HOW TO BE A COACH

.

John Milton Fogg interviews Tom 'Big Al' Schreiter via teleconference.

JMF: Tom, what would you like to talk about?

BIG AL SCHREITER: I’d like to start by asking everyone a question. I hear people say a lot of different things about MENTORMING. Some say, “If you want to mentor somebody, you don’t have to be an expert in their area, because they already know what to do. What they need is to hold somebody accountable.” Well, I get thinking, and I say to myself, “Say, that sounds pretty good, but isn’t that what spouses are for?”

JMF: There are some single people on the call, Tom, so be careful please.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Oh. They wouldn’t be able to relate.

Other people say, “When you mentorm someone, you don’t need to worry too much about the day-to-day results or the reaching of certain goals. You need to be more concerned that they get the lesson or learn something from the experience, even if they don’t reach their desired results.”

So I’d like to ask everybody here: What would you expect a mentorm to do for you? To tell you exactly what to do, to make you responsible for it, or to teach you a new life lesson or open up your mind? What do you look for in a mentor?

Player One: What I expect from a coach, and what I try to do in coaching, is to help people bring out things they already know and come to decisions they already have. Through asking my questions and listening, they’re able to come to their own conclusion.

Player Two: What I look for in a coach is something like a golf coach: I know how to do the swing, I know how to do the stand, but I don’t know what I’m missing on the carry-through. I want someone who watches me and listens to me, and can then tell me what I don’t know or what I’m missing.

Player Three: I’m in coaching because I have discovered that I will lie like a dog. I want someone to keep after me until I either tell the truth about what’s going on with me or drop dead!

Player Four: I would like a coach to keep asking a series of increasingly focused questions until I can’t use any of my excuses any more and have to focus on what I need to do.

Player Five: I actually have two wants for a coach. One is similar to what Player Two said about the golf swing: I know what I’m supposed to be doing, and I know what I am doing, but I can’t always see the difference. I want a coach to point out those things that I know darn well I should be doing and that I may think I’m doing, but that I’m not in fact doing. I also want the coach to help me see new perspectives on whatever situation I bring to him or her, because we all tend to get tunnel vision.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Okay, let me pass on a perspective on coaching. Actually I didn’t tell John the whole truth: I actually do coach a couple of people. It’s not technically coaching, it’s just that we’ve been friends for 15 years and I put up with their phone calls. At least that’s how I put it.

I have a friend named Mike, who calls me his coach. Mike calls and tells me what’s going on, and when he’s all done, he says, “Okay, now, I can’t see the forest because of the trees, why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

It’s a lot easier for a third party to detach from all the emotions, the baggage and the relationships, to take a pretty logical look from the outside. I can look at Mike’s situation and tell him how I see it, and he gets it. So, one viewpoint of what a coach can do is to point out what your player doesn’t know or can’t see, to be a detached third party.

However, that’s just one perspective. I notice that in your answers, you seem to want generally similar things from a coach, but there are probably differences among each of you about what you expect from a coach. With the couple of people that I “coach,” I like to give them what they want. Wouldn’t it be good, as a coach, to be there to give the people you’re coaching what they want?

In other words, it might be good early in the coaching relationship to say, “Hey, what would you like to accomplish? What would you like me to do? Where do you want me to fit in?”

JMF: One purpose of our coaching program at TGN is to clarify with people what they’re after. What do they want to accomplish? Still, I do my coaching in a specific way and with a specific philosophy: building the business in terms of relationships, with a commitment to personal growth as fundamental. I go to some lengths to make sure that’s what people want to deal with, clarifying these things at the outset, so that I can coach them within the realm of my own expertise. I’m not willing to coach people on stuff I don’t know anything about or don’t agree with, approve of or believe in. Is this perhaps a little different, Tom, than what you’re saying?

BIG AL SCHREITER: That’s part of the partnership in coaching. If what they want from you, or me, or anyone else, is not going to be a good match, it’s pretty important to get that way out in front.

I got an e-mail today from a lady named Donna, who says: “I have a home business with a wonderful Web site, and I’d like to know how to get people to my site. Can you help me? I’m very new at this.”

If you read between the lines, here is what Donna has just asked me: “I’d like you to figure out how to do this for me. I can’t do it, because I’m new, and I don’t want to invest the time and effort to learn how.”

Would this person be a good coaching candidate?

If you received an e-mail from somebody saying, “Hey, I don’t know how to do it, I don’t want to take the time or investment to learn, please do it for me, will you do it for me free?” … What would you say?

I get e-mails like this two or three times a day. I always answer them very nicely, because they don’t realized what they’re asking. I say, “Well, if you’re new to marketing, now’s a good time to start learning the skills you need. It takes time and a bit of effort, but without the skills, well, it’s going to be more difficult. There are many good ezines and free webcourses on the Internet, so that’d be a good place to start, hope this helps,” and I send them a few sites where they can get started.

Now, here’s what really interesting about these people: they never write back. Why not? Because that would require additional effort.

So the first thing I suggest you do in looking at a coaching relationship is to make sure that the person really wants to put forth an effort and is not simply asking you to do his work for him.

JMF: You’re famous for giving people, even prospects, a test to see how committed they are: you send them a free book, then call them a few days later and say, “Did you read it?” and that means something to you. Is this the same thing?

BIG AL SCHREITER: Yes. I believe that before you take anybody on, to teach them how to be a leader or to coach them, they need to pass a test. You don’t tell them it’s a test, of course, because that would ruin it.

I like to give them a book to read and say, “I’ll get back to you in three days, then let’s talk about the book.” If I call back in three days and you say, “Well, I haven’t got to it, because the NBA finals were on last night, and I had to work the following day, and the day before that, well, you know, I was just not feeling well…,” then guess what I’m thinking? I am thinking, “If you didn’t have enough ambition to read a book, what are the odds of you following through, bringing people to meetings, learning new skills, or putting up with rejection?”

I wouldn’t come out and say, “Sorry, right now, you don’t qualify.” To you, I would put it this way: “You know, at this point in your life, it’s not a good time. Maybe something else is going on for you.”

This doesn’t mean you’re disqualified forever, but if you can’t even make the effort to read the book, right now would not be a good time for me to invest the time and work with you.

On the other hand, if you called me back the next day and said, “Hey, I’ve read that book, got a lot out of it, got underlinings all through it, I know I’m early, but can we talk about it now?” … What would that tell you?

JMF: It would tell me, have breakfast with them the next morning!

BIG AL SCHREITER: Yeah, sounds like here’s a potential leader!

I talk a lot about building leaders in the business; coaching is a part of this.

My philosophy in network marketing is this: distributors come and go, and they will take out of the business what they want to take out of it. They’re going to take out enough to pay the MasterCard or Visa, to use the products wholesale, to make an extra check, and whenever there’s bad press, or something else comes along, or they get distracted, they come and they go, like sand on a beach.

If you’re going to build a large network marketing organization, you’re going to have to do it with leaders, because leaders will be there when good news happens and when bad news happens.

I have a saying that has been quoted a good deal: “The secret to success in network marketing is simply to build leaders and make them successful.” The first step in that is simply to realize that you can’t find leaders, you’re going to have to create them. You can’t steal them, because if you steal them, somebody else will steal them from you. You have to find people who aren’t leaders, and then teach them how to be leaders.

To teach somebody how to be a leader, you’re going to have to teach them to think differently. They’re going to need new viewpoints, new lessons in life to help them see things differently. That’s what I think a coach has to do.

A lot of people say, “How could you take advice or be coached by somebody who hasn’t done it?” But the truth is, the people who have done it usually have no idea how they got there. You’ll see this in your business: someone joins your business and goes right to the top. Then when people ask him how he did it, he’ll say, “Be positive.” And you kind of groan. You know that people are going to need a little bit more than, “Be positive,” to build their businesses!

If you wanted to be a great baseball hitter, who would you like to have as your coach? Would you like Mark McGuire? Okay, you go up to Mark McGuire and say, “Hey man, you’ve hit more home runs than just about anybody I’ve ever known. How do you do it?” And Mark says, “Well, take steroids and swing hard.”

Or would you rather have Tommy Lasorda, who today, at age 70, can’t hit it out of the infield? (I don’t know if Tommy Lasorda ever was a major league player or not, but I’m sure he never had any home run titles.) You go up to Tommy with the same question, and he says, “Here’s what you do: you grip the bat like this, you shift your weight like this, you bend here, you look at the ball like this, and here’s the point where you break your wrists.”

Who’d be a better coach for you? The answer, of course, would be Tommy Lasorda.

You don’t always have to have a top superstar as a coach. What you really want in a coach is somebody who can guide and coach you.

Sometimes you’ll see a leader stand up and say, “Hey, you know, I joined three days ago, and I have 50 people already.” But that leader may have certain advantages. Maybe his parents owned every house in the town, and he knocked on all the doors and said, “Say, if you don’t want your rent to go up, you know, join this business.” You don’t know what he did, and whatever it is, you may not be able to duplicate it. So you might want to look for a coach who’s going to be a little bit more patient, and not necessarily worry about his or her personal statistics.

Player Two: I was at a small business expo and met a woman who’s a top leader with a company I really admire. I shared with her that her CEO is one of our coaches, and she immediately started pitching me harder than I’ve ever been pitched for any company!

BIG AL SCHREITER: So, what are you saying about this lady? Would you like her to be your coach?

Player Two: No, absolutely not!

BIG AL SCHREITER: Would you like to be her coach?

Player Two: I don’t think she’d be willing.

BIG AL SCHREITER: I think that’s a pretty astute observation.

Player Two: I don’t think Dexter Yager would, either.

BIG AL SCHREITER: I think you’ve quickly sorted out that this is not going to be a good coaching prospect for you, or even a good relationship, and you let it go right away, whereas some people are going to be as stubborn as she was, and keep pitching her for two years. All they’re doing is supporting Southwestern Bell or MCI, and wasting a lot of time that could be spent helping other people.

So that’s a good observation. You’re going to have to be pretty selective about who you’re going to coach in your business, or else you’re going to waste a lot of time, and I can attest that you can waste a lot of time!

When I first started building leaders I used to move in with them. We’d spend six months on the road, doing opportunity meetings, retailing and everything…and after six months I would have a really friendly distributor, but not a leader. What I learned was that I needed to qualify them first and then have an agenda or outline of which principles I wanted to teach them.

JMF: Tom, how did you know that they were potential leaders or, dare I say, and please correct me if I’m wrong, coachable?

BIG AL SCHREITER: Oh, I’d ask them. And I’d do the test we talked about: loan a book for three days. And it wouldn’t necessarily have to be that good. You could loan them an audio tape. Send them to the store for ice cream and cookies. You just want to see if they’re willing to make an effort.

JMF: Willing to make an effort, or willing to do what you told them to do?

BIG AL SCHREITER: I never make that distinction. Sometimes when people don’t do what I told them to do, what they actually do turns out to be a whole lot smarter and better. I have never been under the assumption, at any time in my career, that I had the answers.

I also notice that a lot of people who do become leaders have a bit of an independent streak in them. They all want to be the head of their own organization, not part of somebody else’s. And I have to allow for that, for the fact that they may not want to do things the way I want to, and they may not see the things I want to.

The Dale Carnegie course in management has something called “the acceptable margin of error.” This means, if it’s not too far off base, don’t bother correcting it; spend your time on things that are more positive. So I’ve never made people think that they did the wrong thing. As long as they were making an effort, I worked with them.

JMF: Can you say more about what you would do to build leaders?

BIG AL SCHREITER: If I want someone to be a leader, I need to teach them certain principles, so I won’t have to go back and correct them over and over again.

For example, I teach the principle, “Life is not fair.”

I ask, “If you’re in one of two lines at the bank, waiting to see the teller, which line goes faster?” They answer (correctly), “The other one.”

I say, “You’re on two lanes going one direction on the highway, which lane goes faster?” They answer (again, correctly), “Well, the other one goes faster.”

I say, “So what you’re telling me is, life’s not fair.” They say, “That’s right.”

I say, “Can you tell me who said life should be fair?” And they say, “Well, you know what, I don’t know.”

“So,” I say, "let’s agree that life is not fair. Because if life was fair and everything was even, we would all be earning $30 a month in a rice field somewhere. But we have TVs, life is good. So it’s good that life’s not fair.” They say, “Yeah.”

“So the next time Mary talks longer than Alice at the meeting, the company changes the compensation plan, the product price goes up or down, the catalog’s the wrong color, let’s not complain that it’s not fair. Even if you’ve been totally run over and it was absolutely unfair, get over it. You know, life’s not fair, and we’re the recipient of pretty good luck as it is, so let’s go on from there.”

Now, I can tell them that, and it’s not going to catch. But after two or three times in situations like the ones I just described, it’s finally going to catch, and I will no longer have to deal with their saying, “Oh, this is not fair,” any longer.

The next principle is: “Most people do network marketing every day, they just don’t get paid for it.”

When you believe that, then prospects will react to you totally different. I use this example: dogs know who to bite. They read our vibes, our auras, our body language, whatever, they know. I teach people this principle so that way they will never feel rejected, and instead will feel it’s an honorable thing to let people know that they can collect a check for network marketing.

I teach a principle about problems. I’ll say, “Do all companies have problems?” They answer, “Yeah, all companies have problems.”

It’s true. Every network marketing company has problems. They may be perfect at first, but as soon as they start hiring humans, they start having problems. Here’s how I teach it:

“Every network marketing company has problems. Your job is simply to choose the company you wish to have your problems with.”

Now, this is easy for women to understand, because they can relate.

JMF: How come they can do that, Tom?

BIG AL SCHREITER: Because women understand that all men have problems. You simply choose the man you wish to have your problems with. Now, men don’t relate, because women are perfect, so we have nothing, you know, to go by.

Player One: He’s a smart man.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Teaching these principles helps eliminate all kinds of negative phone calls, back-biting, arguments and politics. You won’t get rid of all of it, but you certainly will get rid of most of it. And, your people won’t be affected by all these outside influences that can hurt their business. You get to spend a little bit more time cruising, or being with your new baby, or enjoying a nice walk in the park, instead of handling phone calls with problems.

I teach the principle that, “People never buy on price,” and I give examples to help them understand that, so I’ll never have a price objection among them.

If we’re going to coach people to be leaders in network marketing, we need to teach them the core principles, something like the 10 Commandments. Once you have those principles down, you have a pretty good idea that whatever comes up, it’s going to fall into this framework which you can deal with. You won’t have to handle each individual situation.

I would ask the people here tonight: Have you started your own list of principles that you want your distributors or your future leaders to understand, so they become bullet-proof and continue building their businesses?

Player Two: I have.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Okay. Anybody else?

Player One: I’ve done similar things, but I haven’t done it in just the way you described, and I really like the way you just said it.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Okay, let me give you a few more examples of principles I like to teach.

“Prospects are neutral.” A prospect only becomes a good or bad prospect after meeting you. This explains why one person goes to a party and cleans up, getting lots of prospects, while the other one goes there and comes away with nobody.

“People are reactive.” They don’t normally use their free will. However they are acting right now is simply a reaction to you. Therefore, if you don’t like the way people act, you simply change what you do, and you get a different reaction.

“There are three reasons people join your business: because they know you, because they like you, and because they trust you.” In other words, it has nothing to do with the company, the products or the compensation plan. When they first join, they don’t have enough information yet in those other areas to make decisions based on that.

“The principle of notification: you have an obligation to notify everybody about your business, but you are not responsible for the decisions that people make.” You’re only responsible for letting them know, so they won’t be mad at you two years from now.

“You need only three or four good people in your career to have a massive income.” Any one individual person you meet doesn’t have to be one of those three or four good people, so don’t go around trying to convince or manipulate people, or complain to me if don’t see it yet. If it has nothing to do with your three or four good people, then don’t bother me about it, and you shouldn’t be bothered about it, either.

“The secret in network marketing is not in finding the right person, but in being the right person.” (From what I’ve seen, people in the TGN community really get this.) Once you are the right person, you don’t have to worry about finding the right person.

An example: You’re walking down the street with a group of friends, and you see a bum sitting in the gutter, nearly passed out, clutching a bottle of wine. As you walk by, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a brochure for his network marketing opportunity. How many people are going to make a small circle around him to listen?

Now, further down the street, here comes Michael Jordan, dribbling a basketball. As your group walks by, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a brochure for his network marketing opportunity. How many people are going to check this out?

Here’s what is interesting about this: both Michael Jordan and the bum are in the exact same company with the exact same brochure! The secret is not in finding the right person, but being the right person.

“People are human.” I don’t want to be negative, and please don’t take it this way, but let me give you some characteristics of the human species: selfish, self-centered, greedy ... So when somebody comes to me and says, “Man, this person just ripped me off, he’s greedy, only thought about himself,” I say, “Well, you know, sounds like he’s pretty human.” Why get upset when people are being human? I mean, that is part of what they’re known for.

“The right timing.” It’s not the right time, every time, to talk to somebody. If you talk to a young lady who seems distracted, and she finally says, “I really don’t want to check this out right now. I’m getting married later this afternoon and I have a reception this evening,” I would suggest that this is not the right time. Realize that people may not be a prospect today, but they might be tomorrow.

JMF: Tom, at the risk of being mercenary, is there one of your books or tapes that has all these principles listed?

BIG AL SCHREITER: They’re kind of spread out on all the tapes. I thought about one day putting together a definitive list, but then I thought, you know what, these happen to be my viewpoints, and any one might be the right one for you.

JMF: Is that a subtle way of saying, if people really want to learn these all they need to buy all your materials?

BIG AL SCHREITER: No, it’s a subtle way of saying that people can do what I did, look at the problems that stare you in the face, then build a principle around each one so you don’t have to deal with it any more. You may experience totally different problems than I did, although most of these are probably pretty common.

I don’t think there is a definitive list. These are just some examples of things that I try to teach. I’m happy if I get my leaders to learn three or four of them really well, to really get them down.

JMF: Anybody have a question for Thomas, please?

Player One: It’s kind of interesting: you started out saying that you were not a coach, and you proceeded to do an excellent job of coaching by asking everyone what they thought what being a coach was….

JMF: He didn’t say he wasn’t a coach, I did.

Player One: Then you brought up the point of somebody who’s done really well but didn’t know how they did it. I’ve seen a lot of people who have done it and don’t know how they did it, and what they wind up saying is the same thing that all the big leaders say, but none of them really actually did that thing they’re saying. In learning to be a coach, I spend a lot of time going back and actually being coached, because that helps me figure out how I did it, so I can explain it to somebody else.

BIG AL SCHREITER: You’ve got to watch sports, you really do, and here’s why: at the end of the game they always interview the star player, “Wow, you guys won, how’d you do it?” And the star always says the same clichés: “Well we gave 110 percent. We did it as a team. We put our heart and soul into it.” I’m not sure how you give 110 percent, because I think that 100 is technically the maximum that’s possible…but there they go, with the same clichés every time.

Player One: Right! In networking, somebody will say “Duplication, duplication, duplication,” and I know that guy didn’t duplicate, he went and did something totally different than what his sponsor did, and now he wants people to duplicate him. So that’s not being an effective coach. What would be the best way to do that?

BIG AL SCHREITER: The best way to be a really good coach is to coach. How many people here know that I do quite a few live workshops?

(Various): I do.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Any idea why I do those, other than my just being an incredibly nice guy with no social life?

Player One: Because you don’t like the telephone.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Yes, that’s one good reason.

(Various): To make money.

BIG AL SCHREITER: No, not yet, if I do I’ll let you know!

Here’s why: you learn a whole lot more by teaching than by sitting and learning. The more I do these, the better networker I become. So while some people think I do this out of the generosity and goodness of my heart, the actual hard-core, engineering, logical person in me says, "Hey, the more workshops and training you do, the better you learn the principles and how to teach them, the better you learn how to get the people to learn them faster, the better networker you’ll be.” So when I answered Player One’s question, “The best way to learn to be a good coach is to coach,” I really mean that. Doing it a lot is important. There are other factors, such as knowing how the business works, but actually going out and doing is one of the fastest ways to learn. That’s why I do a lot of workshops.

Player One: Thank you.

Player Six: In some of the other conversations we’ve had about coaching, we’ve talked about detachment. I think I would have a bit of a problem with that, detaching from the person enough so that I could say the needed thing. How do you handle that?

COACH SCHREITER: How do I handle being detached?

Player Six: No, do you find it necessary in your coaching to concentrate on being detached from the person enough that you can give possibly hard advice once in a while?

BIG AL SCHREITER: Well, I have no problem being detached: I’m an engineer. If you’d like to learn how to be detached, just go to engineering school.

As far as telling people what they need to hear, versus what they want to hear, I have a lot of trouble with that.

When you tell people what they need to hear, often they don’t hear it, and all you’ve done is aggravate them, which makes it more human. We can be brave and do it, and not worry whether people like us, but the bottom line is, are they going to hear it and get it?

My strategy, which is probably not as effective as it should be, has always been to give them something they will hear, rather than giving them what they need to hear, and then make tiny adjustments on the way instead of in one big massive step. Some people with a background in psychology who understand how people think could probably move them from one step to another very, very quickly. I don’t have that skill, so I just deal with the skills I do have.

Player Three: I’m just getting started, working with leads, and I’m relating the things you said about looking for leaders to the responses I’m getting from people who answer my invitation.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Let me ask you a question: what do ninety percent of your leads tell you on the phone?

Player Three: Nothing. They don’t answer the phone, or they don’t call back. Of those who do, I’ve probably had about 70 percent sound really excited and say, yes, they remember answering an ad.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Then what happens?

Player Three: Variations on “not much.”

BIG AL SCHREITER: Can I pass on a principle, if you promise not to take it personally?

Player Three: Yes, please.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Imagine a person who hates his job, wants to earn more money, would like to be in his own business, wants more time with his family, would like not to commute anymore. He fills out a form saying that he wants to join a business, that he’s really interested.

You talk to him, and now he’s suddenly not interested.

What do you think happened? Do you think it had anything to do with what you said or what you did?

Player Three: It could be. Yes.

BIG AL SCHREITER: Yes, it had everything to do with what you said and what you did. Whatever you’re saying and doing right now is turning these people from good prospects to bad prospects.

The principle is this: Prospects have no free will. They are humans; they only react. If you want them to react differently, simply change something you say or do. I would say, “Hey, let’s learn to say or do something different, and then test it out until we find the formula that’s going to get these leads to react by saying, ‘Yeah, let’s get started now!’”

I would use several examples like this to teach the principle that it has nothing to do with the prospect but almost everything to do with what we say and what we do.

I’m glad you brought this up, because it’s a good way of showing how you can teach people the principles by real-life situations they are facing, and after you’ve been showing it to them from four or five different angles, all of the sudden they go, “Oh, I get it!”

JMF: Folks, please, what one valuable thing are you taking away from this conversation?

Player Seven: Tom, I like what you said about being the right person.

Player Four: What I’m taking away is, whatever happens has everything to do with what we are doing, and has very little to do with the people we’re talking to.

Player Eight: People come and go, but be selective with the people you’re going to coach.

Player Nine: I learned that you learn more as a teacher than you do by being taught.

Player One: I love that all companies have problems. Just pick the one you want to have the problems with.

Player Ten: I like the fact that you said people assume, and that we should always try and remember that.

Player Eleven: I liked the principle that people have no free will, that they only react, so if we want a different reaction, we need to do things differently.

*** End of teleconference/interview.

Have Questions?We Are Here To Help!

Send an Email

STAYING WITH ME THIS FAR I HAVE INTERNET SPECIALS FOR YOU.....



COACH FOR FREE

FREE EBOOK

REX'S BEST OFFER FOR YOU

BE GLAD TO HAVE YOUR AS A PARTNER IN A

JOINT VENTURE

NEXT