I just finished reading Ray Dalio’s Principles, and the book contains some very valuable nuggets for coaches.
(I’d go as far as saying that it’s a must-read for any entrepreneur)
Dalio shares lessons learned from his life and from building an extremely successful business (Bridgewater Associates) into one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
I pulled too much out of the book for just one email, so I’m going to spend a few days sharing my biggest takeaways from it.
Here’s today’s golden nugget:
You can’t do something only for money.
Dalio writes:
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“While making money was good, having meaningful work and meaningful relationships was far better. To me, meaningful work is being on a mission I become engrossed in, and meaningful relationships are those I have with people I care deeply about and who care deeply about me …
Think about it: It’s senseless to have making money as your goal as money has no intrinsic value – its value comes from what it can buy, and it can’t buy everything. It’s smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them. Money will be one of the things you need, but it’s not the only one and certainly not the most important one once you get past having the amount you need to get what you really want”
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I see a lot of people (Get-Rich-Quickers) jumping into the coaching industry because they think they can make fast money doing it.
Even if they’re good salespeople who can do that, that success is usually short-lived because they can’t stay in the game long term. They don’t deliver on their promises, and they don’t get repeat business or referrals.
To stay open, they have to keep convincing brand new people to buy from them – an exhausting thing to do.
A better approach is to build the strong relationships that Dalio talks about, and then the money will follow.
Looking back to the last four years that I’ve been coaching, relationships are what’s helped me build it up.
It’s all the initial Skype calls that I had with people who were once strangers, and who I now consider friends and business partners.
It’s the times I started working with a brand new client, did my best to help them, and then benefitted from the repeat business and referrals over the following years.
Money is important – hey I happen to really like the stuff! But once you realize how important building relationships is, the green stuff will naturally come to you.
Speaking of relationships, Karl Bryan knows how to build them.
He’s been helping business coaches do it for years, and his company is working with the “who’s who” of the coaching world in 24 countries.
We got such a great response from the training that Karl did for my community a few days ago, that we’ll be doing encores of the training this Tuesday for anyone who missed it.
Here’s the link to register for Lead Generation On Steroids For Business Coaches:
