things you feel obligated to do. And all you need is another perspective. And you say, that's ridiculous. Why did I let myself get hung up on that? And so a coach will help you strip away the weak goals, help you decide faster, force you to face your doubts, push you forward for opportunities that actually matter, that you can even get more excited about. As a result, you're gonna perform better on. The payoff is you don't waste five to 10 years drifting. You stop the drifting. You reposition, rebrand, relaunch into your next chapter, but this time with clarity and confidence, giving it everything. It's like swinging at the ball. And there's no, you know, you're not hesitating anymore. You're going for it because you got your head clear. That's how a coach can make a difference in your career. And let's talk about your personal growth, your personal growth and your personal confidence. Maybe you've got patterns, thinking patterns that sabotage you, Things you hesitate on procrastination, things you've never been good at, you don't know how to get good at. And you wind up making excuses about it. And you started settling for those excuses and left alone you can rationalize your way into mediocrity and be miserable. The trouble with paying the price for greatness is that it's work, it's effort, but it's nothing like the price of mediocrity. The price of mediocrity is much worse for a winner than the price you pay to win and push yourself from the line of good to great. And so a coach can help you realize where that line is, where the lines are in your life that you need to make the changes and give you the clarity and the insight to make that, those kind of changes. So the payoff is you break old cycles, you don't choke. You finally build the habits of a winner. Clarity, discipline, finishing what you start step by step, because you've got it on your mind now. And so the other. Here's, here's another thing. Let's just say you're going into something important. Here's where a coach can help you. You're going for some kind of championship, some kind of promotion, some kind of breakthrough. Something big is on the agenda and you want to make this thing happen. Well, you're about. Maybe you're launching a new product, maybe you're leading your team to some kind of big breakthrough. The stakes are high, the pressure's on. And what a coach does is make sure. Helps you keep your perspective and make sure you don't choke. Helps you prepare like a pro. Help keeps your emotions under control and keep your emotions from derailing, you know, keep your mind on the prize, you know, your eye on the prize. And it helps you push all these outside distractions out of your way where you can keep your energy for yourself and your team focused on getting the job done. And so the result is that you will perform your best at a higher percentage of the time, you and your team, when it matters most. And so I won't tell you about a client, I won't name names, but they were launching their first major product. Six months of work on the line. They came to me because they kept second guessing everything. And we kept talking, you know, we spent several sessions talking about their presentation. We went through the question, you know, the checklist. And I wasn't telling them what was right and wrong. I was asking them, are you sure about this? Are you sure about that? And you know, where, if you were to have a doubt, if you think something, you know, this would fall apart, where do you think it would be? And you kind of work through that. And I know that a friend of mine went through this, this with Martina Navratilova when she had to face Steffi Graf. And it was a mental thing. Steffi Graf, you know, is a. Navratilova was in the end of her career, she's going for a seventh Wimbledon. And Stephie was the up and coming star, energetic and, you know, just had all the mojo going for winning everything. And Martina, you know, I'm out in Aspen now, and Martinez spent a lot of her life out in Aspen. And so she's in the community. So, you know, Martinez, she's worried. In fact, when you said all you had to do was say Steffi Graf to Martina and she would start to shake. And so they worked through all that, you know, they analyzed it and then by the end of the time of their coaching sessions, it was like, you know, Steffi Graff is like, so what? You know, you know, and then she had a different response to the name Steffi Graff. You know, the idea, the picture of Steffi Graff, the idea of getting in the, on the court at Wimbledon with Steffi Graff, because that's what it was. She was going to players and try and win her seventh Wimbledon against Steffi Graff. Well, she got her mind right and guess what she did. She went in and beat Steffi Graff at Wimbledon. Finished her career with a bang. Seven Wimbledons, but she had six Wimbledons under her belt. But she needed that kite, you know, that specific high tech coaching to help get her through that last hurdle. And so that's what coaching does for you in those kind of situations. And make sure you don't choke. Helps you prepare like a pro, keep your emotions from derailing. You know, if you've got the ability to do it, it allows you to do it. And then also the thing is, like, there's one thing about leadership when you, a coach shows you how to build, inspire and multiply your team. And a lot of leaders will be their own worst enem. They want to do too many things themselves. They don't know how to duplicate themselves. And it's a total. You know, it's one thing to run a company, it's another thing to build independent leaders who can run the company when you're not there. And allowing you to move up and think about other things and spend time about new projects, new expansions, things like that. And I always had the idea and my principle was when I was building companies that I would go at every position, I'd go, you know, start at the bottom because there's nobody else around. And as quick as I could I'd get seven to 10 people to do what I was doing. Whatever I was spending my time on, I'd get seven to 10 people who could do it incredibly well. Now, usually I try to get 20 or 30 trained, so I'd have seven to 10. That would be really good. And so then I could feel comfortable. I could move up to another level of supervising them and not have to ever go backwards, like, they're dropping the ball. Now I got to go back and start again, regroup. I never wanted to go backwards, so I would. My goal was seven to 10 people doing what I was doing so I could move up and, you know, and again, the rule of three, for everyone you want for sure, you better have two or three possibilities. So I'd go for try and change, trade, 20 or 30. So I'd have seven to 10 good ones. But somehow, somehow you've got to get that clear in your mind where you know how to tolerate people coming up, taking responsibility. They're not that great in the beginning. You know, it's like, you know, you're a concert pianist and you got a rookie just learning the piano, and they can't do a concert right now, but they can get started and they can get better, and they could start the road to where they could be doing concerts. And so that's a process. But learning how to do that is something that, you know is a skill set. And a coach can help you learn how to build, inspire, and multiply leaders. And the result is you stop being the bottleneck. You start building an organization that can win with you or even without you. And let's face it, you don't have a company until the company can run without you there. And so, you know, it's a key skill every leader's got to. Got to learn. So here's the bottom line. Coaching pays off when the cost of trial and error is higher than the cost of speed and certainty. You know, you're not buying talk. You're not buying friendship. You're not buying, you know, entertainment. You're buying speed, clarity, confidence, results. You're buying years of your life back. And so my challenge to you is what is important to you. How much longer are you willing to keep paying the price of not having the coaching and the insight you need? Because ideas don't. The great ideas at every level, the great idea, you're not going to make great decisions without great information and great ideas and these great ideas and this great information doesn't care who has it or who uses them. And so if you don't have that, you know, it's one of the things you pay for coaching to get those ideas clearly explained to. You might have heard the cliches and heard the words, but you don't really get it. And so when you get the coaching, you get a coach who can make you understand how that applies to your situation. And so hopefully, you're getting the idea of why people, at least a glimmer of an idea why people pay for coaching and why it's smart to pay for coaching. Because one idea, you know, we used to say in our business, or we still say in our business, you're one recruit away from an explosion, like in our local office or a local team, you know, you're one key new person coming in. And from an explosion, in a very sense. Sense, a very similar sense, you're one great idea, one great insight at all times away from an explosion. And so you keep looking for those wherever you can. But sometimes the coach is the one who can give you precisely the one that fits your situation. And so if this episode hit home for you, do me a favor, share it with somebody you think needs to hear it. We're building a community of people who refuse to settle for mediocrity. We're just. We're driven to win, and we want to win as fast as possible. And we know that winners are a certain breed of people. They don't, you know, they'll fight to be great, they'll fight to overcome, they'll fight to break out of a stall. And it's easier if you got a team. You know, Harvard has shown that people learn more from people going through the similar transitions as themselves as they do from gurus. Coaches are great, but you learn also a lot of key things from your peer group. And so this is a way of getting both things working for you. Before I had the community, I felt like I was on the edge of the Grand Canyon, speaking all the time. Like, you go into a keynote, you go to speak to 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, 50,000, and then it's like you never get much feedback. Am I having an impact? Or did these people understand, or did they have a question that I could have answered very quickly? And so maybe they stalled out. And the idea in all of this stuff is to have the biggest impact possible. Everybody speaking on a stage wants to have the biggest impact possible. Everybody leading a team wants to have the biggest success possible, because then more good things can happen to the people that are plugging into them. And so finally, the idea of the community came up when I interviewed Gina Bianchetti last year, November last year, and she was on Mighty Networks. And so I said, that's missing piece of puzzle for me. And so it's been my, my head is hurt all year long trying to get everything in place and get the wording down and things in place. But we got a community now. We got a community of winners and we're growing and we're looking forward to see what kind of bright, high energy people want to plug in and be a part of it. You're welcome to come anytime you want and give us a try. You never know what's out there until you. At least you don't have to be plugged into this podcast. But find a place. Find a place where you can get the missing pieces of the puzzle so you can move at warp speed towards success. Because, you know, the journey is great and everything, but it's actually better to start experience success. You know, it's great to fight for a Super bowl, but ask the Buffalo Bills, who've lost four, went to four and never won. It's much better to win a Super Bowl. So let's get you on track to having some of those big victories in your life as quickly as possible. And maybe a missing piece of the puzzle is coaching Sam.