What is Coaching and Should You Hire A Coach?

by | Feb 12, 2018 | Career, Non Traditional Pharmacy Careers, Side Hustle

I hired my first coach when I couldn’t really afford to hire a coach.

I was a pharmacy resident making $40K a year, but I wasn’t particularly happy in my daily work. I wanted to start a side-hustle to generate extra income for my family, but I constantly doubted my own decisions and I was distracted by every new opportunity that came my way. I wasn’t making any progress, and I felt like giving up.

Maybe you can relate.

I knew that a career coach could improve my situation and guide me in a new direction, but it was going to cost me $500 a month for a particular coach, and I wasn’t looking forward to having that conversation with my wife.

Despite all that, I took the plunge and hired a coach, and one session made me a believer in the power of coaching. One session helped me take the guess-work out of my own goals and start moving in a new direction.

Since then, I’ve never looked back. Between 2013 and 2016, I invested $30,000 in coaching, and in return, I created an additional $177,000 income.

More importantly, the entire process also revealed my own desire to give back the gift of coaching, because it had such a profound effect on my own life.

Because of coaching, I’ve been able to

  • Create 3 businesses in 3 years
  • Pay off my house 27 years early
  • Become 100% debt free as of January 22nd, 2018

“Does coaching work? Yes. Good coaches provide a truly important service. They tell you the truth when no one else will.”

Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric 

Why coaching?

The interesting thing to me is that we readily recognize a coach’s value in professional sports, in amateur sports, and in endeavors like vocal performance.

If you saw an olympic athlete competing without a coach, you’d probably think they were foolish.

In a football game between cross-town rivals, the game isn’t likely to go well without the coaches. The result will be chaos, discord, and failure.

In fact, nearly every competing team has a coach: a leader who can help the team work well together, set and achieve goals, and push people beyond their own expectations.

If high performance athletes have coaches, why wouldn’t you use a coach to achieve your goals?

That was my logic for hiring my coaches.

But what is coaching?

As a coach, I help you move into a happy career.

Your needs are different from anyone else’s, but your happy career could look like this:

  • A new pharmacy job that gets you excited in the morning, and satisfied at the end of the day
  • Leave the pharmacy profession into a completely new career (like my client who left pharmacy to go into his passion: real estate and renting)
  • A simple transition in your company now, but the work is less stressful

Whatever your destination, we create it together.

Do you want a coach?

What I realized in my  coaching experience, though, was that I didn’t need a coach.

Just like you, I was able to get by without one. I also realized that the better question was whether I wanted a coach, and the answer to that question was yes.

I was tired of simply getting by, and I was ready for a change. 

I wanted help from someone who wouldn’t listen to my inner doubts and fears. I wanted someone who would hold me accountable without letting me make excuses. I wanted someone who would provoke me and challenge me, and offer suggestions about how to achieve my audacious goals.

The first question to ask yourself is whether you want a coach.

I realized along the way that I love having a coach who doesn’t judge what I think or what I say, and who will really invest in who I am and what I’m trying to achieve. I realized, too, that coaching made me more productive because it helped me eliminate unrealistic options and identify what was important.

What if I’m not sure if coaching is for me?

If you’re one of those people and you’re interested in coaching, know that I offer a complimentary (free) session for anyone I believe I can help.

I believe so strongly in the power of coaching that I won’t charge you anything for our first session because I want you to experience the power of coaching.

(If I’m not a great fit for you, I’ll point you in the direction of a coach who I believe can help you.)

We will discuss your career, your goals, and the things that are extremely important to you. The initial session is designed to uncover your priorities by asking you deep and powerful questions. You will leave the session with action steps to move you toward your expressed goals.

After the complimentary session, you may decide that you’ve learned enough, in which case I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction and allow you to move on.

If, on the other hand, coaching is a good fit for you, we’ll discuss a contract for coaching, which will include pricing that is unique to you and your situation. (It’s why I don’t include pricing on my page.)

In my mind, coaching is an investment in yourself and in your dreams. It isn’t an investment in me but rather a financial commitment to yourself and your own priorities.

Simply stated, if you aren’t willing to invest in yourself, then coaching isn’t for you.

No high achiever reaches the top of his game without assistance from a coach who helps him see beyond his own experience.

Who are your clients?

I’ve worked with dozens of pharmacists and entrepreneurs over the last 5 years.

Recently I worked with Keely Ray, PharmD.

Keely was working in a LTC company for 10 years and felt the pain of living the perpetual Groundhog Day in pharmacy.

When Keely called me, she knew she couldn’t stand another day of her job, but didn’t know where to start with revitalizing her career. She tried looking for job opportunities for months, but never found a good fit.

After a few coaching sessions with me, Keely and I discovered what was most important to her, and created a New Job Plan.

This New Job Plan lead her to receiving an offer within 4 weeks of coaching for $180K! (no benefits though).

My work with pharmacists involves creating and implementing a career plan that creates new job opportunities, rather than looking for the scrap jobs on Indeed.

Daniel Wainwright, Founder of Obvious Advertising, had been trying for years to figure out how to become a consultant, but he wasn’t sure where to start.

He had grown so frustrated that he was prepared to walk away from his existing business and start something completely new. Within a month, he realized that he had everything he needed to succeed in his consulting work.

Three months after he started, Daniel had added 10 new clients, for a total of $40,000 in additional annual revenue.

“You’d think the extra money would be the thing most people would be thrilled about, but I’m more excited about the positive mental changes. I would tell myself things like, ‘No one will buy from you,’ or ‘You don’t have enough credibility.’ I found myself telling myself a different story.”

– Daniel Wainwright

Your time is precious. You’re likely already feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

I’ve learned from my experiences — both coaching and being coached — that taking action with the help of someone else speeds your results. Relationships are the heart of a successful business, and coaching is no different.

Avoid putting a price tag on your dreams. No one is more passionate about your dreams than you are, and no one is better suited to chase them. Enlist the help of someone who can help you see beyond the emotion and negativity to move your dreams forward.

You have absolutely nothing to lose.

Click here to talk with myself or one of our Happy PharmD career coaches. 

Once you fill out an application, you and I will connect over the phone. We’ll decide together if I’m the right guy to help you move into a new pharmacy job.

Then, you and I will move into a complimentary coaching session.

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Creating Happy Pharmacists

If you really want to build the career and life that you’ve dreamed of, one where you are helping people and working in the field that you love, you need to do something different than what you’ve been doing.

Re-discover why you became a pharmacist and find your passion again.