Coaching success stories provide wonderful examples of what works in coaching. Recently a client of mine had a major breakthrough because of the technique I used with him at the very end of his coaching session. You’ve probably heard the old aphorism “You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.” Here is an example of success in getting the “horse” to drink the water.

Happy Endings Can Translate to Coaching Success Stories

Feeling down or unhappy can be a great motivator in coaching, but it isn’t a very empowered state for your client to be in. Clients come with all sorts of stories about what’s happened, what isn’t working, what they want to change—obviously that’s why they are in coaching. But once you have worked with them to find a strategy and an action plan for change, you want them to leave the session feeling powerful enough to follow through and become a coaching success story.

Creating The Happy Ending

In order to empower your clients to take action and to become one of your coaching success stories, you may need to help them to change their state from a negative one to a positive one. You can do this by asking the right questions; by having them follow your directions on breathing, standing, etc. to change their physiology; or by my favorite, taking them through an emotional flood of visualized and felt positive experiences, one of the techniques taught in the Master Coach University.

Bringing The Horse to Water

Remember the client I mentioned earlier? Well, I’ve taken him through the emotional flood process before and he’s enjoyed it. But this time turned out to be a revelation for him. He announced with wonder that instead of having to just wait until he was feeling better in a few hours or a few days, he now knew he could make the change from feeling bad to feeling good quickly and voluntarily. He was finally ready to drink the water!

So often, coaching success stories come from outside the actual sessions we do. This is one of my favorites because it happened right there on the call and I had the privilege of sharing the experience.

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Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Within all the best coaching success stories enters the darkness before the dawn. It’s the time when the hero wants to quit or appears to be on the edge of death. Even though most of our life stories don’t involve actual danger, the subconscious mind cannot distinguish one type of stress from another. It is all perceived as danger.

Why Coaching Is Needed For Success

Most people determine whether they will move forward based upon a feeling. But since our feelings are based on what we believe to be true and our beliefs are more or less programmed by events that happen in their lives; it quickly becomes apparent we cannot trust our feelings if we want to see a major change in our life.

It’s amazing how quickly people can re-create their previous lives even if they move across state to a completely new environment. I have a friend who left her long term boyfriend, moved several hundred miles away where she didn’t know anyone, and within two months had found a similar boyfriend, career, and income.

Coaching Success Stories Always Have a Hero

What is predictable is that we repeat the patterns in our lives. If we start moving outside that pattern there is tremendous pressure to return to the safety of what we know. I have felt my subconscious trying to talk me out of moving ahead many times. Sometimes it is the voice of reason, other times it sounds like a loud cry of panic. Sometimes I have even felt physically ill. The only way to become a coaching success story instead of being among the multitudes of people who live a predictable life is to keep moving through the storm. One of the reasons accountability coaching is so valuable is that it trains people to move forward when everything else tells them to stop. The moral behind coaching success stories is to take action, and if you still feel horrible you can go to bed.

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Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Behind the greatest coaching success stories is a common theme. From failure to success, these stories paint a seamless portrait of transformation. But unlike movie stories, coaching stories rarely portray the severity of challenges it takes for the heroes to achieve their own personal successes.

The Unmentioned Part Of Coaching Success Stories

In movies drama is emphasized; especially in the theatrical trailers that try to sell you on the idea of seeing the movie. But in coaching success stories the psychological drama is often minimized. Why? Is it that we are too fearful of our own fragilities? It’s unfortunate, because few people ever achieve their dreams. With all the knowledge out there that is available to the masses, what is holding you and your clients back?

Our Common Enemy

If you are not afraid at times, you are playing too small. You may be happy with your life, but you won’t be very effective in coaching your clients. When you can empathize with your clients and confront the enemy of fear as a united front, you both win. If you don’t, your clients will hide from the fear and feel ashamed, rather than to seek solutions. If you don’t understand the enemy you and your coaching clients will lose the battle if not the war.

It’s essential that you tell your coaching clients that fear is an integral part of their coaching success story. Without facing this enemy, they will never be able to be the hero conquers all and lives happily ever after. Because after all it’s not as much about what people want to achieve, it’s about who they want to become in the process. In my book, the hero is the one who faces his or her biggest fears, conquers them, and in doing so is able to serve others.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Have you started collecting your coaching success stories yet? If you haven’t, you are missing out on a terrific tool for marketing your life coach business, for using in your sales conversations and for helping your life coaching clients. And in case you haven’t guessed, the best source for your personal coaching success stories is testimonials from people you have coached.

Get Testimonials From Everyone You Coach

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For every coaching setting, whether complimentary sessions, individual sessions, workshops, whatever, write yourself a short script tailored to the situation, asking for a testimonial. Memorize it so it comes out naturally, and use it every time you’re in that setting. For instance, at the end of your complimentary coaching sessions you probably already have a script asking where your prospect got clarity or what was most significant for him in the call. You might ask what his next step is going to be and when is he going to take it. Whatever questions you normally use to clarify the value of the call to your prospect, ask him to put the answers in a testimonial. If your prospect got something from the call, he is one of your coaching success stories whether or not he enrolls in coaching with you. If you coach him in an ongoing relationship, you will have other opportunities to ask. But whether or not, you can still request a testimonial based on your complimentary session and you can start building your collection of coaching success stories.

Coaching Success Stories Need A Format

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Like all good stories, good coaching success stories need a beginning, a middle, and an end. So in your testimonials you also want a progression in the story, and this is something worth explaining when someone accedes to your request. Ideally, you will have a sort of executive summary of what you want in the testimonial. Obviously I don’t mean content, because everyone will have her own story. But to be most effective, the testimonial needs the person’s name, where she was in her personal life or her business before the coaching; how, specifically, the coaching helped; and what, specifically, was the outcome–what changed. You want the most specific, measurable, external information you can get–“I had no paying clients before coaching with X, and I got 4 in the first month of coaching.” Or maybe “I doubled my income in the first six months of coaching.” You get the idea! Those details are what make coaching success stories credible and exciting to prospects, and encouraging to clients. You aren’t looking for someone just to say what a great guy you are and how much fun they had with you.

Turning Testimonials Into Coaching Success Stories

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Testimonials come in a variety of forms. You might have some written and sent to you. You might record them digitally on a flip-cam after a group training or seminar. You might have an audio recording at the end of a telephone coaching session. Whatever the form and however else you use the quote or recording, you can take the story and write it out as a script. Title it so you know what the story is about, memorize it, and file it in your coaching success stories folder so you can find it when you want to.

If you don’t routinely ask for testimonials, you should. They and the stories that come from them can be valuable for your clients, for your business and for you.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “Life Coach Salary Secrets” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your Life Coach Salary Secrets.

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Coaching success stories don’t just motivate clients to enroll, they also motivate coaches. It’s not easy when your coaching clients are struggling toward their own success. How do you avoid getting pulled into their stories of discouragement? How do you avoid staying up all night tossing and turning about your clients’ lack of success? It’s helpful to have a set of your own coaching success stories to turn to in these times.

Coaching Success Stories Are Everywhere

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You can find success stories everywhere, once you know understand the formula. First you’ll need to find the hero. He’s often not easy to recognize, because he looks like an ordinary person who is really struggling. Modern examples may be someone who is on the verge of bankruptcy, foreclosure or divorce. Every hero has his deciding moment. Even Michael Jordan didn’t make the cut for his high school basketball team. It’s in that critical moment that heroes are created. Every great story has that hero who struggles, finds his strength, and overcomes whatever it is that is keeping him from living the life he wants. You can see this in fictional characters like Harry Potter to Olympic athletes like Mary Lou Retton.

Are You Ready To Become A Hero?

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When you face that critical moment with your coaching client, you have the opportunity to become a hero. You get to decide whether you are going to do whatever it takes to help you client break past his barriers, and in the process break through your own. Whether it is getting mentoring or coaching for yourself, or taking on some advanced training; you can set the stage to for one of the great coaching success stories. In the process you not only become the hero of your own story, but you allow your client to become the hero in his story.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Coaching success stories are what keep us going as coaches. Whether it’s my story or yours, it’s inspiring to all of us. We use coaching success stories to motivate ourselves, to motivate our clients and to help convert potential clients into paying ones. But for some coaches, and in fact many clients, it can be challenging to acknowledge the successes we’ve had and take credit for transforming ourselves into the people who could make those successes happen. When we don’t acknowledge success and transformation, we limit our ability to use those experiences to spur us on to further action. So how do we cement it all in? What can we do, and have our clients do, to keep our successes real and significant so they can move us forward? We can celebrate!

Why celebrate our coaching success stories?

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The simple answer to why we need to celebrate our coaching success stories is that when we do, the successes become real to us. The celebration anchors the story and the success to a positive, powerful physical and mental state so we can call on that state when we need it. Everyone has doubts and fears, and it’s easy for the doubts and fears to cloud the story and take away our power. We get into our heads, start analyzing what happened, and minimize or even negate out accomplishments. We find explanations for what happened other than “I did that, I made that happen!”

One of my personal coaching success stories is about me being coached into a state where I was so unstoppable that I could (and did) safely walk barefoot across a bed of 2000 degree coals! I celebrated like crazy afterwards, and now I have only to put myself back in that celebratory state to know that if I could do that, I can do anything. Celebrating helps us to own what we have done so it can kick-start us to further action.

Meaningful celebrations

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Coaching success stories are always cause for celebration, and celebration is first and foremost a physical activity. Pat yourself on the back. Jump and down and shout “yes”. Do whatever works for you. Reward yourself in some way and when you are feeling your absolute best, ask yourself some questions to really help you own what you caused or accomplished and who you had to be to make it happen. What are you celebrating? Why is that worth celebrating? Why was it an important goal? What did you do to achieve that goal? Who have you become in the process? Who will you become in the future because of what you did?

As children, we all knew how to celebrate. Something as small as seeing a caterpillar on the ground or a rainbow in the sky made us burst with joy and excitement. Coaching success stories are our caterpillars and rainbows. So celebrate your successes and your client’s successes with abandon, and use the momentum to make both of you unstoppable.

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Are you one of your own coaching success stories yet?  We all know that coaching success stories are a valuable tool when enrolling new clients into your life coaching business.  But are we a living example of what is possible with coaching?  Is our life coaching business where we want it to be, or at least on the right path?  There are three things that can happen when we embark upon a new goal, and each has it’s own challenges.

To Grow Your Life Coaching Business You Will Have to Lose the Doubts

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Life Coaching Business Threat #1:  Starting to doubt yourself.  When you start doing something outside your comfort zone all the systems in your brain start firing warning signs.  Danger!  You are about to change.  This is one of the most common threats to becoming a coaching success story.  You start doubting and stop taking action.  Your body relaxes knowing that you are safe from change.

Sabotaging Your Actions Will Not Help You Become One of the Coaching Success Stories

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Life Coaching Business Threat #2:  You sabotage your actions.  Even if you continue on your path there will be a time when you just do something you will later look back on and wonder what you were thinking.  Why did you sabotage yourself, and why do you continue to do it?  Your limiting beliefs are again responsible for preventing yourself from becoming a coaching success story.

When You Decide Your Life Coaching Business is Fine the Way it is You Stop Growing

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Life Coaching Business Threat #3:  You rationalize your success.  John Assaraf calls it “ration a lies.”  That is you starting thinking that you can be happy the way things are.  You don’t need to get to the next level.  This will keep you comfortably away from becoming a coaching success story.

So how does one navigate around these life coaching business threats?  Just like your clients, if you want to become a coaching success story you need to commit to being coached yourself.  That doesn’t mean having a friend work with you every once in awhile.  It means committing to ongoing coaching, especially when you don’t think you need it.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

The fastest way to gain credibility for your life coaching business is to use coaching success stories.  Many start their life coaching business by getting certified.  That is a great way to get credibility.  But what if you don’t have the finances or time to invest into getting certified?  There is another way.  People don’t hire you to coach them because you’re certified.  They hire you because they believe you can help them to get the results they are looking for.

In Your Life Coaching Business, Ask Your Coaching Success Stories to Put it in Writing

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The most powerful way to enroll someone into your life coaching business; is a coaching success story.  It’s a “third party endorsement,” and it is why major advertisers pay millions of dollars to celebrities and athletes to endorse their products.  Most coaches start their life coaching business by coaching people for free.  That is fine, as long as you ask them in advance to pay you by writing a testimonial for you.  Assure them that you only want them to write a testimonial if they are truly happy with your coaching.  Once you have the testimonial, display them on the internet or in a nice binder.

Life Coaching Business:  How do You Get Your Client to Properly Write Their Coaching Success Story?

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An easy way to get coaching success stories from your life coaching business clients is to provide them with questions.  Give them a fill-in-the-blank customer survey form.  After they have shared their results with you, ask them to fill the form out.  Then select the best ones and put them on the internet or in your testimonial book.  Then start to use the testimonials when you run free sessions to give you credibility.  This will also help you enroll more clients into your life coaching business.

Kris Thompson

JTS Advisors Strategy Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business

Finding life coaching business is not about hard sells.  It’s been said many times, “Nothing sells like success.”  How often do you use coaching success stories when you are trying to get new clients to enroll in coaching?  Coaching success stories are one of the easiest and most fun ways to increase your life coaching business.  If it’s not already part of your script, then now is a great time to start, even if you don’t feel that you have any success stories that are compelling enough yet.

Coaching Success Stories Don’t Have to be Stories of Your Personal Successes

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There are three myths that stop people from using coaching success stories to enroll new clients into their life coaching business.  The first is that the stories must be about one of their clients.  If you don’t have any coaching success stories yet, ask some of your coaching friends for some examples.  Don’t lie and tell others that it was one of your clients.  But it’s perfectly legal to start a story by saying “I have a friend who was coaching someone in a similar situation.  This was what they worked on and this was the result….”  Of course the more stories you have in your repertoire, the more likely you’ll be able to come up with a compelling match.

Even if You Feel Your Story Telling Skills Need Work Using Coaching Success Stories Will Help Your Life Coaching Business

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The second myth that keeps coaches from using coaching success stories when trying to enroll people into their life coaching business is that they don’t feel like they can tell a story well.  That’s actually better in some ways because it will force you to write it down, word for word.  You can even get help with the scripting before you try it out with your clients.  If you’re well rehearsed, no one need know you are reading if you coach by phone.  Then you can use it over and over again.

Using Coaching Success Stories to Sell is Effective Because it Helps Prospective Clients to Relax

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The third myth that keeps coaches from using coaching success stories is that they don’t really believe that it will have an effect on their life coaching business.  If that’s the case then Google, “Using stories to sell” and you will get hundreds of hits to choose from.  If you’ve used stories in the past and they haven’t seemed to help, then you might need to change your strategy.  Make sure you find a story that is similar to your client’s, and connect the benefits that your client wants to the coaching.

Using coaching success stories to build your life coaching business is not only more fun, but also more effective because it is less direct.  If you can get clients caught up in your story, they will relax their natural resistance to being sold.  Just as stories can help transform people during a coaching session, they can also help a person make a powerful action step toward their goals by enrolling in coaching.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Success Stories, Life Coaching Business