If you’ve ever been coached before, you probably had a love/hate relationship with one thing:

Action steps.

You love ‘em when you do them, but hate ‘em when you don’t.

(Mostly cause you’re embarrassed that you didn’t finish the assignment before your next session)

But there’s one thing I see more and more coaches missing when it comes to action steps…

…and it’s that not all action steps are created equal.

See, there’s really two kinds of action steps required to truly succeed in a big way:

1. Action steps to make progress toward a goal

2. Action steps for personal improvement

What’s the difference?

Let’s break these down a bit more.

Action steps to make progress toward a goal

Let’s say your goal is to generate $10,000 in business in one month.

There’s gonna be some very specific steps to achieve that, like:

1. Create a marketing plan for the month

2. Follow through on the marketing plan

3. Get referrals from current clients

4. Run a one-time-only promotion

5. Follow up with potential clients

You get the idea.

Every step is specifically created to get you closer to the goal - no fluff.

But when you’re striving to succeed with something like this, sometimes you start to struggle personally.

That’s where the second type of action step comes in:

Action steps for personal improvement

These action steps are to keep you at your highest level of performance physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.

They can be highly customized to the client, and super bite-sized.

All that matters is that while they’re striving for their big goal, they haven’t forgotten to take care of themself personally.

If you stop progressing personally, side-effects include:

• Low self-esteem

• Forgetting the “why” behind the goal

• Scattered mind

• Emotional explosions / implosions

• Imposter syndrome

Treatment for these side-effects is easily said, not always easily done…

…just keep working on yourself personally, building good habits like:

• Reading educational books

• Exercising (even 10-20 mins a day)

• Going to bed early and waking up early

• Meditating, or even just do breathing exercises

• Journal about your day, new ideas, or things you’re learning

You could easily come up with a list of dozens of things for your clients to do.

Don’t.

Just have your client pick one thing to work on alongside each of their goal-oriented action steps, and you’ll both be amazed at how much a difference it makes.

Quote of the week:

Song of the week:

- Kirk