To be the best - work with the very best

I saw Tyler as a coach and less as a consultant, and our interaction also reflected that.

I was unsure on grad school and MBA, until a bunch of my Stanford Alumnus friends (GSB mostly) convinced me that Stanford is the right next step for me, a few visits to the school and dropping in on few classes had me convinced.

This was late November with a deadline in January. With 6 weeks to go, I got Tyler's reference from one of the Stanford Alumnus who had played a big role in making the decision in the first place.

Coming back to Tyler, he is the best coach one could ask for when applying to the best and the most selective business school - Stanford GSB. I will write below 3 short stories that make Tyler the best coach for this job

1) He is introspective: He doesn't try to "game" the system. He acts as a coach, he spent 4-5 hours going through my life-story, giving me hours of homework to reflect and categorize my life experience and we did this until we found a very compelling, true and unique life story.

He is really helps you introspect, he has custom built tools, videos and other material which makes this very very easy and provides a guided framework for this process. By the end, one is able to articulate an honest, unique and compelling story of your life.

2. Once we had the life story, it was time to look into the future. I had a very immediate vision of my career: To do this, reach this goal and impact X in the world. But like a good coach, he kept pushing me further at my own pace, one nudge at a time until I was able to fully comprehend the big vision he saw for me. At this point, I told him "Forget this business school thing, I want you to be my life coach for life".

The first two steps took 3 weeks almost or a few days over, but was very worth it. He heard me patiently, asked deep questions, made me introspect and helped me arrive at my own answers.

3. Once he helped me find and define the vision for my life journey, he got down to nuts and bolts. He is very good at maintaining the essence and removing the fluff. We might think various things are important to our essay ( that NGO experience, that international stint, that marathon I ran for charity etc), but he is able to weed the fluff out and help us keep the essays to their true essence.

These 2-3 weeks of essay writing can be frustrating as you keep trying to be verbose or include trivial details, which Tyler will mercilessly cut out till you have the best version of yourself.

He is an amazing coach and an artist who is at the peak of his art-form. By the end, everyone who read my essay ( 12+ people; half of them Stanford Alums) before submitting was 100% sure that I will get a Stanford call and Tyler said "Stanford is the Olympics, the best of the best run, I think we have prepared you to the very best and I can't promise anymore".

I did get a Stanford call, he did send me his tools to prepare for an interview and we had a wonderful 1 hour chat before the interview and he helped me pick my suit.

Needless to say, he was a great person to have as my coach for this endeavor and is a testament to my belief, that if you want to be the best - you have to surround yourself with the very best.

He definitely is the very best in what he does. My advice to you - go to him as a coach to learn and improve your story rather than as a consultant to solve a problem.