How to reach fast excellence as an entrepreneur

The love for coaching brings you to the threshold of making a big decision. That is, to deal with coaching professionally, to take your risks, to make investments and at the same time to change yourself. To a large extent, being a coach, that is, being a professional and at the same time being an entrepreneur of yourself, puts multiple challenges in your head. In this journey, we all need to keep in mind that we wear all three hats and these three hats have different requirements. For example, one can be an excellent professional and not be an excellent entrepreneur. This does not make him any less good as a professional. The three roles you have to perform are those of the practitioner, the professional and the entrepreneur.

So, let’s look at some fundamental things for someone who is just starting out, or for someone who has not yet organized everything so well to get started. The first is the sales pitch, that is, how you present yourself in some opportunities. If we look a little inside ourselves and do not find a convincing answer on how “we should structure it”, then we better look outside of ourselves. That is, to look at other people’s examples and observe if it works for them.

The second vital thing is the marketing plan. Of course, you can entrust it to someone else, but the essence comes from you. You yourself must know very well who you are, what your image is and what you want it to be, what market you are in and who your ideal customer is. What is your ideal customer doing so far and not cooperating with you? What other services might he use to meet his needs?

Then the third important thing is the business plan. That is, the steps you will follow to set up your business from day one. You may be preparing to set up an organization, work alone, or work with one or two others. In any case, you need a plan. And here we go to number 4 because you also need a plan to make the plan for the first 100 days of your business. The activation plan. This plan is usually used by executives in large companies and of course politicians. You will have noticed that when someone takes on a big role, they ask him what he will do in the first X days. It is something extremely expected.

Discern the real opportunity

If you do not have a plan… you do not know what you can bring. What could be an opportunity for you if you do not know where you want to go? You will not be able to discern the real opportunity… Let us speak clearly. If you cannot do this, there will never be an opportunity. Everything will be “possibilities”. Possibility is something you could possibly do, but it is not what you have been waiting for a lifetime to seize the opportunity. So, start thinking about who the ideal customer for you could be, find your specialization, your niche… Certainly, the younger ones want to see which customers they work with best and bring results. The specialization could definitely be decided after experience and a lot of practice.

Indeed, when one starts, one sees in every prospective customer as an opportunity, and everyone, in the beginning, seeks out the right quantity of customers. But it is critical here to know and reflect on something important. The “no” you say will bring you more significant benefit than the “yes” you say. And we will say it anyway. A bad yes has a higher cost, than to refuse a bad deal. You will need more time to get out of a bad deal, on the contrary. Let us not forget that everything we do has a continuity, a consequence, a respect for those with whom you work. People will always be there.

Do not be afraid to say no, because the cost may be much higher by saying yes. Overturn the belief of “do not say no”, do not miss the “opportunity”. Unless you have a specific destination, you’re just moving the car. What is important for you to have with you on your new journey? For me personally, it has always been inspiring some opinions of people that I would like to share with you. Some of them may seem strange, or somewhat provocative.

So, Steve Jobs used to say before he died that before you decide to do some things. You choose to implement some of your decisions without knowing exactly where they will lead you. You cannot know what will happen. This is the world treaty for the future. Your intention or will and maybe your optimism brings you to do some actions hoping that they will work and connect with each other when you do them. You cannot understand exactly how they are connected… said Steve Jobs. But when you turn around and look back, you will be able to join these strings, and you will know how you did it!

Tim Cook’s second opinion says that to lead even yourself at this stage, you are leading a commercial risk, for example (in Greece), you should remember this. “There are times when you will feel alone, you will have to make decisions on your own. That’s nature. ”

The third opinion, I think is very important. Success comes from many failures. If there is one thing that stands in the way of success, it is the fear of failure. We fail to be able to manage this fear of failure, which is to be expected, and this does not allow us to learn. And if you think about it… the classic questions we ask in coaching “what went well”, “what can go best”, teach us exactly that. Observe how we learn to discover what we will need to do to succeed. What can fear do to you? To think again and again and again all the possibilities…

“Be careful not to fail”, “Be careful not to make a mistake”, we often hear. I say no, make a mistake and do it quickly to find out. Zuckerberg had said, “Move fast and break things. “If you do not ‘spoil’ things, it means that you are not moving fast enough.” We need to continually evolve. Wilde’s last saying tells us to be ourselves, as… everyone else is “caught”! I think this summarizes the above very well. Do not seek to find out what others do and how. In any case, this is a bad logic for your professional activity, but also for coaching as a process. To be ourselves means to know ourselves, to have knowledge in him. Know who you are for yourself and your customers.

So let’s go straight to see five challenges faced by a professional who is starting to work professionally in coaching. Decisions are a difficult “stranglehold” which is always against you, and you should make it a lamb. You need to learn how to make decisions. Decisions are difficult but necessary. The second is the time you spend on all this. You should allocate your time in such a way that it satisfies both your professional and business activity, your personal time and of course the time with your customers. The biggest challenge here in my experience is to stop “spreading out”.

The third, which for me is very important, especially for someone who is starting the main issue you can have is the “noise”. You need to learn to manage the noise, the things that affect you, the comments that discourage you, the beliefs etc. that can discourage you. Do this very well!

The fourth challenge is the past. Your past especially when you start on one hand determines you, and on the other hand, you may need to make a huge distinction between yourself and people regarding the new condition in which you are and operate. This leads to an increase in your customer base.

The fifth and last challenge is the confrontation with failure. You will have many. Be mentally resilient! Try again, do it again. If you have not, you will never know. These five are the most basic challenges for me, and now we go straight to the mindsets. Five plus one!

The first is having a growth mindset. We need to develop the mentality, and it is a very good reference in the business world, who knows the specific mentality through management. The second is mindfulness & compassion. An excellent reference is the work of Liz Hall to refer to. The essence of this mindset is that it leads you to activism and helps the other to move forward. The third important mindset is abundance. It is very important and since we are talking about doing business to look for abundance. To create it. Everything we discuss is not lacking. The truth is that our audience, our customers are not limited, and you can create a new audience every day. The question is what do you want to see and bring…

We continue with synchronicity. First, you are in the present moment, then you focus on the source, then you identify and study the possibility, then you determine what is happening suddenly. You use your intuition, then you enter into awe and then you enter into a process of meaning and then comes continuity and consistency. Finally, it is our degree of altruism. These are the 9 pillars of synchronicity. Some call it the “law of attraction”, and it can significantly affect your future.

The fifth mindset is the “positive genius” mindset which helps reduce noise. The last mindset is yours! You need to know which one is yours. This is what can help you and move you forward!

Angelos Derlopas, MSc, MCC

First published at Forbes Coaches Council, 2020