How to become an Extraordinary Coach with Ajit Nawalkha

Co-founder of Mindvalley – Ajit Nawalkha

Ajit Nawalkha is a speaker, angel investor, author, entrepreneur and business coach. He is a co-founder of Mindvalley and key investor in successful companies like Blinkwebinars and Zenward.

Ajit believes that when it comes to creating a business and a life you love, it?s all about doing less, not more and his methods have been proven to work again, and again. One of his core beliefs is that a life worth living is a life that is dedicated to being of service to others. Ajit?s passion and purpose revolve around helping entrepreneurs create a positive impact in the greater world. Nothing makes him happier than watching honest, dedicated business owners achieve their dreams; knowing that he played a part in making those dreams come true.

What you will learn from Ajit Nawalkha:

• Stages of being a successful coach
• How to consistently work to develop yourself as a coach
• How to earn more revenue faster as a coach and keep your clients longer

and more….

Ajit’s Website:

Evercoach.com

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm a Jamie Masters and today on the show we have Ajit. Now, he's cofounder of Mind Valley Teach. He's a serial entrepreneur. He has had tons of businesses in the past. He also wrote a book called The Book of Coaching and runs Evercoaching.com. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. 

Ajit:	I'm so excited to be here, and Jaime. 

Jaime:	So, I want to talk about coaching, because I never thought that there was a very good book on coaching, no offense. I'm a little judgy when it comes to coaches. I remember when I first got into Coach University and I was talking to them and everybody that I talked to never made any money at all as a coach. So, I was a little - right? So, but - tell me a little bit more about Evercoach and what The Book of Coaching is actually about.

Ajit:	So, it's kind of like what you said that a lot of coaches actually make no money whatsoever or made very little money which barely would feel like, it's that even a profession worth getting into, but that's mostly because of the misunderstanding that happens around coaching as a business and the need for coaching. 

	And recently you would have seen a lot of people have started to show up as coaching, and the reason there are coaches and the reason for that is because there's a whole opportunity that is being discovered that previously was ignored, because people are now starting to realize that as you're becoming a professional, usually what would happen traditionally is, let's say I'm a professional. I'll go out, I'll read a book, I might attend a seminar, and I'm done. Right? But what happens when you're attending a seminar? What happens when you read a book, it's lot personal to you. 

It is very impersonal. It's very generic. And generic never really serves a high-performing individual. Or you're a high-performing individual but only moderately. Not as much as a person would like to, and that understanding has built the whole industry of coaches who can go in and support people to really transcend to their next performance. And by performance, I dont really mean predominantly [inaudible audio distortion] relationship, health, wellness; all of that good stuff can happen if youre working with a coach. 

So, what had happened for me was I personally have used a lot of coaches, teachers, educators, thats how my story kind of evolves as a person is I came from a little town in India called Chipora and I got to where I am today thanks to all the all the teachers, coaches, educators who showed up in my life and showed me the path, and that kind of got us interested to kinda look at these folks and wonder why is it that people are not engaging with these coaches? Why is it that coaches are not making the kind of money they should be making or finding the freedom they should be finding? While of course serving the tribe? 

And the dynamic is because like you correctly said, there was no real one place that somebody could tell them or show them what's possible for them as a coach, as an educator, as a teacher. Right? And that is what led to the creation of Evercoach. So, Evercoach came in as a platform and we said what if we simplify business and coaching for coaches. Right? Because that was the piece that was missing for coaches was a lot of noise around saying how to get a client, but that is never a great way to build a great business is not only about clients. 

Yes you do need clients or somebody needs to pay for the services that we provide, but that's not what really creates truly, powerful, successful businesses. And that led us to create Evercoach, and that further, we wanted to summarize and make that knowledge accessible to as many for a price that would be easy and more people can go through so at least they can get started and get started in the right. That got us to write The Book of Coaching. So, that kind of is the back story for The Book of Coaching.

Jaime:	So, what is the right then? Because if it's not going out after clients, everybody's like well wait I'm so confused. So, give us the model of what does work.

Ajit:	So, we talk about this at length in The Book of Coaching. Right? And basically the model revolves around three principles. And anybody who's an entrepreneur knows that there are principles that you follow. Strategies come in handy, but strategies only work until a certain point. Often it's about principles, the core concepts of what really makes that business work. 

And every business has its own DNA. Right? For coaching, the DNA revolves around three key elements. Element one is you yourself. Most of the entrepreneurs again forget that. They don't really work on themselves after a point. A coach is it's even more important, because if the coaches are not focused on them and really understand themselves, they won't be able to guide their clients in the way they need to be guided, because they are scared themselves. They are fearful themselves and not able to ask the questions they need to ask. They're not ready to go where they need to go to create a result. So, the first element, the first principle is, are you consistently working on yourself? And that's the first principle.

Jaime:	Okay. So, we have a question. Wait I have a question on the first principle. Because you hear this all the time where they're like oh, that coach read a book on how to lose weight and they didn't do it themselves and yet they're coaching other people how to do it? And everybody gets in a tiff because of all that stuff. 

And I remember my mentor when I first started, I didn't have very much business experience at all, and he taught me, and he was like when you're a baseball coach, you don't necessarily run as fast as the players. And that made me feel better at the time for sure, but when you look at where that line is of you can't teach if you don't know or if you haven't been there before, where is that line of how much they work on themselves? Should they be three, five, seven steps ahead of the people or is there no metric for that?

Ajit:	There's no metric for that. And there's a reason why there is no metric for that. And I'll give you an explanation in context of the example that you gave. What if you have not lost the weight and you're helping other people to lose weight. What if you have not been really successful in your business, how can you help people be really successful? Can you coach a client that is further on the journey than you? The answer to all of those is yes. 

When I say you need to work on yourself, it doesn't mean that you have to be this perfect being, because firstly, there is no perfect being. Secondly, a coach's job as much as yes they want to [inaudible] [00:05:52] somebody else's experience, they it's like if I tell you to position somebody else or sell somebody else, would it be easier for you to position yourself or somebody else? Especially if you trust the other person? 

It's easier for you to position somebody else, because it's easier to ask that question outside. It's hard to ask that question inside to yourself. Now, the challenge here is the coach should be willing to ask the question inside with the awareness that sometimes they won't find the answer, which is why it's always recommended as a coach; you should have a coach, right, because you will have to take that journey yourself. But what is equally important is nobody should become a coach because they read a book. That's not fair to your client. You will not derive a result with them, because the book doesn't make you of coach. 

A coach becomes a coach because of the second thing that we're about to get into, which is do they have a developed methodology. A developed methodology is a format that works. That works or tends to work most of the time. Not all the time, because that's not really possible, everybody's unique, but most of the time. 

Do you have a proven methodology of getting your client from point A to point B, and point B being the point that they want to get to. Right? And if you have a set of tools, if you have a set of strategies that can get a client from point A to point B, then, and you have evolved it, and you've worked on it consistently, and you have a solid methodology, again, a lot of times coaches will get into coaching without a solid foundation of knowing what are they doing. 

They would read a book and they would think, I wanna go out and help a lot of people. And yes you can go out and help a lot of people, but please don't call yourself a coach, you can just be giving friendly advice and that's okay. Right? Because you don't really know everything and, not that you need to know everything, but you don't know enough that you can actually help someone and you won't actually get results to your clients, which again doesn't really help you or your clients or the business or just the community of coaches who actually do the work and actually before they show up and work with the client they know what they're going to do and what they're about to do. Right? So, I hope that answers kind of [inaudible] [00:07:55] of answering that question. Does it?

Jaime:	Yes. It definitely does. Especially because it brings up when - so I joined Coach University, and one of the first things they tell you to do is to go coach. And I was like but I don't know what I'm doing. 

	So, I couldn't even charge my best friend $25 a month, a month to do this. So, I was like okay it's free. Right? So, because I didn't feel confident in what it was, and this is like ten something years ago. But what's amazing and what I think people need to understand is it does develop, and you might suck at first no matter what you start that's new. It's okay to suck as long as you sort of are willing to go the miles for them. So, I love that you have a ? actually having a methodology that you know has worked in the past is way better when you start then to just randomly make stuff up. Right?

Ajit:	Yeah. And know that because you already said you may suck, no you will suck in the beginning. That is an absolute 100 percent guarantee that your first few clients are going to be absolutely shitty, you're not gonna do a good job, and they're going to hate you for it. But that's why when you start you do something like what you did, which is to say hey would you be willing to play long? Can we try this? Can we test it? 

It's like almost even when you create a product outside of coaching. Right? Yes you can charge for the product straight off the bat, but if you're still working out the little quirks of it and what you're putting out is not really refined, maybe the first few clients you want to just give that as a service for free and say hey try this, tell me if it works, and if it does, now I know works, I've got the- that's why you launch a better version of a software if you have a software company. Right? It's kind of the same principle. Go out, coach, if you're a coach, consult if you're a consultant, teach if you're teacher, for absolutely free for just one thing. Does this method work? Do people even like what I'm doing? 

Jaime:	I love it. Alright. So, I interrupted you enough. What is number three? 

Ajit:	And number three is the one that most people focus on, which is to build a business around it. Right? This is the thing that most everybody thinks that's the problem with their business. Right? You go to a coach and they 100 percent of the time would say I don't have enough leads, I'm not closing well enough or my social media is not really perfected. I'm perfecting my [inaudible] [00:09:58]. Right? And this is 100 percent of people going that's my problem and it's - sometimes it is really the problem that their [inaudible] or they don't know how to sell or they don't know how to position themselves or their website is really shitty, but a lot of times it's because you have a really bad methodology and it doesn't work. 

And because you're not deriving results with the person is why nobody's coming. It's because you're not refining your message is why nobody's coming. But it's important once you've refined your message, once you have [inaudible] the methodology, once you are constantly working on yourself, go ahead and work on your business. Build a funnel. Build a webinar if that's your funnel. Build a landing page, write a book, speak on stages whatever that is for you, but find that ecosystem that works for you, and by ecosystem it means you don't have to do all of these items. Right? 

You don't have to go and speak on stages and write a book and write a [inaudible] [00:10:50].  No. You don't have to do all of it. Do one, do it really well, understand it, why it works or why it doesn't work, try to refine it as much as you can, and then go for the next one, and then the next one, and then the next, because then also you will end up building a team around it, and that's really understanding business. It's not only about marketing, it's not only about a funnel, it's about building a business around what you do as a result. Right?

So, it's - first it's you working on yourself. Really understanding you, what you do, having a full alignment, and also constantly working on yourself so you can't really stop. Right?

The second is to build your methodology, which again yes you build it once, but you gotta keep it evolving. If it doesn't evolve, it again becomes something that becomes stagnant. As it becomes stagnant, your clients don't want repeat working with you, because well you didn't evolve so what's the point for them to work with you.

Secondly, because the world evolves and you didn't evolve, you actually were left behind. You just didn't realize it. The world has a lot more knowledge every single day. The have a lot more insight every single day. There're new things happening every single day. There's technology developing every single day. You gotta adapt to that. You gotta have a methodology adapting to that.

And then lastly, is you constantly work on your business. So, that's why I call them the principles. They're not you do this, do this, do this, and now you're golden. No. You constantly have to keep doing it, and as you work on these three elements again and again it's almost like it's a circle with these three elements in it and as you work on it your business expands and you start to grow in context of clients, results that your clients get, or returns on your investment that you make in your business. However you want to measure success. 

Jaime:	So, it's all in tandem. Do they all start all three at once or do we go one then two then three when you first get started?

Ajit:	So, there's no point working on your business until the time you've worked a little bit on your yourself and a little bit on your methodology, and once you've done that is when advisable third step is to start working on your business, but again, one step at a time, because every single time you work on exposing yourself to the outside world you need to be able to collect the data to refine your methodology and yourself. 

	And then once it starts to go through, and it could be, and again this is more depending on your measure of success. Some people think if they're generating $5000 a month, now it's time to go all in and now it's time to tandem work with everything and that's fine. Some won't feel that comfortable even if they're making 100,000 a month. 

So, it really depends on you as to what's your measure of success and what feels comfortable to you. But there will be a point where you will like I have my methodology it really started worked out, I feel like I've done a lot of work on myself, now it's time for me to really expand my practice and now that we just keep bringing back people in and constantly work on these pieces at the same time collecting feedback from my clients, collecting feedback from my reality, attending events, reading books, getting my coach to work with me so constantly I can evolve as a person.

Jaime:	So, how do you ? I met someone the other day and she has a book so she has a methodology she's been working with, but she's in the third step where she's doing a bunch of things and none of them are really hitting. And so what's interesting is the niche that she's in is forgiveness. And when she moves to the marketing, she's like I'm not - I know that this is core work that helps people, but I don't know how to make it get to the masses. 

Do you have advice for somebody who's making a little bit but, I mean I don't even know how much she's making, but she wants to make more for sure. Everybody wants more. Yes. More. 

So, what would you have for somebody like that especially on that third stage going I feel like I'm working on myself, I got that piece, I've got number two. Business help.

Ajit:	So, if somebody's asking for business help, usually it would be a longer conversation. But from what you told me, for example, her niche is forgiveness. Right? What you have to first understand is when you work on your business, the first thing that you work on or at least among the first few things that you work on is really understanding what are you doing for your clients, which is also called your message in a way. Right? If I go out today hey Jamie, let's work on forgiveness today? What will be your response?

Jaime:	I'd be like eh. I'm good. Thanks.

Ajit:	Exactly, which is probably why nothing's hitting the mark for her. 

Jaime:	I forgive everyone. It's fine. It's not me.

Ajit:	It's like I've forgiven everything. Right? So, if you really work on your methodology, and forgiveness is your thing, you would understand what forgiveness [inaudible] [00:15:15] people. So, coincidentally, it's funny that you say forgiveness is a niche, because recently I did an experience called the 40 Years of Zen. I don't know if you know about it.

Jaime:	I do.

Ajit:	Basically, you do?

Jaime:	Yep.

Ajit:	Alright. So you're basically five days [inaudible] and you're in a meditative state like four or five hours every single day, and you are doing certain exercises. One of the key exercises that they do is called forgiveness. It's literally where you're forgiving your past and past relationships, past experiences, events, forgiving yourself, so on, and so forth. It sounds really simple, but it's really intense. It's really, really intense. Because you're doing it, not just saying oh I forgive, you actually have to let the experience to fully come out and really forgive. Right? And all that kind of stuff and has biofeedback and everything coming together. 

Jaime:	Yeah. Can you actually set the stage for that? Because I know the guys at Biocybernaut, which is very similar to Dave Asprey's thing too, and I don't think people know about this enough. Like, I meditate. They know I talk about meditation all the time, but they don't know about this thing. 

So, if you could explain what it is, that would be killer.

Jaime:	Absolutely. So, 40 Years of Zen is basically an integration of Eastern practices and the best in science in a way. Right? So, what they did is they said we at this point, and this is? I think this was like 10, 15 years ago that NASA [inaudible] [00:16:27] it to train astronauts. Basically the technology, and I could be wrong about how the story of how biofeedback or neurofeedback started, but I feel like that was the one, because I always in the past I worked with NASA scientists, and they said it was [inaudible] there. 

So, again fact-check me. I don't know, but really it was neurofeedback is what it is. But basically, it means that your brain has impulses like pulses, what do you call, electric currents. They have electric currents happening, and that's how messages get passed to you or messages get passed back to the body. Right? 

So, everything has a reaction in your brain. That's how your brain works. And because it's an electric pulse, what happens is you can measure it. You can know what's happening in your brain based on what you're doing or how you're reacting to a particular thing, and if you can map that, you can map how your brain is in a critical situation or what your brain is experiencing when some event happens our a memory of an event happens and so on, so forth. 

And that is also why you can train your brain to do certain things is basically you can go, oh my brain is not connecting in this particular way, but an optimized brain would connect this way because you know like now they've studied enough brains, so they kind of help you train your brain a little bit like that, and at the same point in time what they do is they train you to get consistently back into a state that is called the alpha state of mind or the brain. 

An alpha state of brain is basically which is associated with high creativity, high intuition, you know, all that kind of stuff. Right. So, what you're doing in 40 Years of Zen is basically they attach your brain with, I hope I'm using the right words, electrode is what I would call it, but I don't know, maybe they call it something else there, but basically they are tracking what's happening in your brain. And they are taking feedback, so that's like neurofeedback, based on the impulses that your brain is doing based on the activity that it is doing. 

So, you have headphones on which kind of gives you a guidance of are you able to hit the alpha state. Are you hitting it again and again and are you staying there consistently while you're meditating. Right? So, that's kind of what is happening as an exercise. So, you are coming back into alpha again and again and you're staying in alpha which trains your brain, because it's an acquired skill, now your brain knows how to stay in alpha for a long period of time. 

And it is by the way true, so anybody who wants to train that way, it's economical, it's five days of absolutely nothing else that you can do, because your brain is just tired as hell and you sleep like a baby, because you're just working your brain for eight hours every day, nine hours actually every day. 

So, that basically is what is happening inside what they call the pod. And one of the exercises so, what happens is of course you're training for alpha, but a way to release your brain to get into alpha more easily and often, their many exercises, but one of the key exercises that we practice for about a day, day and a half, is forgiveness. 

It is because what happens is our brain has a subconscious memory or an unconscious memory of one of the events which create a particular behavior in life. Like how you react to things in life. It kind of is triggered by those subconscious things. So, even consciously you might go like oh I've forgiven you, let's say a past relationship or partner so-and-so, or yourself which is like the hardest thing to forgive. Like you might go oh no, no, no. I'm past this. Right. So, consciously you can say that, but subconsciously memory is a little harder to delete or reset if not delete. Right? 

So what happens is this particular exercise is they help us retrain and release this subconsciously, because again they're helping you get into the alpha state so it helps to release subconsciously or unconsciously. So, that's kind of a really long explanation, and I hope I did not butcher their science completely while doing that.

Jaime:	But I love that.

Ajit:	I hope they don't come after me.

Jaime:	We'll put links with more information for sure, but I really appreciate that, because I don't think people understand what is out there technology-wise of actually reprogramming your brain on purpose. Right? When I heard about it at first I was like, okay. There's a conference here called Voice and Exit, and they talked about the exact same thing. And I'm like so I don't have to meditate every day? I could just go into a little pod thing and then it'll be like 40 years? That's amazing, right, the fact that you can do stuff like that is insane. Go you for doing it. 

Okay. So, I know we sort of got off track, but I think it's huge and we will totally put some links on there. 

So, what would you do in the case with a coach that really is working on forgiveness even though like you didn't go to that place to go oh I need to forgive everybody? 

Ajit:	Yeah. I didn't. Right? So, that's kind of how you need to think about your message. It's like they call that message 40 Years of Zen. It has nothing to, it doesn't say forgive yourself in four days or anything like that. They say okay this is what you experienced. This is the outcome you can expect. 

So, the outcome I was expecting going there is I would have a deep meditative experience and I would be able to perform at a higher level. Right? And the higher performance thing like I said previously is what people hire coaches for most of the time is because they want to be it's not that they are in some kind of misery, because then they usually need a therapist and the coach will just say hey I think you need a therapist. Go talk to a therapist. This is not a coaching problem. Right? So, that's a different conversation though. Right? 

So, what needs to happen is as a coach is your helping people with their performance most the time and because of that is why I went to 40 Years of Zen. Now, forgiveness as a practice, and again I need to know her work enough to really be able to suggest something, but just making an assumption here, if she is helping people forgive themselves or life instances and so forth, it could be that she could be positioning living in a more free life or living a more high-performance life or removing blocks that might back be holding people back in different areas of life. 

Because when you forgive yourself especially there's something that you've held onto really hard and again I'm not a forgiveness researcher here so from whatever I know is if you have had stories holding you back, and she could have an expertise in one of these areas it doesn't have to be all of them especially if she is new and not generating a lot of revenue and has a small audience, she could focus in let's say for example it could be a lot of people have blocks of bad memories around health, around relationships, especially in today's time, terrifying memories around relationships, terrifying memories around money. 

You could be actually talking about how to really get to being how to really be more abundant or how to really find the relationship of your life or so on and so forth. Because these blocks that stop people are the reason why they can't move forward to taking a chance again let's say in a relationship. Right?

So, she could be digressing into a real outcome that a person can make meaning of, and if they can make meaning of it, they can understand her process. Right? Now, eventually what will happen and again, if she's already written the book, she might be onto something and that might become the story that she actually tells, because books are powerful. Books are, because they are easy to consume because a book is like 19 bucks, anybody can get one, and you can listen to it these days and you can walk around you can like? I have books all the time and I read half of them in the sense of like [inaudible] [00:23:50], but I get excited about the idea that the person is talking about, and then I want to know more about the person. 

So, if she's already written the book, which is really exciting, she could just use the book as the story that she tells without actually talking about forgiveness at all. Right? Let the book be the message. Let the book be something that gets in front of more and more people, because as the book will go in front of more and more people, what will happen is people will get excited about the idea of forgiveness. Right? 

I will give you an example. This example is from, what's her name, Brene Brown. Do you know Brene Brown?

Jaime:	Oh yes.

Ajit:	People, if you don't know. An amazing lady. Phenomenal work. And she has done a lot of work. I don't know what her domains are. It's not coming to me right now, but basically her work has become really popular in the area called boundaries or having boundaries. Right? Which if you think about it, do you want to know more about boundaries? [Inaudible] be like what boundary are you talking about. Right? Nobody knows what boundaries even means. So, the time [inaudible] actually get exposed to the idea that Brene talks about. 

And that's kind of where it could be the other way around. Where you start with a concept that is delivered through in a full package and that [inaudible] [00:24:59] that becomes the idea after. Living in the now was popularized by Eckhart Tolle. Right? So, The Power of Now is the name of the book. Nobody cares about now until then or at least the way he said it. Nobody cared about it before The Power of Now came in. The Power of Now is the name of the book. Right?

Jaime:	Yeah.

Ajit:	Eckhart Tolle's book. Yeah. So, that's kind of like that's a book creating the conversation. So, you could create a conversation as well if you want. If you've done especially research on it depends on deep the research is on it, because that's what really makes it really popular. 

For example, Dave came out with a book called Head Strong. I don't actually know if that I would believe that it profiles a lot of 40 Years of Zen. I haven't had a chance to read the book, but it's basically before he didn't [inaudible] [00:25:44] with 40 years. He said headstrong. I think [inaudible] neurofeedback. Right? Neurofeedback is not new. It's been here for ten years. But it became popular, because he talked about in a way that made sense to people.

Jaime:	Yes. Okay. So, it's describing the method instead of going into the pain or the outcome, and the person doesn't care about the method, they only care about the pain or the outcome.

Ajit:	Yes. Exactly.

Jaime:	So, you have to speak to one of those either the pain or the pleasure that they're gonna receive. And it's so much easier said than done when it's in your own business is hard to look at. That's the reason why you said hire a coach or someone else that can tell you what to do, because it does make a huge difference. 

Ajit:	Exactly. That's very true.

Jaime:	What are some of the stories that you've seen from because you've been doing this for a while. The book came out last year. What are the stories that you've seen of people really improving their coaching practice? Because I feel like people come to me because they're like you're a successful coach. Teach me your ways. Right? And mine took a lot of time. Don't get me wrong. I'm extremely happy for where I am right now, and it did take some time, so we're not gonna do the crazy shortcut method, but I would love to know what you have people really look at or what stories people can feel inspired from. 

Because I have a feeling a lot of people are like I can't make any money at this that's not 'real money' whatever their line is on what real money is, and then they give it up. Or they go back and get another job or something, and I wanna help those people right now. So, you tell me. What are some stories or some inspiration that you've heard from the book coming out in your methods?

Ajit:	So, one of the things that I feel that definitely gets quoted a lot especially by individuals who are new in the business from the book, and that's also one of the reasons why we wrote the book is because exactly what you said. Most people because they don't have a line to know what is success, what is failure, what takes what time, they try something for two months and they go oh okay, this is not for me or this is too hard, I don't know. This will never make money, so on and so forth. 

So, they have this imaginary scale but that scale doesn't really have any real value in context for them to know where they are on the journey. So, what we did is we created a ballpark and again this is a ballpark it's not set in stone or anything like that, but we said okay let's do the research. 

Let's ask generally, because we have almost over 100,000 coaches that receive our emails on a daily basis, and we researched and researched and researched to find out how much time does it take for somebody to get to a particular level and what should be their activities at that particular level for them to transcend to the next level, and the next level, and the next level? Because that would give somebody a baseline to kind of work with. Right?

Jaime:	Yeah. 

Ajit:	You go, okay, okay. Here's where I am on the journey [inaudible] [00:28:19].

Jaime:	I wish I had that when I started. Man. That would have been helpful. 

Ajit:	So, that kind of comes in the book and just to give you a brief of what it looks like is basically we said there are four stages and that's where we stopped. There're stages further than that. We kinda stopped at four, because usually people kinda stop at seven figures and then they go okay if I make seven figures I'm good. Right? 

So, stage one is what we call the soldier. The soldier is when you make under 20,000 in your income. This is where you should be doing coaching part-time. This is the time where you're testing your methodology. This is the time when you're failing more than you're becoming successful. This is the time where you will work with a client and sometimes will freeze because you wouldn't know what the heck to say right now. These are those times. You're developing a methodology. You're going out there, you're testing yourself in many ways, will you be able to actually become a full-time coach. 

Then after the soldier is the next stage which is what we call the dame or the knight depending on if you're female or male. Right? So, the dame or the knight stage is where you are now a little bit more ready. Your methodology is starting to solidify, you kind of are getting results again and again, but you're still not really making a lot of money, but you're making somewhere let's say between $20,000 to $60,000. This is where you're kind of finding that safe spot which also sometimes is enough for people to find the comfort to say alright, I can quit my job and become full-time in it or it might be where you're like okay this is a great part-time thing and this is all I want. 

So, this is where some coaches will go, this is all I want because I want to contribute to the world and this is my give back, but I really love my daytime job and I don't want to risk being in this business all the time. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's where this segment is usually. This takes anywhere between two to five years. Right? Again you can accelerate the pace but usually this is what the time is and actually it's less than five years, it's two to three years is where you will be at this one. 

Then you will get into the Prince or Princess. Prince or Princess stage is where you start crossing 100,000. You could be doing anything like quarter million sometimes. That range. This is where you now are probably hosting groups, you're not only doing one-on-one's. You sometimes if you were excited about teaching a lot more than coaching, you would discover that, and so you'll end up creating courses, you might end up writing a book, so on and so forth. 

But basically your revenues are significantly higher. You definitely have started to hire a team and you cannot have a day job at this point. You kinda go okay I cannot have a day job. All I'm doing is coaching, teaching, training, whatever you want to call yourself and whatever your focus is.

And again, the distinction to remember is a lot of times people come into the business thinking they're a coach but they're more of a teacher. Right? And the reason why I even distinguish these two words is because if we don't, it gets confusing. Right? Because what happens is sometimes people will come on a call and we'll start giving a lecture and that lecture is more a teaching format than a coaching format, and the expectation of the client is more that it would be more [inaudible] [00:31:07] with them. Right? 

So that's kind of just for the person who understands to go oh I'm more of a teacher because I like to just go and present the ideas. I don't like to sit patiently and wait for the person to respond and then come back to them. Right? And there's nothing right or wrong. It's just more a choice you make based on your personality. Right? So that's the - 

Jaime:	Well, I really appreciate you saying that. Because I don't think anybody really makes that distinction. I can't help coaching. Like my mentors told me not to coach, and I was like I will coach someone in the grocery store. Like I will do, I can't help it. It's sort of a thing. But the teaching side, a lot of people are teachers and then they go like this and they don't understand why the coaching side isn't working as well. Like you're selling them something that's different than what they said they wanted. And that's not bad like you said. 

So thank you very much for making that distinction. I want everyone to think about which one they are right now, and you can be both, don't get me wrong, but you need to know when you do what. Alright. Continue. 

Ajit:	I am both, for example. I teach most of the time. Once in a while I like to coach. But it's like you could be both it's fine but you just need to know when you're playing teacher, when you're playing coach, if you're playing both. Right?

And the final one is where we call the Queen or King stage, which is where you probably have a big team, you have to have a few online programs, because now it's becoming unscalable for you to just coach in groups even, and you could be doing anywhere between quarter of a million to a million and that's kind of where you're at. And that's where we said these are the four years, and that might take up to seven to reach the final tier to get to. Right?

And so basically this timeline or this rough timeline that you have again can change based on people. For example, there was a particular coach who came to me and we were talking about their journey and their journey was they hit six figures in six months. 

But the thing is that you need to know the back story of the person which is why there's another chapter in our book which is called the false legends is where people come in and say I'm a six-figure coach and it took me only six days or six months. And I'm like alright tell us the back story a little bit. Right? 

So, the back story of this person, this person wasn't doing anything like that, but the back story of this particular person was they were in Silicon Valley before. They had sold two companies before they became a coach. Right? So, they already knew everybody and everybody already wanted to work with them so for them to get to six figures was two clients. Two clients out of 20 people that they knew was easy peasy. 

They had to have four conversations and then enroll the two clients. And yes, [inaudible] [00:33:27] to coach in six months, but that was because of the back story. It had nothing to do with what usually happens. So, this of course is more just an average line that we try to give to be so people don't get bonkers on oh they did it in six days, how do I do it in six days. You don't. It takes time. Like you already mentioned. It just you can slow pace it, fast pace it based on how much time you're putting into it, what's your past experience, what are willing to do, what you not willing to do, so on and so forth.

Jaime:	Thank you for that. I know because it makes good headlines do say six months to six figures or six days or whatever it is, and then you go back and you're like oh they've been running companies forever and they know digital marketing like the back of their hand. And you're like eh. Yeah [inaudible] thought about that. 

	And we compare unfortunately. Right? So, even especially when you're at the beginning. So, I tell people commit to ten years. Just know that it's going to take ten years and you'll get there, but we think that it will happen in the year, and then we feel like oh that wasn't worth it and then you leave. And then we don't actually stick to to me it's commitment that counts, the hard-core commitment. Even if you can only do ten hours a week for ten years, it'll still gosh darn add up. Right? 

And I think people don't give themselves the benefit of the doubt on how long it can take and where we start. Very, very big difference, and I'm gonna highly recommend everyone get the book, so that way they can learn more, because it's got sound advice, and I wish I had that when I started coaching ten years ago. So, thanks for writing it now at least because it's helpful. 

Ajit:	Thank you. Thank you very much.

Jaime:	So, but you also said, and I know we have to wrap up in just a minute, but you also said you have 100,000 people on your list. So, everybody's probably like hm, how did he get 100,000 people on his list? 

So, what's working the best marketing-wise for you guys to be able to have people that are paying attention to your emails and have that many on such a broad spectrum of coaches?

Ajit:	So, what we have done, and again this is where the back story also counts, right? So, Evercoach itself is only a three-year-old company. It's a small new company in many ways, but at the same amount of time, I've been working in digital marketing space for almost ten years. I helped build a company called Mindvalley for that. And the company that kind of is just a partner in this project is also Mindvalley, because we co-founded this company together. 

So, that's kind of the back story of what we built and how we were able to build it so fast. But at the same point in time, what we had developed as a partner in Mindvalley and as the CEO of Mindvalley and now the cofounder of Evercoach, is that we've developed a unique methodology of understanding that if we provide value in a particular format which we called master class format, if you provide value in that particular format, over time we win, and we win went massively. Right?

So, initially it's cash intensive because you don't always tend to collect the cash back which you invest, and usually you're almost running a dollar-in-dollar-out type of campaigns, but eventually what happens is because it starts to get momentum and people start to recognize that if it's a master class by this company, it's phenomenal, we should go for it, it tends to convert into much higher return on investment. 

So, that's kinda what our format has, we use where we have kind of really made it a point that our master class, are best in class, are best in the market, and that are loaded with a tremendous amount of value and results while you're in the class. 

So, whereas most people would design webinars online trainings that are designed to sell, we design a master class for a result. It's not [inaudible] [00:36:55] full result, because that's not possible in 40 to 60 minutes, which is usually the length of a class, but it's designed to drivers almost while you're in the class or through some [inaudible] that you might do right after the class. 

But basically the point is that you would remember that class. You won't forget. You would appreciate the class itself even if people [inaudible] something in the end. 

So, that's kind of the core idea of the main master classes and the link trainings that are result-oriented in itself, and then at the end, we position our one of our products [inaudible] about 5 to 7 minutes, it's drill easy, it's not something that people feel like holy cow we just went like super salesy on me. It's not. It's very simple, but that actually creates more appreciation in the market over time. 

Initially, like I said, it's the first few classes might not do as well, because it is also a particular skill that [inaudible] over time to how to teach really well. And that's what we do as the first step, is we teach [inaudible] at least that's what we believe that we teach [inaudible] is we teach [inaudible] on the class, and so when they're being taught in the class so well, people that if they would want that result they would come and join the full program and that seemed to work out really well for us. And that's how we build our [inaudible] over hundred thousand now. 

Jaime:	I love that you practice what you preach though. You've got the methodology and you're like we're the best teachers, this is the format we know we do, and then you level it up. And now of course everybody else don't necessarily just throw money at things that are necessarily going to work if you're doing dollar for dollar if you don't have the background, but he has just as a caveat. 

	Because it does and that's the thing to me with business. It's so fluid for you and what you know and your team and how it goes, because you knew that this would be most likely successful even if at the beginning was losing a dollar for dollar, long-term it would make way more because of your ten years, ten years of it. 

So, give yourself a break people that are just starting right now or are only a couple years and it doesn't feel like you're really hitting that sweet spot. A lot of the people that I interview, a lot of the people that you guys are hearing talk about this stuff have a ridiculously awesome backgrounds. Okay. Sorry. Caveat. 

I really appreciate you being completely transparent about that too, because I think everybody gives themselves a hard time for some of this stuff. And everybody's a work in progress. We do the best we can with what we've got. 

So, I'm gonna start wrapping up, because I know I need to go but, and you need to go, because I know it's LA and early morning and I'm sure you want to get going. 

What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Ajit:	So, first thing is work on your product as much as you can and refine your product as much as you can. In the long term, product always wins. In the short-term, marketing might win, but in the long term the product will always win, because there's nothing like having clients praise about what you did for them. And if you can focus on that and constantly look for feedback on this. Working on your product doesn't mean you sitting in the corner thinking this is the best product ever which is again a thing that happens a lot of times; you think your stuff is like the best that is in the market, that's just not how it works. 

You gotta go out, you gotta study, you gotta collect feedback, you got to [inaudible] results, you gotta see if people are getting results with what you put out, and if they are, trust me eventually you will win. 

But it will take time. Make an 18-month plan, a 36-month plan. Don't rely on the next three months. It doesn't work that way. That's not real business. That's opportunity and then you can go to cryptocurrency as much as you want, but if you want to build a real business, it is reliant on strong fundamentals and a great product. 

Jaime:	It's back to the old-school business methods that have worked for history instead of info marketers; they're like you just have to be good at marketing. You can sell crap. That's not true. Thank you for being a good guy. Really, really appreciate it. 

Where can they find more about you and where can the get the book and all that fun stuff online?

Ajit:	Well, the best would be to just go to the Evercoach.com, Evercoach.com, E-V-E-R-C-O-A-C-H dot com. So, that would be the domain that would give us all the information about what we are doing there, and you can get on the list. You can see what we do. If you are interested in the book, just go to TheBookofCoaching.com and it will redirect you to Evercoach.com where the book is available. So, you can go out and get that.

Jaime:	Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really, really appreciate it.

Jaime:	Thank you. Thank you very much for calling me here.

Tags: Ajit Nawalkha, Business Owner, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, how to build a successful coaching business, jaime masters, life coaching business model, millionaire entrepreneurs, mindvalley, podcast, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, top entrepreneurs

Categories: All, Entrepreneurship, Featured Millionaire Interview, Intellectual Capital, Mentors and Mastermind, Millionaire Interviews, Wealth Building, Work Life balance

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

Learn More