Get a Life (Coach)

Former NFL superstar wide receiver Terrell Owens has had a life coach for the
last two years. He says it has made a huge difference in his life and, if he had
had a life coach during his playing days, it would probably have made him a
better player too. Indeed, if he’d received life coaching during his playing
days, he said, maybe he would still be playing now.

-CNN Interview September 2013

Everyone needs a co-active life coach to help them find their way through an increasingly complex professional world and personal life.

Listen to the way Terrell felt before he reached out to get himself a life coach:

“I was lost. You know—you know, being T.O, being that star
athlete, all the pressures, me putting a lot of pressure on myself, you know,
to be the best… for me it’s been humbling. Me having to just sit, you know,
sit in the house. I’ve lost friends…Because I count on one hand, you know,
the friends that I can really count on and call to—and call on and really
confide in, you know—you know, during my darkest times and my darkest hours,” Terrell Owens speaking with
Graham Bensinger about his situation,
September 9^th, 2013

If I have one regret about my own career, it’s that my mentor passed away
while I was still in my 20s, and I never found another one until I turned 60. I
believe that everyone, EVERYONE, should have a mentor or life coach. What a
difference it can make to your quality of life.  

My new coach helped me narrow my focus—do more of what I am good at and less
of everything else. She helped me find my “captain”— the personage who comes to
me when I am troubled, and who has my back. Whenever I feel uncertain, I can call
on this being; then my breathing slows, I feel more relaxed, and I can
concentrate as well as perform better.

My life coach now is also my wife, @desiradda.  

I wrote this testimonial for Dawn MacMillan Firestone:

“The greatest beneficiary of her coaching so far is, I believe, me. She’s
helped me first narrow then improve my focus, find my life purpose, change my
personal business model and achieve greater levels of success,” Bruce M
Firestone, founder, Ottawa Senators, broker, Century 21 Explorer Realty,
September 2013.

Now as I was listening to Terrell on CNN, it occurred to me that in addition to
all the media training, nutrition advice and physical conditioning that sports
teams provide their players, if I was still running the Ottawa Senators or any
other major league sports franchise, I would make the extra investment and hire
a co-active coach for every player.

Most of these coaches charge around $300 per month for two sessions so for a
cost of $3,600 per year the team could provide their athletes a service that
might not only help them on the field/ice/court but also at home, with their
families and kids and after their retirement as well when other concerns settle
in—financial, mental and physical health. When you are paying anywhere from a
few hundred thousand dollars to $25 million per year to these people, $3,600
does not seem like a big investment especially if it leads to higher
productivity and greater levels of satisfaction, happiness and achievement.

And, oh by the way, it makes sense for professionals in other (non-sports)
fields to have life coaching too IMHO. I do some coaching too in the fields of real estate, entrepreneurship and development… more below on this.

@profbruce

Postscript: Without a doubt, the other area of coaching most athletes need
help with is managing their financial affairs. A huge number of highly paid
players are broke at the end of their careers or within five years thereafter.

Know what the no. 1 thing in life is? Love? Money? Fame? Success? Nope, none
of the above. It’s trust.

Every player has people around him or her (agents, friends, family,
hangers-on, lawyers, accountants, entourage and sock people) who have can’t-miss
business propositions. It’s nothing to blow a million dollars these days on a
new failed bar or restaurant not to mention millions more on dubious loans,
failed marriages, stupid business models, inflated property purchases in
multiple cities…

Sports teams should make a more concerted effort to educate their players in
this regard and players should never designate control over their financial
affairs to anyone but themselves. Having said that, they need to find financial
advisers that actually know what they are doing.

Remember, even if you have $10 million cash in your bank account at the end
of your career, invested in t-bills at say 1.1% per annum, this is only $110,000
per year before tax. So if a decent financial planner can goose his or
her returns to even just 3 or 4% without doing anything stupid, that’ll make a
huge difference to the athlete’s post-retirement lifestyle.

BTW, exactly the same advice applies to the average working person—about
life, about trust and about financial planning.  

Now I should add that in some research I did a few years ago, 61 of the top
100 richest Canadian families had all or substantially all their wealth invested
in real estate so I believe that real property should form part of anyone’s
financial planning. That’s why I wrote, Real Estate Investing Made Simple
and why I am doing a free webinar called: How to Get Rich,
Slow. It’s also why I do real estate coaching. How’s
that for shameless self promotion?

@profbruce