How I Got Started With Coaching

Before Coaching 

I was talented at drawing and painting, went to an illustration school, and worked at a local theater with a 100-foot stage. They had no money, so I had to paint everything on the walls of the stage. I joined the Army, got into Army entertainment, and did theatrical design and directing for three years. I got out and went to work at the Arena Stage in Washington DC then attended Cal State Fullerton. The first six months I took freshman theater school courses and the second six month the most advanced courses because college was not for me. Herbert Blau, the dean of a new school called Cal Arts, came to my school. He looked at my work and gave me a full scholarship and a stipend, and I spent four years there doing theater and making my film American Refugees. After Cal Arts, I taught Tai Chi until a friend from Cal Arts invited me to work with him on a low budget film called Star Wars. He was doing the optical effects which were turned down by every major optical house in town because it was impossible. So, two young kids took on the impossible and in 18 months, we had done it brilliantly enough to win an Academy Award.  

Discovery of Coaching

Optical effects did not interest me, so I moved on. I wanted to lead workshops but I had a significant stuttering problem that made that impossible. I joined a company that offered high powered workshops to people and worked in accounting and logistics - backstage again. The manager of the office I was in was a big guy with a big voice and a big presence who would not tolerate anyone of us being anything less than we wanted to be. He found out that I wanted to lead workshops. So he put me in front of a room of 350 people to lead a 10-session workshop and paced the back of the room, yelling "Breathe!" every time I stuttered. I taught the participants how to stutter and told them they would never be as good at it as me. One day, I heard two people talking and that may have been the first time in my life that I actually listened. As a stutterer you don't listen because you are too worried about what you need to say next. I started to work with people as a coach and found that it was a natural skill I had had all along. I remember that I had moments of coaching others as a child and teenager and I never stuttered in those conversations.

Decades of Practice

Thanks to my mentor - the big guy - I learned to connect with people as a coach and worked as a hired gun for consulting firms with many Fortune 100 companies. Over time, it made sense to me that I could start a coaching business and go out on my own. Friends of mine who did the same thing charged $250.00 per hour and I charged $35. I had 50 clients and they had 2. I learned a lot fast about connecting with people and over the years the stuttering became unnoticeable - it will always be there. I was doing something that I loved to do and had a natural skill for doing. Now, after a few decades, I have had a lot of practice and have developed a variety of methods, tools, and toolkits that come from working with clients and giving them what they needed.

Please don't try to make sense of my story because in this world nothing makes sense - we just have to go with the flow of challenges and opportunities. I am very proud of what I am doing and the tools I have developed but the best part is that I am doing what I ought to be doing. While I have done a lot of different things throughout the years, I have made millions of dollars in that time doing the one thing I do best, which is speaking. Not bad for a guy that stuttered. Let's now look at some of the things I have helped others achieve. 

That is why I can help you find what you ought to be doing,

do it your way, and take it all the way - as I have for myself. 

Some Client Success Stories

Major Corporate Clients Before CRE

I have worked, focusing on selling, with a wide range of companies, big and small, in many different industries. These include wood products, biotech, cosmetics, securities, insurance, automotive, computer chips, consulting, coaching, attorneys and accountants, writers, artists, and entertainers. There are many stories I could tell but one in particular stands out.

I was asked to join a lead consultant from a firm I knew to do two days of work with a major cosmetics company. We delivered the standard training of the company which offered very high level leadership and management tools. After the end of the first day, the lead consultant met with the executives who were very unhappy with our work because it was way above the heads of the one hundred counter girls (as they called them back then) who were participating. We were told that if we did not have something to offer that was aimed at this particular audience, we should not bother to come back. The lead consultant asked me to figure something out for the next day. I stayed up all night and came up with the seeds of the first practice of my future approach to selling. I presented my work the next day and it was a hit with the one hundred women who needed to learn about sales and management for their teams back in the department stores.        

Commercial Real Estate Clients - Over Two Decades of Successes

For the past two decades, my main focus has been on a variety of Commercial Real Estate disciplines - Investment Sales of all product types including Multifamily, Retail, Industrial, Office, Medical, Self-Storage, Mobile Home Parks, Land, and Leisure. I also have worked with Tenant and Landlord Reps, Finance, and Admin Teams that included Analysis, Packaging, Marketing, Research, and Transaction Coordination.

I have worked with thousands of individual agents, hundreds of managers, executives, and scores of boutique companies.

Here are four of of my favorite examples from the many client successes I have helped generate:

There is the executive who had opens a new office in a new territory on the east coast for a major west coast company. In his second year, he has gotten his motley crew up to 2 million dollars and we start working together. Six years later, he opens another office packed with people like the first and does 37 million.

Then, there is the new agent whose first project is moving out of his parents' house. I work with him to become a successful agent, then a sales manager, and then he becomes a regional manager who turns around three offices one after the other. Next, he becomes a division manager. He is now a number two executive at that same national firm. 

A lone agent with a team who focuses on the institutional level of CRE product and I work together. When we start, he is working with a senior agent and is making income in the $200k range. Each year for the 20 years that we work together his income increases. In 2020, he and his team generate $11 million dollars in income for the firm. And, as a bonus, he becomes an even more extraordinary human being in the process.

Finally, there is an agent who has a team of people and does quite well in 2007. Then, in October 2008, the financial collapse hits. He loses his team, the good clients disappear, and he is headed for making no money. He tells me he is considering selling file cabinets again. I tell him that before he sells any file cabinets, he should call the 253 strategic clients he has cultivated and see if there is any money there. Two weeks later, he begins getting one, two, or three incoming listing calls a week. During our work together, he rebuilds his team and, in 2022, they do $22 million in sales. He never gets to sell any more file cabinets. 

My offer to you is to help you find your right path, figure out how to do it your unique way, and then take it all the way to the end that you envision as so many I have worked with have done.