You call yourself a professional!?

So you want to be a success? You'd like the fast car, the bright career, the thriving business?

Well we're all professionals aren't we? As professional at being businessmen and women than your average pro tennis player? Probably not.

The truth is most people in business get very little, if any, professional mentoring, coaching or supervision - particularly those at the top.

The reality is that if you want to succeed in business you'd be absolutely mad to try and do it without a structured, formal and close relationship with a decent business coach. Deep down you know that I'm right too because you know that if you we're trying to be a professional tennis player you wouldn't dream of not having at least one coach and a rigorous training regime.

A real difference to the bottom line? 

For many, many years I didn't realise how important having a coach really is. Now that I have one you can actually see the impact of the relationship in a pretty sharp upturn in revenue and - more importantly - margins. Not - and I hope he'll forgive me for saying this - because he's had any direct influence on the day to day running of the business it simply because a coaching relationship changes your attitude towards what you do every day. It keeps you focused, on target and held to account at all times. It keeps you - at all times - in a state of training.

Does it always work?

Now, I'm a realistic person so I should caveat all of this by saying that yes, it is possible to engage with entirely the wrong mentors & coaches and this can really put you off. If you've had a bad experience I'd love to know more about so do please post a comment or drop me a line... and if you'd like to hear my advice on picking the perfect coach why not sign up for my weekly email - I'll be covering this again in a few weeks.

Meanwhile I'll leave you with a saying I've picked up from one of my brothers - the founder of the ground breaking Tassomai learning platform - and it goes like this:

An amateur practices until he gets it right. A professional practices until he can't get it wrong.

So whatever your profession, wherever you are in your organisation, realise this; that unless you go out and find yourself a great, professional coach then however hard you think you're trying you'll really only ever be an amateur.