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Koans to Live By If You're Thomas Leonard

Thomas Leonard The Zen of Attraction

by Thomas J. Leonard

I developed these 14 koans to help me get more space so that I could better apply the 28 Attraction Principles and Practices of the Attraction Operating System. Note: You can take these literally, figuratively or as a place to come from in your dealings. They are simply what works for me.

1. Promise nothing.
Just do what you most enjoy doing.

2. Sign nothing.
Just do what doesn't require a signature of any kind.

3. Offer nothing.
Just share what you have with those who express an interest.

4. Expect nothing.
Just enjoy what you already have; it's plenty.

5. Need nothing.
Just build up your reserves and your needs will disappear.

6. Create nothing.
Just respond well to what comes to you.
7. Seduce no one.
Just enjoy them.

8. Adrenalize nothing.
Just add value and get excited about that.

9. Hype nothing.
Just let quality sell by itself.

10. Fix nothing.
Just heal yourself.

11. Plan nothing.
Just take the path of least resistance.

12. Learn nothing.
Just let your body absorb it all on your behalf.

13. Become no one.
Just be more of yourself.

14. Change nothing.
Just tell the truth and things will change by themselves.

Copyright 1997 by Thomas J. Leonard. All rights reserved.

(Used with permission)

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Topics: Thomas Leonard, Attraction Principles, Zen of Attraction

The Secret to Coaching Success: Servant Entrepreneurs Unite!

Posted by Julia Stewart

I've been playing with the concept of the Servant Entrepreneur, a phrase that I coined when looking for the entrepreneurial equivalent of Servant Leader (http://www.greenleaf.org/). I'll be speaking about it at a new seminar titled, THE SERVANT ENTREPRENEUR: How to Become Irresistibly Attractive to Money, Opportunities and People.

In a previous post in the Coaching Blog, I wrote that the Servant Entrepreneur was probably the only business model that will bring sustainable success to coaches.

What is the Servant Entrepreneur business model?

1. Do service for others.
2. Leverage that service (and everything else) to grow your business and create value for your clients, yourself and the world.

In that order.

Simple, huh? Maybe you're already doing it. But maybe not.

Most coaches start out with this as their purpose, more or less, but it gets lost, easily. Especially while you're getting hyped by marketing programs that tell you how to make lots of money as a coach.

Are you making lots of money, yet?

If you're not, then you may be focusing on the wrong step. Most coaches either focus on doing service and leave out the leveraging piece, or they focus on the leveraging piece and only do service as an after thought, which comes across as manipulative to savvy potential clients. Or they flip back and forth, which doesn't work, either. Do you see yourself in here?

How do you consistently do service first and leverage second and become enormously successful (like say, Oprah Winfrey or Thomas Leonard)?

I don't pretend to have all the answers and yet, I've seen it in action and it works and I've seen coaches who don't get it, even "top" coaches, crash and burn.

Here's the tricky part: The Ego and the Greater Self need to kiss and make up.

If you've done your personal development, you know what I'm talking about. (If not, get to work!)

However, most PD programs encourage you to live only from the greater self and get the ego out of the picture. The ego is what has driven humankind for tens of thousands of years. Now some folks are giving it the boot; calling it "pathological" or "dysfunctional". Maybe it's neither. Maybe the greater self is just an upgrade, like from DOS to WindowsXP.

Ego is a source of energy, expensive energy maybe, like foreign oil, but useful at least for now. The Self runs cleaner, but it can use a boost in order to get things done in the temporal world - the one where business occurs. The ego can be placed in service of the greater self and visa versa, kind of like hybrid cars use two different energy sources and produce cleaner running cars. You're probably already doing that to some degree: It feels better to come from the Self and the ego likes to feel good, so it's willing to go there, right? That's why doing service feels good.

Why not let the Self support the ego, too? Having a greater voice in the world, having the power and money to do great good - wouldn't that serve the Self? So why not let the ego succeed at the things it wants, when those things can also serve the Self? For example, why not let the ego have all the money and success that it craves - as long as it's doing service?

If you ever visited thomasleonard.com while he was still alive (You can still go there by going to www.waybackmachine.org and typing in thomasleonard.com and choose the dates that you want to look at. Currently his URL just goes to a memorial site.), you know that his tagline was, "Ego is good." Ever wonder what he meant by that? He'd already discovered that ego can place the Self in service of the world. Without it, you may as well retire to your cave and meditate for the rest of your life. Not a bad thing, but if you're an entrepreneur, it's not your thing.

Thomas made SE work.

How can you start putting SE to work for you (and the world)?

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Topics: coaching success, Thomas Leonard, Servant Entrepreneur

Servant Entrepreneur

Posted by Julia Stewart

We need a new definition of entrepreneurship: The Servant Entrepreneur, someone who always places service above profits. Like the Servant Leader, this is someone who is not in it for the perqs, but for the honor of doing service. Not for the ego rush, but the fulfillment of purpose.

When I say, "someone who always places service above profits", I don't mean that the Servant Entrepreneur is any less savvy as a business person; He/she's still and entrepreneur. But service is first.

Thomas Leonard was a Servant Entrepreneur (He also had a big ego that sometimes got in the way, so there's hope for us all!) Thomas doubled the value of Coach U every year without raising the price. He added value to Coachville members for the sheer joy of it - and he made a small fortune!

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Servant Entrepreneur may be the only business model that will deliver high-quality coaching and a profitable business, at the same time.

How can we become Servant Entrepreneurs? I believe it takes discipline to do it consistently. It may not always feel good. It may mean forgoing the intoxicating moments for the joy of fulfillment. And that means knowing the difference between the two, becoming aware of how each feels to you.

For me, spiritual fulfillment is a subtle inner knowingness, a joy that connects me to the whole world. Intoxication is that excited little buzz I feel that causes me to check my email at 7 AM on a Sunday morning!

Becoming a Servant Entrepreneur also may require asking yourself throughout your day, "What is motivating you? Who's in charge, your ego or your Self?" And not judging, if it's your ego, but choosing to put your ego in service of the world. This may mean shifting the way you think about your projects away from money-generating products toward value-generating products.

Instead of asking ourselves, "What do I want to do?", we may want to ask, "What does the world want or need that I'm excited to give?"

I believe that this discipline requires that we do not try to go it alone. Precisely because it is so easy to slip into ego-based desire without even knowing it. We need mentors who have mastered this (I'm not sure any have) or friends who are closely aligned with this value to hold us accountable, or spiritual teachers who know us very well.

We need to practice Servant Entrepreneurship, not just light a candle and hope for the best!

This is a big shift for most of us to make. Subtle but big. I'm attempting to orient myself around it, as an operating system. Please let me know if you think I'm missing the mark.

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Topics: Thomas Leonard, Servant Entrepreneur, Mattison Grey

Did Coaching Go Mainstream Without You?

Posted by Julia Stewart

I've been at odds with all the experts on this one for years and I read it again in Andrea Lee's book, Multiple Streams of Coaching Income,recently (which I recommend, btw).

Everybody who knows anything about coaching knows that coaching hasn't gone mainstream, yet, but when it does, it'll be really BIG. Have you heard that one?

Guess what? Coaching already went mainstream!

How do I know? For starters, I first heard about coaching on the Oprah show five years ago. Actually, I had heard of it previously, but it didn't sink in until Oprah did an entire series with Cheryl Richardson (every Tuesday, I think.) At the time, Oprah was the #1 TV show in the world (I think it still is, but I haven't looked that up). They even watch it in Saudi Arabia! That's as mainstream as it gets (and that was five years ago).

I remember telling Thomas this in an R&D class, when he asked "When do you think coaching will go mainstream?" "Coaching is already mainstream, now", I said. (I could tell he didn't believe me.) Who was I to tell Thomas anything about coaching? I was just green enough not to know any better! Sometimes it takes a neophite to notice something the experts are missing.

And every year that goes by, I get more right about this one.

In 2005, coaches aren't just guests on other people's TV shows, now they have their own shows. Rhonda Britton even has two shows on different continents!

And have you noticed how often coaching gets joked about in advertising, TV and movies? And did you know that there's an indie film out there called, Life Coach, the Movie? Did you know that thePurpose Driven Life, a run away best seller in the US, is a coaching book written by an evangelical minister?

I think coaches are resistant to this idea, because they've bought into the notion that when coaching goes mainstream, everyone will have a coach. Then, it'll be easy to get clients, right?

I think coach training schools further this notion. They train coaches. The coaches can't find clients. The coaches say, "Hey, what happened?" and the training schools say, "Just wait, when coaching goes mainstream, it'll be easy."

What if coaching went mainstream without you and you're still waiting for it to get easy?

So where are my clients then, you say? They're all around you. People want coaching. They want better lives, better careers, you name it! And some coaches are making money fast by offering people what they want.

What's my point, here? My point is that professionals (not just coaches) stop themselves from being successful, because they get too rigid an idea of how success is going to look. They keep waiting for success, their way, to show up, when success a thousand possible ways is going wanting.

I learned this as a personal trainer. Personal training is about 10 years ahead of coaching. I remember when nobody knew what it was. Some people still don't. But it hit the mainstream in the 90's. I was able to ride that wave, because I had learned that in fitness, you can't sell people what you think they need, you can only sell them what they want.

Big distinction!

I remember sitting in the back of a Pilates studio in Manhattan, where I was picking up and extra certification. My classmates were bemoaning the above distinction like they were doomed to failure, because of it. Then I shared the secret: "Once you've got them, you can educate them." Little lightbulbs went on all over the room!

My personal training clients come to me with very specific goals. They want to fit into the jeans they wore in college, for instance. Or they want to look like they did at eighteen. I don't lie to them. I tell them I can't turn them into eighteen year olds, but they can look great at 50. They're willing to accept that as a goal. Funny thing, though. They almost always say later, "I came because I wanted to look better, but the real reward is that I feel so much better." And they stay with me. I've had one client for fifteen years!

How does this translate into coaching? I'm not suggesting you pull a bait and switch. Don't promise to double their income and expect them to be satisfied with less stress. (That could happen, but don't plan on it.) Do find out what they want and what format they want it in. Will they buy a book, a motivational CD? Will they join a group that meets in your living room every week? Will they take a work-out class where the instructor slips in a little coaching? Will they take a series of classes that includes a coaching gym?

Once you've got them you can educate them.

What else can you do for them that they don't know about, yet? Do you know that chasing after dreams is almost never as fulfilling as living your values? People who haven't been coached, yet, don't (usually). Let them begin to learn that, while they're experiencing you in some other format. Offer to take them even further with it. Maybe that'll lead to one-to-one coaching. Maybe to another book. Who knows?

One thing is for sure. With seven billion people on the planet, you don't have time to coach them all one-to-one. Especially now that coaching has gone mainstream!

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2005http://www.yourlifepart2.com/confab.htm

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Topics: Coaching, Thomas Leonard, OPRAH, Cheryl Richardson, Andrea Lee

Coaching Blog

Koans to Live By If You're Thomas Leonard

The Secret to Coaching Success: Servant Entrepreneurs Unite!

Servant Entrepreneur

Did Coaching Go Mainstream Without You?

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