Legacy Coaching for professional athletes, top influencers and business giants

Are you already successful? You’ve done well for yourself and your loved ones? What others call the top of your field is your home base? And now you are asking yourself: what’s next? Then this article is for you!

What is legacy coaching?

Let’s start by looking at what the word legacy actually means. The word “legacy” translates as nothing more than “inheritance”. When combined with the word coaching, this can seem a bit confusing. So what is it?

Legacy coaching is about looking beyond your current situation by looking at what you want to leave behind. What impact will you have left to the world, to your audience, to your field when you are not in your current position any more. What values have you passed on to the next generations? How has your experience inspired others to follow in your footsteps?

Impact Legacy Coaching

To take it up a notch I like to refer to it as “Impact Legacy Coaching” which implicates the impact that your legacy will leave behind. At the same time it also helps people to understand that in order to leave a legacy you need to make an impact.

This process is the most powerful and effective when it is led by an impact legacy coach. While the whole field of legacy coaching is fairly new, 2021 is the right time to make a shift on what really matters.

Who is legacy coaching for?

Getting a coach to work on your legacy is certainly not for everyone. It is for those who already rose to the top, who are at the pinnacle of their area and planning for a transition in the near to intermediate future. Eagerness to share your skills and have an inspiring mission play a major role as well in making the process most effective.

The 3 core target groups of legacy coaching:

Professional athletes and sports stars at the top of their field

Professional athletes and sports stars are perfect for legacy coaching. Not only is an athlete used to working with coaches, it is also in the nature of sports pros to help each other and work as a team. At the same time, whether you are a professional soccer player, tennis champion, football star or whatever sports you are doing… Many athletes face the same challenge: “What do I do after my career is over, when I am 30, 35 or 40 years old?”  

What’s great about being a professional athlete is that you have the opportunity of making an impact while you are young and you are one of the best at something that you love to do. Many athletes, through their exposure, also built up a good to great following on social media and in general have an audience… at times even a huge and global audience like Cristiano Ronaldo, Tom Brady or Roger Federer.

A legacy coach can help you in planning from today to the future at the right time. Since every athlete is first and foremost a human being that stands for something in his or her life the question is what values, skills and help they want to give to future generations. 

Top Influencers on Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn and other social media

What’s great about top social media influencers on Youtube, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on is that they have already found their voice and have an audience. In this case it is more about bringing out even more of themselves in the process. Hiring a legacy coach is not about creating a personality that you are not, it is the opposite. Coaches are all about making you better and improving your skills in order to be able to create even more value for your followers – whether you interact with them live or through any platform. 

Since being an influencer is a relatively new field, creating a plan for what’s to come will give stability to any social media star in the ever-changing fast paced online world. This is also one of the most exciting fields for a coach – to be hands on and provide constant feedback and coaching.

CEOs & Entrepreneurs

CEOs and successful entrepreneurs also know the feeling. Having spent years trying to get to the top of a company through performance and strategy, the feeling of being burnt out often dominates at an advanced age. They ask themselves if that’s all there is to it: this constant hunt for further and higher, always pursued by the next generation, who are striving for their own position. 

What comes after all the achievements if you are not being fulfilled? That’s where creating your legacy comes into play: creating a lasting impact, delivering sound values and skills while being fulfilled.

Why is legacy coaching valuable for you?

Let’s start with the consideration of why legacy coaching can be interesting or even valuable for you…

Since the beginning of 2020 the world has changed a lot. On all parts of the planet have been people that profited from the pandemic and others that are still licking their wounds. I don’t know if you are on the one end or the other but my guess is that things have changed for you as well. The big question is how can you make a difference to those who need your help? What can you bring to the table that moves the needle?

If you are already playing in the major league your thoughts for the future could be:

• In which direction do I want to shift my attention that fulfills me?
• What will I leave behind after I stop doing what I am doing now?
• How can I leverage and at the same time empower my audience that I already have?
• Which steps do I need to take in order to get to my goal?
• Who can help me to add focused value to my followers?

The process of answering those questions will allow you to get even more clarity and create a plan of adding fulfillment to your life while at the same time creating more impact and establishing a legacy. 

The 5 pillars of legacy coaching

Know your destination

By now you probably have some sense of the opportunities legacy coaching offers for people seeking meaning in their lives.  And that is exactly what legacy coaching is designed to accomplish. 

The goal is to break new ground. To create a sustainable footprint for posterity. Sometimes legacy coaching also results in the coachee starting a second career or becoming a keynote speaker along the way. Others start to become socially involved and, for example, contribute earned money to foundations. 

The question of purpose is always the same: What is the next level you want to reach in your life?

These questions contain everything that legacy coaching is about 

• The question of meaning in life
• The question of being fulfilled 
• The question about the actual calling 

Be clear about your audience

In coaching, you are asked the question of who you want to reach with your message. Who do you want to inspire?

Let’s assume you are the professional footballer mentioned above. After your career ends, nothing is the same anymore. Your former target group, your loyal fans, might only be marginally interested in your future life.

With a Legacy Coach your aim is to tackle new tasks, new goals. Goals, tasks and visions that fulfill you. This is almost always accompanied by a change of the people who have surrounded you so far.  

Define your new target group, people you want to inspire! Get to know your target audience.

Also think about who can help you build new collaborations. Surely one or the other friend from your team has already gone through this development. Where you used to celebrate championships with your fans, you are now looking at groups that have different interests and visions.

Consciously build your own brand

Legacy coaching targets people who already are a brand. Successful people who already have some branding associated with their name. Now is the time to become aware of your brand. Your brand is what those around you associate with you and your personality. Your brand is what others say about you. Often, now is the time to determine a strategy. The best strategy is to incorporate things that people already associate with your brand together with your aspired future you.

No matter where you are right now, you can expand your already existing personal brand or plan a 360 degree turnaround, a re-branding. With new goals, visions, you lay the foundation for sustainability. Incidentally, this can be very exciting if you want to completely redefine yourself from scratch. You can strategically plan in a completely new way with which topics and emotions people should associate you. A sophisticated roadmap is more important than ever here.

Branding, or in other words how others perceive you, will make the difference between leaving a legacy and being a commodity. There are many people out there today that are certified in something, have lots of skills, provide value and want to become someone. Skills or being certified don’t make a brand. Being the true you and showing it to the world consistently will make you unique and stand out.

Implementation through communication

Communication is everything that is perceived by someone else. I would even go a step further that communication starts within yourself. But I am sure that you already know that… because otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this post.

The implementation of a (re-)branding process in the context of legacy coaching starts with communication. The communication to your audience must be crystal clear and leave no room for speculation. Work on your communication, especially if you have already been successful. People initially perceive you through your communication and since you already are an established brand you will be compared to your past self.

Think about where you can improve in terms of communication. Successful communication builds the bridge between expectations and action. Communication skills such as working on your voice, your body language or your presentation skills are just the basics. In the world we live in today you also need to be able to talk to a camera, be great in video meetings and know how to establish connections through networking. And if you want to become a keynote speaker it helps to know what makes a great keynote.

You have to be true to yourself

In general, the people who consider legacy coaching are already very authentic. A great brand goes hand in hand with authenticity. Whatever path you choose for yourself it is paramount to stay true to your core. If you want to make a big change in your life and want to take your audience with you it is critical to be open, honest and vulnerable with them.

It is important to keep what you stand for and what your audience and fans love from you. Because your personal essence remains. Through realignment your authenticity can and should be strengthened. The example of the statue hidden in the stone makes it clear. The essence is that the statue has always been inside the stone and it took lots of work by a master to show it to the world. The same is true for legacy coaching, where a masterpiece becomes visible bit by bit.

One last thing about being authentic: fulfillment comes through authenticity! You might have achieved an awful lot in your life and still not be fulfilled. You cannot achieve fulfillment. You have to discover it.

Is legacy coaching right for you?

Do you feel that there is more inside of you that the world needs to see? That you can make a difference by what you know or what you have achieved by passing it on to the next generation? Do you want to progress in the next phase of your life? You are used to working with coaches to achieve your outcomes?

What do you feel that legacy coaching can do for you? Let me know in a comment or send me a message and let me know how I can help you create your legacy!

All the best,
Ronny