Did you ever wonder how some people climb so high? Where did they get the courage, skills and how did they find the path? I’m pretty sure a lot of people have this thought every day. A sporting hero of mine, Andy Murray, I’m certain has had this thought every single day from when he first started playing tennis. He thought it of Roger Federer, he thought it of Rafael Nadal and he must have achingly thought it of Novak Djokovic having suffered defeat after crushing defeat.

 

Yet he reached down, found the courage and made sacrifices that others weren’t willing to make to further hone his skills and eventually, he found the path.

 

And eventually, they all ended up looking upwards, at Andy Murray - the world’s number one tennis player.

 

So what does that have to do with coaching? The answer is everything.

 

I am willing to place a bet with you, right this very second, that no-one who ever “made it”, did so on their own. It just doesn’t happen that way. There are always a group of people behind the figure of success. And in that group, there is almost always a coach.

 

Another leader in their field, Bill Gates, said, “Everybody needs a coach”.

 

There is virtually no-one in the world who would not benefit from coaching of some kind. And I guarantee that anyone who has done anything of interest or note (sport, business or any aspect of life) has had some form of coaching along the way - most likely a lot of coaching.

 

This is exactly the way things panned out for me. I, like everyone else, have certain talents and using these had brought me a certain amount of success. Or at least what I thought as success at that time.

 

But when it came time to take on a veterinary business by myself, I knew that in order to really thrive, I needed to get a lot better at being a leader, so decided to take the plunge and get a coach to help. The results were amazing. I was able to take a “burning bus” vet hospital with 4 employees, no profit and a whole lot of issues, and turned it into a two site, with 14 employees, bustling enterprise that had trebled its revenue. And after 3 years of operation, I was acquired and sold out of the business having made a massive difference in the life of my team and also my own financial well-being. I then spent the next 18 months building and leading my third assignment as a leader of a large veterinary team as the group Chief Veterinary Officer.

 

Could I have done this myself? Possibly, but I believe that it is more likely I would have made the same mistakes I had made in my early career and not enjoyed anywhere near the same level of success. Or I’d have burned out trying.

 

Let me turn to another sport I enjoy, swimming, to highlight exactly what a coach can do for you.

 

If you pay attention to the way people normally swim the front crawl stroke, it’s quite common to see a swimmer thrash their way up a pool and then stop at the end blowing hard and taking heaving gulps of air. (This is why you mostly see recreational swimmers doing breast stroke)

 

And it happens because of poor technique (churning water ineffectively while simultaneously creating a lot of drag).

 

The fixes for this are actually pretty simple, but only when you know about them. Trouble is, that unless someone else has guided you, then all you would think is that you need to train harder to go farther. Practice more, smash out more lengths and you’ll improve. And to a limited extent, this is true. But practicing a poor technique just makes you better at that poor technique. So there is an invisible, very low, performance ceiling that will block your further progress.

 

The truth is that a swimmer with good technique, can jump in a pool after months without training and swim faster than most, and further too. A swimmer with good technique could almost, in theory, just keep going such is the efficiency of the technique. (I never swim less than 1 km in a pool - regardless of how long it was since I last got in a pool).

 

A coach is a person who helps you discover those hidden skills and hop from one level, up onto the next, setting you free to learn how to play your chosen game at an entirely new level.

 

This is how Andy Murray levelled up. He got Ivan Lendl.

It’s certainly how I got where I am and I know for sure that I will never be without a coach. Where once it was a leap of faith to hire my first coach, now I happily spend thousands on an activity I see as a fundamental investment in my own future. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has brought me more success, better returns and greater ability to enjoy my life.