CAREER/LIFECOACHING 107
sense ofwhat she’s good at and what she doesn’t want to do. Our promise is
that we will double that income while doubling time off. We work in groups,
through a structured format, over a period of a year. The awareness that our
coaching creates helps participants achieve their goals. It’s amazing how
many people have doubled their incomes and doubled their time off within
the first 30 days.
The key to the success of our coaching is its structure. I developed it by
considering hundreds of different sources. The emphasis is extremely practi-
cal. Our focus is not on instructing but on questions. We deal with four aspects
ofour clients’ lives: first, their career, work, and income; second, their rela-
tionships; third, their overall financial situation; and fourth, how much they
intend to be worth. We make a strong distinction between income and worth.
There are three other critical parameters that we consider—personal and pro-
fessional development, community and social involvement, and spiritual devel-
opment. But we do not contemplate these as deeply because they are more
personal and time consuming, and require a different level of coaching.
Instead, in each of the first four areas, we discuss how to organize our
lives to reach a higher level of satisfaction. I call this the focal point process.
Par t ic ipants have come to the session having done prework on these areas al-
ready, the purpose of which is to get psychologically out of their existing
space and force them to think through questions about who they are, what
they want and how they’re measuring up. Now, it’s time to bring that initial
thinking into greater clarity and action.
Working in small groups of five people helps generate a different level of
creative possibility. This idea is related to the Mastermind concept in which
the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the people you hang out
with. When like-minded positive people come together to share ideas, amaz-
ing things happen. Sometimes, a great conversation with a really interesting
person turns on all kinds of lights in our minds. In our program, we create a
structured Mastermind in which everyone asks each other a series of ques-
tions and goes through a series of exercises. One such question is “ What are
the points of intensity in your life?” Intensity is defined as a point when you
make a decision that has a multiplier effect on the actions or outcomes of
many other people. For example, we ask: “ What are the intensity points in
your work?” Contemplating that, people ref lect on whom they would work
with, what markets they would get in or out of, and what skills they would
need to be more successful. Once we’ve decided to learn a new skill, what
kind of multiplier effect will that have on our lives?
Out of those questions comes one more, just as important: “ What action will
you take immediately as a result of your answers to the preceding questions?” I