How I Started My Coaching Journey
My Coaching story starts off at the midpoint of my college education. I remember being in community college at the time when my high school friend approached my girlfriend at the time about a business project he was working on. My girlfriend asked me if I would like to come and I said “I have nothing better to do” and went. At the time I knew nothing about business and had about $40 in my bank account, so I was looking to change my circumstances really quick… and I was bored.
So we ended up having to pick up my high school friend from his house and drive him to that business project he mentioned. We arrive at this gated community in Riverside and proceed to drive up a long driveway to a really nice house. That house ended up being the starting point to my journey.
In that house I met a gentleman that at the time was a professional soccer player and in law school. He shared with me the concept of residual income, owning my own business, and being my own boss. At the time I had small goals and was just focused on the day-to-day. The only thought of the future I had was getting a degree and after that who knows. After that discussion I started looking into the future outside of school, outside of the 4-5 year plan, and started to think bigger. Looking back now I would believe much bigger much sooner.
I ended up getting started in Network Marketing that night for this company called Vemma. I would end up spending the next couple years not making any money, developing myself, attending seminars, attending conventions, and meeting wealthy speakers and people. Eventually, after being around success, my business went from $0 in sales to over $25,000 in sales in one month. I had teams in Las Vegas, Seattle, Southern California and other places too. It was an exhilarating feeling, but as quick as it came it left. Behind every tragedy is the seed of an equal or greater opportunity.
That experience gave me the skills and development necessary to mentor people on how to develop an extra stream of income, build networking skills, build business skills like public speaking. In hindsight, although Vemma didn’t work out I was able to gain valuable life skills that I still incorporate into my life to this day.
Fast forward to my college experience at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). While I went to CSULB I was a part of two organizations. The first was American Marketing Association (AMA) and the second was Delta Sigma Pi (DSP). DSP is where I was able to gain a little brother (mentee). This was different from Vemma because it was more personalized and since I had no experience in generating development plans it was a new experience for me. The idea of mentorship benefits both parties in the mentor/mentee relationship. For the mentee it gives them an authoritative figure to shape certain ideas off of in comparison to the mentor gaining experience and learning from the mentee. It’s a two way street that most people tend to overlook. Mentees can become teachers to mentors too.
After these experiences I became hooked into driving as much value as I could to people, so I ended up stumbling into this concept called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP stems from the theory that our entire world is viewed by the filters of our mind. Since our mind holds this filter, the techniques and changes are derived from the mind. NLP utilizes techniques to help a person that wants to change their circumstances by changing the filter applied in their mind. Another word for filter of the mind in this case is paradigm. In other words our world is viewed through our own lens and our friends and family see a completely different world because they have completely different lenses.
Without going too in depth here I was able to sharpen my skills so that my mentees are able to do a couple of things.
Find out what they truly want to accomplish
Develop goals that stretch their skills and capabilities
Develop a plan that puts them on target to hit those goals
Continuously improving the plan and Goals based off of learnings
It’s simple, but what’s easy to do is also easy not to do.
After gaining insight into my coaching story it is very clear that no two stories are the same. Through countless times of failing I have found what works for me and I can now share what works and what doesn’t work. And like I tell my students, you can pick and choose what types of information you want to implement into your life.
If you resonated with anything in my story or need to improve a specific thing in your life, then I highly encourage contacting me.
