Ben Duncan, Business Owner, NH, USA

What's the obstacle that would have prevented you from investing in coaching?

Number one was the fear of failure. If I'm going to hire somebody, am I going to have the wherewithal to put the work in, am I going to make the time to put the work in, and what will they think of me if I fail?

Number two was the financial standpoint. It's a big pill to swallow. I think us men are conditioned to generally not seek help from others, especially other men in a professional setting that may be there to help their personality issues. I've been conditioned to feel that way. The cost seems daunting at first because it's hard to quantify it until you start it. I couldn't say, "I'm going to do this thing with Jason and when I get done, I'm going to be X." If I did that with a gym or personal trainer and I committed to it, I would have a goal at the end. Because there is so much mental gymnastics and so much inner work, it's very hard to quantify a dollar figure to an outcome.

What did you find as a result of investing in coaching with me?

The most obvious thing that I found is that it's a certain necessity in anybody's life. I had to recognize that I couldn't do a lot of these things on my own. It's completely okay to allocate funds, time, and work to a task that's bettering myself and subsequently bettering my outcome in life.

By our second month or so it really hit me like a ton of bricks that this is something I need: the accountability of somebody else holding me to a standard an an expectation, somebody who has a timeline and work for me to do. Those are so important and they're things that you can't get by reading (or listening to) a book. Meeting with a coach really drives home the fact that there's somebody who's taking time out of their life to make sure you're doing something better. You've actually reached out to this person, paid them, and said, "Help me." And that person is waking up every day and saying, "I've got to help this person because they hired me to help them." It feels like you have somebody who's got your back. It feels like there's somebody who's looking out for you.

Those mornings when you wake up and don't feel like doing anything, there's still the one person who's got my back. If things are going sideways, I could reach out to you. If my whole week is going sideways, you're still going to be there. I could talk about it on our weekly call.

Coaching with Jason actually enabled me to feel better about hiring a business coach and work with other coaches for personal training, etc. I've done that in the past, but never really valued it. Now I value the coaching relationship.

What specific feature did you like most about my coaching process?

I like the "no bullshit" style. I never felt like I could whine my way out of it or manipulate answers to make you think I was doing stuff right. I always felt like you always knew what was going on and could always see through whatever was going on. You would always push the questions until the answers came out, no matter how difficult and painful that was. I think it's your ability to draw the truth out of people and the honesty were what I appreciated most.

What were three other benefits from working with me?

Time management. I'm still working on that, but it's a 90 degree change from the same point last year. I can now allocate time to do things more easily.

Feeling more secure about myself and my decisions. Working with you on the particular subject of No More Mr. Nice Guy has really helped me feel better about who I am and feel more secure about leading the life I want to live and not putting up with anything other than that.

The third thing is self-esteem. I'm coming out of this with bucketloads of more self-esteem than I came into it with.

Would you recommend someone else work with me? Why?

Absolutely. Your style works; you have this innate ability to get the truth out of people without being a jerk, but without being wishy-washy. That works for a lot of guys who have spend so much time trying to be liked.

It's a great investment. You're going to come out of this experience a totally different person, and because you're a totally different person, you're likely going to be better with your money. Money actually ends up becoming a non-issue, because you come out of this being more direct with your money, more secure with your job, or maybe more secure with your wife who has spent all your money in the past.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I really value this relationship. There were many times where I had to take a step back and say, "I hired this guy. He's not my friend. We're not going to get together for beers next week or whatever. he's a professional in this job." Because of your personality and the way we did the homework, I did feel like you were a friend who was looking out for my best interests.

You also had the roadmap. I wasn't ready for the whole roadmap in the beginning, but you helped lead me through that map by giving me little pieces of it here and there to follow, and now it's much clearer. I can look back on old notes and see where I wasn't going or where I wanted it to go. As I progressed I can see how that map formed along the way. I'm very happy with the outcome. Two thumbs up!