The Cost Of Coaching
Many are the times when I am asked what is the cost of coaching? Usually when someone leads with this question, they generally are not invested in the process. I have never looked at coaching in terms of sales. With the market being inundated with new coaches, I have stayed true myself and the process. As a retired crisis counselor of 20 years, I always honored the process and not the recruitment. I think that is the biggest factor to my longevity.
“I don’t look at the cost. I look at the loss.”
The cost of coaching will vary from one coach to another. Some a little, some a lot. I like to look at coaching from a practical approach though. I don’t look at the cost. I look at the loss. In my own experience, I lost everything by my mid 40’s. While I retired at age 40, I had more than enough money, real estate and other assets that if I lived humbly, I never would have to work again. But I decided to go all in with real estate. Having never lost a quarter in the market in 20 years, I thought I was invincible. So I doubled down and went all in. I started buying house after house. Sure, I was paying for them in cash and in full. But I wasn’t doing my due diligence. I couldn’t have predicted what would happen next.
My best friend who was a broker {we had purchased several houses together in the past}, told me to slow down. He was 20 years older than me and knew far more about real estate than I will ever know. But I didn’t listen. I was all ego and on a 20 year win streak. You couldn’t tell me anything. I wasn’t coachable. And because I wasn’t, when the unexpected happened, it changed my life forever.
In 2008-09 when the market crashed, I was sitting on 7 houses that my crew was in the process of rehabbing. While I owned these houses outright, they needed work. With the market crash, there was a surplus of properties on the market that were in fair to great shape. I simply couldn’t compete. To make matters worse, my wife went through some very serious health conditions {that she still battles today}, and because of that, neither one of us could work. I was home taking care of her full-time. We held on for as long as we could, but after a few years, we were forced to surrender everything. We lost it all. All of our houses, money and credit. A tough lesson to learn all because I wasn’t coachable.
So what is the cost of coaching? For me it is not what is the cost, but what is the loss. I can remember when I went all in, I had a conversation with my brother. He was concerned that I was moving too fast. I told him that even if I took a 100k loss, that bouncing back from that would not be too devastating. But then the perfect storm happened, and multiply that 100k many times over, and now it was game over. Had I used my friend as a coach and listened to his counsel, I would have taken a hit on one house and not 7. One house would have hurt, but in no way would have bankrupted me. Even with my wife’s health issues, we should have been fine.
When I was growing up, I was heavily involved in the martial arts. I was surrounded by my instructors and motivated people. I learned from them and was encouraged. That’s the value of a coach. They bring experience, passion and knowledge to the coaching process. Why would we be concerned about the price? Had I remained coachable, my life would be vastly different. And while my life is pretty amazing now, and still married to my beautiful wife, we in no way have recovered from losing everything. Yes, I learned some valuable lessons from the storm. But, I believe I would have learned those lessons anyway’s. There is a better process to learning. And while it maybe true that some lesson can only be learned in the storm, some people never get their fire back. And that’s the benefit of working with a coach.
So when someone ask me what is the cost of coaching. I simply say “For me, all of my worldly possessions.”