It's not who your coach trains, it's who trained your coach.
Sometimes we are drawn into a business or coaching relationship because of WHO the coach or mentor has worked with. A laundry list of famous names can totally influence who you decide to learn with. While I’m absolutely honored to work with some of my high-performance level clients, (and yes that totally gives validation to anyone, that a highly skilled professional would choose to learn more from them), it’s not my noteworthy clients that actually make me a better coach. It’s the people that have coached me.
Sometimes it’s the people who have trained you that help you become who you are today.
So before you get all starry eyed about who your coach’s clients are, have a look at who their coaches were.
While I continually invest my time and money learning from high level coaches across the world, I wanted to share one special experience.
I came across a couple of burned CD’s today. On them, were my training sessions with Ron Anderson. Ron taught me not only some incredible techniques that I use in my coaching today, but also unknown to him at the time, Ron taught me a life changing mindset, to follow my goals and dreams no matter how wild they are!
It all started one January in 2015, I was watching Rock of Ages and couldn’t believe that Tom Cruise, Russel Brand and more could actually sing as well as they did on the show. So being me, I had to research, firstly, was it actually them singing, and secondly, who the heck taught them to do that so well if it was them!
This is one of my proudest moments, because, in this moment I trusted my instincts, believed in myself wholeheartedly that I not only needed, but deserved to invest in myself as a voice coach, and before the film had even ended, I had done the research, found the coach that was hired for the movie, researched him, and booked my lessons and flights and was on my way to go meet Ron in LA!
It was wild. Stars aligned, I stayed with one of my favourite and incredibly talented humans, Matt, in his gorgeous condo in Santa Monica, (Extra bonus got to share the inflatable sofa bed with Max the dog, which in itself was an adventure as max had more energy than me booking trips to learn more about singing).
And another alignment was one of my other musical friends turned photographer, Charles Torrealba was available to do a shoot with me that week too.
It was such an incredible trip. One I remember fondly every year, because I was also there for my birthday.
I could write an entire post about Ron. In fact I have an entire podcast about Ron, one of the most in depth voice tech / science episodes I’ve produced with his partner Pipe, and for which I am so grateful. Google him. I did and look how that turned out!
Although I only trained with Ron a few times, and we were not extremely close, he was, and always will be one of the greatest voice coaches this industry has known. Ron passed away a little over a year ago and I’m so sad I won’t get to train with him and see that amazing smile again. However, he did change my life. And for that, I am always grateful.
When you next get that urge, when you see someone you KNOW you have to learn from, train with, spend time brainstorming with or just to say thank you to…..DO IT. Things change, people (and sadly also dogs like the lovely Max), leave us too soon. Make the most of every moment that brings joy, growth and happiness.
It will change your life.
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