Do Market Leaders Need Advisors?

In the first part of this article, Dan Kennedy started describing the first three reasons you need a coach; accountability, being questioned and challenged, and being listened to. Top performers in both athletics and business use coaches to keep themselves at peak performance. What are you doing right now to improve your performance and increase your business acumen? Who is at your side pushing you to achieve more? If you don’t have someone there, then you need a coach.

Why Top Performers Use Coaches – And You Need One Now, Part 2
by Dan Kennedy

Being Recognized for Your Achievements

Everybody needs recognition and celebration-but to whom can the entrepreneur brag? Certainly not to his employees, his competitors, his vendors. Since most of the people I and the coaches I advise work with are “Renegades”, using unorthodox marketing strategies, most of the people around them actually disapprove of a lot of what’s working, even if they grudgingly acknowledge the results. And often, if the owner of the business takes the garish black on neon green oversized postcard he spent days slaving over, that just pulled a 14 to 1 ROI, home to show his wife and kids, he gets a very disinterested response. A “that’s nice dear” – not a “holy crap! 14-1! You’re a genius. Can I get a copy of that?” Having a knowledgeable coach or, better yet, being part of a coaching/mastermind group gives everyone of us an appreciative audience who “gets it” who understands our accomplishments, and is able and willing to celebrate our achievements because they are secure in their own success.

Being Accepted

I call my most successful clients (and myself) “Renegade Millionaires’ because we violate just about every norm of our industries and professions…we are actually quite dysfunctional in one way or another…we think and talk differently than almost everyone around us in our day-to-day lives. Because of this, a lot of successful entrepreneurs actually suffer silent frustration and loneliness. In many instances, we can’t even explain what we do to ‘civilians!’ Feeling like “the fish out of water” most of one’s waking hours is not all that pleasant. That’s why being part of a coaching/mastermind group will like-minded “Renegades” is so invigorating. One of the core human needs is to be accepted for who you are, without need of mask or cautious editing of expressed thought.

Being Motivated

Surely a top pro athlete being a game doesn’t need “motivation” but, actually the fact that they are paid millions, win, lose or draw, means they do need a great deal of other motivation to do all the behind-the-scenes hard work required for peak performance on the field. In almost every locker room after every game, grown men who are paid millions to play their games are awarded game balls. Coaches cry, hug, atta boy!, nudge. Ultimately, all motivation is self-motivation, but there’s definitely contributions made by the people and ideas you associate with, the involvements you’re in, the successes of others you’re exposed to.

Check back for the last part of this article by Dan Kennedy, when he writes about the options available in coaching.

About The Author: Dan Kennedy is the author of nine business books, including his newest, NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS, available in bookstores or from online booksellers. Additional information and free chapter previews at www.nobsbooks.com. Included with the book, a coupon for a free kit of peak personal productivity tools. Kennedy is also a busy entrepreneur, consultant, speaker and direct-response advertising copywriter. Info at www.dankennedy.com.