5 Ingredients to Become a High-Caliber Coach
By the Co-founder: The Origins of the Meta Performance™ Institute
Hey there,
Welcome back to the Meta Performance™ Coach newsletter.
Today is an exciting day!
Up until now, I (Joseph Barkley) have written this newsletter solo. But at the Meta Performance™ Institute (MPI), we believe in the power of “WE.” We believe we are capable of so much more together than we are on our own. From here on out, you’ll hear from more world-class coaches.
Today, we’re starting with someone very special:
Partner at Novus Global, and the reason MPI exists at all—Co-Founder Amanda Jaggard.
Without further ado…
Hi all! Quick question for you.
Have you ever had an idea so big you’re almost afraid to say it out loud?
Not out of fear of looking dumb. Or silly. Or being misunderstood. But because you know that words have power. You know that, as soon as you solidify that idea into sentences, as soon as you speak that thing into existence, everything is going to change.
Maybe you felt it when you had the idea to…
Go back to school
Quit your job to start a business
Or move across the world to serve a great cause.
Before anyone else knows, there’s a moment where only you know.
Where the idea is yours and no one else’s. There’s a strange power in that moment because if you want to, you can squash it. You can put an end to the idea before it even begins. You can protect the status quo. OR you can disrupt everything. You can choose to say it out loud.
You can take the idea and make it real.
This is exactly the kind of nervous excitement I felt on that Saturday evening.
It was 2017. My brother, Jason Jaggard, and I were walking through Northeast Los Angeles on our way to a pizza joint for one of our regular sibling hangouts. I can still picture the street corner. The stoplight. The moment I said it out loud for the very first time.
But let me back up.
A year earlier, I decided to go full-time as a coach.
Years before that, Jason and I both got trained as coaches, but we took different paths. He dove headfirst into the world of coaching, writing, and speaking. He launched the Novus Global coaching firm. Meanwhile, I was focused on raising my two sons.
But when I saw what Jason was building at Novus Global, I realized I could create a thriving practice too, so I decided to go all-in as a coach and join him and our growing firm of coaches.
There’s nothing quite like your first year of coaching.
For most of us, it’s incredibly humbling.
You’re fumbling your way through something you feel like you should be good at, but you’re just not yet. Even though I had received solid training, everything was still new. The conversations felt high-stakes. The client dynamics were unfamiliar. And don’t even get me started on knowing how to do pricing and run the business side of things.
That first year is like getting your sea legs while the ship is already out in the middle of the ocean.
Here’s the thing: I’m an educator by trade.
I have a degree in secondary education. I’ve taught in both traditional classrooms and in juvenile detention centers. Even while I was in the throes of building my practice, something in me was stepping back, asking, What’s actually happening here?
How does someone become a great coach?
What does real learning look like?
More importantly, how could we make this easier for the next person?
I recognized a problem with most of the training programs for coaches.
When you become a coach, it normally goes like this…
You get trained in a program that lasts a weekend, a week, or maybe a month. You take it all in, absorb the frameworks, and get excited about the possibilities. And then… it’s over. The certificate gets printed, the Zoom room closes, and now it’s up to you to figure out how to apply it all in the real world.
The problem is, most programs separate learning from development.
Coaching is NOT about head knowledge.
It’s not enough to read all the books, binge all the podcasts, or collect certifications like Girl Scout badges. Coaching isn’t just something you learn. It’s someone you become.
And this transformation doesn’t happen in a classroom.
It happens in the wild—on real calls, with real stakes, in real time.
There was nothing wrong with the training I originally went through. It was solid. But the real growth didn’t begin until after the training, when I started doing the work. Getting reps. Making mistakes. Feeling awkward. Recovering. Adjusting. Getting feedback and going at it again and again.
It was in the thick of this process that the idea hit me.
What if we stopped separating training from development?
What if that first, messy, formative year wasn’t something you had to survive on your own but something you were guided through?
What if you could learn powerful coaching tools AND practice them under the guidance of world-class coaches?
What if you got live feedback the very same day you learned a new tool so you could refine it early, avoid bad habits, and grow faster?
That was the seed for the Apprenticeship Model.
You see, coaching is not just a career.
Coaching is a craft.
You have to learn it through hands-on experience. Think of it like a doctor. There's a reason they do hands-on, in-person learning. You would never want someone to operate on you who just took an online course on their own, right?
The craft of coaching deserves that type of rigor and development.
So I started dreaming:
What if you could go into an intense coaching apprenticeship and come out the other side with everything you need to…
Confidently coach anyone
Create transformation in every session
Find and sign your own clients in the real world
Package and price your services
Build a coaching business you actually love
That night, over pizza in Northeast LA, I shared the idea with Jason to see if it could be anything. It didn’t take much convincing. He said, “If you run it, Novus Global will fund it.” So we did. We started MPI, and we created Foundations—a 5-month executive coaching certification program unlike anything we’d ever seen.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because the first question we asked ourselves is the exact question you need to ask yourself today if you want to become a coach
What Ingredients Do You Need to Become a High-Caliber Coach?
Here are the 5 things we came up with that now serve as the distinctives of Foundations.
1. Training to Improve Your Coaching Ability
This is where you learn the tools to create transformation for your clients.
In our view, training isn’t about memorizing techniques. It’s about integrating Ways of Being. You don’t just learn what to say in a session. You learn how to be, how to listen, how to think, and how to hold space for your clients to discover what they are capable of.
This is where many programs stop.
2. Live Feedback on Your Coaching Ability
You need eyes on your coaching sessions.
You need a coach who is better than you to give you feedback to show you where you can improve. Someone to help you refine your instincts, break unhelpful habits, and grow faster than you ever could through trial-and-error. This is why, in Foundations, every apprentice receives ongoing feedback, not from an “armchair expert” but from a Novus Global coach who has a thriving coaching practice of their own.
3. Your Own Coach
You cannot lead others into transformation if you’re not being transformed yourself.
You need to hire a coach who is better than you. Working with a coach keeps you sharp. It gives you a mirror, a guide, and a standard. The experience of being coached deepens your ability to coach others because you cannot see blind spots in others that you do not see in yourself. You also need to experience what it’s like to have skin in the game for your own development. How can you expect clients to invest in coaching when you’re unwilling to invest in coaching?
If you’re not in the work, you’ll hit a ceiling fast.
4. Business Development
Coaching is both a craft and a business.
If you don’t know how to create clients, price your services, and lead powerful enrollment conversations, you’ll never make it. Spend just as much time learning how to grow your coaching practice as you do improving your coaching ability. This course on the 5 Steps to a 6-figure+ Practice is a great place to start.
5. Community
Without community, it’s easy to get stuck or self-sabotage.
With community, you grow exponentially because you’re not just learning from your own journey, you’re learning from everyone else’s too. Get in a group of like-minded coaches who are all hungry for growth.
The beauty of joining Foundations is you get all of this (and so much more) in one streamlined program. You don’t have to figure it out piecemeal. You don’t have to do it alone.
What started as an idea I was nervous to say out loud turned into our first cohort of 5 coaches. Now, it’s grown, and we regularly kick off new cohorts of 25+.
Here’s my challenge to you today:
First, if you have a powerful idea that could change everything, say it out loud.
Take the step.
Make the leap.
Bring it to life.
You never know how many lives it could impact, starting with your own.
If that big change is transitioning out of what you’re doing to become a coach who transforms lives, we’d love to talk with you.
Find a time for a free Vision Call and explore if Foundations is your next step.
Let’s find out what you’re capable of.
Cheering for you,
Amanda Jaggard