The fact is that competency is no longer something to aspire to. Good enough is no longer good enough, especially if you’re on the Attraction track. You’ll simply need to set your sights higher in terms of what you do for a living and how you do it.  Get on the path of mastery. – Thomas

Coach Dave Comment:
Mastering Your Craft is an essential BRAND BOOSTER for any Coach.  We would love to have you on our team for the I Love Coaching Game September 2011!  All of us will play with one of these ideas in the Top 10 to BOOST our BRANDS.  It is going to be great fun!

1. Invent something new in your field.

It’s NOT that difficult. Just give yourself the permission to be an Einstein or Edison. The closer you are to your customers, the more ‘ideas’ you’ll have. THEY are your R&D department, not YOU.

Question: What is something that your current customers need yet haven’t specifically or directly asked for yet?

2. Invent a better way for customers to use your product or service.

It’s one thing to be a great attorney, coach or RV salesperson. It’s quite another to actually care how WELL your clients or customers use your services or product. Most providers, manufacturers and sales people SAY they care about this, but they really don’t.

Question: If you DID care ‘this much,’ how would you prove it?

3. Teach others in your field how to better do what they do.

One of the fastest ways to master your craft is to teach the newer people in your field what you know. They, in turn, will ask YOU the right questions which will keep you learning and progressing. Surround yourself with very smart students and you’ll become a real master of your craft. Don’t try to force yourself to master your craft all by yourself. That’s a lot of extra work.

Question: What can I learn from new people coming into my field/industry?

4. Bring a piece of what you do and share it with the public, for free.

This is an interesting idea in that it prompts you to think in terms of serving a much larger market than you may be serving now. What IF you could give away a piece of what you do?

Question: How would you master your craft faster if you were to give away a piece of what you do, know or have, to tens of thousands of people?

5. Raise at least one standard in your field or industry.

This is one great way to improve yourself, your industry and your own professional reputation. The bar gets raised every time one person in an industry or field does this.

Question: What is the one professional standard that you could raise which would make you stand out among your peers?

6. Reduce the emotional/time cost of delivery of your product or service.

In order to have the time and space to master your craft, you’ll probably need to find a way to simplify, streamline or automate part of what you do as a part of your service delivery business.

Question: What is one aspect of what I do professionally which is either unnecessary, time-expensive or emotionally-expensive to me?

7. Increase the demand for your product or service.

I’m a believer that when you focus on increasing the demand for what you provide (meaning to give more people more/better reasons to buy what you offer), that you are, in effect, getting better at what you do. This, because it puts you more in the shoes of your current as well as potential customers and has you coming up with features and benefits that they will respond to, thus evolving the very product or service you are providing.

Question: What is the one thing that almost everyone really wants in life and how can I link my product or service to that?

8. Integrate your product or service with other popular products or services.

People rarely buy or use products to use all by itself — usually they are using the product or service to enhance other products or services, or as a tool to get more out of life. So, no product or service is an Island — it’s part of a network.

Question: What product or service do people use a lot that I can link my product or service to?

9. Tap into the minds of the smartest/most visionary people in your industry.

There are always visionaries in every field and one of the fastest ways to master/improve your skill sets is to be in touch with these smart people, in some way. I read Wired magazine, subscribe to several email broadcasts of super smart people in the Training/Development and Internet industry, and have developed relationships with several very, very smart people who I can turn to with questions and who’s responses prompt my thinking in a way that I could never do on my own.

Question: Who is the smartest/most visionary person you know in your field? Get on their electronic mailing list.

10. Invent a new craft.

This, of course, is cheating, but what a way to win! I read somewhere that one of the benefits of inventing a new craft is that no one can ever tell you that you’re wrong. But the idea here is that there are new professions and crafts popping up all the time in respond to a more educated, demanding and specialized consumer. Don’t be afraid to invent an entirely new service or product, and give it a new name. That’s how business/personal coaching got started as a profession.

This Attraction Principle Top 10
is part of the CoachVille Pro Coach Membership Center
Copyright 1997 by Thomas Leonard and 2011 by CoachVille LLC.
All rights reserved.