Trainers and Coaches and Mentors, Oh My!

Trainers and Coaches and Mentors, Oh My! It seems the deeper I dig into coaching the more I learn about it and the more I realize we all need a coach, regardless of where we are at in our journey. The sad thing about this and I suppose like most industries is that very few every come to grips with hiring a coach, and the ones that do are the last people you would think would hire a coach. Look at other professions, golf for example, Tiger Woods has a coach and although he has taken a few steps backwards over the past few years he is still one of the most dominant players to ever play the game, and yet he feels that in order to be his absolute best he must have a coach, and undoubtedly he has more than one coach.

The differences between mentors, coaches and trainers as I see it -

• A Mentor is someone with experience that is willing to allow a protegee to follow along, to shadow and learn from working directly with that mentor
• A trainer is someone that will take a program and teach his trainees to do as I say, follow the scripts and the systems and ingrain habits into their trainees
• A coach is someone that will take the God-Given talents of an individual and bring out the best in that person to help them reach their fullest potential

I started coaching when I was 16 years old, I played basketball in high school, along with football and track and I wanted to coach young athletes, so a friend and I went to the local rec department and asked if they would consider us for coaches for one of the youth teams, they loved the idea because they usually end up with an overbearing father of a less than athletic son and everyone pays the price. Well that year I fell in love with coaching and knew that it was something I would be doing at some level through out my life.

I went on to college, played some football but studied a new field at the time, the official title was "Strength and Conditioning for College and Professional Athletes" I know it is a mouthful but it was what I really wanted, to be around the best in the world at what they do, to be a part of their growth and to bring out even more of each and every athlete I was to work with, this was my calling. As I worked my way through the program I found I had another rather unique ability to find an untapped niche and dig deep into that, I was managing a liquor store while attending school and discovered a very little known secret about the industry and within months we were on our way to being not only the number one draft beer sales store in our city, but we were the catalyst to taking our quadrant of Denver to the number one spot in the nation in draft beer sales.

Fast forward a few years to having children and coaching whatever sport they were into at the time, nope I was not one of those overbearing parents and my boys were not superstars, but I did want every one on the team to have a fair shot at the sport they were trying to play so I would do as much as I could to teach them every position, at least the positions they showed interest in, because you just never know when one will have a growth spurt and all of a sudden they are a man playing among boys.

Same is true with Realtors, so many get thrown into the business and are taught, if they are taught anything at all, that they must do it "this way", or this is how the "rock-star" agents do it, well if they do not have the same make up of that "rock-star" then all the training and coaching and mentoring is not going to get them to that level, no what is needed is a personalized approach, just like Tiger Woods gets, he has a swing that is different than everyone elses, imagine if his coach said, "Tiger, you need to copy Jim Furyk, he has a great swing and has been consistent with it his entire career." I think Tiger might be able to pull off that swing, but it would take him years to perfect to where he could take it back on tour and make money with it.

One thing I learned from my years in college, studying to work with the best, is that one size does not fit all, even when those two are playing the same position, take Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, if they were on the same team i guarantee they would have different workouts, different diet plans, different strength training programs and probably even different conditioning programs, and yet they are two of the best that have ever played, playing the same position, so why do we keep coaching agents to do the same thing that someone else did.

I will admit that there needs to be a foundation laid, but to be the best, everything needs to fit your personality, your budget, your life dreams and goals, your timing and best of all it needs to be fun! When you can put all of that together then you will not only have a blast, you will perform at peak levels and dominate your industry.

Ever since I became a dad my favorite word has been "Dad" and my second favorite was "Coach"!