Just received this from one of my oldest clients a few minutes ago — I thought I would publish it verbatim. Enjoy! When I rolled over in bed at 5:45 this morning, my usual weekday wake up time, I began to think about my day and realized I had my normally scheduled coaching session at 7:30, meaning I would have to get out of bed soon.

I was thinking I wish I could just cancel the session and grab another hour of sleep. I felt that the session today was going to be less meaningful than others. There was no “hot and heavy” issue facing me that needs immediate attention.

Oh well, I thought, I will go through the motions and if it turns out that the session is a bust, so be it. I decided that I would use the session today to discuss a relatively minor event of the day before that had caused me some temporary angst but passed in short order.

My focus would be to ensure that events like these stayed in the temporary and minor range for me. Wasn’t sure a whole session could be filled with that but would go with the flow.

When I arrived at my meeting, spent the first bit catching up with my coach on personal “stuff”. While chatting, I found myself staring at the piece of paper my coach always brings to every session, a blank, white sheet waiting to be filled with boxes and circles and lines outlining our discussion.

The sheet even had my name on top today reminding me that I was the focus of the session and needed to figure out what I wanted to go over with him.

My first thought was to go with the outline that my coach provides before every session- what were my accomplishments this week? That would be easy since I made had contacted two people that were on my list from the last session. My coach provided positive reinforcement for doing this and discussed how the meeting that I had and the one that I was going to have were going to fit into my goals.

Where to go to next for the session, I thought about our prior discussion related to managing people that work for me and that I work with. It was here I could bring up the event of the other day that I had dealt with. Again, my coach complimented my handling of the situation and offered further thoughts on how to set boundaries and expectations that would help when working with these people.

My coach then reminded me that the conference I was going to attend in two weeks, that I had previously mentioned in another session , would be another potential opportunity to identify additional resources for my business . He told me to think about possibly inviting out one of the speakers of the conference to breakfast or for a drink. He said a lot of times the speakers are alone at this type of conference and appreciate someone making an effort to include them in the fold.

As the session was nearing an end, I asked the coach how things were going for him. He shared with me some of his business ideas he was working on and we chatted further about the potential profitability of these ideas. It got my creative juices flowing always thinking about how it is important to keep coming up with new business ideas to keep your business moving forward and be in the forefront of your profession.

We finished up with setting up our appointment for the following week and said our goodbyes. As I began to walk to my car to begin my workday I began to smile to myself and though okay today turned out to be a more meaningful session than anticipated.

So why did I attend my coaching session at 7:30 this morning?

To hold myself accountable on a weekly basis
To feel good about my progress/accomplishments
To be proactive about my business and continual move it forward
To have a support mechanism for me and my business (business therapy)

So there it is — my client just made me feel wonderful for the weekend. I owe a lot of what I am today to her. - Rich