Our Founding Story

The answer to this often-asked question is really quite simple: Great Relationships!

Not the latest HR trend or technology fad or whatever is being created in someone’s garage.
It’s Great Relationships.

Whether at work or home, in-person or virtual, we all share a fundamental need to engage with others in mutually beneficial, supportive, and net-positive energy relationships.

That’s why I started Coaching Right Now in 2008.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Yes, I started this company at the beginning of the worst global financial meltdown in 80 years. Perhaps not the best timing.

But we succeeded and grew, and I discovered several valuable truths in the process:

• It’s about YOU, not me.
• Anyone who wants to change, can change—if given the right tools, skills, and support.
• If we’re not consistently focused on staying relevant to the world around us, we’ll soon become irrelevant.
• Create space that allows people to grow.
• Good leaders create environments where employees want to give more.
• More heads are better than fewer heads—no matter how “smart” the heads.
• It’s all about relationships.

5 lessons learned from starting my first business during a global crisis:

1. When money is tight (when isn’t it tight?)…the value of the solutions we provide is determined by the customers who CHOOSE to invest their money with us, because they recognize we have the best solutions to meet their needs. Because it’s always the right decision to make a good investment.
2. We take the extra steps to understand what’s most important to our customers, and help them identify a clear line of distinction between their needs and their wants, because these are rarely the same. Customers value our expertise in helping them understand this distinction, and successfully
   merge the two.
3. Be clear about what you want for your business and what you need to do to get it.
4. We all have specific intrinsic strengths and weaknesses. Have the courage to honestly recognize your own strengths and weaknesses and create space for people who complement your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Always be willing to learn from others.
5. A company’s culture is the result of all the intentions, behaviors, actions, priorities, and relationships that mesh together every single day. Culture is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It’s important to invest time upfront to carefully define and support the kind of culture you want. Otherwise, it will define itself in ways that may not be best for your company—and which can be difficult and costly to reshape.

Why a coaching company?

The concept of a “coaching” company came from the value I discovered in learning from other people in my life, who helped me (a natural introvert), learn the necessary skills of relationship building.

In 2003, I joined an external group of business owners. By 2008, when I decided to start this business, I had already developed a strong network of supporters. This network helped me gain the competence and confidence I needed to refine my ideas into one actionable, although still risky, business plan to go out on my own.

I was surprised that an introvert such as myself could develop such a strong network to help me take one of the biggest leaps of my life. When I reflected upon what I had done to garner a network of accomplished business leaders, I came up with four attitudes that ultimately became the foundation for our Core Values:

• Stay Curious: It’s about you, not me.
• Be Authentic: I am who I am. Trying to be anyone else is futile.
• Choose Kindness: Give first, ask second.
• Spark Energy: Energy is the fuel for growth.

I was blessed to have four mentors: Ralph Auerbach (my father), Arthur Aeder (my father-in-law), Melvin Siegel (my learning partner), and Samuel Bailin (my teacher), who had already been where I wanted to go–in business and in life–and from whom I developed the core beliefs which became central to Coaching Right Now since our inception in 2008.