Coaches Coming Together

The purpose of this post is to tell you about a new creative project I’m working on this week and to invite your feedback about it.

Last weekend I spoke at Rich Litvin’s sold out Prosperous Coach Mastery Intensive in Marina del Rey, California. It was an amazing program, and Rich and his team did a truly fantastic job.

In addition to speaking there, I also went through the program as an attendee. One of the challenges Rich gave us during a 2-hour lunch break was to go out and try to create some money. This is often a challenge for coaches; some of them have a hard time asking for paid clients. Many of the coaches in the room called potential clients during the lunch break and offered various coaching packages. Last I heard, the 50 attendees had generated at least $20K in sales during that lunch break. So just by initiating this challenge, Rich created many positive ripples. Beyond the money the best stories were the breakthroughs people had in kicking off new coaching relationships with clients who could really use their help.

The idea of creating more money didn’t excite me though. Making more money (as a primary aim) doesn’t feel inspired enough. So I morphed the challenge into a more personal one. I set the intention to go out and create some value in a way I’ve never done before. Within minutes I had an idea — an instant download of inspiration.

The Idea

During the lunch break I contacted five friends who were also in California at the time. I suggested that we all get together over the course of the upcoming week and hammer out a new product from scratch over the course of a few days. These guys include other coaches, speakers, and seminar leaders in the field of social dynamics and relationships.

All of them were on board with the idea. In fact, it was a synchronicity that I contacted them about this because some of them had previously been discussing a similar idea. So this was a “you had me at hello” invitation. 🙂

Now I’m in Santa Barbara, and our project is underway. Last night we got together and discussed ideas for this project. We’re aiming to create a new audio program, and we’d like to have the recordings done this week. This will be an inspired, go with the flow program, not a scripted, how-to program.

Audio feels like a better choice than video since it means less editing work, and it’s more digestible since you can listen while driving or doing other tasks. But we may also shoot a little bit of video and take some snapshots of our sessions.

The Big Why

We discussed ideas for why we wanted to do this and what our shared purpose could be. Here were some of our priorities:

  • a program that helps us grow, not just sharing knowledge
  • explore and discuss the edges of our comfort zones, our current challenges
  • going with the flow of inspiration as it comes up, not pre-scripting the content
  • topically something on relationships, social dynamics, and especially cultivating and exploring deep connections (body, mind, heart, spirit) with other people
  • share our raw thoughts, ideas, and feelings
  • talk about the areas of growth where we don’t have certainty about the right course or approach
  • something like a group coaching or masterminding session for each other that would also provide value for the listeners
  • create a product we can sell and that people would love to own, so it generates long-term passive income for the team
  • explore the subjective reality perspective on relationships
  • create something to benefit men and women alike
  • express ourselves authentically, uncensored
  • have fun creating this, share laughs, enjoy ourselves, be in the moment
  • perhaps just the first of many products of this nature

It wasn’t difficult for us to agree on these. Putting these ideas into the room was very energizing.

A Fly on the Wall

So the idea here is that you, the listener, would be like a fly on the wall listening to a group of 6 coaches with different backgrounds discussing their biggest current challenges, mainly in the area of relationships. You’d have the chance to learn how a group like this can challenge each other, push each others’ buttons, and ultimately work together to help create breakthroughs and perspective shifts for each other.

Each guy in our group comes from a different background. Each has different strengths and weaknesses. Some things that are challenging for me are easy for my friends, and vice versa.

Last night we mainly had a brainstorming session. We expect to begin the first recordings tonight, assuming we can get enough mics together in one place. And we’d like to be done recording by the end of the week. So we’re doing all the recordings while we’re together in one place, and then we can tackle the editing and launch by collaborating remotely.

For me this is an attempt to create a product similar to how I blog. When I get a new article idea, I normally write and publish it the same day or perhaps the next day. Otherwise it’s dead and I’ll never write that particular article. This project helps me lean into my edge of discomfort — creating a larger work with the same “act immediately on inspiration and go-go-go till it’s done” approach and also doing it as a fun team project with friends.

I just had the idea for this project on Saturday. By the end of lunch, the other team members had already said yes. On Sunday I met up with some of the other team members. On Monday we were all in Santa Barbara together. That same night we began discussing why and how to make this happen. The how started coming together fast because we created a big and empowering why for our team. Starting with an inspiring why is crucial for a project like this.

We didn’t find inspiration in a how-to, let’s share our wisdom type of product. We didn’t find inspiration in trying to make money. We found inspiration in: Let’s discuss our own edges of comfort, our areas of uncertainty, the dark places of growth that disturb and confuse us. And let’s see if we can create breakthroughs for each other. Let’s see what comes out of us if we get together and talk candidly about our challenges, current lessons, and comfort zone edges. That idea got us excited to proceed.

The Team

Here’s the specific team we’ve put together:

  • Steve Pavlina (me)
  • Knut Johannessen
  • Morten Hake
  • Shogo Garcia
  • Luke Eilers
  • Fred Andreas Ligaard
  • Ken Knapstad (team audio tech)

Your Feedback

We figure that if this project is a growth experience for us, it will be a growth experience for people to listen to it.

My questions for you are:

  • Does this idea excite you? Would you want to listen to something like this? Do you care?
  • What suggestions would you have for us? What would you add, subtract, or change?
  • Do you have any suggestions for what we might call this product?
  • Where is the edge of your comfort zone in terms of relationships, lifestyle, and personal growth?
  • What’s your greatest personal growth or relationships challenge right now?
  • How can we make this project more useful for you without losing the benefits for us?

I understand that relationships can be a sensitive topic for many people. So feel free to send me your feedback privately via my contact form, and I’ll share it with the other team members. You don’t have to give your real name; staying anonymous is fine.

Also, if you want to know when this product launches, I’m sure we’ll all announce it when it’s ready.

Update: This project has been released. It’s called Imaginary Men.