Photo courtesy of PublicDomainPictures and Pixabay
Welcome to part 4 in the series of articles on the 7 steps to earning your living as a successful professional in any field. Over the past year I’ve been isolating the specific steps involved, and refining them. What’s resulted is a ‘roadmap’, and while the version of it I’ve created is aimed at coaches, therapists, trainers and consultants, with a little creativity, you’ll be able to see how these steps relate to anyone who wants to transition to doing work that involves you being a ‘trusted advisor’ to others (e.g. expert / speaker / professional services etc).
I’ll be going through the remaining steps over the next few weeks, but if you want to download my new guide, “The 7 Steps for Earning Your Living As a Successful Coach” and get all 7 of them right away, you can get the guide free here. As you read this concise guide, you’re going to discover that it’s simpler than you may have been led to believe. So let’s look at Step 4 – Relationship.
STEP 4 – RELATIONSHIP: Cultivate ‘trusted advisor’ relationships
As a successful professional (whatever your field), you’re in the ‘relationship business’, passionately serving your clients. A trusted advisor is someone who you absolutely know is acting in your best interests. When you have this depth of connection with your clients, it changes the game in terms of what you can do for them.
And here’s the thing: ANYONE who signs up to work with you as a client will be someone who’s already in relationship with you, even if it takes the form of following you on Instagram, reading your articles or having the occasional chat with you at your local cafe. People typically need to know you, like you and trust you before they’ll be willing to invest their time, money and confidence in you and your work. That’s why the ONLY place you ever find clients is in relationship with you.
The Myth vs The Reality of Step 4
It’s human nature to want people to like you, but the result of this for many people starting out is they seek approval and validation from their clients, which is no basis for a successful professional relationship. The reality is this: as a successful professional, you cultivate strong relationships and a depth of connection with your clients that enable you to serve them deeply. Serving your client deeply may mean risking their disapproval. But here’s the thing: when you serve your client despite these risks, you communicate the fact that their life is far more important to you than their approval.
STEP 4 FOCUS
– Start cultivating long-term trusted advisor relationships, based on caring and service.
– A deep felt sense of connection carries its own credibility, authority and guidance, so learn to develop ‘clarity of connection’ in conversations.
– Ask yourself, “How would I be relating to this person if I knew that I’ll be one of their trusted advisors for the rest of my professional life?”
Next week we’ll be looking at Step 5 – Enterprise, but if you want to get all 7 steps right now, you can download “The 7 Steps for Earning Your Living As a Successful Coach”.
If you want to take a deep dive into the principles behind clarity, during the Certified Clarity Coach Training programme, we put a big focus on establishing and strengthening your foundations, and include plenty of practice sessions so that you start building the skills, intuitions and reference experiences for great coaching. We also focus on helping you get the kind of certainty in your own and your clients’ innate capacity for resilience, realisation and transformation (you may have got a sense of this if you listened to my coaching session with Pam Featherstone, or the ‘unpacking’ of it I did on my podcast here
The programme is a 10-month immersion into the principles behind clarity. It’s formally open for registration and it’s not just for coaches; we’ve had all sorts of people go through the programme including computer programmers, doctors, call centre workers, lawyers, parents, PR specialists, therapists, office workers, entrepreneurs, surgeons, people who are already coaches and consultants and trainers and even a professional footballer. If you’re interested, it’s worth knowing that we’re not running the programme next year so the intake that’s starting this September (2018) is the last chance you’ll get to join us until 2020 at the very earliest. So if you want to find out how to become a Clarity Coach and see what’s involved in bringing an understanding of these principles into every aspect of your life click here.
To your increasing clarity!
Big love
Jamie Smart
Sunday Times Bestselling Author, Speaker and Executive Coach
PLUS: Whenever you’re ready… here are 6 ways I can help you get the clarity and results that matter to you:
1. Listen to the ‘Get Clarity’ Podcast www.jamiesmart.com/claritynow/
2. Hire me to speak at your event: www.jamiesmart.com/book-jamie-to-speak-about/
If you’re a coach or interested in becoming one…
3. Join The Thriving Coaches Facebook group
4. Listen to The Thriving Coaches Podcast
5. Take part in the Thriving Coaches Blueprint. our 90 day, rapid-implementation programme to help you get more clients and grow your coaching or therapy practice (doors now open!)
6. Learn more about the Certified Clarity Coach Training Programme, our 10-month deep-immersion into the principles behind clarity (doors now open! The programme starts September 2018 and won’t run again until 2020 at the earliest.)
If you’re looking to change job, career or move from FTE to something more fulfilling…
7. Join the Transition Launchpad Facebook group
8. Learn more about Escape Velocity: The Transition Blueprint our 90 day programme to help you transition into doing fulfilling work.