Why You Need a Coach

Shut up and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, emcee, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you. Hey Rockstars, Reggie Dawson here, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Welcome back, thanks for tuning in. Today I want to tackle a question that I think comes up sometimes when you listen to this podcast or maybe just as you go through your career and everything. And that is why you need a coach, why you need a mentor, someone to kind of, well I'm going to go over what a coach does for you. But why you need one. And truth be told, I am a performance coach. I help performers from all different backgrounds and all different genres take this talent, this thing that they do, and turn it into this amazing performance, this experience for their audience. And just build upon that, continue to connect with their audience, build their fan army, and just ultimately go after their dreams. So, you know, this may be, I may be a little biased. I'm a little biased in making this episode. But it's a question that I've wanted to tackle for a little while. It's a question that, I mean, I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous to tackle because this is me kind of putting out there, basically saying, well, why I feel like I should be needed, I guess. I don't know what you would call that. Maybe it's tooting my own horn. I try not to appear cocky and egotistical, and that's not what this is about. But this may not even be about. This is not necessarily performing. This could be, maybe you're clicked on this podcast because you want to be a speaker and you need a specific speaking coach, or you want a vocal coach, or an acrobat coach, or a gymnastics coach, or, you know, any kind of coach. I coach your overall performance and how you connect with your audience. I can't necessarily help you sing better, but I can help you look better while you do it on stage. That's what I do. But it's not just about what I do. It's, in general, I think everyone could benefit from some type of coach. I mean, hell, even life coach. People get life coaches, businesses have coaches, athletes have coaches. Not just their team coach, but sometimes they pursue, you know, their individual one-on-one coaching as well. And that's, well, that's kind of what builds professional athletes is that more one-on-one focused attention. A lot of the, even the great performers in your background and in what you do, you know, they've had coaches along the way and everything. And so one thing I think to realize is why you need a coach is because, well, sometimes you need someone else to help you along the way. And there's a couple of things that I do for people and kind of, you know, why I do what. Well, first of all, why I do what I do, and let me just share this. So why I coach coaches is there are people that get enjoyment out of watching other people succeed at what they love. What they love to do. And I'm one of those people. And, you know, you love to get out on stage. And believe me, I love to get out on stage too. I like to get out and emcee and talk and speak on stage and dance. And, you know, I like to perform as well. But there's something about watching someone else become successful and kind of being a small part of that. And when I mean a small part of that, you know, like a coach, I think, number one, a coach is going to be a coach. And I think that's a big part of being a coach. And I think a coach is going to be there to help keep you motivated. Sometimes things are going to get tough. Sometimes things are going to feel like it's in the way. You're going to feel down on yourself. You're going to feel maybe get a little complacent. And a coach is going to be there to kind of, like, help you along and boost you up and keep you motivated. And, I mean, sometimes, I've said it before, you know, give you that stiff kick in the pants you need. And that's really what I think a coach is there for is no matter what, to help you keep, to help you keep moving forward. And, oh, by the way, before I go any further, I'm going to, okay, I'm going to just insert this here. I always offer an opportunity to work with me on my podcast. We do a 30-minute introduction call, get you a couple of things going where you can start, like, right away just improving your performance. And, you know, what happens is you go to my website, beingonstage.com slash calendar, put in your name and your email, and you pick a time. You pick a date. You want me to call you. I call you up. We chat for 30 minutes-ish. And, you know, I give you some good, solid, you know, tips and specific tips, like, to you to help get you moving forward and help you get going on that next step and just get unstuck or crush whatever barrier standing in your way right now. So let me just insert that now. And I'll tell you a little bit more at the end. But that's kind of – that's going to be my all. My ultimate offer. So other – let me just go ahead and continue with the podcast now. So other reasons that you need a coach. What I like to do when I coach people is, you know, we start with a plan. Well, and a lot of times we work backwards from your dream. You know, we work backwards of how we're going to get there. But we, you know, we create a plan. And then I help you stick to that plan. How do I help you stick to that plan? Accountability. Celebrating victories. And I'll get more into those things here in a minute as well. But listen, why do you need it? First of all, why do you need a plan? Well, everything great that has ever happened from winning wars to winning football games to putting on an amazing performance at the Super Bowl and the Grammys to Cirque du Soleil to, you know, America's Got Talent. These are some of my favorite things to watch. Everything started with a plan. And if you're going to accomplish something great in your life and in your career of performing, you have to have a plan. It's kind of like a road trip. You know, a road trip, you know, where you don't know where you're going and you just start making turns. That's great. I'll be honest. We did a road trip. Not really a road trip, but we kind of got in the car and drove. And we let my daughter just start choosing where we went. And we ended up basically in the next town over. Like, we just went in a little circle. And. It was kind of boring-ish. But a more exciting road trip is when you have a map. You have a plan. You know where you're going. And that's what a coach does for you. You know, we take this thing, this dream, this big goal that you have, and we help you chop it up into smaller pieces. And then I mentioned accountability. We hold you accountable to accomplishing those little pieces along the way. You know? And, yeah. You can easily come up with a plan yourself. But having that other person there to kind of bounce the ideas off of and tell you, Hey, you know, I've seen it go this way. I've seen it go that way. I've seen. You know, kind of tell you when there's a red light, a green light, when you should, you know, full speed ahead. And maybe when you should back down a little bit from something. Having that other perspective is important. You know? And that's what's going to help mold you and guide you into the performer that you want to be. When you're a third-person video game, you have a little more perspective. You can see a little bit more around what's going on than just, you know, seeing the action right in front of you. Having that third party, having that outside perspective is incredibly important. And it helps identify your strengths, helps identify where your opportunities are. We don't have weaknesses. We only have opportunities to become stronger. And you get help developing new goals. And you build upon the goals as you go. You know, we don't set off to accomplish a 10,000-person audience, you know, on next Saturday night. We start off with something smaller. You know, we start off with reaching out to different clubs or different venues. We start out with, you know, finding events that you would fit with. That's where, you know, you start at something a little smaller than opening night at Hard Rock or opening at Hard Rock. Or whatever it is. And as you accomplish your goals, we celebrate. You know, we go out. We have fun. We, you know, no matter how small the victories are. Granted, not every victory is going to be a VIP night in Vegas. But, you know, we celebrate those victories. You know, we have a drink together. We cheers to it. We, hell, I mean, if shopping is your thing, you buy yourself something, whatever. But we celebrate the little victories. That you do. And we keep that positivity going all along the way. A coach isn't there to beat you down and tell you what you're doing wrong. A coach is there to help keep you doing what's right. And there really isn't no right and wrong. Like, truthfully, there's no right and wrong when we talk about coaching. There's opportunities to become stronger. And there's things that you're strong at. And there's opportunities to become stronger at other things. There is no right and wrong. right and wrong and So I don't want you to think that having a coach and having that mentor is all about someone forcing you to do something or beating you down and telling you what you need to fix all the time because that's not it. That's not it at all. It's about building you up. It's about helping you keep your confidence high, keep your motivation high, keeping you inspired, and keeping you on the track that's going to get you where you want to go. And if where you want to go changes or shifts and you try something you don't like, then we adjust the plan. There's nothing set in stone about having a coach. It's not like I'm going to come into your life and give you this straight line that you have to walk very carefully in order to get there. It's like a zigzag trail and a loop-de-loop. There's no straight line that we're going to follow. We're going to adjust. We're going to ebb. We're going to flow. And you are going to get there. It's going to take work and it's going to take time on both of our parts, but you will get there. But it's not. It's not going to be a straight and easy path. It's going to be bumpy. It's going to be crooked and it's going to loop back on itself. And you're probably going to find yourself walking across the same path that you've already carved. That's part of growth, though. That's part of accomplishing your goals. That's part of seeing your dreams come true. That's part of your journey is crooked, broken pathways that sometimes don't even make sense. And you don't even know if you're on the right path. But that's where the coach comes in is to keep telling you we're on the right path or to tell you, hey, maybe you might want to shift your path just a little bit because where you're going right now, I think there's a cliff right there. It's kind of like having a navigator and you're lost in the woods, you know, tell you when the bridge is out, tell you when it's time to turn back, tell you when it's time to turn left or turn right. And help guide you. It's continually towards that place for you where you see yourself because it's all about your vision and and what you want to. It's not about what I want to accomplish. It's about what you want to accomplish as a performer. That's what that's what my coaching. That's what my coaching is about. It's about what you want to accomplish and where you want to be. And we just build that plan together. And I just help you get there. So, again, you know, I mentioned earlier, you can jump on my calendar. It's completely free. I actually call you right from my cell phone. I mean, I have a couple. People that can probably attest to that. Shout outs to those that have recently jumped on the calendar. Miranda, Rebecca, Lewis, Sam. Appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. You could be next. You could be the next person on my calendar. We could chat a couple of days and and who knows where you're going to be headed, you know. But. This is the first step. This is this is step one to getting that coach, that person. It's. Going to, you know, get you going on your plan, help you build your plan. Let's do it. Let's let's crush this thing. All right. Why not? Why not you? Oh, that was a really good episode. The episode about a month ago called Why Not You? You should look and look back at it. Really, really motivational. Really good. Pick me up also. So listen, thanks again for tuning in. And I appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you pop up on my calendar and. Talking to you and getting your plan going and getting you crushing your dreams. And of course, as always, keep on shining.