BUSINESS COACHING

Patrick Donadio’s Business Coaching Cover Story.  As reported in Small Business News, February 1998

Calling the Shots

By JOAN SLATTERY WALL

You’ve reached a plateau: successful, but seeking improvement; happy, but wanting more. Jim DiCello, owner of Northland Medical Pharmacy, and John Messmore, a partner in the local Hyde Park restaurants and various other business interests, have been there. Both found that professional coaches helped boost them to the next level. 

John Messmore considered himself a success. He was a partner in Columbus' posh Hyde Park restaurants, chairman of the board of Smart Move Self Storage, and owner of John Messmore & Associates, a real estate development company. 

Still, that wasn't enough. "I knew that the path I was on, although I was successful, I didn't feel fulfilled," Messmore says. He turned to Barbara Braham, a professional coach whom he'd met at a seminar seven years earlier, for guidance. 

As a result of his work with Braham, he opened a new company-one that uses his true talents and gives him greater satisfaction. 

DiCello's relationship with Donadio, a national trainer, consultant, speaker, writer and business coach based in Columbus, began on a rather small scale with his staff. It wasn't long before DiCello started seeing the results of Donadio's coaching: His oncology niche business has increased nearly 30 percent in the last two years…and he soon decided Donadio could help him refine his own skills

Jim DiCello is the owner of Northland Medical Pharmacy. While he has nothing in common with Messmore's lines of business, he does share the other's vision of continued improvement. 

DiCello has been a public speaker for years and has developed pharmaceutical niche markets in oncology, dermatology and infertility medicines. His company is growing steadily.  But he's not content.  He wants to get more results from his presentations, and he wants to pursue additional niches. To accomplish that, he also sought the guidance of a professional coach: Patrick Donadio.

DiCello met Donadio when the latter was a speaker at a pharmacy seminar. "I told him, 'I'd like to work with you to keep me ahead of these guys,' " DiCello says, referring to the other pharmacists in attendance. "'I want you to work with me to refine what I'm doing and perhaps define some other markets.'" 

It seems to be working.  Here's how corporate coaching helped DiCello and Messmore get more professional satisfaction-and personal fulfillment-out of their businesses. 

GET BETTER 

DiCello's relationship with Donadio, a national trainer, consultant, speaker, writer and business coach based in Columbus, began on a rather small scale. 

DiCello's marketing representative, Mike Whyte, needed some help developing surveys and open-ended questions to determine physicians' needs and to keep dialogue going on sales calls. It wasn't long before DiCello started seeing the result of Donadio’s coaching: His oncology niche business has increased nearly 30 percent in the last two years.   

Convinced that Donadio could help his business in other areas, DiCello charged him with improving the pharmacy staff's phone skills. Though many of DiCello's customers have never seen him, he still wants them to come away with that "warm, fuzzy feeling" of personal service that makes them feel good about calling again. 

DiCello saw improvement in his staff, and he soon decided Donadio could help him refine his own skills, first in the area of presentations.  DiCello, who measures his success by whether the phone rings, wasn't getting the response and interest he wanted after making presentations to pharmacy trade groups or other professional or community organizations. 

"My presentations had no dynamics to them at all. It was just me talking as a pharmacist," DiCello remembers. Donadio suggested using personal stories about his work, as well as visual aids-such as overheads-to help convey his message.  "It has really helped me to be the customer again and be the audience," he says. 

"It's good to have someone in your corner who thinks differently than you," --Jim DiCello, owner Northland Pharmacy referring to Business Coach Patrick Donadio.

It's also put him in more constant demand. The American Pharmaceutical Association, for example, is interviewing him as a candidate to host a radio spot, called "The Pharmacist Minute," for 60 radio stations across the country. 

Donadio also helped DiCello modify his sales pitch. Not only did this open more doors for him, but it helped him identify additional niche markets. 

"When we go to a physician's office, we say, 'We're not here to sell you drugs. We're here to sell you pharmaceutical services and problem solving,'“ DiCello says, noting that such an opening prompts physicians to share problems and concerns with him so he can look for solutions.

Such open exchanges with physicians led DiCello to a niche called individualized compounding. At the physician's request, he customizes a patient's dose into one that may not be available commercially. For example, a doctor may have an arthritis patient whose pain medications upset her stomach, so DiCello would make the medications into a topical compound instead. 

Donadio works with clients on an hourly basis for short-term projects, such as preparing for a speech, or for a three- or six-month program to focus on improvements in specific areas. "There's a common theme I'm working from: Figure out where are you now, where would you like to be, and how you're going to get there," Donadio says. 

For DiCello, the coaching changed his thought process. "It's good to have someone in your corner who thinks differently than you," DiCello says. "I'm a pharmacist. I think like a pharmacist. Patrick has gotten me to think like I'm a problem-solver and not a pharmacist." 

Coaching vs. consulting

    Professional coaching is a relatively new concept in Central Ohio, and the term often leads to confusion.  
    "I think professional coaching is evolving nationally. The Midwest is probably further behind than other parts of the country," says Patrick Donadio, a Columbus-based corporate coach who four years ago did not have any coaching clients. Now he maintains about 12 such clients-15 percent of his business-at any given time.  
    Barbara Braham says her coaching clients, which she limits to 10 per year because of other business demands, have only been using the term "coaching" for about two years. However, she says she's been a corporate coach almost since she started her Central Ohio business in 1985.    
    The Professional & Personal Coaches Association, which is negotiating a merger with the International Coach Federation, defines professional coaching as "an ongoing relationship, which focuses on clients taking action toward the realization of their visions, goals or desires. Coaching uses a process of inquiry and personal discovery to build the client's level of awareness and responsibility and provides the client with structure, support and feedback."    
    Donadio says he's not aware of a lot of people doing coaching locally, although many use the term "consulting."  He and Braham define consulting as helping a business organization, while coaching focuses on the individual.    
    "As a coach, I kind of see myself filling this role as motivator, mentor, friend and as an educator," Donadio says. "As a consultant, I see myself more as the educator but not necessarily those other three roles.    
    Sometimes, as a consultant, I give information and they do whatever they want with it. As a coach, I give them information, motivate them to use it, and listen when it is not moving as quick as they want."    
    Both Donadio and Braham say coaching focuses on the present and the future, while therapy tends to look at how the individual's past affects where they are today.    
    "I don't go back," Braham says. "What I do is say, 'Where are you going?' "I look at where you are and identify what is the gap between where you are and where you would like to be."     SBN                                               --Joan Slattery Wall  

© Copyright Small Business News. Used with permission.

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