Do you know how to coach others? It is often said that the best leaders are great coaches. How have you improved your coaching abilities or skills? Or do you have people on your team that need to learn how to be a coach? Or maybe you are looking to hire a business coach?
In today’s episode, we interview David Patterson, and he shares with us a few of the keys to being a great coach that you can use to develop yourself, others on your team, or to use as criteria in helping you find a great business coach for yourself.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
There is a saying that “Experience is the best teacher.” But actually, “Evaluated Experience.”
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at: https://www.dp3consulting.com/
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
- Connect with our guest on social:
- IG: @dp3consulting
- IG: @ceodavidpatterson
- FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecoachbuilderjourney
- TikTok: @coach_builder_david
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpattersonatlanta/
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
David Patterson has built a proven 20-year track record in providing strategic small business consulting services, facilitating powerful workshops and orchestrating impactful seminars for brands like Bank of America, Keller Williams Realty International, John Maxwell Leadership and Business Made Simple.
David brings to the table a unique wealth of knowledge and an extensive network of successful, like-minded, like-valued entrepreneurs in everything from business launch strategies, organizational behavior-based team building and professional and operational best practices through his Atlanta-based coaching and consulting firm.
David Patterson Purpose Statement:
I endeavor to help grow gifted and motivated people into intentional leaders with the desire of living influential, transformative lives.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open, I’m wondering if you know how to coach others and how to do it well. It’s often said that the best leaders are great coaches. And in today’s episode we interview David Patterson and he shares with us some of the keys to being a great coach that you can use to develop yourself as a coach, to develop others on your team, to develop them as future leaders or great leaders on your team. Or maybe you’re looking to hire a new business coach and you can use what he shares to use his criteria to help you find a great business coach.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:53):
David Patterson has built a proven 20-year track record in providing strategic small business consulting services, facilitating powerful workshops and orchestrating impactful seminars for brands like Bank of America, Keller Williams Realty International, John Maxwell Leadership and Business Made Simple. David brings to the table a unique wealth of knowledge and extensive network of successful, like-minded, like-valued entrepreneurs in everything from business launch strategies, organizational behavior-based team building and professional and operational best practices through his Atlanta-based coaching and consulting firm. His purpose statement is to help grow gifted and motivated people into intentional leaders with the desire of living influential transformative lives.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:39):
I’m so thankful and grateful to have David on our podcast today. He’s someone that has become my coach that I’ve been working with, and someone that I consider just to be a great business associate, and someone who I consider to be a friend. So let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with David Patterson.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (01:58):
Tom, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast. My name is David Patterson. I am the CEO and Chief Alchemist of DP3 Consulting here in Atlanta, Georgia. And we have been in business since September of 2012, and we basically focus on helping small business owners, coaches, and executives with growing and expanding their businesses and themselves personally, depending upon what that definition is. So I’m excited to talk to you and those that might be watching and adding value to each and every one of them.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:30):
It’s wonderful to have you here, and I know we connected through a Mastermind group and-
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (02:35):
We did.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:36):
… now you’ve become my coach in helping coach me and guide me and go through things. So grateful for the opportunity to work together, and I thought it’d be wonderful just for you to share some insights here. One of the things really is the focus is talking about coaches and being a coach. So oftentimes we hear, myself included, you need a coach, but one of the things I don’t hear very often about is how to be a coach. So one of the things I’m wondering is what personal attributes do you think make for a good coach?
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (03:11):
Well, number one, I think it’s important to actually have experience in the thing that you are coaching. And the opposite of that unfortunately is there’s a lot of people out there that are not becoming coaches because they don’t think that they would be good coaches. But the great thing about it is that if you have expertise in something that you’ve had for 3, 5, 7, 10 years, you would make a great candidate for a coach. And some of the skills of coaching, yes, have to be learned, but there are others that are really natural. So number one is definitely having the expertise and the experience that you can share with someone. Number two, communication skills and more importantly, knowing how to ask great questions.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (03:57):
A lot of people think that coaching is about telling somebody what to do and when to do it, and that’s more of a consultant. And one of the biggest challenges that people have in the industry is understanding the difference between a coach, a consultant and a mentor. A mentor is someone that meets for time and time with someone with a mentee and they share their life experience or their business experience, but there’s not really any action items or accountability around them. A consultant is someone that actually works with an organization or an individual on a specific task, and that consulting firm or that consultant has experience in using frameworks or tools to help that person get where they desire to be based upon their experience as a consultant. But as a coach, it’s important for us to help people go through the process and guide them through a process through questions versus telling them what they should do.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (04:57):
Self-discovery is the word that we like to use, and one of the things that people say about me in my coaching program is, “David coaches to the person, not to a framework or structure.” And that has a lot to do with understanding the person. And one of the other attributes I would say is people skills. Understanding not only about what questions to ask, but listen to understand, not listen to respond. So having emotional intelligence is really important as a coach. And I think one other attribute that I would add would be being goalful focused, knowing how to set smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. It’s important for us to hold our coaching clients accountable to smart goals. But that starts with us and I’m a big believer in not coaching something that I’m not willing to do myself. So I believe that that’s some of the attributes of being a great coach.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (05:55):
I will say one of the things just stood out in you when I met you and I came back and shared with my team and even my wife, I said, “I met David, he’s fantastic, and what I like most about him are the questions he asked. He just asks great, thoughtful questions that I just saw in our Mastermind session.” I said, “I need to talk to him to see what’s going on. Is he taking any new clients? How does that all work?” So I’m glad we connected there. Let’s talk through this a little bit as someone who’s maybe listening in, maybe they’re a candidate to be a coach and have been wondering about maybe doing something like this or I even think for the franchisors we work with ultimately they become coaches. They’re coaching their franchisees on how to run and operate their business. So one thing that I’ve been thinking about is how do you improve as a coach? They talk about the coach improving their client, but how does a coach improve?
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (06:53):
I think it’s extremely important to have a growth plan. That sounds really simple, yet there are attributes to it that require some intentionality. In a growth plan I believe that there are three key characteristics to becoming better. Number one, you have to be intentional about your growth. And what I mean by that is first of all, you’ve got to get clear on where you want to grow because there’s, I like to call it the 10 pillars of intentional living. There are 10 different aspects of our lives that impact us for personal growth, professional growth, whether the case may be. So we have to get clear about do I have to grow in my relationships? Do I have to grow in how I manage money? Do I have to grow in how I communicate? Do I have to grow in understanding my mindset is something that’s impacted me. There’s many pillars in our lives that we have to work on.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (07:49):
So the first thing you got to do is got to get clear about where to grow. Once you get clarity around there, there has to be intentionality. And for me, there’s three specific things with intentionality that I do to grow. One is read. I’m a reader and a lot of people that have known me and known me for a period of time will tell you that I’m a walking library. You can probably see the bookshelf behind me, and I would say a good 30 to 40% of those books that are behind me, I’ve actually read. And I don’t read just to read it, to say that I read it, I read it so that I have notes and be able to teach it and to share it with other people because that allows me to grow in knowledge and wisdom and understanding of the concepts and principles and frameworks that’s being presented in that book. So that’s number one.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (08:36):
Number two, podcast. We’re recording a podcast episode right now, and there are great podcasts that’s out there to grow. I’m a certified John Maxwell coach. John Maxwell material I’m going to consume heavily. So if you can find a Maxwell podcast on leadership or personal development, go and consume all of that information out there. Number three would be the Mastermind. An opportunity to mastermind with people like Tom. We had just got back from Nashville. We’re recording this on a Tuesday. We were together in Nashville last week, Thursday and Friday two days, with literally people from around the world. We had a young lady there from South Africa, and I was so glad to see her. I wasn’t sure if she was going to make it or not. Getting in the room with different people that have different perspectives but also have their definition of success and being able to share their successes and failures, failures and structures and framework are really important for growth.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (09:32):
And the one other thing that I would add to that is there’s a saying that experience is a good teacher, but in actuality, evaluated experience is the best teacher. And one of the ways that you get evaluated experience is my reflection and taking time each week to spend an hour with yourself to learn more in depth the things that you were exposed to in the week and asking your questions like, what went well this week? Or what did I mess up this week? Or what am I not doing that I could be doing to help myself move forward whether it be personally or professionally? It’s important for us to be intentional about our growth, for us to get where we desire to be as coaches. And then models. Success leaves clues. Find other coaches that are successful, and look and see what they do to help grow their business. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. I know I’m not doing it.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (10:36):
I look for some of the best coaches that are out there. Donald Miller is one, Michael Hyatt is another one. Those are coaches that I can think of that would make models for you to be intentional about your growth to becoming a great company.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:51):
I love that you’re a reader and I’ll say, you’ve already suggested two books that I had never heard of and I’ve read one, and I’m halfway through the other one already. So I love that I can validate you being a walking library. With that, I’d love for you to share maybe a few top recommended books that you might recommend for coaches or budding coaches to take a look at.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (11:13):
Yeah. The first one would be John Maxwell’s 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. That’s where that specific growth plan can be created. There are 15 laws and that book is meant to be read in 15 weeks. So basically you read the law, you act upon that law, and then if you seem so moved to work on becoming a coach, sharing that information with someone either in social media, at the dinner table with family or with a friend or just when you’re out of the game or relaxing and something comes up and you can say, “Hey, you know what? I was reading John Maxwell’s 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. And in this particular law it was saying this and I think this is something that it might help you.” So 15 Laws would be a great book.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (11:58):
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. It’s a great book to help us with prioritization and understanding that there is an order in which to do things and a way to set priorities for you to get where you desire to be. It is a great book for those that are looking to work on something called span of control. We have so many things that are going on in our lives that sometimes we don’t get anything done because we’re overwhelmed with all these things. The one thing is a good book that helps you with prioritization. A book for individuals that are looking to launch or grow their business would be Donald Miller’s How to Grow Your Small Business. It is a very powerful book that talks about the six key steps to building your business as well as growing and expanding it. One of the value propositions that we have at DP3 Consulting is that we focus on professionalizing operations and doubling revenue. And we do that through the principles of how to grow your small business.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (13:05):
Number four, I mentioned the power of questions. A great book to read would be Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John Maxwell. If you want to become better at forming great questions to really stimulate thought and get to the heart of what a particular challenge is or problem is, this book is going to be helpful to you. And then number five, I’ll make a shameless plug with this one. Number five would be this book, which would be Coach Builder by Donald Miller. This book came out March 12th, and I actually have a community called the Coach Builder journey. Tomorrow, at the time of this recording tomorrow, will be our first Wednesday call that we do at 11:00. And basically Coach Builder talks about the eight steps it takes for you to build a six-figure coaching business or a seven-figure coaching agency. I’ve already gone through the book, I was able to get an advance author copy. There’s a platform that we use from a technology standpoint to develop ourselves and to coach others. Already done the homework. We’re ready to go. And I’m excited to share that information for everyone.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (14:14):
So those are the five books that I would share. And one other thing I would add to Coach Builder, there might be people out there that are saying, “Hey, I’m not really thinking about being a coach, so I don’t know why Coach Builder would help me.” And my response to you would be is, if you are a leader, one of the things that you don’t realize that you do if you want to have a successful team is coach. So Tom, you and I had this conversation in the Mastermind last week, about the importance of making accountability coaching more so than managing. So if people really want to become better managers or leaders, Coach Builder might not be the book for you in terms of if you’re looking to build a business, but it’s a book that will help you develop some frameworks to help you be successful within your organization.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:03):
And I think it’s wonderful. Any leader leading people you’re coaching, if you’re not coaching your people up or coaching them to be better, it’s something we’ve talked about, well, then they’re probably not growing, and that means your company is probably not going to grow or is going to not be able to keep up with whatever new trend or things that are going on in the marketplace.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (15:26):
I think people they miss the opportunity though to have another revenue generation source by having some coaching opportunities in and outside of the organization. One of the best examples of that, before I became full-time as an entrepreneur, I worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield in Columbia, South Carolina. And we had an internal consulting division that worked on helping other organizations with their best practices. It’s really important for people to see the bigger picture of the opportunities that can happen when you can focus on the coaching lane and how people and organizations could use you and your expertise to help them be successful.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:07):
David, for someone who says, “Well, I love this concept of the Coach Builder and this program you’re setting up. How can someone get in touch with you, learn a little bit more about what you’re doing?”
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (16:16):
Two quick ways. One is our website is dp3consulting.com. That’s the digit three, dp3, the digit three consulting.com. The second one is that you could actually call us at 404-458-7888. That would be a good way to reach out. Or you can email me directly at david@dp3consulting.com, and I’d be happily to book a 20-minute complimentary discovery call with you to talk a little bit about what’s happening in your world and see if there’s something we can help you with.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:47):
Perfect. And we’ll make sure we get that all included in the show notes as well for you. Well, David, this is a great time in the show where we make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (17:03):
A miss on my journey is, I’ll give you two. One is, it’s important to learn how to identify the right people that go on your journey, and it’s also important for you to understand how to handle the money properly. I don’t think that a lot of us come through elementary school, junior high school, high school, college that have been taught emotional intelligence and proper budget and finances. And if you have not started a business and you’re thinking about starting a business, grow in your emotional intelligence and grow in your financial literacy, extremely important. But who you learn from matters. And one of the people that I would recommend from a financial literacy standpoint is a gentleman by the name of John Hope Bryant. He’s here in Atlanta. He’s very big on wealth building and financial literacy. And then emotional intelligence. There’s a guy by the name of Travis Bradbury. Travis Bradberry has written a book called Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Great book. Definitely would recommend that. And I think that those are the two major things that I’ve had to overcome because of misses that I’ve made in those two areas.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:19):
Great lessons learned. Well, let’s talk about a make or two on the other side, some highlights.
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (18:25):
Once again, understanding that it’s important for you to have the right people in your organization. If you are looking to build something really big, no one succeeds alone. And it’s important for you to get clear on the who, which is something that’s actually talked about in Coach Builder are the different types of support people that you can have in your organization. It’s also talked about it in how to grow your small business. Understanding who your first three hires are and how those three hires can help expand your business. I know for me, my marketing assistant, Caitlin Elliott has been amazing and has really helped me to begin to build our sales funnels and getting more exposure to people. So that’s definitely been a hit for me. And frankly with some of my clients because I lend Caitlin out to some of our clients, and that’s went really well. So understanding that no one succeeds alone and really getting clear on having the right people in your world will help you grow quicker than you think.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:27):
Well, let’s talk about a multiplier. The name of the show is Multiply Your Success. Have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, or other organizations you’ve been a part of?
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (19:37):
I had mentioned that I’m a certified job Maxwell coach. Certification there has helped me with growing leaders like Tom and other individuals and understanding the importance of leadership. But more specifically getting involved in the business made simple world Donald Miller’s certification program, and more specifically, being able to utilize some of his digital products to be able to expand my knowledge to other people and being able to sell those products to grow our revenue really quickly. There’s one product that we have that’s called Flight School that basically in 45 days, we were able to bring in about $50,000 of capital into the business in a short period of time. And I would not have been able to do that without being in an organization that had those digital products. So for those of you that have heard other people talk about the importance of digital products. Get you some and put some marketing around it because it will be really helpful for you to multiply the income that you bring in year over year.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:42):
Well, David, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (20:47):
Success means to me two things. One, living exceeding abundantly. And what that basically means is the ability for me to help others in a financial way without it impacting my household and those that are in my direct inner circle, that’s number one. Number two, DP3 Consulting is looking to build a team of 12 coaches and helping those coaches be six figure coaches. And when that occurs, whenever that may be, I will feel very confident that I’ve not only have been successful, but what John Maxwell call significant. Success is what you do for yourself to live in abundance. Significance is what you do to help others live in abundance. So part of my definition of success has to be significance, or else all of this was pretty much just about me, and I don’t want it to be about that. So that is my definition of success.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:50):
Wonderful. Well, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
David Patterson, DP3 Consulting (21:58):
Yeah. The only thing I would mention is that, mention the Coach Builder book. I’ll put that up again another shameless plug. We have something called the Coach Builder journey that you’ll be able to access in Facebook. There’s a Facebook group called the Coach Builder Journey. That’s another way to connect with me. We have calls every Wednesday at 11 A.M. Eastern Time. You can either connect in the Facebook group or we have a link for the Zoom, which is called coachbuilderzoom.com, coachbuilderzoom.com. Every Wednesday, 11 A.M. Eastern time, we do about 30, 40 minute call to talk about some of the principles in the book. I’m starting the calls, but I’ll have some guests already lined up down the road that will be adding to the eight key steps to building a six figure business. So I would love to have people come and join us. No obligation to join the journey. We really feel confident that we’re going to help people with building their business.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:59):
David, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when David explained the difference between a coach, a mentor, and a consultant. And he described a mentor as someone who meets with you from time to time and shares their life experience with you, but there’s no real accountability in that relationship. Number two is when he talked about consultants. And consultants work with a company on tasks. They use frameworks and tools to help get that task completed for a company. And I echo that sentiment. That’s exactly what I do and my company does when we help companies franchise their business.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:37):
We use our tools and frameworks to help accomplish a very specific task in helping them franchise. And number three is when he described what a coach is. And a coach is someone who helps someone through a process by asking great questions. They listen to understand, not to respond, and they know how to use smart goals and a variety of other things that he shared during the episode. And these are the type of skills and things that David does for his clients and that he does for me. And happy to give a glowing endorsement because I’ve had a great experience working with him so far.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:11):
Takeaway number two is how a coach improves. So whether you are a leader looking to become a better coach to lead leaders, or maybe you are someone who’s looking to build into becoming a coach, he shared a few things that you need to do. He said number one, a good coach is able to improve by having a growth plan. They need to be intentional about growth. Number two is that they develop and they learn more. They listen to podcasts and they read books. And number three is that they join a Mastermind group to share and learn from others.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:46):
Takeaway number three is that great coaches ask great questions. Great coaches ask great questions. And it was one of the things that stood out to me immediately about David when I first met him, was watching the types of questions he asked. They were very thoughtful and just on point, something that really stands out. And that ties into our win-win today. So now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is when David said that there’s an old saying that goes, experience is the best teacher. But David said, actually, it’s evaluated experience that is the best teacher. And I think he’s right about that. Because evaluated experience means that you are reflecting, your thinking about it. When he said from our previous takeaway that great coaches ask great questions, well great coaches ask great questions that help you as a leader reflect back. Or if you are that coach, asking those great questions help your clients and the people you’re coaching, the leaders you might be coaching to help them evaluate the experiences that they’re going through.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:04):
So if you are a coach and helping others evaluate their experience, it’s going to help that person you’re coaching develop better. Or if you are a leader that’s leading an organization and you are getting asked these types of questions, it’s going to help you be a better leader. So this is a win-win across the board. Developing yourself, developing other leaders and helping your organization grow. Or maybe you’re coaching someone, it’s helping another organization grow.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:35):
So that’s the episode today folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in. And we look forward to having you back next week.