Sir Richard Branson is one of the richest, most successful people in the world. He said, “Since 80% of your life is spent working, you should start your business around something that is a passion of yours. If you’re into kite surfing and want to become an entrepreneur, then do it with kite surfing. If you can indulge your passion, life will be far more interesting than if you’re just working.
You’ll work harder at it and you’ll know more about it. First, you must go out and educate yourself on whatever it is that you’ve decided to do. Know more about kite surfing than anyone else. That’s where the work comes in. But if you’re doing things you’re passionate about, that will come naturally.”
Hilton Johnson has followed his passion to help thousands of people turn their passions into profitable businesses. Hilton Johnson is the co-founder of Hilton Johnson Productions, Inc., the parent company of Health Coach Training and Health Coaching U, located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Hilton has been a leader and pioneer in the training and coaching industry since February of 1990, introducing numerous innovative coaching programs coupled with cutting-edge web-based technology. Hilton and his wife, Lisa, have worked with many top celebrities and industry leaders like Bob Proctor, Brian Tracy, T. Harv Eker, Zig Ziglar, Marcia Wieder, Loral Langemeier and Vic Johnson, just to name a few.
Health Coach Training offers a 12-month certification training program that combines powerful skills of professional coaching with health training, and teaches proven marketing and sales systems to attract clients and coach them by means of a unique web-based virtual coaching office. Here are some comments from a few of the health coaches Hilton has trained:
Suzanne from Virginia said, “I’ve been working with a client since early January regarding weight loss. Since we’ve been working together, she’s tracked her measurements and has lost over nine inches all over in just three months. She’s had some meds reduced at her last doctor’s visit and is feeling great. Since her previous visit to the doctor, she’s lost almost 20 pounds.”
Annette from Washington said about Hilton’s training, “I love coaching people, and seeing their results puts me on the top of the world. The health coaching program has literally changed my life.”
Lastly, Ann from Kentucky said, “I just wanted you to know it’s been quite a year for me. Learning coaching has not only taught me the skills needed to coach, but I feel that the personal development has changed me and given me the confidence needed to succeed in whatever I tackle.”
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Tonight we get to talk with the man who is changing people’s lives around the world. Hilton, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
HILTON JOHNSON: Thank you, Chris. It’s my pleasure to be here.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: I’d like to begin, Hilton, if you would, by just sharing with us a little bit about the role that passion has played in your life. What role have the things that you care most about played in your success?
HILTON JOHNSON: It depends on what part of my life you’re talking about. If you’re talking about when I was very young, I had different passions than I have right now. Before I was an adult my passion was trying to be a rock-and-roll star and play the guitar on stage. That was all I could think about. My other passion was chasing women. That’s all I could think about. I was at that stage in my life. Today, it’s entirely different.
Today my passion, number one, is my wife.
I’ve been married 14 years to an incredible person, and pretty much everything I do in my life now is to make her happy. One of my other passions along with that is that I still like to play music. I’m an amateur, so that’s one of the things I care about. Something you might say I’m passionate about and the role it’s played is creating a business that generates several income strains that will do that without my direct involvement.
That’s my passion right now, to get to a point in my life where I can have a company that continues to grow, as my company is growing now and has for the last several years, without me. Even when I’m dead and gone, I’d like to have a business that grows without me.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Fabulous. I think many of us would like to learn how to do that. Will you tell us the story of how you got your start in this whole area of health coaching? A lot of us have heard about coaching, and particularly life coaching, but health coaching, I think, may be new to some of us. Will you talk a little bit about how you got into that whole area and how it’s developed?
HILTON JOHNSON: Yes. Health coaching is a niche market of coaching. In fact, I think I read recently somewhere it’s the fastest growing niche market of all coaching right now. The way I got involved was about seven years ago my brother died of a heart attack-a sudden, massive heart attack-and we had no idea and he had no idea that he had heart disease. As a result of that, I started going for checkups. I went to a cardiologist, and they did some examinations.
To make a long story short, I ended up a couple days later, after that examination, having a five-way bypass myself. I remember talking to the cardiologist a few months after my operation-by the way, my brother’s death, I guess, saved my life-and saying, “How many people are walking around this country who have heart disease and they don’t know it?” He said, “Literally, millions are.”
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Forgive me, Hilton, but how is it someone can have heart disease and not know it? Forgive my ignorance here.
HILTON JOHNSON: You might associate a pain in your chest with acid reflux or indigestion. My brother didn’t have any symptoms. I think a lot of people who have heart disease and other things, like diabetes, don’t really show any symptoms. They don’t go for checkups, and they don’t take care of themselves. They live poor lifestyles, which we can talk about a little later if you’d like.
There are 6.2 million people walking around this country with diabetes, and they don’t know it. There are a lot of people with heart disease, and they don’t know it. There are people who have other illnesses that are about to make them seriously ill, and they have no idea because they live lifestyles where they don’t pay attention to the body. They don’t go out and get proactive about their health. Then the next thing they know, they end up having a heart attack.
In answer to how I got into health coaching, about the same time all this happened to me, Chris, a friend of mine told me about a company, Motorola, that was using a web-based program for coaching its employees. The company was buying this for the employees. They were providing health coaching through a website and through personal coaching as a way to reduce their healthcare costs.
Studies have now shown-I won’t go into all the details about it-studies have shown now that in corporate America, companies that are investing in health coaching are getting a return of two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half dollars for every dollar they’re investing into it. I saw this as a business opportunity. I went seeking to have a website designed for me. I was already teaching coaching and had been for some years.
We had a website designed for us that would actually do about 80% of the work for health coaching. Basically, we just took our coaching training programs and said, “Let’s choose this as a niche market, and let’s make a real difference in healthcare, and let people who are sick get the attention they need. Let’s help people who don’t want to get sick change their lifestyle so they don’t get sick, and help those who are sick improve from that point on.” We created health coaching as a result of a calamity that I went through and what happened to my brother.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: If I can ask, that was seven years ago or so?
HILTON JOHNSON: Yes, about seven years ago. I had my own health issues. I’ve been in coach training for about 10 years now, but I’ve had this particular program about two-and-a-half years.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: What is required in order to be a successful health coach?
HILTON JOHNSON: You’ve got to know how to do it, Chris. You said it in your introduction about the kite-flying thing. I don’t remember the exact words. If you want to get good at something, then you’ve got to learn how to do it. If you want to be good at health coaching, you’ve got to learn the skills of health coaching. You’ve got to learn the skills of coaching.
You’ve got to learn how to give good presentations. You’ve got to learn how to market yourself. You’ve got to learn how to sell people as a coach. You’ve got to learn how to manage your business. You’ve got to know how to do all the things that go with running a business if you’re going to be a health coach, because you’re in business for yourself in most cases if you have a health-coaching practice.
We can talk about some of the most important skills. There are 20 different hats you have to wear to be really good at something like health coaching. The first step is to get trained on learning how to coach, then learning the specialization of health coaching.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Why would someone want to be a health coach in particular? What are the prerequisites to invest the time and energy to learn what you have just said is necessary to become a health coach?
HILTON JOHNSON: Why would somebody want to become a health coach? Let’s be very clear, Chris. The first thing that would probably motivate people-and some people may disagree with this, but I think it’s true-is they’d have a way that they can make a lot of money. When people tell me, “I want to help other people,” that’s great, wonderful and fine, but I’m always suspicious of people saying, “All I want to do is help other people.”
The bottom line is that health coaching is a $2 trillion problem. The healthcare crisis in the United States is a $2 trillion industry, the largest and the most profitable industry in the world. It is absolutely riddled with problems: shortage of hospitals, shortage of doctors, people being misdiagnosed, healthcare costs have been skyrocketing, the things I said earlier about people having illnesses and they don’t even know it.
It just goes on and on: adverse reactions to prescriptions, medications controlled and manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry. We have a $2 trillion mess on our hands that has presented a $2 trillion opportunity. If people are like me and they believe in the law of cause and effect, if they believe what Napoleon Hill wrote about in Think and Grow Rich that for every adversity, there’s a seed of equal or greater benefit, then there’s $2 trillion worth of opportunity.
I think people who want to make a lot of money and be in business for themselves might want to look at health coaching. Certainly, there are other huge benefits, and those are helping other people, making a difference in healthcare, improving one’s own health, and caring for somebody who you love. All of those are wonderful, wonderful benefits.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Hilton, there’s a very practical thing about what you’re saying. As you know, my partner and I co-authored a book called The Passion Test, and we’ve taken thousands of people through that process. The most common question we’re asked after people clarified the things that really matter to them in their life is, “How do I support myself following my passions?”
I think that’s what I hear you saying. For someone who has a passion for helping people, a passion for making a difference in some way, or a passion in the area of health, what you’re suggesting here is that health coaching is a very practical and direct way to be able to make what it sounds like is a very good and substantial living following those passions. Would that be correct?
HILTON JOHNSON: Absolutely. It’s good to care for other people and it’s good to want to improve your own health, but you help more people by making more money, pure and simple.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: We’ve looked at lots of studies. I’m sure you have, too. When you look at the people who are the most successful in the world, most of them have a lot of money; not all of them, but most of them do. When you talk to them, the vast majority of them will tell you that they weren’t going for the money initially. Some of them were-Donald Trump and a few others-but most of those people, when you interview them, they weren’t going for the money, per se.
They also had the wisdom to see just what you said, that the more income they made, the more wealth they created, the more impact they could have in the things that they really cared about. I think that’s one thing that’s very exciting. Will you tell us a little bit about how a health coach is able to make that kind of money?
HILTON JOHNSON: Yes, but before I do I want to make a comment on something you just said. The late Earl Nightingale once said that money is only important to the degree that you don’t have it. If you have plenty of money then it’s not important anymore. Then, like Bill Gates, you can become a philanthropist and change the world through good deeds and so forth, or like Ted Turner, giving away a million dollars and all those things.
They’ve got plenty of money for themselves and their families, but before they had that, the money was important. I think life is like that. Things that you’re passionate about are important to you to the degree that you don’t have it. When you get it, then other things become important. You’re right, the more money you have, the more you can support whatever cause you may be involved in. I’m sorry, I forgot your question.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Maybe we can start with what the value is. We all know that we make money by providing value to people. What is the value that a health coach provides?
HILTON JOHNSON: A health coach basically helps people to do what they know they should be doing anyway. What is that? We all know that we need to be exercising more. We all know we need to be eating better. We know that stress is a known killer. We know smoking, drinking, unhealthy behavior and habits cause poor lifestyles and they cause problems. We know that people need to have balance in their lives.
They need to take time for themselves, relax, have some fun, and have a balanced program. I meet a lot of people in my business who sell nutritional products. Oftentimes, you hear people say, “I had a life-changing experience with that product.” Then a health coach will take a closer look at that person and realize that yes, they had a good experience with a product, but they’re still not exercising. They’re still not eating right. They still have a lot of stress in their life.
They’re not in balance. Health coaching is about having a balance. What we do is help people to look at the kind of lifestyle they have right now and to help them create a plan of action that they feel comfortable with, at a pace they feel comfortable with, to change their lifestyle whereby they make small but important changes in the way they conduct themselves, which over the long haul helps them improve their health and wellness.
We basically use formulas and skills that help people to do the things they normally cannot do by themselves. Chris, a lot of people go out and buy exercise equipment, they join health clubs, and they make New Year’s resolutions. We all want to be healthy. We all want to improve our health and wellness. We all want to get in shape or stay in shape. Most people don’t have the willpower to do that all by themselves.
Health coaching allows that person to have someone who understands systems, procedures and techniques for getting them onto a plan of action that they feel comfortable with and they can stay with. They can make the important changes they need to make in their life and not be completely dependent on willpower.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: That makes a lot of sense. Are there specific skills that are required to be a good health coach?
HILTON JOHNSON: Yes, some of these are obvious and some of these are not so obvious. Certainly, asking good questions is an important skill. People think when you say, “You’ve got to be good at asking questions,” that you’re talking about opening questions like who, what, where, when, why, how, but I’m not. They’re good questions, but we teach our people in our 12-month training program literally hundreds of questions that we call Forwarding the Action questions.
These are questions, Chris, that cause people to think about taking action. Questioning is certainly an important skill in coaching; it’s just one question after another, hearing a response to that question, then responding to that response and seeing where that goes. Another skill, of course, is listening; not just what you’re hearing, but what you may not be hearing, what people are not saying.
Sometimes you can hear more about what somebody is not saying than what they are saying. You can hear energy shifts, changes, grunts or giggles. You can just hear that shift in people sometimes when you get to a deep level. In our training program we teach people three different levels of listening. We teach them that very, very deep level where there’s a connection made.
Another skill is intuition. People don’t think of that as a skill that can be developed, but it is, and it’s a skill that we teach. When you have an intuitive hit talking to another person, you act on it and you ask about it. Even if it’s wrong, it benefits the coach and the client because you get more information that the coach can use to help the client. Being present or being in the moment with another person is important, so the coach is not thinking about his or her own agenda, opinions, prejudices, or 15 other things that may be going through their head.
We teach in our program how you can be right in the moment with that client. There’s a connection made. There’s a bond made that’s really hard to beat. It goes on and on: goal setting is an important part of coaching; creating a plan of action; and accountability is a major piece of health coaching. One thing in particular, Chris, that we think separates us from other coaching programs is the skill of creating emotion.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Talk about why that’s important.
HILTON JOHNSON: I come from a background of selling. I’ve been in selling all my life. Over 42 years I’ve worked on straight commission or I’ve been in business myself, same thing. I learned, first of all, that I didn’t like to do manipulative selling. I’ve never enjoyed manipulation, persuasive-type techniques, aggressive behavior, or pushy, aggressive selling.
I never liked that sort of thing and never wanted to do it. I don’t like to teach it. We don’t. I learned that you can get people to take action if you can get them emotional. Like you said earlier about studying the skills or getting good at something, I made it a point to go out and discover what makes people act certain ways, what makes people take action steps, and what makes people make decisions.
Maybe you know this, Chris. There are two great motivators. If anyone listening in has had any training in neurolinguistic programming, you know what I’m talking about. That is all motivation is based around the avoidance of pain and the seeking of pleasure. We’re always, every moment, conscious, trying to avoid or eliminate pain or to seek pleasure. Emotion is created by focusing either on pain or pleasure.
One of the things I learned in selling that we brought to our health coaching program is to find out where somebody’s pain is. Then ask questions around it, probe around it, coach around it and elevate it. We don’t create pain. We elevate it.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: What do you mean by elevating it?
HILTON JOHNSON: We intensify it. For example, if I’m coaching you, Chris, and I say, “What would you like to accomplish?” You say, “Hilton, I’d like to lose 30 pounds.” I just heard some pain. You want to lose 30 pounds. It’s bothering you. What I’m going to do is elevate that pain by saying something like this: “What concerns you about being overweight by 30 pounds, Chris?” You’re going to start talking. You’re going to tell me the problems.
I’m going to probe and help you with that. I’m going to get you to talk more about it. I’m going to get you to open up and say things like, “It could lead to heart disease. It could lead to other health issues. It could impact my family, my children. I don’t have the energy. I can’t sleep as well at night.” I want you talking like that in my coaching session. Why? Because emotion causes people to take action.
I have a coaching formula. I have several formulas we teach in our program. I’m going somewhere with this. By getting you emotional around the pain you’re in, it elevates it. You see the consequences of it. You see the seriousness of it. Now you’ve become emotional. I can hear that emotion as I’m coaching you. Then I’m going to talk about the future pleasure.
I’m going to say, “What would it be like if we could help you lose those 30 pounds, Chris?” Then you might say, “I’d feel wonderful. Gosh, I’d be looking wonderful. I’d be buying new clothes. I’d be running up the stairs. I’d be sleeping better.” What I’m doing now, Chris, is I’m creating emotion around pleasure. Again, the idea is to get you emotional, because when I get to a certain point in my coaching session where action is talked about, I know the odds are very good that you’re going to take an action step.
You’ve talked about it. You’ve seen the consequences. You’ve seen the future and how great it can be in your mind. We’ve been through a motion picture together about what the future might hold. When it comes time to making a commitment to take an action step between now and our next coaching session, the odds are very, very high that you’re going take that action.
Whereas, Chris, if I didn’t create that emotion, and I simply suggested or make a requested that you take an action step, you may or may not take that action step because you’re not emotionally charged up about it.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense. I know the language is a little different, but for any of our listeners who are familiar with the way that we often talk about this, as I’m listening to you, Hilton, what I hear is that you, the health coach, is assisting the client in getting clear about what it is that really is important to them. You describe it as developing emotion. It is emotional.
It becomes emotional by me really getting a clear picture of what the cost is to me of my current situation or my current behavior, and what the benefits or positive results and outcomes in my life will be by taking some action relative to that. That, in fact, in the parlance we use, is what we mean by gaining clarity. The clearer that I become, the better I can understand what my situation is currently and what the consequences are of going forward, then the better able I am to create the kind of future outcome or future results that I choose to have. It’s really quite masterful the way that you describe this.
HILTON JOHNSON: By the way, Chris, you just named one of the core competency skills of coaching, and that is clarity, helping the client get very clear on where they are and where they want to go. Sometimes they’re not very clear. That’s another role of the coach, to help that person get very clear. You said it well.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Most people would think that in order to be a health coach, you have to have some sort of medical training or medical background. Is that the case? I haven’t heard you talk about that.
HILTON JOHNSON: No, not really. Health coaching and consulting is an unregulated industry. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to have some knowledge about health and coaching to be good at it. You do. Almost anyone who has a passion for coaching or for helping other people, or changing healthcare could probably become a health coach. What is needed to be good at it is that you need to have the skills of coaching, which is what we teach in our program basically, the basic skills of coaching.
We teach what is called a Cooperative Model, which is a model of coaching where the coach doesn’t have to have the answers because the coach-through questions, listening and those other skills we talked about-is able to help the clients go within themselves and tap into their own natural gifts and talents to solve their own problems. If a person learns the skills of coaching, they could really coach a person on pretty much anything within reason, because the answers come from the client, not the coach.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Can you talk a little bit more about that, Hilton? I saw a quote of yours, something to the effect of what you just said: that all of us have natural skills, gifts and talents to be able to solve any problem we may have; or something similar to that. I’m not sure that’s intuitive for everyone. Would you talk a little bit about it?
HILTON JOHNSON: That’s what we call the Cooperative Model. It’s one of the seven models that we teach in our 12-month training program. Basically, what that is, is the role of the coach is to ask questions, listen, use intuition, clarify, probe, create emotion, and all those things with a client. Through that, it allows the coach to get the client to go within themselves and see, as I said earlier, the seriousness of an issue and where it might lead, and to uncover what may be holding a person back.
In fact, one of the questions we ask in coaching is, “What do you think is standing in the way? What do you think is blocking you from getting you from where you are now to where you want to go?” Getting people to do a visual, like sometimes we get them to draw a graph or a wheel so they can see where they’re out of balance. That helps people to get clear and realize that, “I’ve been neglecting this over here,” or whatever.
We get people thinking. We get people thinking, Chris. The Cooperative Model is about asking questions, listening and using all those other skills to help a person decide on taking some sort of an action step. We call them baby steps. In fact, we like to say that it’s just a notch above thinking about it. We get them to take a very small action step and then another action step, and then we build some momentum.
The answers seem to come to us as we need these. The coach never says anything like, “You should do this. You have to do this. You ought to do that. Here’s what I did or what somebody else did.” The Cooperative Model is not about that. It’s about asking questions to get people to look at themselves and to go within themselves. They have the ability within themselves to solve their own problems.
The coach through asking questions and making requests helps a person to see where they are and where they want to go. Then finding out what sort of an action plan they would like to take and that they feel comfortable with, that person then solves their own problems. That’s what cooperative coaching is all about.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Do you really believe that everyone has the answers to those questions inside of them? Some people would think, “How do I know what my problem is? That’s why I go to the doctor.”
HILTON JOHNSON: Yes, I do, Chris. However, it depends on how the coach presents this, if they can draw that out of another person. You see, I can do something in my coaching session that will set the stage and increase the odds of somebody taking an action step by explaining something to them. Do you want me to give you an example?
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Yes, would you, please?
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For more information about Hilton Johnson and his work, please go to http://www.healthcoachtraining.com/about.shtml.
