Dan committed to his vision and said yes to himself, now he is running his own successful leadership coaching business. He has now transitioned from being a Professional coach to mentoring other coaches enrolled with us here at TCI, while giving back to the community! “Truly living the life he loves”.
Two years ago, Dan Marshall began his journey in pursuit to live a life he truly loves.
Fast forward to today, Dan has left his full time engineering job and with it his comfort zone to become a full time financial coach. Now he is running his own successful leadership coaching business, he has become Professional Coach mentor here at The Coaching Institute and is “truly living the life he loves”.
"If you're committed to having a thriving coaching business, then pro coach is for you and you’ve got to go all in! Sometimes you need to go all in and burn your boats at the shore so that you can chase up your dreams and go for them."
Being an engineer and an entrepreneur requires completely different thinking. How have you found that transition in your thinking?
Early on, that was a huge challenge for me because I had the employee mindset. I had been in a job for 10 plus years so going from employee to entrepreneur (that's what I kind of consider myself know, an entrepreneur) it's taken time to shift my thinking.
It's not something that just happens overnight. It's been a gradual process to retrain my mind. I had to change my thinking to that of an entrepreneur where it's okay to make mistakes or it's okay to fail. Because the more you fail, the more experience you get, the more you learn. It definitely been a transition.
What are you loving at the moment about running your own business and being able to serve and being able to live life on your terms?
I was just thinking about this in the last couple of days of the training we were in. I did my ideal average day exercise a couple of years ago. And in this training, we revisited that and I realised I'm living my ideal average day that I spoke about years ago right now.
I've got the flexibility now in my life, I've got the freedom to create the schedule how I want to do it. My business vision is ‘live the life you love’ and right now I'm truly living the life I love. And I’m also helping other people live a life that they truly love as well. So it's crazy to think back to just a couple of years ago, what I said I wanted to do, I'm doing that now. I'm living that ideal average day and a life I truly love.
Did you ever think back, when you first started your journey, that you would be able to say that you are now living you ideal average day?
Not a chance! If I look back five years, I was addicted to comfort. I was so stuck in my comfort zone and I was so unhappy. Outside of work I had some success but in working I was so unhappy, so addicted to comfort, so scared to try something new. So there's no way I could see myself now, five years down the track doing what I'm doing now.
When you first joined TCI and you stepped into the pro coach program, did you have to change something about how you thought? What did you have to shift?
If I look back to my very first weekend, when I joined TCI, I learnt something very important there. It was ..
Are you interested or are you committed?
Say yes and work out how. When I was at that FOCS weekend, I knew this was the place I needed to be.I knew I was committed, that I had to say yes and work out how. On that third day of the Foundations of Coaching Success training I said yes to myself, yes to my vision. I went to Pro Coach that weekend because I knew I was committed and this was the path I wanted to take.
It was a huge step outside the comfort zone. I called my wife that night and she said, “Daniel, you sound different” and I was different. Something changed for me that weekend. Since then, I've just been taking more and more steps outside of my comfort zone. Now my comfort zone has expanded and my life has expanded because of that.
What's your journey been like when it comes to following systems?
At the beginning of my journey I tried to reinvent the wheel. I tried to do it myself and take bits of this system and then add my own little flavour to it. I was getting some mixed results but then it got to a point where I realised that I needed to follow the system. The books are here, the manuals are here, the systems are here. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Once I started following the system, then I started getting more sustainable results and things started to improve.
What's an example of something that has been the most impactful when it comes to following systems?
The biggest one is probably the Ultimate Business Success Guide. They give you that awesome manual which literally sets out step by step what you need to do to have 6K per year business. That's something that I kind of neglected for the first year. Then a year into it I realised that this is literally telling me step by step what I need to do to have a thriving coaching business.
If you could go back two or three years ago and give yourself some advice, what advice would you give yourself to speed this journey up and get yourself committed earlier?
I would tell myself to hang around the people that have the results that you want and work with great mentors and coaches.
What would you say to someone who is inspired by your journey and is thinking about making more of a commitment to their journey and to their own business goals?
I would say to them are you interested or are you committed? If you're committed to having a thriving coaching business, then Pro Coach is for you. You’ve got to go all in! Sometimes you need to go all in and burn your boats at the shore so that you can chase up your dreams and go for them!
"My business vision is ‘live the life you love’ and right now I'm truly living the life I love and I'm helping other people live a life that they truly love as well. It's crazy to think back just in a couple of years, what I said I wanted to do, I'm doing that now!"
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