Cindy Goldrich is a parent coach that specializes in parenting kids with ADHD, executive function challenges, and other learning challenges. She also trains other people to become professional ADHD coaches.
Cindy has a background as a mental health provider and when she wanted to start supporting kids with ADHD, she went and got years of coach training in ADHD and executive function. She decided to make parents the center of her work because when parents lack knowledge about how to best support their kids, she wasn’t able to make much progress with the kids.
Developing a group session coaching model:
When developing her coaching model, Cindy decided she wanted to start group seminars. She wanted parents to be able to be in dialogue and have a support system of people with similar situations. Group sessions are also more cost effective for both Cindy and her clients. It is more time efficient, she makes more money, and it is cheaper for her clients.
It has also given Cindy the opportunity to do so much more with a sliding scale and offer her services to those who cannot afford it. It is important to let go of what a group means when getting into group coaching rather than individual. Cindy says her groups were not the size she hoped they were at the beginning but it grows over time through marketing and word of mouth.
“If you ever want to expand, you have to let go of perfection and control to some degree. You have to be willing to let someone help you”
One of Cindy’s big pieces of advice is to take every opportunity you get because you never know what will come of it.
In terms of marketing, every time Cindy speaks in front of people she makes sure to collect email addresses and she writes articles for lots of magazines which led to her being asked to write a book.
Cindy expects to be paid if the organization has a budget for it. Instead of having a set rate, she asks clients what their budget is and assesses what a proper fee is and they want to pay her what she is worth
Cindy had many participants in her practice who were therapists and educators and wanted to become a parent coach themselves. So eight years ago, Cindy started a program of training professionals and lay people to become parent coaches.
Sean McCormick 0:01 Today on the Earn More Tutoring podcast, Cindy Goldrich and I talked about how she created the calm and connected parenting workshops, how she trained other coaches to work with parents and how she has written two books. Cindy Goldrich 0:14 I want to help normalize it, give them the support. So that was one of the reasons I thought doing this in a group would be effective. The other thing is, it's so much more cost effective for parents and for me, I can, you know, have my two hour class and my one and a half hour class. And I can have, you know, a bunch of people in there. So my income is going up because I have a bunch of people, and their cost is going down. Sean McCormick 0:42 Today on Earn More Tutoring podcast, I talk with Cindy Goldrich. Welcome, Cindy. Cindy Goldrich 0:48 Thank you. Happy to be here. Sean McCormick 0:50 Thank you. Yeah. So Cindy, please tell us about your different ventures and the different hats you wear in your business. Cindy Goldrich 0:57 You're sure I actually do a few things at the core. I'm a parent coach, and I specialize in parenting kids with ADHD executive function challenges, learning challenges. I also train other people to become professional ADHD coaches. So I have parent coaches. And I do have some ADHD coaches who worked with me as well, who really do the they work with high school and college students and adults, not on the academic and but on helping them understand how the ADHD and executive function is really impacting their learning, their motivation, their behavior, their stress, all of that. So that's the core of what I do. Sean McCormick 1:45 Yeah, thank you so much. So parent coaching, and also training coaches. And how did you get into that space? Was it always something that you wanted to do? Or did it kind of open up as you saw the need? Tell us more about how you how you started that? Cindy Goldrich 2:00 Yeah, it really evolved, I have a background, I'm a mental health provider. And what I wanted to start supporting the kids with ADHD, I found that it didn't make sense to come from a therapeutic background, it made more sense to come from the coaching. And so I then went and got years of Coach Training, specifically in ADHD and executive function, because this is a neurobiological disorder. This is a situation where, you know, you're you're, you may be perfectly intelligent, actually, very high IQ, usually, but your brain works differently, you have trouble focusing, organizing, you know, managing emotions, do doing what you intend to do. So I found that coaching made a lot more sense. And as I got more and more into the coaching, I developed my own program for parents, because I found that if parents don't know what they don't know, I wasn't getting very far with the kids. So even though I was originally doing direct intervention with the children, I found that the parents were either hovering too much, or maybe supporting in ways that weren't really supportive. So I decided to be the parent the center of my work. And I developed my workshop series called calm and connected parenting children with ADHD and executive function challenges almost 15 years ago. It's evolved since then, but it's it's really I offered around the world, it's in Spanish, it's in Chinese. It's, it's, it's a really great program to just help parents understand their child, and then build in the skills of how do I know if I'm enabling or supporting? How do I know what boundaries are going to not be triggering, but are actually going to support them? And how do I know consequences are not going to be just punitive, but they're going to build skills. So in terms of working with the direct providers, it allows the parent to back off a little bit and work as they need to work with their kids so that the providers can work more successfully with the students? Sean McCormick 4:10 Yeah, it's one thing that came up when you when you shared that was, you were already in the mental health space. So I'm sure there's plenty of need for that, right. You know, people are there's there's such a demand for mental health services and supports. How did you begin that shift? were you seeing, were you seeing clients one to one directly? And you just noticed that hey, like, everybody seems to be struggling with the same thing, or I'm just really good at it. How did you make that shift from being a mental health provider to? Of course, you're still supporting students and families mental health, but how did you make that shift? Cindy Goldrich 4:44 Because as I learned more, more about the world of ADHD, I learned about coaching and it just makes so much more sense. Because I am a very strength based approach. I don't look at this as a deficit. I look at this as a difference with challenges that people are born with. So even though I have a very Family Systems Approach, you have to have an individual approach and understand what is this person's...
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