Gina believes that writing down and communicating your goals makes even the grandest ideas possible over time.

As a sought-after consultant, speaker, and author who specializes in building successful teams, Gina Pellegrini brings a wealth of practical experience to her role as a coach. She’s been a participant in the Strategic Coach® Program since 1992 and enjoys coaching other entrepreneurs. “I love knowing that at some point, they’re all going to experience an important transformation,” she says.

For Gina, the process is rewarding. “On the first day of my workshops, a lot of the participants wonder who I am and what this Program is all about—just like I did when I started out in Coach,” she says. “Then as time passes, I watch their confidence, revenue, focus, and free time all increase, and those layers of the onion keep peeling away. I really appreciate their commitment, their risk in trying something to better themselves, and their vulnerability and openness in sharing.”

Gina’s Minneapolis-based business, Pellegrini Team Consulting, trains entrepreneurs and their team members to work together more effectively. “My focus is to help business owners become true leaders instead of micromanagers and to encourage team members to take ownership of their roles. I train staff to schedule and protect their entrepreneur’s time, and to filter everything before it gets to ‘the boss.’”

Gina’s programs improve crucial aspects of her clients’ businesses. She teaches business owners to delegate all appointment scheduling and to take care of existing customers so they become a bigger source of referrals and revenue. She helps her clients hire the right people, build a team that works well together, and become decisive yet adaptable leaders. After 17 years in business, Gina has earned the respect and gratitude of her clients. They often thank her for helping them gain confidence in areas that used to be overwhelming, and for providing their organizations with the structure to operate at a higher level.

Gina understands the dynamics of office environments. Early in her career, she worked as an administrative/marketing assistant for a top life insurance agent in Chicago. Gina did everything possible to keep him in front of people. While he met with prospects and clients, she handled client service, new business, and office management. Because of their success together, other agents sought out Gina to help them set up their offices. “I started training people who were hired by other agents to do what I did,” she says. “I became a local hiring and training guru. I did this additional work on the side for quite a while until a friend referred me to a life insurance agent on the East Coast. I flew out there and worked with the agent and his staff over the weekend. On the flight back to Chicago, I decided to take the plunge and start my own business.”

The idea proved to be more than viable; word spread that Gina could re-engineer teams to free up producers, who could then spend more time in the field. This put her in high demand.

Her new business was successful from the outset, but Gina still needed some guidance. “When I started,” she says, “I knew what I was doing, but I really didn’t know what I was doing—just like every other entrepreneur.” One of the agents she’d met gave her a cassette of Dan Sullivan speaking, and she was intrigued. Now that she was running her own business, she felt the Strategic Coach Program was the right structure to help her learn and grow.

“The Program allowed me to be with other entrepreneurs and get pearls of wisdom from them. They helped me define my path, create a game plan, and allow my passion to keep shining through.” The more her business grew, the more she found the Program had to offer. “If I hadn’t done this once a quarter, my business wouldn’t be where it is, nor would it continue to go where it can go.”

When Gina started her company, she rarely took a long weekend. “Now my office is closed every Friday,” she says. “Everyone on the team benefits from working more efficiently during the shorter work week.” Even with the shorter week, Gina’s income is about six times what it was when she joined the Program.

A lot goes on inside Gina’s building. In addition to her private consulting, Gina offers two group teleconference series on team-building and working your client base. She has written a number of articles and books based on her ideas, and is a well-known speaker at events like Court of the Table and the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), an annual meeting of top performers in the financial services industry.

As the eldest sibling in her family, Gina is a natural caregiver and a born leader. She is an extrovert who enjoys connecting with friends and meeting new people. “One of my favorite things to do is entertain because I love people. If there’s a dinner party or a theme party, or if I can plan holidays with friends—anything I can do with a group of people—I just love the connection, the laughter, and the diversity.”

Looking to the future, Gina plans to expand her business further with new services and products. Eventually she would like to work three days a week and achieve her dream of owning a villa in Italy. She wants to volunteer more—she recently spent two weeks in Tanzania as part of Peace House Africa—and perhaps open her own boutique. Of course Gina has written down her goals and discussed them at length with her team.

“Over all these years in Strategic Coach®,” Gina says, “sometimes I write these things down and think, ‘Oh, this is kind of pie-in-the-sky, but I’m just going to throw it out there.’” What she’s learned is there’s no such thing as unrealistic goals, just unrealistic deadlines.

“It’s amazing when you write things down and they actually happen,” she says. “It gives me goose bumps!”

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[Download] PDF version of Gina Pellegrini’s Coach Story.