Four Vital Questions that Every Life Coach Must Ask

Four Vital Questions that Every Life Coach Must Ask

Are you wondering why your coaching hasn’t taken off?

It’s okay, I too was confused. At first.

When I started my coaching biz. I was asking myself over and over the wrong question.

“Why isn’t my coaching business taking off?”

Sure, I had some clients, but not many.

Then I realised, “Hey! I’m a coach! Ask a better question!”

And so, I did. What was my question? That’s a great question!

Well, in truth it wasn’t one question. It was 4 questions actually.

This question is actually, four vital questions that every life coach must ask.

If you’re a coach and you want to grow your business big time, here are the four vital questions that every life coach must ask. If you don’t answer these questions and create a marketing structure based on your answers? Then your coaching business is going to feel like you’re collecting aluminium cans from rubbish bins.

Here are the four vital questions that every Life Coach must ask or flounder or worse, fail.

1: WHAT is the biggest problem you solve?

2: WHO needs that problem solved most or WHO will pay the most to solve that problem?

3: WHY do YOU want to help them? And

4: HOW do you help them?

Here’s what led me to answer those questions.

When I was learning NLP, I realised how many dumb beliefs I had that were limiting my income.

As I was nearing the end of my NLP training, I had a HUGE epiphany that multiplied my annual income over four times! This epiphany led me to earn more than the then Prime Minister John Howard! But you’re not here about my epiphany. That’s for another time. So, let’s get back to my answers to those four vital questions that every life coach must ask.

Here are my answers to the four vital questions that every Life Coach must ask…

Then I got a coach, and after our first session together. I got clear. That’s when I answered those four questions, and this is what it looked like:

  1. WHAT is the biggest problem you solve?
  2. ANS: Money worry.
  1. WHO needs that problem solved most or WHO will pay the most to solve that problem?
  2. ANS: People who want to make more money. Why? Because they’re unsatisfied about what they’re earning now. At some level, they know they could do better.
  1. WHY do YOU want to help them?
  2. ANS: Because I once knew that that felt like. How much it hurt me, almost physically when I worried that I wasn’t even going to survive. Somehow in my brain, I thought I was going to die – or at best, become homeless, destitute.
  1. HOW do YOU help them?
  2. ANS: With our Life Coach + NLP Practitioner program.

Candidly, I didn’t answer these questions all too quickly. It took me one coaching session with my amazing coach and one whole day to answer those four vital questions that every life coach must ask.

I got coached that Friday and I had the weekend off. So I decided that that Saturday, I would sit down and commit to answering those four questions.

Hell! I was committed.

After all, I had invested so much time and money to be a coach only to fail. No way!

I’d already quit my job and had no other income. It was boom or bust for me.

What happened next?

The upshot? I didn’t waste my entire weekend going around in circles.

I realised that all that was needed from me to STAMP! my foot on the ground and make a full-hearted decision. A declaration to the Universe that I was IN! I was committed to helping evolve my peeps.

I was committed to helping me, help the Universe.

So, I said to the Universe, out loud and in my head…

“I’m doing this, and I need your full, financial support. I’ll build the program and do the marketing, and you find the people that need me most. Speak to their souls, not their human (because I know how scared the human can be. And how courageous the spirit is).

Speak to their souls so that they get that I will look after them. I’ve got their back. I will help them to evolve and help them to make more money. How?

I will teach them how to remove their fear of money. I’ll educate them. I’ll coach them. Hec! I’ll even do some of the work for them if I have to!

Send them to me and I’ll do rest.”

Things can change just like magic when you make a full-hearted decision

Like magic, my coaching world changed overnight. I got my first positive sign that something had shifted as people enrolled in my coaching.

Then large numbers of people came to my premium program, my “Life Coach + NLP Practitioner” training.

Fast forward to today…I’ve now made millions of dollars and I don’t know if I have helped millions of people – but I’ve certainly trained thousands of people who have helped thousands more.

All of this happened after asking four of the most powerful questions that you can ask yourself as a coach, trainer or change agent.

The question is – when will you ask and answer those questions?

And if you already have – welcome to the world’s leaders.

I welcome you as a change agent, whose job it is to wake people up.

Because my friends – the majority of the world’s population are in one huge, big, out-of-control (through control) trance. They’re adults, still running off programs that came from their parents and their childhood.

Finally, if you know you’re here for a bigger reason and need some guidance or help?

Let me reward you for reading this far…

Let me reward you for reading right until the end.

I have now been a successful commercial coach for 20 years with over 38,000 hours of transformational work under my belt. No-one stays in business for 20 years without knowing a trick or two.

So here is my offer to you…

I give you one hour to help get you clearer and get you on track. You can get more information and access me and my diary here.

To your success!

Rik SchnabelThe Brain Untrainer

Beach or Bust – How To Create The Life Of Your Dreams

If you are not living the life of your dreams, then let me share how you can do that…

Today I’m sitting on another beach in Tugan, Queensland. I am literally living the life of my dreams right now. It’s a delightful 21 degrees. The sun is shining and the day is filled with the promise. I can do whatever I want.

How did I get here? How did I get off that endlessly spinning hamster wheel to create a life of freedom?

18 years ago, I was working in a busy office and had no idea how to create the life of my choosing. I’d been working for too long with the same old belief, that this is what people did. With crusty eyes, thinning hair and a look of bewilderment, I would wake-up at 6:30 am, stumble into the shower. Then after breakfast I brushed my teeth and hurriedly jumped into my car and into the bumper to bumper city traffic. Leaving home, just 5 minutes meant another 10 to 15 minutes stuck in traffic. This was not living the life of your dreams.

I was told it’s a part of the human race, but I was coming last.

Arriving in the office an hour and a half before I needed to was the norm. It was expected. Leaving work at 7 pm or sometimes 9pm was typical. Finally, at home around 10 pm in the evenings, I was too tired to do anything but have dinner and go to bed. On weekends, the highlight was a breakfast out somewhere and perhaps a zombie stroll through the Botanical Gardens. I was tired all the time yet, I had to appear like I was at least partially interested in what I was doing – but really, I just wasn’t. Life at the time, felt like I was dragging myself across a cheese grater. I used to think, “Is this what living is supposed to look like? Surely, there must be more to life?” I was a part of the human race and sadly, I was coming last. This was not living the life of your dreams.

The thoughts in my head weren’t pretty, but thankfully, no-one but me knew it. I had to start asking myself better questions, but I just wasn’t. It was actually my wife Rebecca who did.

It was a Saturday and I was laying on the couch waiting for my family to get themselves ready to go out for breakfast, thinking, “Another weekend and all I want to do is nothing but rest.” When my wife said, “You know how we love going to warm places near beaches on our holidays?” At which I agreed in a drone. She continued, “What if we started living that resort lifestyle now, instead of just on holidays?” To which I dejectedly replied, “How?”

Sometimes, when your energy is low, the last thing you want to do, is work out some complex or near impossible solution to an unfathomable outcome. I think you get where I was at. On reading my response, Rebecca began reciting some of our friends and even two of my mentors who had created freedom in their lives. She then set the challenge. She said, “You’re just as smart as they are, why don’t you just ask them how they did it?” Not a bad strategy, I thought. So I did and here is their advice, which I followed. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I decided that I’d had enough and from now on, it was going to be “Beach or Bust!” Let me share how I did that in 7 simple steps. Not easy steps, but simple to do. I did want to create the life of my dreams.

Here is how I created the life of my dreams.

STEP #1: Work out how much money you need to survive, not thrive.

Tony Frederick wasn’t just my best friend, he was also a clever man and mentor with a ‘can do’ attitude. I shared our idea with Tony and he said, “The first thing that you need to do is do the numbers. Work out how much money you need each month to survive, not thrive. Get rid of all of those needless expenses that are not needs, but wants. You know, the extravagances that are nice to have, but not necessary. Reduce your overheads so that financially, the transition is simple.” It was great advice and in the first month, I was shocked at how much more money we had in the bank. Tony said, “Build a financial buffer that might equate to about half a year of your normal income.”

STEP #2: Start researching a mobile business and study that business or get the skills you need.

These days, there are so many ways to make money, without having to go into an office or be located in the one spot. These days, you can search Google for “mobile business ideas” and you’ll get 800 million results. Now, I had completed my life coach training and I could coach anyone from anywhere to improve their life, all on Skype! That was truly a mobile business. (In fact, today from the beach, I’ll be coaching a client in China.) This is living the life of your dreams.

STEP #3: Start your mobile business now and keep your full-time job.

This was sensible advice. Tony suggested that I continue my job AND build my mobile business in the evenings and on the weekends. Sure, I was going to be one busy guy, but the mission after all, was “Beach or Bust.” Tony insisted that if it was a true mobile business, I would be able to create it from anywhere at any time. Life Coaching was perfect, because most of my clients wanted to work with me out of working hours.

STEP #4: Prove your product and master the marketing.

Starting a business is one thing and building your skill is another, and mastering getting clients or customers is something altogether unique as a set of skills. Now I was already a good marketer, however most of my skill was offline, not online. So I started some extra study to master the online game. (As a trainer of Life Coaches, I also built an online program to show coaches how to get clients and build a business with my Business of Life Coaching program). In just four steps, I was almost ready to launch my laptop lifestyle. But Tony suggested one more step.

STEP #5: Make a third of your current income in your new business and bank it as a business buffer.

In just 3 months, I had money coming from everywhere! I had my regular income and my business income coming in. I did what Tony suggested and I banked the money and built a buffer. After 6 months of starting my new venture, I was ready to quit my job. I remember it was March 2004. It was the first day of my life where I felt truly free. No bosses. No bureaucracy. No reports and I could design my business and my life, however I wanted.

It’s now October 2019 and I’m heading into my seventeenth year of freedom and you can too – if you want it? You just have to follow these five steps.

R!k Schnabel is Australia’s #1 Brain Untrainer – if you want to achieve anything in your life that you haven’t been able to on your own – have a complimentary chat with R!k to see how he can help you.

Why Coaching Raises Your Standards and How to Get Beyond Standard

Why Coaching Raises Your Standards and How to Get Beyond Standard

How do you get beyond standard? How to you carve out a new life that is rich in value and lives up to your dreams?

Today I responded to a lovely lady from the UK who needs some help growing her business and came to me for coaching. But she’s painfully sitting on the fence; not making a decision.

It reminded me of where I came from and what I had to do to change my life and get beyond standard. It was 2004 and I was $70,000 in debt and had only $27 in my bank account. Doing the ‘standard’ things just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I had to do something different.

Here is what I wrote to her after she made no decision:

Hi Sue (name changed to protect her identity),

Okay. Yes, your response is a bit vague. In fact, there is no decision in it. Would it be okay if I shared with you what I’ve learned in my 20 years of coaching? What took me from a massive debt to become a millionaire?

I know you want success, so I’d like to share with you what I’ve found that my most of my successful clients do.

They raise their standards by making a new decision and then four things to gain ultimate success. This is how you get beyond standard.

The decision?

Make a commitment to do whatever it takes to get whatever you want.

Say YES to your dreams, even if right now, you just don’t think you’ve got what it takes. Then…

1. Work out/decide/dream up what you really want from life, then

2. Work on devising the best possible strategy to get you there

3. Work out what you need (skills/tools/systems/connections/attitude) to make the strategy work, and

4. Take massive action on that strategy and remove any neural patterns that gets in the way of that action.

I know that sometimes it’s hard to make a decision because we don’t know what the future holds – and that’s acceptable to most, because that’s how 95% of the population live their lives. It’s standard practice. However, to get beyond standard, to really create a magical life of freedom, you have to do (most often) the opposite to what the large majority of people do.

To be extraordinary, ‘standard practice’ is no longer an option for you

Most people don’t realise that they’re making ‘standard practice’ decisions.

Last week my Singing Coach was whining about a speaker she listened to at a conference that she attended. She loved the speaker by the way but was annoyed that the speaker was paid $10,000 for a short keynote talk. Then she said, “You speak! Do you get paid $10,000 a talk?” I stupidly replied yes at which she immediately said, “And you’re paying me $35 an hour for singing and you get paid $10,000 an hour!” She was obviously offended.

But while she was sitting there stewing, I’m thinking – “I could coach her so she could increase her rates or become a singing speaker. That opportunity is there for her right now, but she’s too busy getting all bent up about it.”

I said, “Money and time are two illusions, and some people do much less for more – but they did much more to get there. And no, it’s not fair.

But everyone has the same opportunities in front of them, though let’s be honest here. Some decide to put up their hands and say, ‘let’s go for it’ while others sit on the fence; standard practice.” She of course sat on the fence and kept doing what she knew to do – and continued teaching me to sing. But she could have been singing a whole new tune.

Does this make sense to you?

Opportunities are all around you, but you won’t see them until you want to see them. So we just keep complaining.

It’s going to take many mindset shifts to get you to sing a new tune too, because we favour our patterns. We love our comfort zones. It’s why the world is getting fatter and sicker.

To get out of our patterns it’s typically uncomfortable, uncommon, weird, different – but ultimately it will become your new normal and your new normal will be what others see as a life beyond limits.

You will be admired, lauded, applauded – and hated by some as jealousies rise. My job as your future coach is to challenge your thinking until we break those old patterns that are keeping you stuck in an average life.

You’ve got to keep untraining your brain, until you become your future you. If you want it, it’s right in front of you… A richer way to think is not standard practice.

If you would like a complimentary consultation with R!k Check out his coaching page here or enjoy a solutions session with R!k here.

Values: Which value shapes your destiny?

Values: Which value shapes your destiny?

valueIf you want to know where you’re headed, look in the direction you’re facing. If you want to know why you’re going there, look no further than your values.

What you value determines where your life grows and where it doesn’t. Your values are critical in shaping your life. A great tool to find out where you need to do some values work is the “Wheel of Life.”

The “Wheel of Life” is commonly used in Coaching to determine problem areas in our lives. Using the template (left), you imagine the outer wheel is valued at 10 and the hub is valued at zero. You then place a line in each segment rating it from zero to 10 to uncover where you think you’re out of balance. Read more