If you’re a coach, you believe everyone needs a coach. Part of this conviction comes from what you have experienced in your coach training. You have seen the impact and power of coaching in people’s lives. You have discovered a coaching conversation with even a little bit of skill can have some pretty amazing outcomes. And then, as you have grown in your thinking about coaching and your skills in shaping conversations toward powerful outcomes, you start thinking “EVERYONE needs to experience this!!”

There’s also a pragmatic side of this conviction that everyone needs a coach. It means they might hire you so you can help them overcome those pesky obstacles that block real success and seize those amazing opportunities that just stay as ideas but don’t ever materialize into their full potential. If everyone realized they needed a coach, that would be really good for the coaching business – your coaching business!

So, if you believe everyone needs a coach, why don’t you have a coach?

If you believe someone should pay for this powerful experience that can create new awareness and clarify powerful action steps that can change a life and change a world, why aren’t you willing to pay for it?

I’ve been one of those people who had the conviction that the world would be a better, more sane and forward moving place if more people engaged with an equipped, skilled and qualified coach. I would tell other people this same thing, any chance I got. Church planter – you need a coach! Pastor – you need a coach! Business leader – you need a coach! World – YOU NEED A COACH!

But I didn’t have a coach. You know why? I was too cheap. Bottom line, I didn’t want to pay for it.

Hey, I’m a pastor. I come by it honestly. People in the ministry world think everyone should give us stuff, or at least provide it at a deeply discounted rate. We largely have a poverty mindset and martyr mindset.

But remember, you get what you pay for.

I needed to move forward in my leadership. I was also convicted that I was being a hypocrite by telling people to invest in something I wasn’t willing to do myself. So I asked Chad Hall to recommend some coaches for me to talk to. He gave me some amazing coaches to contact and I had a tough time choosing between two of them.

Prayerfully, I hired Mark to be my coach. And you know what? Being coached is awesome! About every two weeks I choose to create the sacred space I have told others they needed to create, and it has been great.

Mark is an amazing, insightful, skilled and experienced coach. And I pay him for the privilege to be coached by him. The cool thing is, I pay enough that it hurts. It is an investment on my part that makes me think about being ready for my calls and following up with my actions. Because I don’t want to waste precious resources.

I’m making progress in some areas; I have a ways to go in a number of others. But I’m growing! Oh, and I’m not a hypocrite anymore. They both feel good.

Coach, you need a coach. If you think you can’t afford it, maybe you can’t NOT afford it. Maybe it is the very thing you need to get to the next level in your life, ministry, skills…

Maybe it is what is needed for you to grow as a coach who has empathy and understanding of the challenges of being coached – creating sacred space, having courage to focus on what’s most important, following through with actions, working hard in a conversation, stepping toward the unknown, uncomfortable, imperfect, imperceptible – the things you expect your coaching clients to do.

One of the most cost-effective ways to take the next step in having a coach is to join The Coaching Exchange. This is one of the services CAM offers to grow you as a coach and matches you up with other coaches of similar skill and experience levels to coach and be coached. You can sign up or find out more information by going here.

As well, you can access CAM’s list of current CCLC Coaches here. Everyone on the list has been trained by CAM with foundational coaching skills. Contact three coaches and interview them about the possibility of them being your coach for a season.

Because everyone needs a coach. Everyone would benefit from engaging in the discipline of meaningful, intentional conversations.

Even you.