It’s always hard to explain what a coach does.
You champion. You challenge. You have deep, life-changing conversations, and you call people out on the stories they’re telling themselves, the ones that are holding them back.
Let me give you an example.
Last week, I talked to a brilliant woman who’d left a prestigious corporate job in Dublin because she felt called to do something completely different. She wanted to paint, and to write. So she moved to Budapest, where she could live cheaply and hang out with other creatives. And she painted, and she wrote.
The writing, she’d discovered, was a way of feeding the art. It helped her shape her ideas. But she still wasn’t a real artist, she told me. Artists are trained, by doing an art degree. Artists belong to some exclusive, secret club that you need an invitation to. Artists have a gallery, and exhibitions, and collectors. She was still a marketing executive, really. She was just dabbling.
I asked what she would need, to be a real artist.
‘To sell some work,’ she said.
‘So sell some!’ I replied.
We spent the rest of the session talking about how Damien Hirst and his generation of British artists didn’t wait to be discovered by a gallery. They got noticed by putting on their own shows in empty industrial buildings.
We also discussed how training comes in many forms. Art school is a fairly recent idea. It’s brilliant, and it’s never too late to go do a foundation year, a class or a degree. But historically, most great painters started as apprentices, learning on the job. And most giant leaps in art history – or music, or literature, or most art forms – involve loose collectives encouraging, inspiring or even fighting each other. This can happen at art school. But also in a bar, a club, or a run-down part of a city where rents are cheap.
We talked about coffee shops, restaurants, vintage shops and bars near her apartment that might agree to put some of her work on display, when they reopen. We explored the idea of a market stall, or simply taking a couple of paintings to the local square where people gather for a drink in the evening, and propping them up on a bench with a ‘for sale’ sign.
In the end, the solution was even more simple.
And more appropriate for these self-isolating times. After our conversation, she simply put six of her paintings on Instagram, with captions and prices. The next day, she sold her first piece.
The embossed invitation had arrived.
She had joined the secret club.
She was now a professional artist.
The painting only raised enough to cover another month’s art materials, and a few drinks in that square. But that’s not the point. She had begun.
Prices can be raised.
Whether you’re a musician or a designer, a screenwriter or a stylist, the creative journey is pretty much the same. You get better at your craft, and also better at crafting a story around it. You get better at showing your work, and selling it. You learn to cope with the inevitable setbacks, and rejections. And a coach can help with all of that.
But in this example, it was about taking some first, faltering baby steps. And I had the honour and privilege of being with a new artist while she made them.
So that’s coaching.
Did I mention how much I love my job?
What do you think?