The Top 5%

Signing up is not the same as showing up.

You can enroll in a class, buy a gym membership, or join a training and feel committed in that moment. But the enrollment does not do the work.

I want you to consider what it would mean to bring the top five percent of your own potential to something you choose.

Not an effort that lets you coast through because you already have talent or experience. Your best effort.

That is what I have been thinking about as I return to the kind of teaching I love most: close, intense work with people who want to grow and are willing to show up for it.

What does your best effort require?

Some people want an impossible goal and are willing to face what pursuing it requires.

They want to work hard. They are willing to be vulnerable, examine beliefs that hold them back, and keep going when the work challenges them.

That kind of willingness is rare.

It is much more common to sign up and assume that participating at an ordinary level will somehow produce an extraordinary result.

Then, if the result does not happen, we explain it away.

We got busy. The gym was too far away. The class did not work.

Look honestly at the gap between deciding you want something and doing the work to create it.

Do not confuse enrollment with achievement

A gym membership will not make you fit by itself.

You need to go, lift the weights, and do what develops your body.

The same is true of education and coaching.

You can buy access without applying anything. You can attend without giving your best effort.

What do you expect of yourself after you sign up?

Are you willing to be uncomfortable, practice, ask questions, and let the experience change you?

Or are you expecting the act of enrolling to deliver the outcome?

I want you to distinguish those two very different commitments.

Get support focused on your success

I think reaching the highest level of your potential is difficult without support.

That support might come from a coach, mentor, therapist, teacher, or trainer.

The important distinction is that this person's job is to focus with you on your success.

Your friends have a different role.

When you are taking on a challenging goal, working with someone who is there to help you pursue it can give you a different level of attention and support.

I have loved working closely with students who wanted that intensity and were willing to put themselves fully into it.

Choose the right fit

Not everyone should work with me.

Liking my podcast or wanting to train with me does not automatically mean my energy is the right fit for what you want.

In Master Coach Training, I am very involved. I want to understand where students are struggling and push them toward the next level.

Some people find that exciting. Others do not want it.

That is useful information.

I want to work with people who want the kind of growth I offer and are willing to do the work it requires.

When designing this training, I asked how to create an experience that demands that commitment rather than assumes it.

What if payment came after success?

One of my mentors, Dean Jackson, offered a question I have considered often: How would your business change if you got paid only when your clients succeeded?

I have asked my students to consider it, too.

We tend to reach the same answer. We would become much more discerning about whom we worked with.

We would want people who would show up, practice, apply, and do the work.

That question shaped the Master Coach Training structure I announced in this episode.

I described a program in which tuition would be due only after a student had earned and been offered certification.

The point was not to hand out certification because someone had paid. It was to require the work and achievement first.

Earn the outcome through the work

In the training I described, enrolling would not guarantee completing it.

If a student decided it was not a fit, we could part ways without tuition being exchanged or certification being offered.

If a student did not participate at the required level, I could also decide it was not the right fit.

My intention was for everyone admitted to succeed. Being offered a place meant I believed the person had the potential to handle the work.

But I wanted completion to mean something.

Consider this principle beyond coaching. If the result depended on your best effort, would you still want to sign up?

Would that expectation excite you?

Your full effort may look different from someone else's

This is not a one-size-fits-all expectation.

Two people can have different talents, preparation, experience, and capacity.

The same assignment may ask very different things of them.

When I went to college, I was well prepared by my high school. I did not have to work as hard as some classmates to meet the expectations.

I could get through with less effort. But I wonder what I might have learned if I had expected more from myself.

What would I have developed emotionally? How much more could I have grown?

Your standard does not have to be only what allows you to pass. You can ask what would require your own best effort.

Choose where to give that effort

You cannot give one hundred percent to every single thing.

So choose.

Which area of your life deserves that level of energy from you now?

It may be your job. It may be your home life. It may be a training, a health goal, or another endeavor you want to pursue.

What does your potential look like there? What would showing up fully require?

I am interested in people who spend their energy growing and applying rather than complaining about people who are succeeding.

That is the work I want to do with my students, and it is a question you can bring to whatever you choose next.

Make the commitment real

The training I announced was for coaches already certified through The Life Coach School, with an application process and an intense period of live work.

Even if that particular training does not apply to you, the principle can.

Choose something you genuinely want to put yourself into. Be honest about the effort it requires. Seek the support that fits the goal.

Then show up for the experience you chose.

Not simply as someone who paid or enrolled. As someone willing to learn, practice, be challenged, and discover what your best effort can create.