8 - Toku McCree: Transformative Enrollment - Moving Beyond The Yes And No

SPEAKER_1 (0:12)

Hello, Coaches of the World. Welcome back to the Coaches Rising Podcast. And today, we're going to be talking about something that I think is really, really important. Normally, we're talking about the art of, you know, effective, impactful coaching.

And today, we're going to be exploring the art of enrolling coaching clients. You know, if you haven't got clients, then you can't do effective coaching. But we're going to find out how closely those two are connected, you know, that actually enrolling clients is the art of effective coaching.

And I'm going to be speaking to Toku McCree, who's somebody I met a couple of months back at the Rich Lipman Intensive. And I was just really impressed with the way he was talking about coaching, his dedication to practice, and the distinctions that he was making around coaching that really kind of created some new possibilities for me and my work. So I thought, let's get him on the podcast. And he's going to talk to us about coaching beyond the yes and no. It's this kind of last 10% of the enrollment process of a client where the client has...

They've said yes or they've said no to working with you. And it's a place where a lot of coaches either freak out or they just kind of don't give it any attention and they move on pretty quickly. And Toku had an amazing breakthrough where he discovered what happened when he slowed down in that place and began to continue coaching the client. Not in order to kind of put pressure on them to sign, but in order to serve them, to truly serve. So that's what we're gonna be exploring today. And I think it's a beautiful podcast.

Toku McCree (1:55)

So the concept that's kind of interesting that I talk about when I talk about enrollment is that most coaches spend about, I would say, most of their time focused on the first 90% of the enrollment process. And it's actually the last 10% that all the gold is.

SPEAKER_1 (2:15)

Right, right.

Toku McCree (2:17)

And that's in this realm of coaching beyond yes and no.

And that's really like, that's what makes and breaks really a coach's business, is that last 10%. And it's the 10% where we are most likely to abandon a client, I call it leaving a client at the altar. I'm most likely to leave a client at the altar. It's the chance, it's the place where all the other mistakes in our enrollment process arises. And it's one of the least understood parts of the, I mean, like really nobody talks about it. I mean, the product first coach doesn't even talk about it, because it's after, it's kind of after propose.

So we talk about it a little bit. So we talk a lot about everything from getting clients to having the conversation, to doing the proposal. But it's actually this last 10%, which is almost nobody talks about, is actually the most important part of the coaching conversation.

SPEAKER_1 (3:00)

Cool.

Toku McCree (3:01)

Not just from a sales perspective, like from a change perspective, it is the thing that actually creates change in the client.

SPEAKER_1 (3:07)

But I wanna, I can feel the excitement at this topic already. I wanna kind of, before we go into that, I wanna back up and just ask you about your story in relationship to enrollment.

Toku McCree (3:20)

Totally.

SPEAKER_1 (3:21)

I think that's really interesting, because I know you just mentioned The Prosperous Coach, and you read that book one day, as a lot of coaches are getting on to that book, and it's a fantastic book. Tell me about the story of what happened after you read that and how it impacted your coaching, because I get that there was more to it than just that, wasn't there, just reading and buying that book?

Toku McCree (3:44)

So there was a lot of things that happened on my pathway to enrollment, but The Prosperous Coach was a big turning point. I actually had gone a very traditional route in trying to build my business. I hired a marketing coach who was really great. I mean, she does a great job, and I just don't think I was ready to work with her. And I was actually, hand to Buddha, I was sitting in meditation in a Buddhist meditation room and had this realization that everything I was doing in my business was wrong. It was just there was something about it was off.

And so, I've been looking around for texts about how to learn about enrollment, and a friend had recommended The Prosperous Coach, so I read it, and it was just this big epiphany, like, oh, I can do this. I understand how this works. It feels really good. I didn't have to know what my niche was. I didn't have to know what my ultimate result was. I could go out and use just my ability to make calls and connect with people to create a business.