I do that. 

Why? Do I hate money? Am I a fool or a spendthrift?

Let me explain.

I have been working with an executive coach since I think Jan 2018. Her name is Behnaaz Engineer, she is a coach from Mumbai.

When I started coaching with Behnaaz, our monthly revenue in LawSikho was around 3 lakhs per month and it was just a side project. I had started it thinking what if someday our main business with NUJS at the time gets destabilised? I wanted to have a 10 lakh per month revenue stream as an insurance. This is the first goal I set with Behnaaz in January of 2018. Then by April, that fear actually materialised and we had to jump into LawSikho full time from May 2018.

Now the same company’s revenue is around 6 cr per month.

Our team was tiny back then. In May 2018 it was 14 people. Now our team is over 600 people! We have even reached multiple global markets like the UK, US and Canada. We could not even imagine this when we started.

We are also a listed company now!

In between, I spent one or two hours every week with Behnaaz planning how my next week will go, what I will achieve, and how I will deal with various situations.

How did coaching help me?

I set small achievable goals with help of my coach month on month and kept working towards achieving those goals one at a time. This has helped us to grow exponentially. How coaching helped:

1. Focusing deliberately on narrow winnable stretch goals
2. Prioritising what really matters, deprioritising the rest
3. Revisiting priorities weekly to see where they stand and what progress has been made
4. Checking if my calendar and how I am actually spending time aligns with the priorities agreed upon
5. Checking if my team is aligned with these priorities
6. Creating long term plans so I know what may come up over next 2 years
7. Crisis & overwhelm management by focusing on the basics

Coaching basically helped to set clear goals and then stick to those goals. And when goals were not met, it helped to discover how to change that in the coming weeks. 

How do I think coaching helps me now going forward?

Not much has changed actually in terms of how I spend time with my coach.

Setting goals for the week, identifying and reflecting on what are the priorities, reviewing failures to understand what can be done differently next time. Also it helps to have the perspective of a coach who has seen me grow and evolve over 5 years, so the long term perspective is very valuable.

Ok maybe you don’t need an expensive coach. But if you have a big goal, do you have someone in life who can:

1. Think through your life goals and priorities
2. Set achievable targets every week in alignment with those goals
3. Think through your strategy to achieve those targets
4. Help you to create an action plan for the week based on priorities
5. Help you to review why you missed your targets in the past and how to improve on that front
6. Help you to cut down on distraction
7. Hold you accountable to your own plan

If you don’t have someone, then please get someone.

Btw, inspired by my experience with coaching, I ensured that all Skill Arbitrage courses incorporate elements of coaching.