Our guest today is a master certified coach and one of America’s leading relationship experts. He is Dr. D. Ivan Young, Professional Motivational Speaker and Master Certified Relationship Coach. With more than a decade of experience, and hundreds of clients, Dr. D Ivan Young not only teaches, he empowers us to better understand and grasp how others perceive and think about us.  Here are some highlights from our conversation:

·       Make sure that you understand where you want to be. Dr. Young stresses that coaching is a relationship more than it is an event and that relationship begins with self – how are you connected with that niche you found in coaching and why is it special to you and what drew you in. When you look at what you are doing, where are these hidden spots can you find things that you can bring to life in such a way that no one else can do. That is where you can fortify your niche and do what you want to do.

·       Dr. Ivan started out in his coaching journey as a pre-med student at the University of Houston. His focus was to be in cardiovascular surgery or neurosurgery. With this, he points out that where you start out doesn’t exactly translate to where you end up in. Dr. Young advices to be permeable and pliable to what the universe or what God or what spirit is guiding you toward. For him, he took his love for medicine and physiological psychology and built upon it. He built a connection with how the human mind works and how it connects to relationship coaching. Make parallels of what you love with your coaching practice.

·       Sweat equity is the time and grain to get you where you are. As Dr. Young would put it, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. He started into coaching in 2004 or 2005 and he was just trying to get in where he could fit in – and he says that is just ok. Until you reach a plateau wherein where you’ve been meets with where you want to go, you will never really say you’ve made it. You have to maintain a certain level of consistency. The longer you remain consistent, the more it will drive you to where you want to be.

·       You cannot do coaching from your hip. You need education. You need to have a foundation so that when you articulate something, people will be able to grasp what you are talking about. Coaching requires studies and taking yourself to another level and your practice will follow.

·       Dr. Young also shares some of the “Watch-outs” in the coaching industry; one of those is yourself. You have to watch out on thinking that you know everything when you don’t know anything. You figure that when you are successful in one area, you will be instantly successful in another. You have to think about what does it really mean to have a brand and how do I build this brand. The first step with that is you have to define what is it that you do. You must be very consistent in your efforts to be visible and to be visible in the right way.

·       Another watch-out is your haters. When you get big enough, expect people to character assassinate you. When you become a valid threat and a constituent on the media, are you prepared to handle that? How do you position yourself to sustain with the aggression of the being in the public eye and have you prepared yourself to remain humble. No matter what you do, you are only as good as your last performance. Your focus is to continually create a buzz around your brand and around your name.

·       If you’re not turning people on, then you are turning people off. Every opportunity matters 30 seconds at a time and how you manage your 30 seconds with what you say, how you look, your body language should make people say “that’s a brand I want to be connected to”.

You can find Dr. D. Ivan Young at www.drdivanyoung.org. He is going to be in a show called Breaking Dad which will be coming soon.