Joining me today is Steve Chandler. Steve is an author, business coach and sales and leadership trainer who has delivered his training and coaching to over 30 Fortune 500 companies and many small businesses. He is the author of 9 Lies that are Holding Your Business Back, The Small Business Millionaire, Time Warrior and over 20 additional books. He is the founder and lead facilitator of Advanced Client Systems: The Coaching Prosperity School which has been training business and life coaches from all over the world for 12 years running.
A pleasure to connect with you for this conversation! Please share with us the story of how you decided to pursue your business, your books & transformational journey.
I owned an advertising and public relations company in the 1980s and one of my clients was Michael Bassoff, the director of development at the Arizona Cancer Center in Tucson. Together we created unorthodox but highly-effective fundraising systems that led to us writing a book about it called RelationShift: Revolutionary Fundraising.
We started giving seminars on the systems in the book, and I got hooked on the world of teaching and training and consulting. So I left advertising and PR and never looked back.
When I found that the same principles of creative, compassionate communication and relationship-building that worked in the fundraising world could also translate into the world of business, leadership and sales I developed more and more training and coaching programs and expanded my reach into the world of corporate and small business.
There was never a clear decision to do any of this, it was always a matter of following what was working best and making the biggest difference for people.
What top 3 lessons could others learn from your story?
- Keep looking for where your skills and energy can make the biggest difference for people.
- Learn to enjoy reinventing yourself continuously, adding skills and expertise as you go.
- Be willing to see that more compassionate communication (featuring deep listening and understanding of others) is amazingly valuable to every enterprise and every person within that enterprise.
Which authors influenced you the most for their inspiration and wisdom?
Martin Seligman, whose books researched and proved that optimism is not a permanent personality trait, but rather a system of thought and communication that can be learned by anyone and that improves performance, productivity and relationships in immediate dramatic ways. Tom Peters, whose books are fiercely intelligent and wild with energy and deeply inspiring (and convincing) about the importance of creative customer service. Michael Neill, whose books, especially Supercoach and The Inside-Out Revolution, teach trainers, coaches and consultants how to understand and serve clients in the most impactful ways.
What top tips would you give to young entrepreneurs for being successful in business and in life?
1) Whatever business you get into or create, take care of your mind, body and spirit every step of the way … keep your health, happiness and spiritual growth as your top priority always.
2) Stay open to daily innovation and creativity especially in the service of your customers.
3) Always favor action and compassion over personal fears, ego, social anxiety, taking things personally, and nurturing a victim mindset.
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
Yes! My business and life coach Steve Hardison who saw possibilities in me that I couldn’t see, and who patiently, lovingly and energetically coached me to become completely transformed from a lazy, discouraged, ineffective, depressed pessimist into someone who learned to love to create programs and services for others, learned to love writing books, and learned to love life itself.
What world leader was most influential for you in becoming the leader you are today, and why?
When I was young it was President John Kennedy, and in my older years it has been The Dalai Lama. Kennedy modeled hope, courage, enthusiasm, bi-partisan civility and dignity and joyful ambition. The Dalai Lama has inspired me with his continuous and courageous application of spirituality and compassion to every world problem he encounters.
What are the 3 things that most excite you about 2019 or this moment in time, and why?
1) The exploration of space, the universe and quantum physics that keeps a sense of infinite wonder alive.
2) The marriage of science and spirit led by people like the Dalai Lama, Matthieu Ricard, Bernardo Kastrup, Byron Katie, George Pransky and Rupert Spira.
3) Innovations in technology and worldwide communication that are breaking down the barriers of belief and superstition between nations and their people.
How do you think leaders will need to change in in the next decade (2020 and beyond)?
They will need to systematically and courageously dismantle their egoic and confrontational worldviews to allow love, understanding and collaboration to guide their leadership.
Have you launched a new book / podcast / webinar / app recently? If so, please tell us about why you chose to create it, a little more about it – and share the link(s) where you’d like our readers to check it out!
My new book just launched & is called Creator. It was written to encourage people to wake up to who they really are and how much divine creativity they have access to and can apply to their work and their relationships. It can be found wherever books are sold, and it was written to answer the question of what I wish I had known early in life so that all the struggles and misery created by my ego and misguided cultural conditioning could have been seen through and dissolved on the spot.
The book can be found on Amazon here.
How can our readers follow you & your company on social media?
The Steve Chandler Coaching Prosperity School is very active on Facebook (link here )and my website is http://www.stevechandler.com/.