Business RadioX ®

Business Growth Expert Sarah Dawn

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SarahDawn
Coach The Coach
Business Growth Expert Sarah Dawn
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SarahDawnSarah Dawn, Business Growth Expert at Sarah Dawn Consulting, Attorney, and Host of The Blissed Biz Podcast, helps
entrepreneurs and professionals create the business of their dreams that supports a lifestyle they love!

She is no stranger to success and 7 figure businesses, but also overwhelm and burn out. Now she’s passionate about forging a path to a blissful blend of record-breaking business growth and personal fulfillment.

Sarah Dawn consults with business owners and high-achieving professionals helping them to create the business and life of their dreams. Sarah’s an expert at marrying kickass business growth strategy with unparalleled levels of personal fulfillment. She is a member of both Texas and Arizona Bar Associations, Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, and multiple women’s entrepreneurial organizations.

She lives a successful and fulfilling life in Scottsdale, Arizona, enjoying all things outdoors with her husband, children, and pups.

Connect with Sarah on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why are people so prone to overworking and burning out
  • Something that you see people getting wrong on repeat
  • Steps to start working smarter instead of harder
  • How do we keep from getting back in the same bad habits

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to Barak’s Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today, we have with us Sarah Dawn with Sarah Dawn Consulting. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Dawn: [00:00:43] Hi. Thanks for having me on the show.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your consulting practice. How are you serving folks?

Sarah Dawn: [00:00:50] Yeah, I’m working with business owners to help them reach all of those growth goals. What do they want to do in their business to make more money and having that set up really super intentionally so that that growing business fits in a lifestyle they love? Most entrepreneurs don’t do just that. It’s kind of all or nothing. And it ends up this roller coaster. And we think that you can have it all.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:20] Now, what’s your back story? How do you get involved in this line of work?

Sarah Dawn: [00:01:23] I actually am an attorney and I think we can tend to serve our best role in helping people down the path that we forged a little bit harder with a little bit more effort. I picture kind of going through that jungle with a machete. That’s what I did. And growing my business as an attorney. I was a partner in a law firm. I was hustle work nonstop. All I wanted to do was build and grow that business success. And I didn’t have any measurement for what personal success would look like. What was the life that I wanted? I just wanted to grow more, have the clout, have the money and the other parts weren’t falling in place. I, I think I had some belief system. I know I had some belief systems behind it on where my value lied within my organization, even though it was mine. I thought I had to work harder and longer hours to be valuable to it. And I fully burned myself out. I had health concerns for several years in a row that I kind of war is a badge of honor, that it meant I must be doing something right, because along with those health concerns was a growing business.

Sarah Dawn: [00:02:40] And ultimately my body knocked me down in a way that I couldn’t ignore it. I ended up with a sudden onset of Bell’s palsy, which is paralysis of half of your face. And that was my pores. I won’t pretend like I’m a quick learner. It’s not like that happened. And I thought, oh, I better do something better. It took some time, but that was my realization that I needed to structure my own work differently. And over the years I realized I could do that. And I didn’t have to give up the success part. I didn’t have to make less money just because I was getting better. I don’t love the word balance, but kind of better variety in my life. And when I did that for myself, I thought every entrepreneur I meet when I’m networking, when I’m, you know, doing anything, meeting other business owners, there’s still that same practice. People say I’m an entrepreneur, so I get to pick which eighty hours a week I work or talking about answering those midnight emails. And I was like, man, everybody else is doing this. And I really want to show them that they don’t have to.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:52] Now, are you still doing lawyering or is this now just one of the tools in your tool belt and you’re consulting in addition to the lawyer lawyering?

Sarah Dawn: [00:04:02] Very, very little lawyering, I don’t take any new clients, that’s actually probably one of the hardest boundaries to draw with my consulting clients, because they kind of are like, oh, hey, we got a lawyer in house, too. Let’s let’s do all that part. And I refer all of that out. I have very narrow little bit of lawyering. And I just realized this is the work that lights me up. Watching this success grow for people has more fulfillment for me than any contract I’ve ever drafted in my career. So I’m I’m moving that direction to have little to no lawyering in my life.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:41] And now you chose to call your firm consulting, not coaching. How do you kind of discern the difference between consulting and coaching?

Sarah Dawn: [00:04:49] Yeah, I know. I know people feel really passionate about those different words when people say, well, which is it? I say, yes. You know, it depends in the strategy part. It’s very much consulting where I’m giving my client tools, showing them how to structure it in their business and guiding them through strategy marketing plans, very much consulting when it’s one on one with that business owner, a lot of coaching, a lot of diving into belief systems and behaviors and leadership training. That’s the part that’s more coaching. But across the board, whatever anybody wants to call it, I am I’m getting people results and whatever it’s called, I love the results at the end.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:40] So now how do people kind of find you? What what are they going through where the solution is to call Sarah and her team?

Sarah Dawn: [00:05:49] I have gotten most of my client base so far just through networking and referrals. I have a huge referral base where this I’m a business owner that loves my life is contagious. And that’s exactly what I want to develop here. I want to I want to create a movement of doing business better where you’re not having to pick between, you know, being mentally healthy and loving life and having success in your business. So a lot of my clients have been referral based. Like I said, one client, I’ll do it. They have their networking friends sing something shift and they’re like, what are you doing? And I get that next referral. And then just through my network, showing up in rooms, talking with people and just kind of having this conversation about what’s possible in an etching away at those beliefs that you have to pick

Lee Kantor: [00:06:46] Now when you’re working with someone, are they they must have a level of self-awareness where they’re like, hey, something’s not going right. There must be a better way. Let me explore kind of some coaching or consulting or advisory services to help me get through this. Or is it something that there are symptoms that they’re like, hey, my business hasn’t grown in six months or a year or I’m losing clients or, you know, having trouble in my relationship, like, are there symptoms or is it something that just self-awareness where they’re just real, they have this kind of realization?

Sarah Dawn: [00:07:22] Yeah, the symptom base is, you know, if I’ll get a referral from an acupuncturist or a therapist of somebody that has gone to them for the problem, those symptoms that are coming up, you know, somebody with some other practitioner modality that the individual has said, I’m burning out, my body’s shutting down, something’s not working for me. And when it’s clear it’s their business, those referrals come over to me. Now it’s what’s the saying? You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force them to drink. I can tell pretty quickly when I’m talking to someone, especially if it’s somebody that’s wanting one on one services with me, this consulting service. I can tell pretty quickly if they have the level of self-awareness that I can do any good for them, if I hear somebody say, well, I’ve already tried everything and I actually know already that nothing works or or my business is different, you can’t really apply any new strategies to it. Everything has to stay exactly the same way it is. Oh, OK. There’s really not you’ve got to have that level of self-awareness that you just mentioned that something’s not working and something needs to shift that you don’t know about yet. If you’re convinced that there aren’t any solutions that will work and there’s nothing in your business or lifestyle you can change, OK? There’s nothing I could do with that.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:54] So now, I mean, even in your own life, you were having those like the universe was giving you signals and you were like, I got this. This is just another hurdle in front of me. So you weren’t ready for the work at that point?

Sarah Dawn: [00:09:06] Yeah, there were plenty of years that I actually remember a life coach approaching me. He was in my network. And I was putting on this big event that was part of my firm, we would have these huge events that were just kind of bring in not necessarily the clients, but the network and build the clout. And I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off and a gentleman there was a life coach which actually put a really bad taste in my mouth for life coaches for a while. But because my mindset wasn’t there, I wasn’t ready. He approached me and just said, Sarah, how are you? And I’m like, Oh, good, great. Thanks for being here. Have a drink. And he’s like, No, I’m watching you. And I think we need to talk. Are you doing OK? And I wasn’t having it for a second. I took major offense to him, noticing that I might not have it all together and he could kick rocks as far as I was concerned. And and so I can relate to that. I can relate to not being ready to make any shifts. And I think that’s why I can see it so easily. And somebody else of I’ve been on that part of the path and I get I get it. I don’t shame anybody for it. I’ve been there. But but you have to be ready to to actually make those big changes. Otherwise you’ll be fighting against your mentor versus working with them to create to create that new structure.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:37] Right. And I think that’s an important issue to deal with when it comes to coaching. If you’re being coached, you have to be vulnerable and you have to be humble. And if you want it to work, I mean, otherwise you’re just looking for someone to argue with and pay them a fee for that. You know, like it’s not really moving the ball for you, but you think you’re doing something and you’re checking that box like, oh, I got a coach. It didn’t work. Another thing that didn’t work and you kind of see yourself sabotaging.

Sarah Dawn: [00:11:09] Yeah. Yeah. And I was a lawyer. I mean, I could argue with anything. Right. And I actually, I, I highly encourage my clients as part of onboarding to take the disk profile. Now, you know, there’s disk, there’s Enneagram, there’s several different of those personality profiles. I love disk. I have no affiliation with them, but I love disk because in a work in leadership setting, it gives a really, really good idea on how controlling they are of the whole situation. That’s the D level of disk and then how open they are to any kind of change, which is the S. I immediately look at their D. And S levels to say are are they going to need to control every bit of this process and how open are they to have any kind of change? And all not just because of the disk profile scores, they would also be a conversation. But I don’t want somebody’s money if if we can’t do anything, I need to be fulfilled by my work, too. So if if we can’t make movement, if if they can’t open up, you know, take some more time. Look, I’ll give some more resources for them to look into for them to decide that they’re ready to come back around and really dove in.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:33] Yeah, I find that a lot of coaches, they’re hesitant to just use that TrueNorth and say, look, this is a good fit or it’s not. And if it’s not, let’s not work together because it’s not going to be good for either one of us. But a lot of people are. So, you know, the money part of it is so in front of them, it’s hard for them to pass up money. But, you know, sometimes that’s the best thing to do is to just just work with good fit and everything will take care of itself. Your life becomes a lot easier rather than just forcing every client with every challenge into what you do, even though it may not be really what you do.

Sarah Dawn: [00:13:13] Yeah, it may not be the best fit for either one of us. And, you know, it’s kind of the same thought process. Is that expensive money? Just because you’re a business coach or a consultant doesn’t mean you’re immune to the same problems that you help people with. So those money issues can creep up for anybody. And it’s really hard to turn away money even when it’s good. It’s hard to turn it away, but it can be really expensive money to chase and energetically expensive to take on those clients that you just can’t move the needle for them. So now, this is not my work. It’s not the coaches work that moves the needle. It’s the clients work with your guidance.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:57] Well, that’s the that’s the ultimate thing, though. The client has to want to more than you like if they don’t want to do the work, unless they’re just going to pay you to do work, which is a different service, you know, then they can’t work. I guess it’s just not going to work.

Sarah Dawn: [00:14:15] It’s like how much I want my child’s room to be cleaned. Doesn’t matter,

Lee Kantor: [00:14:19] Right? Well, unless you’re going to go and clean it and then the child’s trained you into cleaning their room.

Sarah Dawn: [00:14:27] Exactly. He’ll do a whole new service model there.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:30] Now, talk me through the onboarding. So like, say, I come to you and I got a challenge or I’m frustrated or things aren’t going my way. What is that first kind of conversation look like? What what what are some of the questions you’re asking me and how are you able to kind of see if it is going to work or not?

Sarah Dawn: [00:14:47] Yeah, and that first conversation, I love for it to be casual and just really genuinely learning about the other person, how did they get into their business? What did they love about it? What what aspects of the work they do that just really light them up and remind them, oh, yeah, this is the reason I started this work. And then also getting curious about what do you procrastinate on all the time? What is always in the back burner and then you’re mad at yourself for it, what comes across your desk and you instantly can feel some resentment towards that being there. Tell me about your customers. Tell me about how you want to serve them and what the highest moneymaking parts of your business are, just getting really curious about all of that. And that doesn’t even have to be an onboarding conversation. Any entrepreneur I meet, I just get giddy listening to all of that. But that gives me really great insight on where where do we need to make some changes or do they even know? Do we need to do a whole lot more work into just diving in on what’s not working for them, what’s not the money making activities? And then I kind of follow that up with I have a set questionnaire that asked similar questions and then goes into, you know, what are some measurable goals you would really like to reach in the next three months, the next six months, and see how realistically we can implement some strategy and get those goals met, because oftentimes they’ll have something that they want to reach in the next three months.

Sarah Dawn: [00:16:27] But it’s because it’s been a goal on their list for the last two years and something’s just prevented them from getting to that. And then that last piece is the risk profile. I love to get it from the client themselves. If they have a team that’s going to be integral to the work we do. I love to get the disk profile from the employees and from the team, too. I’m very, very cautious about that, though, because it can freak people out, employees. It can really freak them out. And the last thing we want is to create a flight risk from there, what we’re trying to make positive.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:05] Why is this person asking me these questions?

Sarah Dawn: [00:17:08] You know, that’s how they feel that they you know, you’re their team also feels fulfilled by their work. So if somebody from the outside is coming in, they instantly have the question of did I do something wrong? And then now I have to take this personality test that in their mind, what if I fail it? And this third and Sarah comes in and tells my boss I shouldn’t be here? Right. And that’s that’s not how it works. But it’s really hard to convince them that that’s not how it works so. Well, I would well, I love to have that information. It really helps us structure things to be optimal for the team. We are so delicate about that, that there’s trust there first and excitement about the work we’re doing first before we go throwing personality tests in front of team members.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:54] Now, do you do most of your work with individual entrepreneurs or business leaders or do you work with the entire teams?

Sarah Dawn: [00:18:01] I’ve worked with entire teams, that is so fun to get everybody on board, but it has to start with that business owner operator and that’s my ideal client, is the owner operator. It’s not an entrepreneur that just kind of threw their money into a business. And there’s a whole different group that’s not really my niche, but those owner operators that have a role within their business. But that role is just way too intense for them to keep creating and innovating to make the business grow. They need to get out of the weeds and be more of that kind of umbrella person than the critical employee in their own business.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:41] Now, when you’re working with that person and and do you have a story you can share that maybe you help somebody go to a new level and has that happen?

Sarah Dawn: [00:18:52] Yeah. Oh, yeah. OK, so one of one of my clients actually started as a solo partner and was hitting a place in her business that she had more and more clients coming to her. She was a fitness coach, so she had more and more clients coming to her. And she was maxed out and she was getting to the point that she was rethinking whether her business would work for her or not, considering just completely crashing the whole idea and starting over, because it’s it’s it’s emotionally draining, especially like fitness, nutrition, that kind of thing. The clients need a lot from you emotionally as they go through their transformation. And she just didn’t see how she could serve everybody she wanted to serve and and have any level of her own mental health. So every time she gave to a client, she was breaking down a little bit more. And within a year of work, I worked with her for about a year, a little bit more, maybe about a year and a half. And within a year, she went from this mindset that she was the only person that could ever serve her clients. There’s no way she could ever hire on to she had a team of five. She had other coaches underneath her taking care of the client base. She was able to take her services at a premium price level and doubled her profit, not just revenue, but doubled her profit in that year just by looking at things more systematically and realizing that she wasn’t the only person that could do what she did. She was the face of the company and she was the innovator within the company. But she could train other skilled individuals to serve her client base. And that one was so much fun watching that transition go from a burned out. So Panurge to the president of an actual company.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:57] Now, you mentioned the nature of an owner operator. Do you have a niece from an industry standpoint?

Sarah Dawn: [00:21:04] You know, I haven’t had to narrow that down, and it’s so fun when people with different industries come in. I’ve worked with several nutrition and fitness coaches. I’ve worked with salons and institutions and various cosmetologists. I’ve worked with attorneys and CPAs. And I’ve worked with artists, graphic designers, people in that kind of industry. So I haven’t needed to do that because the pain point has been the nesh for me. It’s I’m operating this thing and I need to get out of the weeds. And that pain point has been so specific, I’ve been able to apply this modality across the board.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:50] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice or get on your calendars or a website.

Sarah Dawn: [00:21:57] Yup, it is w w w Sarah done consulting dotcom, and actually when you go to my website, the very first thing you’re going to see is a free tool to get you started on doing the work I do with my clients. It walks you through a week of itemizing what needs to come off of your plate and exactly how to do that without losing money in your business. And then pretty soon, within days on that website is going to be a link to a new program that I have started called Blissett Business Mastery, where it takes the work I do one on one with people and lets me expand it in a course level with individual support to just reach more people to start doing, like I said, doing business better.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:49] Well, Sarah, congratulations on all the success. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Sarah Dawn: [00:22:54] Thank you, I appreciate it and I love being on here talking to you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:58] All right. This is Lee Kantor Rules next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

Nadya Zhexembayeva With Reinvention Academy

by

Nadya-Zhexembayeva
Coach The Coach
Nadya Zhexembayeva With Reinvention Academy
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In Ventures magazine calls her “The Reinvention Guru.” TEDx Navasink calls her “The Queen of Reinvention.” Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva, the founder of Reinvention Academy, is a scientist, entrepreneur, and author specializing in resilience and reinvention.

As a consultant and an educator, Nadya helped such companies as Coca-Cola, IBM, Cisco, L’Oreal Group, Danone, Kohler, Erste Bank, Henkel, Knauf Insulation, and Vienna Insurance Group reinvent their products, leadership practices, and business models to meet new market demands and prepare for incoming disruptions. Until 2016, she served as the Coca-Cola Chaired Professor of Sustainable Development at IEDC-Bled School of Management, an executive education center based in Slovenia, where she teaches courses in leadership, organizational behavior, strategy, change management, design thinking, and sustainability.

As a speaker, she delivered keynotes to more than 100,000 executives – including four TEDx talks in Slovenia, Austria, Romania, and the USA.

Nadya is the author of a number of books, including “Overfished Ocean Strategy: Powering Up Innovation for a Resource-Deprived World”, which was named Best Book of 2014 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries, and “Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advantage”, which was selected as one of the Best Sustainability Books of All Times by BookAuthority.

Nadya’s latest book, “The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos” is the a finalist in the American Book Fest Awards, the winner of the 2021 Axiom Business Books Awards, and the winner of the Kirkus Star, “one of the most coveted designations in the book industry, which marks books of exceptional merit.”

Nadya earned her PhD in Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, USA, where she also served as an Associate Director at the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, now Fowler Center for Sustainable Value, until 2008.

Connect  with Nadya on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why reinventing your business and career is more important today than ever
  • How often do you need to reinvent to survive and thrive
  • Where do you start and how do you know you chose the right direction

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to Barak’s Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today, we have with us Nadya Zhexembayeva. Welcome, Nadya.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:00:43] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. You are the founder and chief reinvention officer with Reinvention Academy.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:00:52] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:54] So tell us a little bit about that. How does one start a reinvention academy, which by definition, I would think is always reinventing itself?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:01:04] It is. It was a complete accident. So I’ve reinvented a few times in my life. I was in business then. I was a doctor and I was a full time chaired professor at the business school and one of my students, an executive in a retail company, said things you say are fun and interesting and I almost believe you, but you don’t have enough business experience to speak about this. So come to work with us, do real work and real companies, and then you will be much better as educators. So in 2007, my husband and I started a consulting company working inside businesses that needed help to deal with some form of disruption. Sometimes it would be a technology competitor regulator and sometimes it would be an economic crisis or what we have now covid-19 disruption. And slowly we realized there is more demand that we can handle. And we decided to teach people how to fish rather than fishing for them. And that’s how Prevention Academy was born.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:11] So now is there a rhythm to reinvention or is this something that is just is evolution just another name for reinvention?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:02:21] I love that question. So there’s two elements of the answer. It’s a very deep question. There’s absolutely everything to reinvention that has to do with the life cycles. And the life cycles for specific industry are different. But we do have averages for the world. In the 20th century, just about 30 or 40 years ago, average and the average and average life cycle for a company would be around seventy five years. That means you can run pretty much the same business model, the same portfolio of products and the same processes for very long period of time. For decades, you can milk that cow nonstop without any significant change for decades. And if you were to guess, what is the average life cycle today? Twenty, twenty one, I’m sure you would name it far, far from seventy five years on average. We did this research. We do it every two years. And this latest study we had was September twenty twenty. Today, on average, companies reinvent every three years or less to survive. So there is a rhythm you have to match your industry. Some companies like telecom, high tech, it’s actually less than 12 months and some companies like manufacturing, mining, metals, it’s closer to seven to 10 years. But the average right now is between two and three years for any industry, any size of company around the world.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:53] Now, do you find that those statistics hold true globally?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:03:58] Oh, yes. So we do studies globally and they absolutely do hold they are more specific to industry than they are to geography. And it has to do with the how globally connected the world is right now. So one thing is the rhythm and the second thing in terms of reinvention versus evolution in our research and practice, working with companies, we discover that there are nine different types of reinvention and one of them is very incremental, close to evolution type of change, and others are radical innovation and a good, good approach. As safe and sound approach in our volatile and uncertain times is actually having a portfolio of very diverse reinvention projects. Some are more radical and more in the innovation than dimension and some better in that incremental improvements, evolution, stuff like that.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:54] So now how are humans adjusting to this faster pace? Because humans tend to be security oriented or a lot of them and are always looking for the safe, the safe path. And in order to reinvent yourself at that kind of velocity, you’re going to need to be taking risks and to be thinking of things that hadn’t been thought of in the past and really putting your neck on the line personally in terms of putting political capital in your own career at risk at times in order to be right where the odds are you’re not going to be right anywhere near the at the rate you were maybe when a. Life-cycle was 75 years,

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:05:33] 100 percent, you’re right on the money, so for very long period of time, when the cycles were long, we would do a lot of testing and experimentation behind closed doors. Our failed attempts would never see the light of day and nobody would know that we are not performing at the highest level. It would be in labs, it would be in focus groups that we would test products and we would only bring products to the market when they were already perfect. Right now we simply don’t have the luxury to do so. So we have to change our mindset and we have to change our beliefs around what it means to be professional today in a reinvention academy. We have executives, coaches and we have business owners. And we just had this discussion about a week ago at the Deep Dove session where one of the consultants, coach in New Zealand, asked me. She said, how come it seems like all of my clients are doing more and more, pedaling harder and harder, and there’s absolutely no result. And the answer is you cannot do perfection now. You have to prioritize speed to market. You have to bring half cooked, low hanging fruit, the minimal viable products to the market for be relevant to survive the past year. And then you’re absolutely right. So currently, the research shows us that very small number of people are open to change and are open to risk.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:07:06] There was a recent study by the University of Toronto that was looking at American and Canadian knowledge workers. So all college degrees, all employed and in in terms of their openness to risk, it was anywhere between 11 and 19 percent. The highest was 19 percent. So you can imagine that these are knowledge workers. They are all employed and they are really risk averse. Imagine what happens in that in other populations that are less open to innovation and new things. So on one end, we have this risk aversion, but on the other end, those of us who are parents my daughter was 17 when I remember her being born and she was not risk averse. She was not afraid of change. She didn’t need the bonus to reinvent. She was OK to start walking and trying and falling and so on. So we have more of an education. We need to educate people rather than educate them when it comes to change and reinvention. Because in today’s world, we have to rethink our approach to what change is, what it means to be a professional, what it means to fail. If you’re not failing that much today means you’re not doing something worth of even being in business today. Anyone who is a real professional and expert in business is the one who fails quite a lot, fails fast, fails very efficiently.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:36] Now, are you finding that I mean, that makes perfect sense in a in a laboratory that we should all do that, but when it’s my time and I have to risk something and I might get fired or historically in the culture of this business, I haven’t seen many people who have failed two times in a row keep their job or three times in a row that keep their job. How do you and especially and that doesn’t even count some cultures. I mean, some cultures are more entrepreneurial and open to taking chances and failing, and that’s OK. But some cultures aren’t, you know, that could bring shame that, you know, could have a negative impact. And not just you, but it could your family. So how do how do people make this kind of adjustment and change the culture of their kind of their company, number one, to allow and tolerate failure at a more frequency? And also, as some countries have to adjust how historically they might have spent thousands of years not being fans of sailing.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:09:41] Absolutely, so the good news is that we can now rely on quite a lot of developed and very advanced tools that can help you deal with both the cultural and mindset issues and also more hard issues. For example, even when you have an open minded organization and the culture is open to change and the failure is not punished, if the systems in the company, for example, the budgeting system is simply not allowing for flexibility, you will not match the speed of the market. So good news that we now have plenty of tools that would allow you to deal with all of these elements. For example, in our community, one of the most beloved exercises that is done again and again is Fear to Action exercise, which is a very simple three steps worksheet that you can do with your team work and you can do yourself, you can do in your family if your family is facing some sort of disruption. And it will bring you from the moment of fear and resistance all the way into action. There are other tools, canvasses, all kinds of exercises that can help you develop the pathway towards a new way of working. And for example, in the last year since the covid started, because it was such a painful moment around the world, we have work with more than three solid executives, business owners around the world using the tools. We have this free event happening every few months called easy reinvention. Lapin in five days, all of them come to results and all of them are able to start the journey in changing the culture in the company. So five, 10 years ago, I would be scrambling to give you an answer. But today there’s plenty of tools that can help us deal with all of this elements, whether it’s a soft issue like mindset and culture or hard issues such as systems and processes.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:43] But if this is just the reality of today, if this is something that, you know, that that as my business partner says, that train has sailed, that no longer is the life cycle of a business. Seventy five years. It’s changing more rapidly. And in some cases, it’s changing annually where it’s virtually impossible to stay. You have to be reinventing or else it’s impossible to even have your business in that in that industry. In order to do this and change that rapidly, you have to have trust that you’re not that it’s OK to fail at that rate. And if that was if people are really trusting this, the case of failing more frequently, then why is it that the highest levels of companies that they’re firing the like the life span of a CEO or a chief marketing officer are just a year, just a few years? It’s not something that they’re willing to just stay the course for five or 10 years. So in one hand, they’re saying it’s OK to fail, but on the other hand, we’re firing people left and right. So how do you kind of reconcile that?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:12:56] The way I see it is that our business operating system is not catching up with the reality yet. So as I said, I was a professor at the business school teaching an executive MBA in the executive programs. And it’s remarkable how behind the theory and the practice of management behind the reality on the market. If you think about most of the things we teach in business schools and most of the things that we expect to happen in the corporate or small business environment, all of the tools or almost all of the tools were created full on cycles, strategic planning. It’s a great tool for long cycles, just in time, inventory and supply chain management. Great idea for stable nonvolatile markets, high debt, excellent idea. And in certain nonvolatile environments, most of the things we take for granted are designed for very long cycles and for very stable, competitive environment. So what’s happening today is that we have lived in new rules, but we keep trying to survive in those new rules with old tools and we are just not catching on. And it is a quite a drastic transformation that is happening in both academic circles and the practice of top management. But unfortunately, it’s not happening fast enough. So we see mass die off of companies. The predictions for the next five years, right before covid-19 Boston Consulting Group was doing research and therefore site is about thirty three percent of all companies will not survive in the next five years. And Innosight, another research company, was predicting that about half of fortune, not fortune standard and poor five hundred will be gone within the next six to seven years. So we’re seeing mass mass death of companies that are pretty much killing themselves because they’re not able to adapt to change and live in new environments. I call it titanic syndrome because the behavior of this company is just so, so remarkably similar to what you saw on Titanic. When a company or an organization or even an individual kills their own company, kills their own career because they’re not ready to adapt to change now.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:20] And I think it’s worse than that because I think it trickles down to even kind of primary education for children. Like you mentioned earlier, when your child was young, she wasn’t afraid to take risks and and try new things. But as they as the kid gets older, they get less and less thrilled with going putting their neck on the line 100 percent.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:15:45] And again, I don’t want to make our schools, our business community, our academic community, the villains. It’s not that they were wrong. Those were right approaches for the right times. What we do in middle schools and high schools, even in elementary schools, was designed for long cycles. The concept of education, publicly accessible education is very new and just over one hundred years old. And it was designed specifically for this very predictable conveyor kind of nonvolatile, very certain business environment. So it was not in the interest of a young child to be creative, to be questioning, to be testing new things, because in the long cycle you find the winning formula, you find the product portfolio, you create standard operating procedures and you stick to them for many, many years. So they innovative, inquisitive mind. The child is simply a disruptor in that case. And we had to educate children out of their native ability to adapt, grow and reinvent. So currently we not so much need to discover or learn how to reinvent. We simply need to claim our birthright to educate ourselves and educate our children as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:07] Now, do you are we there yet or is this something that we’re just at the very beginning of the beginning where this is just that we’re at the just opening the minds of enough people for them to believe that we’re going to have to make some drastic changes because these are drastic changes?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:17:23] Oh, this is very, very new. So I started speaking on the subject of reinvention and life cycles and how we need ministers of reinvention and so on in 2015. And I was very happy to see that a couple of years later, the other scientists, for example, the amazing best selling author, you all know, right? You probably all heard and read his book, The Sapience he was famously pronouncing in Wired magazine. Forget programing. You must teach your kids reinvention. So it’s coming along. More scientists, business leaders like the CEO of Netflix just had a book out, Netflix and a Culture of reinvention. So it’s picking up, but it’s very, very early. We now see the first American state, the state of North Dakota, that now has chief reinvention officer as a full time position under the governor. We see certain companies who now instituting reinvention officers. But we’re very, very early. And of course, because we’re shaking the boat and rocking the boat, we’re getting a lot of backlash for our work.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:35] So now where does a company start? Where does an education system start, where does the government start?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:18:43] You start with low hanging fruit. The issue with reinvention is that we need to address two things confidence and competence. And the easiest way to build both is to deal with low hanging fruit. Almost everyone can name at least one, two or three things they can easily reinvent in their environment with relatively low cost, sometimes zero costs other than time and effort, but no financial investment and get a relatively quick results. So once we start with a portfolio of low hanging fruit, two things happen. We get confidence because we see results relatively quickly and we also gain very valuable competence. We learn the technicality of the process because the process is very repetitive. It’s very much like playing different music on the same instrument. I’m shocked to see how many companies think they need to invent a new instrument. We have a digital reinvention. We invent a new process. We have a covid-19 disruption. We invent the new process. We have a competitor who just entered our marketplace. We invent a new process. The reality is exact same reinvention process works for literally any kind of problems. We had people with our toolkit who are reinventing churches because it’s a massive issue that so many churches are closing up, reinventing non-profits, reinventing different functional areas, reinventing different products with the exact same toolset and reinventing their own lives and careers. So that’s where you start. You start with low hanging fruit. You start with quickly gaining a bit of confidence and basic competence. And from there you go towards a very crucial shift. You stop thinking about reinvention as a one time project, as a thing you do once, and then you sleep on and start thinking of reinvention as a process, as is as taking a regular shower. It’s like that’s the metaphor I use all the time. If you don’t wash yourself, if you don’t take a shower on a regular basis, you begin to stink. Same with reinvention. If you don’t reinvent your products, your processes, your business models on a regular basis, your company will begin to stink.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:56] And like you said, that this is not a set it and forget it. This is a this is now just part of your day.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:21:04] Yes, very much so. So you need to build a process just the way you have a routine around brushing your teeth in the morning or food or whatever else you need a process around reinvention as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:18] So now who in an organization is the one that typically hires your firm?

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:21:24] We are we are unique in the sense that we work with mainly board members, executives or owners. But when it comes to education, the Reinvention Academy, of course, we come through a variety of doors. Sometimes we have a chief strategy officer. So this year we worked with a wonderful organizations. We worked with Ben and Jerry’s. That was the CEO of Ben and Jerry’s. We worked with a an amazing tech company in the UK and that was chief strategy officer who hired us. Occasionally we are asked by Chief a charge of people officers, but we are more often asked by CEO seat or or strategy head.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:05] And you have a book out that talks about this.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:22:08] Yes, just just a miracle happened during covid-19 because we didn’t need to fly on location as much in the rest time. Our community of just over 3000 executives and practitioners and coaches around the world put together helped me put together a book with nine different tools that you can use in any industry and any disruption. It’s called the Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook How to Thrive in Chaos. And it’s literally a handbook. It has worksheets. It has twenty five business model reinvention cards you can tear out of the book that they’re ready for you to be used. It has cases, it has cost. It tested tools that you can use in your life right now. And I’m happy to see that the book is already gaining quite a few rewards in the industry, including the best business book of the year.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:06] Well, congratulations on all your success and thank you so much for fighting the good fight and trying to help people just kind of be the best them by looking inside and really just trusting their feeling that something is amiss and they should be changing and that they really should kind of lean into that and not fight it.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:23:27] Absolutely. The remarkable thing, we are born inventors. We are born open to change. We’re just educated out of it. And it’s time for us to claim it back and actually change transform our view of change into a. Opportunity, that is. Stop thinking of change as a threat and start milking it for the opportunity that it is.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:53] So if somebody wanted to learn more about what you’re up to or get a hold of the book or just get to learn more about the academy, what’s the website

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:24:01] Learn to reinvent dot com. That too is a is a no numerics. You’ll learn no to reinvent dot com and you can download the eighty five page preview of the book on that website right now. Learn to reinvent dotcom.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:18] Well, Nadya, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Nadya Zhexembayeva: [00:24:24] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:25] All right. This is Lee Kantor We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

Eric Malzone With The Future of Fitness

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eric-Malzone
Coach The Coach
Eric Malzone With The Future of Fitness
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thefuturefitnesseric-MalzoneEric Malzone‘s professional experience stems from a decade in the corporate sector. Starting from the bottom to eventually leading national sales teams. Being an entrepreneur at heart, Eric pulled the corporate ejector seat and opened his first business in 2009, Gravitas Fitness.

After 9+ years of owning successful multiple brick and mortar businesses and a deep analysis of his own “ideal day,” Eric decided to sell his businesses with the purpose of creating a bigger impact in the fitness & health industry while living the lifestyle that him and his wife have always dreamed of.

Since that point, he is now the host of two top-rated podcasts – The Future of Fitness and Fitness Blitz Radio – Eric has interviewed 500+ professionals in the areas of fitness, health, and wellness. He is the co-founder of Certified Course Creation and the Fitness Accelerator networking community. Eric lives a nomadic lifestyle balanced with hard-driving business development and new adventures in nature, culture, and travel.

His vast network and business experience has led him to co-found Level 5 Mentors – a business and life coaching program unlike any other. Eric is now completely committed to helping entrepreneurs think bigger and pursue their unique version of their own ideal day.

Connect with Eric on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, a no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to Barak’s Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today, we have with us Eric Malzone with The Future of Fitness. Welcome, Eric,

Eric Malzone: [00:00:42] And thanks, Lee. It’s good to be here, man.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to tell us about the future of fitness.

Eric Malzone: [00:00:48] Well, that’s a big topic. You know, I’ve been so the Future Fitness is named after is the name of my podcast, which I’ve been doing since 2017. So I’ve been involved pretty heavily in the fitness industry for she’s aging myself probably about 15 years now, I guess, if not more. And having been a former multiple gym owner back in California and selling those and moving on, I want to play a bigger role in the future of the industry. So would a better name than the future of fitness. And I could tell you, having done two hundred and almost 250 episodes now as it’s a weekly podcast and having seen the dramatic changes that have been brought about to the industry, the future of fitness is looking pretty good.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:37] So now is your business, this podcast or you have a coaching business in addition to this?

Eric Malzone: [00:01:42] Yeah, I would classify myself as what a friend called a multi potential. Right. I like to do a lot of different stuff. So I have the podcast is definitely, you know, now sponsored and has been a great source of business development for me. I do handle anywhere between six and ten, one on one coaching clients and they’re generally entrepreneurs. You know, with businesses in the half million to the one point five million mark seems to be my sweet spot. And then I also do contract business development for a fitness technology startup. That is, we need to get launched this summer. So a lot of different things going on like to keep it busy, but it’s mostly focused on the industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:26] So everything is around fitness and you’re just doing it in kind of by any means necessary, anything that kind of catches your eye that you’re interested in. You kind of poke around and see where it goes.

Eric Malzone: [00:02:36] Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you give a little background. And when I did sell my my brick and mortar facilities back in twenty seventeen, my wife and I went nomadic. So we’re traveling around moving about every three to four months over a period of three years really until the pandemic hit made us locked down here in Montana. And so anybody who’s ever taken a venture like that, we’re moving around a lot. You kind of have to get creative with how you you make your money and support the lifestyle restricted in what you do. And so for that reason, I just probably started over that span for different businesses with varying levels of success. But this seems to be a really nice flow that I’m in now and frankly, I enjoy every day and the diversity that it brings for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:25] So when you decided to sell kind of what was your thinking at that point? Did you think, OK, I’m going to sell, I got a pile of money and I’m out? Or did you always think, OK, I’m going to have to, you know, have some revenue coming in? I don’t have enough to, you know, survive just on that pile of money. So I got to always have revenue. And now let me try, you know, X.

Eric Malzone: [00:03:46] Yeah, that’s a really. So I’m trying to put myself back into that that mindset of twenty, sixteen, seventeen. And really, you know, if I’m. Open with myself is that 2000 was a very tough year, personally, my wife and I had a series of loss, you know, friends, family, even our dog passed away that year, loss of a pregnancy. And it just it made things. It changed my mindset around the urgency with which we live. You know, everyone talks about, you know, well, someday I’m going to do this or someday I’m going to live in this place. We always talked about someday we’re going to live in a mountain town and my wife’s from Brazil and someday she’ll learn how to ski. And, you know, with some reflection and looking at I came home one night and I just told her, hey, we always talk about living in this mountain town, you know, someday. What if we did it now? Sell these businesses and I can’t remember. I remember her reaction so distinctly, it was. Well, first of all, are you messing with me? No, no, I’m not. I’m actually pretty dead serious. And she said, well, why don’t we go live in a bunch of them and figure out where we want to live. And I was like, that sounds great. Let’s do that. So the selling in the business was more of a lifestyle decision. Anybody who’s own boutique gyms know that, you know. Unless you own maybe 10 or more, a successful exit isn’t going to be life changing money. It was great. It gave us a launching point for this next phase of life. But I always knew that my work was really not. I knew I was going to look at it as a as a stepping stone to something that maybe was more scalable and more suitable to a lifestyle that we really wanted.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:25] So then what was that first move? What was the kind of first digital business or at least some kind of flexible work location? Didn’t matter. Business that you pursued was a coaching.

Eric Malzone: [00:05:37] You know, coaching actually happened quite organically. The I started actually coaching people when I still in my gym, I started what I guess people will call mastermind group. I just called an entrepreneur club that met once a month for coffee. We will go over people’s businesses. And so and then I just sporadically I never really focused on coaching and just kind of happen. People come to me and I’d have a conversation with like, hey, I could help you with this. Let’s let’s start getting some regular meetings. So that just happened rather organically. The first business that I started after I actually started as I was selling the gym was digital marketing. So it was Fitness Marketing Alliance with a friend and colleague, Doug Hall. And it started off great. I mean, we actually hit profitability extremely fast, but we just diverged in the directions we were going with our lives and what we want to do with business. So kind of dissolved after about a year and a half. So that was the first one.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:32] So you now in this mastermind group, were you charging people to be part of it or were this kind of like a friends helping friends situation?

Eric Malzone: [00:06:40] Yeah, I was just a friends helping friends thing. It was, you know, everybody there was a member or an employee of mine, so a member of the gym or an employee. And, you know, it started off just like, hey, let’s, you know, a couple of people having coffee and then we start to put some structure behind it, which, you know, anyone who’s been part of the mastermind, that’s always nice to have like a specific hot seat. We’re going to work on one particular person’s business. But it was just a great way to get outside of our normal rhythms of business, have coffee and breakfast, you know, once a month, and just discuss entrepreneurship, because I think people who are entrepreneurs know that maybe the problems that you face on a regular basis are not relatable to people who are not in business for themselves. It’s just different and have that ability to talk to people about problems that other people understood and recognize was just really valuable and enjoyable thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:35] Right. And it’s that there’s a reason it’s been around for years like that. It’s helpful. People want to be vulnerable in front of people that can help them, especially if you can structure where it’s noncompetitive and you know, you’re not sharing trade secrets with your competition down the road, but you’re all trying to help each other. And, you know, you’re a sounding board. You know, you get to play devil’s advocate. You can, you know, test people’s ideas and then help them through difficult times, by shared experience. So it’s been around for hundreds of years. So there’s a reason it’s very productive and a lot of people benefit from that peer to peer conversation. Now, for you. When did you start? When did you did you just stumble upon something that’s like, OK, this is going to start generating money for me and then now I’m going to start getting a cash flow from here and then and then you found another one and then you start cobbling together a variety of revenue streams.

Eric Malzone: [00:08:31] Yeah, so I’ve done a mixture consulting, so really everything I think I use my podcast. In I guess not the ordinary way, I think most people start to show that, like, well, build an audience. I will, you know, maybe get sponsorship or do affiliate partnerships and things like that, and I’ll kind of monetize a more traditional way, I found that for me being in a future fitness as a B2B fitness industry, very specific. And the people I talk to, I like to have on executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, people like that. I know a lot of people listen to my show now or maybe investors, executives within fitness industry companies. But I found that and you’ll probably understand this to me is like it’s very easy. It’s much easier to get somebody on the phone or in a conversation if you’re asking them to be on your show. So people who I use it as a way to talk to people who I think could be prospective clients of mine, open those doors, get to know them, you know, kind of build that, you know, like trust factor with them. And a lot of times it turns into what I would call indirect revenue for my podcast. So finding out ways to help people. And I’m a big believer in just being a person of value. You’re always trying to sell people anything, anything and everything. I just want to be there to help people. So many times in my conversations on my podcast, that kind of concludes after recording that, hey, you know, I love what you’re doing here. I like to be an asset to you. You know what? Can I help you achieve the actions you need, your expertize or what is it that you may need? And it’s turned out really well.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:15] And then those folks that are coming to you, you can help them from a business standpoint as a consultant to help them with whatever challenges are having in their business.

Eric Malzone: [00:10:26] Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. I mean, even you know, I’ve worked with large franchises like 45, they had a very specific problem that they are looking to address. So I built out a system for them as well as their trainer certification. So that was kind of on a higher end. And then I’ll work with, you know, maybe the solo entrepreneur who, you know, has some revenue coming in but really needs some experience as someone to bounce ideas off of and how to, you know, turn into something scalable. So it’s really a wide range. But I think the factors that define who I work with most of the time is if I think it’s a cool business, that’s it. If I enjoy it and I think it’s something I’d like to talk about, then I generally get really excited and I’ll probably work for free for a little while until we figure out the game plan and then we’ll engage in some sort of contract.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:17] And then can you share a story maybe where you’ve had an impact on the company? You don’t have to name the name of the company, but maybe share, you know, what their challenge was and how you help them get to a new level.

Eric Malzone: [00:11:29] Yeah, yeah, actually, Ali, who owns a three location swim school. In the in the south, here in the United States, she was referred to me by another coaching client and you know, she is at a point where she is the ultimate doer. Right. Someone if you give her a task list, she will absolutely crush it. She will do it effectively. And she’s not scared to take action. Where she was, you know, a little blurry in her vision was how to deal with certain circumstances, how to formulate her business. So essentially, over about a year and a half we’ve been working together. We have redone our business model. We have put in place, you know, solid marketing principles of email marketing, social media and things like that. Nothing fancy, just the solid basics of it. And we’ve, you know, changed the way she hires her hiring process and just roll mindset around the long term growth strategy for her business. And she’s doing great. She just had she’s hitting record months this right now. And she’s hit that point where she looks at her bank account. She can’t believe that she’s doing something she loves and making a great living doing it. So, you know, there’s many little mini stories within there, some tears along the way, both her and me, probably. But that’s something where I just really enjoy working with her. I think she’s a great person. I want to see her succeed. And it’s it’s been working out really well.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] Now. How did you come up with kind of your methodology and the rates that you’re charging these folks? Since everything sounds like it comes very organically? It’s not, you know, this calculated formula of, OK, this is this tier, this is that it sounds like you’re very kind of OK. Let me just check this out. Let me see if I can be helpful and serve you and then let’s see where it goes. Is it based on, you know, kind of value you help them achieve? Is it based on just a flat rate or a retainer?

Eric Malzone: [00:13:34] Mm hmm. Yeah, I do everything. That’s a really good question. I am. It does. I have a minimum that I work off of. Right. But I do look at each individual coaching client as someone like this is a partnership. You know, I’m I’m looking at it not just to make a sale, but I want to make sure that it’s somebody that I want to work with long term. And then I want to invest my time and money. And I literally look at it as an investment. So I’ll take maybe two, even three meetings with them to figure out if I personally would invest in this company, not necessarily monetarily, but time wise. And that’s the case then. I also don’t want to be a financial burden on the company that with that stops growth. So I do have a bit of a sliding scale depending on where the company is at. And then I tend to grow with my clients as well as they hit certain benchmarks. We talk about raising my rate and we continue to grow. So I look at it as a long term relationship. So for that matter, I’m very picky with the clients I want to work with and I take my time in deciding whether or not I’m going to offer my services in a longer term contract.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:44] And then so but you’re the methodology that you’ve kind of developed. The philosophy has some kind of benchmarks and milestones. And if we achieve this, then I get a raise kind of thing.

Eric Malzone: [00:14:58] Yeah, yeah. It’ll be it’ll be a pretty simple conversation. And to be quite frank sometimes. Lee more often times than I would imagine if I had predicted people will say, hey, I feel like I should be paying more and I’m like, OK, great, let’s talk about that. I don’t disagree with you, so we’ll do it that way. So a lot of times the clients would be so happy that they want to have me along for a bigger role and I get to grow with a company. So, yeah, that is probably for some people listening. That may seem like a pretty loose from the hip way to do things, but it seems to be working so far.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:38] And what I love about it is that you’re doing this by your rules and you’re choosing the clients by your rules. You’re the curator of your clientele and you’re really helping folks and you don’t have a kind of set in stone way of doing anything. This is your business and you don’t it doesn’t have to be built to kind of scale or to replicate or franchise. You’re just doing what works for you in the manner you want to work. So kudos to you for pulling that off. I mean, that’s, I think, the dream a lot of people have. And then they they kind of are afraid to do some of the things you’re doing in terms of serving people first, investing in relationships to the level you do before trying to sell anybody anything.

Eric Malzone: [00:16:26] Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. You know, I did have a vision that eventually what I wanted because being a gym owner, really, you kind of set to eat in one stream of income. Really, it really does dominate your time if it’s a boutique gym like what I own. But I also have a ton of coaching experience within the fitness and health realm, which isn’t that much different than business. So I’ve learned over the long run that. You know, having clients that. Are not are far from the ideal of who you want to work with become. Tough like they generally don’t stick around, like you’re not enjoying the conversation, energy’s not good, the relationship isn’t strong, then things just generally don’t tend to last that long and it becomes almost a waste of everybody’s time and resources. So I try to be selective in that way. And and I learn a lot of that through fitness. Right. Like, if I don’t have a good relationship and I don’t understand or feel comfortable with helping you reach your goals, then this relationship is doomed from the start. So I think over time and having done a form of coaching for you know, I’ve done multiple forms of coaching for decades now, and you start to realize that that that work ability between the two parties has to be there. Otherwise, you’re standing on a very, very faulty foundation.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:46] Now, let’s give some advice for folks out there based on what you’ve learned. Share with us a little bit about how you help people make these kind of big decisions, or maybe they seem big at the time, but maybe in reality they aren’t as big as they fear.

Eric Malzone: [00:18:03] Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this is one of my favorite topics. I think, you know that making big what I call big scary decisions BSD. You know, I think there’s so many points in my life. And it’s funny because when I do interview a lot of entrepreneurs and successful business people, they seem to have a very, very similar framework. Maybe they just haven’t. You tagged it the same way. But there are three questions that I think people need to ask themselves. If they are facing a big, scary decision, whether it be in life or business. You know, for example, when I was thinking, well, OK, let’s sell my businesses that I’ve been building for nine years, I’m going to move to a mountain town. You know, I went through the framework. And the first question you have to ask yourself as well, what is the worst possible thing that can happen? And this is a really critical thing because, you know, once you boil down to, you know, let’s just go back to that moment and like, well, let’s sell the gems and, you know, we’ll go travel and found this mountain. What’s the worst possible thing that could happen was, well, really the worst possible thing that happens. We just live out of our trailer. Now, things don’t go well on the business side of things, and we have a great adventure to, you know, and then we have to go maybe go find a job in corporate America again. And that was the worst possible thing. So for me, my risk tolerance was like, hey, that sounds not so bad. Actually, the worst possible scenario actually sounds kind of fun. So you kind of have to boil it down to that and then you have to adapt that to what is your risk tolerance? What are you aware of? Because I think so many people want to say, well, burn the boats, go all in.

Eric Malzone: [00:19:34] I don’t think that’s a very practical way to look at things. And most successful business owners and entrepreneurs rarely just burn the boats and go all in on what they’re doing. They kind of do it methodically over time. So first question, ask yourself is what is the worst possible thing that can happen? And then we get into the second part? Well, you know, well, first of all, you have to ask yourself, you can you can handle that. Right. And then after that is, you know, well, what’s what’s the tiniest first step that you can you can take in that direction. And to me, like when I was selling the gym, that was just simply, well, I’m just going to write a list of people who may want to buy the gym. That was it. I’ll just have to start with a paper list, and that created momentum to get towards my goal. And you know those. When you start looking at it that way and that that framework lead, that first question is so critical because like I said, so many businesses I’ve talked to, you have a varying form of that same question before they go into ventures. So I think that’s that’s a really good framework for people to start. And this could be anything. It could be, you know, should I start a new job? Should I start this relationship with this person, whatever it may be, these are all scary decisions that we can build a framework around.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:52] Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. Is your ideal client still in the fitness industry or have you broadened beyond that?

Eric Malzone: [00:20:59] I have broadened out. I’m working with a couple of clients outside of the fitness industry. I guess, you know, technically, a swim school is not really fitness working with a great company, actually. McCulloh at Mobile Home, she is a kind of a niche Airbnb service, you know, for specifically for monthly rentals. So it’s addressing a very specific need. And she’s growing every month. It’s awesome to see. So, yeah, I’m all across the board, but I’m just looking for good, solid businesses with with people who have a great vision for where it could go.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:28] And that’s why I like to work with. And then what’s the pain they’re having where you’re a good fit for helping them get to a new level?

Eric Malzone: [00:21:37] Yeah, I think the biggest pain is spinning your wheels because you don’t have a long term growth strategy. And that’s that’s what most business owners are missing as they probably got to where they are with, you know, maybe grit and hustle and maybe some reactivity. But they’re lacking now a long term growth strategy to get to where their goal is and then the implementation thereafter of that strategy.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:03] So they’re kind of plateaued and they’re frustrated that they feel like they’re not kind of get moving the ball fast enough

Eric Malzone: [00:22:09] Or maybe they built a business that is actually now a prison, which we know that happens often as well. You build this business, but you’re the one working sixty, seventy hour weeks and you don’t know how to get out of it. And that’s very common as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:24] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team. What’s the website.

Eric Malzone: [00:22:30] Yeah, two websites and thanks for asking me. You can go to the future of fitness Dot Seo. You can find ways to contact me or look at my podcast, listen to my podcast. And please, if you do, go subscribe and leave us a nice review. And then also you can go to level five mentors, which is more about the coaching practice with with one of my friends and colleagues, Ken Andrew goes so that as level level the number five mentors, dotcom, good stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:58] Well, Eric, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Eric Malzone: [00:23:03] Thank you. It’s great having been on your show, man.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:06] All right. This Lee Kantor will tell next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Lifestyle entrepreneurship
  • Being a digital nomad
  • Podcasting & the art of the interview
  • Making BSD’s (big scary decisions)

Jon Kidwell With The Kidwell Team

by

TheKidwellTeam
Coach The Coach
Jon Kidwell With The Kidwell Team
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JonKidwellJon Kidwell is on a mission to strengthen the nonprofit sector. He believes a better world exists through stronger nonprofits. He is a Leadership & Business Coach for nonprofits.

He focuses on helping nonprofits earn more money and serve people well by applying a servant heart and business mind.

For over 15 years, Jon served nonprofits as a board member, volunteer, and part-time or full-time team member.

Over the course of six years, he grew from an entry-level leader to Vice President of Innovation & Operations, leading 1,100 people in 12 areas of business for a $140 million nonprofit located in Houston, TX. Now, he owns and leads The Kidwell Team on its mission to serve and strengthen nonprofits.

He is married to Meghan and father to Anna and William.

Connect with Jon on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to our Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. Today we have with us Jon Kidwell with the Kidwell team. Welcome, John.

Jon Kidwell: [00:00:42] Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Kedwell team. How are you certain folks?

Jon Kidwell: [00:00:50] Yeah, so the Kedwell team is the business that my wife and I own and that I operate and run. And what we do is we work with non-profits. I’m a nonprofit leadership and business coach, so I work with nonprofit executives, leaders, pastors and and really help them serve people well, earn money in the process so that they can have a really big impact through their mission.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:15] So now what’s your back story? How did you get involved in the nonprofit space?

Jon Kidwell: [00:01:19] Great question. It’s a fund when it goes back all the way to my very first job at 16 years old, I’ve always been in the nonprofit space in some way or form. So I started off camp counselor day care after school. I was a professional teacher and thought I’d be a principal and I just felt this call to be in a different space and so got into more of a nonprofit business organization and really started testing. What is it like to serve people but to do it while also paying attention to selling programs, selling memberships, fundraising, going after grants. And and I did that for six years, actually entered into the YMCA of Greater Houston as an entry level leader and in six years grew to be our vice president of innovation and operations. And that had me leading about 1100 people, 12 areas of our business and responsible for about a fifth of our 140 million dollar nonprofit organization in Houston.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:24] Now, being a nonprofit doesn’t mean you don’t need money, and I think that’s one of the misconceptions that no matter what kind of organization you you’re part of selling is part of this, you have to kind of have revenue somewhere. Is this kind of a mindset shift that you have to help your leaders work through, like to feel good about the money exchange part?

Jon Kidwell: [00:02:49] Yeah, it is this interesting thing, right. And I think for those of us that have that heart of service where we care about people, we always want to make sure we’re on that side of the fence. Right. And maybe it’s just me, but I’ll play out the the the Madoff story or the Enron story. And you think if you just even tiptoe close to that cliff of being too muddy minded, you’re going to fall over. And and that’s often not the case. But but working through that mindset is often part of it. About half of the folks that I work with don’t yet have organizations that earn money. So they do grants and they fundraise. And as you said, so well, they’re selling involved in both of those. Right. And in donations, I am connecting a donor with an impact that that they’re seeking to make. And in the grant world, you are selling the fact that you’re going to deliver on what the government or an organization wants to see happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:45] And then once you kind of help them understand that it’s OK to ask for money and in fact we can’t help people unless we really get this part figured out because it’s a you’re kind of limiting yourself if you’re only relying on that one revenue stream of, you know, government grants. Right. There’s a whole lot of other more impact you can be making if you kind of broadened the people that you’re asking money for and serving.

Jon Kidwell: [00:04:12] Absolutely. So I’ll ask you a question, if I may. If you were looking to give a thousand dollars and I said your thousand dollars is going to put 400 meals out to hungry children or your thousand dollars can support my R&D where I get to get better food or figure out a better delivery mechanism, where are you more likely to put that money?

Lee Kantor: [00:04:37] Right. So when you tell me and especially if you show me 400 people’s faces, that’s pretty persuasive. But if you show me the R&D part and show me 10000 people’s faces, that’s pretty persuasive, too. So and I guess it has to align with everybody’s individual kind of desires on what type of impact they want to kind of have.

Jon Kidwell: [00:04:59] Absolutely. Absolutely. And and you you said something really powerful, right? When I see the faces, when I see the hungry kids, that’s usually the more immediate need. And they usually take precedent, usually in grants. You can’t ask for some of those other things. And in fundraising, it’s much more what’s the need in front of you? Where when when we develop our programs and services, products or goods that we can sell as a part of our service. You and I both know that we can build in a margin inside of there where we can look for ways to pay living wages to our team, where we can put money into retained earnings instead of having to fundraise for that. All of it in service of the mission and the people that that we aim to to impact. But like you said, it’s a different avenue. And not only does it give us the extra bandwidth, as you were talking about, it also diversifies if I lose. And here’s a quick story for you. 2016, we kind of had a perfect storm in our organization. We would raise about half a million dollars a year.

Jon Kidwell: [00:06:03] And in the matter of weeks, we had two grants and four major donors, about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So 30 percent roughly of what we raised every year just vanish, gone. They were just stopping their support for our organization. And that would have left us devastated. We would have had to choose which programs we weren’t going to do, which kids aren’t going to get the meals right. We had earned revenue programs and we said, OK, we have a way to serve people. We also have a way to make money. We also know that we’re not at our capacity. What if we intentionally went after serving more people through our earned revenue programs? What kind of stirring the pot, looking for more funders and grants? But we said this is a focus of ours and we did. And we earned one hundred and ten thousand dollars over budget, which meant instead of 30 percent of our programs, we looking at about eight percent that we said, hey, we just really can’t do this this year.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:03] And that’s just by kind of looking at it a little differently.

Jon Kidwell: [00:07:06] Yeah, absolutely. The the kind of phrasing and words that I use are servant heart and and business mind. And in my head, what that is and what I share with folks is that this is that leader that is absolutely passionate and devoted to the mission to making sure that people are taking care of and can also focus on making and managing money so that the mission, taking care of people and furthering it gets to continue and that it doesn’t stop. They walk that hard line of balancing people and money and how we make them work together for a greater good.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:48] Now, I think that some of the challenges in nonprofits are the same challenges that for profit companies have, is that in the in the general population, the word profit is kind of a bad word. And that’s something that is in people’s mind. For whatever reason, they connected with greed or exploitation or, you know, taking advantage of one group. And I think that we as leaders of both nonprofit and for profit, we really have to take that word back because without profit, you really don’t have a business.

Jon Kidwell: [00:08:25] Yeah, it’s simply margin, right. If if I need to spend five dollars in terms of my people and my cost in my delivery and my tech, if if I make five dollars or less, there’s there’s no room for doing anything outside of that ever. Right. And. So if, in fact, we make ten dollars on something that costs us five now we have five dollars of margin. And so here’s the thing with nonprofits that is is different than a for profit entity. They have rules that say that I as an individual, see you as a board member. We don’t get disbursements of that profit, that five dollar gap there. We get to use that to do whatever we can to further the mission, the explicit mission of the organization. But we don’t pay out individual shareholders based on that.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:19] Right, and that and that’s a big difference, because then the mission is aligned with the cause, which is aligned with the money coming in, like there’s more kind of the incentives are all aligned.

Jon Kidwell: [00:09:33] You got it. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] So now when a nonprofit, are they hesitant to invest in a coach? Because like you said, this is the margin. So they’re taking some of their margin and investing it in a coach with the expectation that that’s going to increase the amount of revenue and they increase the amount of margin.

Jon Kidwell: [00:09:53] Yeah, and, you know, I can’t answer for all of them, I would say that that it depends. And so in my experience, working with executives, talking about how we look at coaching and what that return should be. Right. If you pay me X amount, your leadership, your program offerings, what we work on, whether it’s developing products, whether it’s your leadership style, whether it’s looking at finances, those should return more than that to the organization. And that’s part of that conversation. And there’s also different needs. And so one of the things that that I do in that we do is look at how do we take a principle that’s powerful for all of us in terms of community and bring that into coaching through group coaching, where we can bring executives from different organizations, kind of same stage in their executive leadership in life, but bring them together to lower the cost for nonprofits. But then also, as you said, talk to and speak through. Here are the tangible benefits and the ahli that working with a coach can bring back to your organization in terms of leadership to people and to the bottom line.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:04] Now, for that leader of a nonprofit out there, is there some low hanging fruit that they can be attacking on their own before they invest in a service like yours, that they can help them at least open their mind to the different opportunities that are out there?

Jon Kidwell: [00:11:20] Yeah, absolutely. And so I had shared earlier that about half of nonprofits that I work with don’t yet have earned revenue. They do grants and donations. And and I would tell and I do tell for anyone that will listen that nonprofits can and should earn money as a way to further the mission. And so if someone was listening or asking, I would say that you are doing something, you have a program, you have a service that is a good a product, whatever that may be, that is likely similar to a for profit business that does the same thing or something very similar. And you have an opportunity to sell that as a way to serve people and fund the mission. And I would encourage people to look at that. What problems are they solving? What limitations are they putting on themselves, saying this always has to be free because we’re a nonprofit. Typically, there are people that need problems solved at all ranges of ability to pay or ability to engage with your organization in various ways. And so I would encourage them to to look at at what programs service they can offer charge for and fund the mission through that.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:41] So now how does like how does that kind of brainstorming session work when you’re working with these folks? Like, are you just kind of whiteboarding out, OK, what are all the services we do right now and just start listing them and then just seeing which ones you can project, productize or monetize?

Jon Kidwell: [00:12:57] Yeah, absolutely, that is a great way to start, is inventory, what do we do, just looking at what is it in fact that that you do that matches and similar. And so I’ll tell you a quick story here. It was back with the Y and we had what we knew to be a game changing program. We were going to watch something new. This was a group coaching health and well being program. So think Weight Watchers. So we kind of saw an external business that was doing this and doing this fairly well. And and we said that this is somewhere that we can go. And so just we just went for it right away. We started planning. We invested in training coaches in our team. We invested heavily in marketing. We made sure to plan that this thing was going to launch in January and we signed up 11 people. We have one hundred and fifty thousand organizations and we signed up 11 people, so, you know, we usually learn the most after we fail something. And that was the case for me here. And so now outside of that whiteboarding, what would I do and what I work through with non-profits and what I would tell them to do with me or on their own is that you have to test your idea and what you plan to sell for purpose for people and for promise. If it does not land squarely in the triangle of that three part Venn diagram, it is not as likely to be successful as something that lands inside of purpose people and promise.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:34] So now, in the case of that, if you were to kind of do an autopsy on that at that test, where did it go wrong? Was it something that people weren’t interested because they already had another solution was a lack of clarity of not that they didn’t understand the value.

Jon Kidwell: [00:14:51] Yeah, excellent question, are 11 people total bomb on this program, right? Where did it go wrong? So if we look at purpose I described, purpose is doing the right thing for the right reason. And I would tell you that that’s a it’s a really introspective heart matter. So first and foremost, we launched that program to make money and we did not have the reverse in our mind when we went out. So that was kind of one inside a purpose. It should be mission oriented. That one was. But then you and I both know that anything that we start is is going to take longer, be harder and will be more frustrating than we planned. And we didn’t have team members that were passionate about it. And then beyond that, in that people, buckett, we didn’t have the capacity to deliver. We had three main team leaders. And I would tell you that all of us were carrying 10 pound sacks that had 20 pounds worth of stuff in it. And and we didn’t have any bandwidth to make sure that this got anywhere. So did the program have tremendous promise? Yeah, it did. Right. Like there’s a funding model in place that worked. We knew that the audience was out there because we could see it elsewhere and people were telling us this. We really missed out on doing something for the right reason and making sure that the team was equipped and in a place where they could do it with good intention and just run full speed into the unknown.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:19] So then maybe looking back, doing it a different way, maybe the same concept, but finding that super fan that really believed in this and testing it only in their one location to get some traction and learn in this pilot program with a small group of people. And seeing actual success from it might have been an easier way to kind of ease into this or get more escape velocity.

Jon Kidwell: [00:16:43] That is exactly what it is, we use that concept inside a promise. Call it a test and see that it is good. And so get your small, small group of people, ask people for feedback, find out like, hey, this is different than Weight Watchers. Did this work and feel and sound the same as this program. Right. This is a little different than this, but run some people through the program, get some tests, tweak along the way. The key there is making sure that you’re not just asking a whole bunch of people pleasers for yourself, but really testing and seeing how people are going to respond to that. And when you do that, then then, you know, OK, this has promised, right. We’ve had both good and bad feedback. We’ve tested it a couple of times. We have great results. People are ready to give us reviews. We’ve also built some brand ambassadors.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:32] And that’s an important I think that I think that this is people in both for profit and nonprofit forget this part of it, that they’re looking to scale too quickly. They got to kind of earn their way to scale. And you earn it by I think Seth Godin calls it the minimum viable audience that you have to kind of master this small, get all the bugs out and then organically scale. It isn’t something like, hey, we got this idea. We have access to 100000 people. Let’s just spewed it out there and see what happens. I think that people are looking for shortcuts. And then you really got you can’t do that. You got to earn your way up the ladder.

Jon Kidwell: [00:18:14] You’re absolutely right. And if we think about the people in that smallest viable audience that that you were talking about, that’s the group that it should be for. That’s the group whose problem you are aiming to solve. And if it is extremely successful, as you said, that group grows because others then see, oh, maybe that is a problem that I want solved or it’s working for these people. What are they doing in that smallest viable audience should be paired with the size of funding model that you’re planning on, right? If my smallest viable audience is 50 people, it should match the return that I need to make sure I can keep delivering the program for those people or whomever else comes in. So that’s kind of testing, right? If if my smallest viable audience for that program launch was going to be twenty five hundred people and we never served more than two hundred either, didn’t test that audience well enough or I didn’t build a funding model that keeps us serving those two hundred people properly.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:15] Now is there a typical kind of point of entry for you and your work? Is the nonprofit struggling with something or you coming in in a crisis where they’re like, hey, we got to do something, we better call John and his team? Or is it something that there are leaders out there that are being proactive that say, you know what, we’re plateauing, we want to get to a new level, let’s let’s call John in this team?

Jon Kidwell: [00:19:39] Yeah. So that was. Where I am now in terms of where I enter nonprofits, is it’s typically in an executive transition. So someone has coming in and they’re looking at, OK, we either need to improve some of our programs or we need to launch new. And right now is one of those times, kind of as we exit out of the covid pandemic and people are re reimagining and re engaging and we’re not quite fully here yet. We’re kind of in this limbo and they’re saying, what what is it going to look like for us on the backside of this? We changed everything and now we might have to change everything again. So executive transition or crisis and then also just when they’re doing innervating dreaming and thinking about what’s possible, it usually is tied to some sort of change in terms of leadership money or kind of the stability of the organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:41] Well, if somebody wanted to learn more and have a conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Jon Kidwell: [00:20:47] So the website is my name, John Kidwell Dotcom. And it’s Jon without an H. I figure you can’t hear it, so I don’t need it. So Jon Kidwell, dot com. And for anyone that goes there, you know, a volunteer, a board member, nonprofit leader, we have a free resource I would love to give away to them. And it’s seven powerful reasons why non-profits need to earn money. They can get that just by sharing their email with us. And for those nonprofit leaders, they get it or board members that want to take something back to their nonprofit. We do put in some ideas, money making services that are available and really popular inside the non-profits.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:26] Good stuff. Well, Jon, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jon Kidwell: [00:21:33] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:34] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Importance of having a servant heart and business mind for nonprofit leaders today
  • Why is it important for nonprofits to earn money
  • Where should they start if a nonprofit does not have a program or services that they charge for
  • Service that lands in the middle of Purpose, People, Promise

Business Coach Carol Benson

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carolbenson
Coach The Coach
Business Coach Carol Benson
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Carol-Benson-logo

carolbenson

Carol Benson helps business owners and leaders transform “work is hard” attitudes to become better versions of themselves by unlocking joy and thriving capacities to create more time, energy, revenue, purpose alignment to have ease in work and life.

With a master’s degree in communication disorders & sciences, Benson is an international bestselling author, speaker, and certified conscious business coach, with over thirty years of experience as a communication, social, and emotional IQ strategist.

Connect with Carol on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Joy Mindsets for Entrepreneurs
  • Mindfulness
  • Flow
  • Habits
  • Scheduling
  • Intuition
  • Positivism

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to Barak’s Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have with us Carol Benson, who’s a conscious business coach. Welcome, Carol

Carol Benson: [00:00:43] Hello. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us what it’s like as a conscious business coach. Who do you serve and how do you do it?

Carol Benson: [00:00:54] Well, I work with entrepreneurs, a lot of them are cultures, I, I do it with one of the ones I also do group programs, I do some mentoring and of course, speaking speaking to groups. I love that. And of course, way back when we used to do retreats. Right. So maybe one day soon we’ll have them again, pretty high level intimate groups where it’s all about transformation.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:24] So now in your work, what is the challenge that your clients are having before they spend time with you?

Carol Benson: [00:01:32] Well, what I find is that oftentimes people are staying doing what they’re doing just because it’s comfortable, although they know they’re stuck and many are in that survival, you know, scramble, hustle and grind of making ends meet, constantly promoting to get clients what your cash cashflow survival mode, if you will. And I find that that there’s a lot of anxiety about how do you change and make it easy to get unstuck and to be in. I’m all about joy. So how do you elevate your life with joy and all these hidden places that you might not pay attention to, which just puts you in the flow and the ease? And that’s where the magic happens. It’s not we but it’s it’s really having clear intentions, getting on your purpose and allowing it to unfold with ease.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:34] So now when you say kind of getting into this flow state or finding your purpose and letting it kind of flow with ease, is it something that these people are doing kind of subconsciously they’re self sabotaging, or is it just something they’re not aware of they didn’t even know could be possible? And then you’re kind of unlocking that for them?

Carol Benson: [00:02:53] Oh, completely. Completely. I mean, so much has to do with mindset that’s first place. And of course, if you are a coach, what do we all work with? Mindset and I, I know so many coaches who are personal friends, colleagues, and I hear them sometimes. And I just have to if I you know, I always ask for permission. Can I reflect back to what I just heard you say? And they’re shocked because it is such a natural tendency to go into the negative based on your past experience. That’s why our brain goes if you understand brain science. So it’s really becoming more aware of how can you focus your perceptions in a whole new direction? And that’s what creates more of a flow and need.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] Just now, you said that people tend to go negative almost instinctively or maybe evolutionarily to keep us safe. Is it possible to to eliminate that? Because part of that is for our own good, right. Is to keep us safe.

Carol Benson: [00:03:59] That’s right. Well, you know, we we as humans, we reference from past experience, right. Whatever it is, career, relationships, financial, your your origins, who your mentors were. And we all have those experiences that didn’t feel that it was negative. If you look at it. But there’s a gift hidden. So if I always say use the past to inform where you are right now and where you want to be, because I, I do actually. I do a process with people called edit your life for Joy and really looking at your entire life, even even the pumps and those yucky things that created a lot of suffering and pain. And how do you look at it and find. Well, if this didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be who I am today. So to see the gift and that really shifts at all. So that becomes your where your mind goes as opposed to being tugged into the past negative experience that you had.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:13] Now you use the word joy, and I’m sure that was on purpose. How do you kind of discern between joy and happiness? A lot of people are trying to maybe sell happiness pretty hard, but you seem to kind of gravitate to the word joy. So how do you separate the two?

Carol Benson: [00:05:29] Well, I think oftentimes happiness is it is a destination. I’ll be happy when I get X, when I achieve X, then I’ll be happy. Joy is something that just internal sense of how you view the world. I say it’s kind of like putting on your your lenses of joy, those rose glasses. And it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be Pollyanna, pouty and naive about what’s going on. But if you look at something in a different way, you can access that joy. I always I was you know, I didn’t know I had this favorite aunt that I absolutely adored. And whenever I knew I was going to see her, I my whole body just felt like, oh, this is bliss. And the reason was because of how not only how I felt around her, but how she was so unconditional and. Loving and supportive, and it gave me joy, so I used her as a reference for me. Oh, how do I feel with this connection or this relationship in business, or do I really want to take on this client? If I’m feeling all stressed out and tense, that’s not going to give me joy. So to go around what your question was. I know I’m taking a while to get to what it’s an internal sense that you can access. And there’s joy everywhere. There’s joy everywhere that we don’t always. It could be in your environment. What is your office look like right now? Is it chaotic or messy? So when you walk in your whole body, your whole nervous system just goes to like stress and contraction. Or when you walk into it, do you feel relaxed, like, oh, this is my place, this is my haven, this is my little cave that I’m working in right now. And it feels good. I feel energized that access joy, there’s just different ways. But it’s a sense inside that you can access any time. It’s not always a destination or goal like happiness can be attached to.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:50] Now, let’s give our listeners some, maybe some counsel when it comes to dealing with the chaos of the pandemic that hopefully is on the way out and there can be some sense of getting back to the way things were. Is there any advice you would give somebody who is feeling overwhelmed that it’s trying to put up a good front and and and be positive and to focus on all the good stuff? But there just seems like it’s a kind of a never ending train of of kind of chaos around them that even matter to their best efforts. They’re trying to live this purposeful life that’s fulfilling life, but their resilience is being tested.

Carol Benson: [00:08:37] One thing that I learned long ago when my resilience was really being challenged is that and that’s when I lost everything. So when this pandemic happened, I thought, OK, I have the economic. Financial. History of losing multimillion dollar businesses and everything, so this is now just the health issue. So I thought, OK, I can do this, I can get through it, even though it was not an easy time for anybody, but I found more than ever. That daily morning foundation that I give myself, call it morning practice, call it a daily ritual, whatever you want to call it, but it encompasses several parts. One is I do not look at my phone for a good hour and a half to two hours in the morning, and I get up earlier, so I don’t have to I give myself a digital break. I don’t jump into the social media that that’s really part of the foundation I give myself. I meditate, I exercise and I mix up the exercise. So it’s not always the same thing. It doesn’t get boring and tedious and no one’s been going to the gym. So go outside. Even if it’s raining. Go walk outside and look at your surroundings. Stay present with nature. Let nature reset your nervous system so you have nature of movement, walking, exercise new learning, activate your brain if there’s something you want to learn.

Carol Benson: [00:10:23] Do you want to learn a new language? Spend 20 minutes during that time. That’s yours in the morning to practice a new language or read of a book to learn a learn new tools or strategies. Listen to a podcast, something to activate your brain and of course, hydrate. Hydrate yourself and. Put good food and nutrition in your body and then. What happens is you are so well-equipped for whatever the day brings you, I find if I skip my morning time that foundation. My day changes, it’s not as smooth as if conflicts happen, if, you know, there’s always uncertainty, people may schedule. You think your day is going to look like one way and it turns into something else. But I find that the more calm I am inside of myself, it’s like, no, no problem. That that’s my mantra. Whatever shows up, no problem. And that that is my one piece of this is like the golden gem for everyone. If you are a coach and entrepreneur, take care of yourself first. Then you can best serve the people that you are working with.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:50] And when you’re working with, you don’t know. When you’re working with your clients, do you help them form this daily practice, this daily routine that can be that foundational element that gets their day off to a productive start.

Carol Benson: [00:12:03] I do, I do, and it’s amazing the feedback I get from clients who come back to me and they say I usually, you know, they’ll say things like, I’m always put everyone first. I didn’t put myself first. And now that I’ve started doing that, even their relationships with their partners are much easier because they’re they’re nourished from the inside out. Then they have more to give and they’re not getting depleted and working as a coach. I’ll give you a mindfulness tool that I, I realized about myself. Many of you out there may be highly intuitive and empathic. We feel the pain of others. And when we are working with clients, it can be draining. And I’ve had moments in my coaching life where I was so tired at the end of the day and I realized it was because I was allowing my energy, that empathy to deplete me. So I shifted it to compassion. And so it has that using compassion for their experience and trying to understand why they respond the way they do it, it neutralizes me losing my energy and I’m much more present and available. So that’s a quick little mindfulness tool that helps as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:39] Now, do you find that there’s entrepreneurs out there that kind of lean into the chaos and and almost kind of habitually create chaos so that instead of scheduling their day or instead of having positive habits, they’re kind of just winging everything every day and every day’s a new adventure. And then because of that, they’re really not moving forward. They’re moving, but it may not be moving forward towards their goals.

Carol Benson: [00:14:07] Oh, I think that’s probably the biggest roadblock to to many coaches. They seek the problems. They look at it, but they’re the ones scheduling themselves to be that way. I think that healthy habits, there’s a really good book. It’s called Atomic Habits by James Clear. I highly recommend this book because it gives you very specific ideas of how to add new habits to your day in terms of your schedule. If you want to add something new you’ve had a challenge with and it makes a difference. And when you can see that there’s very few things we can control in our life, but we can control our schedule, we can control our sleep schedule, what we put in our bodies, our exercise, who we want to hang out with and the schedule of our day. So what I find is when you control your schedule and you include time, downtime for yourself, where you might take a 10 minute break and you go walk, don’t get sucked into the social media, schedule your social media check time. I usually do it in the afternoon. I might glance at it in the morning, but I try not to. And it’s amazing how much more time I have at the end of the day. So when you can feed yourself and really care for your energy, you. You’ll find that the chaos just brushes off of you. It just floats off. OK, chaos, uncertainty. Cool. What’s an X? What’s possible in this chaos as opposed to, oh, my day is ruined. Look at what has happened. It’s a very different approach.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:03] Now, can you share a story, maybe a before and after working with a client, obviously don’t name their names, but maybe share the challenge that they had and that how you were able to help them overcome it and get to a new level?

Carol Benson: [00:16:17] Well, I’m going to think of the first client, but just came in. I was working with a medical doctor who felt as if she was the only woman on our whole team and she felt that there. And that’s only significant because there seemed to be that old fashioned good old boys club. Even in her profession. She was top of her game speaking at conferences, the whole thing. But she felt contracted and stressed like there she wasn’t satisfied anymore, even though she loved her profession and she had a lot of. Blame towards one of her parents for they couldn’t have done this when I was growing up, they could have they should have done that, you know, that that blame mom and dad kind of mind set. And I asked her questions to really understand what was going on with her. And it turned out that she had a whole list of things of where she was not enough. Now, keep in mind, this is a highly educated person on top of her game, speaks at all the international conferences and her specialty area, and she still felt she was not enough. So I gave her exercise to do or just write down a whole list of I’m not enough and just list at all whatever it is. And she the next time and she checked in with me, she sent it to me, I shared it with me. And our next session we looked at it and I said, OK, what? I want you to decide what’s really true.

Carol Benson: [00:18:26] And out of a list of about 20 things, maybe there was three things that were true. The rest was all the stories she was telling herself. And what was uncovered for her is that her heart? Was really. Impacted by all the blame and becoming defensive and having to be the best at everything. She was a perfectionist and had to be top of the game, highly competitive. So when she identified that about herself, a very interesting thing happened because we were on a Zoome call. I could see her shoulders drop, her whole body shifted her. She had this huge smile on her face and she just looked at me and she said, Oh, I got it. And I took her through forgiveness processes about her one parent that she was really having a hard time forgiving. And so the change in her was immediate. And from that moment, I helped her identify more of her purpose, which was keeping her specialty area as a physician and putting it into a coaching or teaching model for parents with children. And it was I’ve been watching her for the last year. What she is doing is phenomenal. I’m so proud of her. And she’s still working as a physician, but she’s delighted and enjoy because she’s doing her purpose. She discovered what was in her way through us working together. So it’s really it was like this flower just blossoming.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:22] So, wow, that’s a really amazing story, powerful story. And it shows that a lot of the time the answer is within you. And and it’s kind of stares you in the face a lot of times and you just have to kind of see it, that’s all.

Carol Benson: [00:20:39] Yes. Well, everybody has blind spots. And when you’re really working with someone who is not they don’t have their own agenda for you, but they allow what is inside of you to naturally unfold and you elicit it so that they can elevate their life and into more aligned, purposeful existence where they do have that joy and happiness and meaning in all areas of their life. So, yes. Well, that’s great.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:17] Yeah, well, it’s amazing work, Carol. It’s a it was an amazing story. And your expertize and your knowledge in this space is just phenomenal. And if somebody wants to learn more, have a conversation with you or somebody on your team and get unstuck. Is there a website they can go to?

Carol Benson: [00:21:34] Yeah, my website should be up there. We’ve been there’s been some glitches with it, but when I have my assistant on my Web person, she’s been having some issues, but it’s Carol C.A.R., OEL, Bentson B and also an M A for Masters dot com. So that’s Carol Benton M a dot com. And if you’re on LinkedIn, feel free to connect with me. I do. I actually do look at my LinkedIn messages. That’s that’s another way to connect with me. So it’s been a really a pleasure. I love these questions and I’m happy if anyone has specific. Think that they’ve been struggling with I’m happy to schedule, you know, a 15 minute call or whatever and just support you in any way. Well, I or point you in the right direction. So I’m happy to be available for that. It’ll be a delight, actually.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:37] Well, thank you for that generous offer. Again, Carol Benson, Carol Benson, MEDCOM is a website. Connect with her on LinkedIn at Carol Benson. And thank you for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Carol Benson: [00:22:53] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:55] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Edward Gorbis With Career Meets World

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Edward-Gorbis-Career-Meets-World
Coach The Coach
Edward Gorbis With Career Meets World
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Career-Meets-World

Edward-Gorbis-Career-Meets-WorldEdward Gorbis is a career and business coach and author of the book Unbreakable Mindset. Edward works with immigrants and first-generation professionals and entrepreneurs on how to rapidly accelerate their careers and businesses without sacrificing their lives.

By eliminating the doubt, overwhelm, stress, frustration inherent in the demands of navigating the business journey, Edward’s clients achieve rapid growth in their career while creating fully integrated and thriving lives. Through his one on one coaching and online mindset program, Edward’s clients learn the strategies and systems necessary to maximize their career and financial potential and live a life of fulfillment.

Edward is the CEO of Career Meets World, an online coaching platform, startup advisor, and the host of the Career Meets World podcast. Edward was formerly a civil engineer turned Senior Sales Leader at WeWork and has led various teams to generate more than $50MM in revenue over the last 10 years.

Connect with Edward on LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why are belief systems so important
  • Advice you’d leave for ambitious leaders and founders

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to our Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one today, we’ve we have with us Edward Gorbals with Career Meets World. Welcome, Edward.

Edward Gorbis: [00:00:43] Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about career meets world, how you serve in folks.

Edward Gorbis: [00:00:51] Absolutely, so for me, career, my world is really about empowering both immigrants and first generation leaders who really want to thrive both in business and life. For me, it’s really been a journey around understanding that as an immigrant myself from Ukraine, having grown up in the US and having everything my parents afforded me, it’s really just been a journey about serving that demographic and empowering those individuals because they really are the backbone of the US. And oftentimes they have kind of the work ethic, the discipline and the tenacity. But what I found is they don’t necessarily always have the tools and strategies to truly play an effective game within this business game that we all play now.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] Talk about your back story. How did you get involved in coaching?

Edward Gorbis: [00:01:42] So coaching is just kind of a core part of my DNA. It’s something that I found myself doing very early on, even let’s call it middle school, high school, college. It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed doing informally through mentorship, facilitation, through internships, and basically throughout my entire corporate career and over the last 10 years, I really enjoyed spending time in leadership positions, growing teams. And I realized that I actually want to create a lifestyle for myself where I can do this all the time because I just enjoy helping people so much. So once I had that realization is kind of important epiphany. It was just a combination of all the skill sets, all the experiences that I’ve had. And I packaged it into coaching. And now I’m fortunate to work with both founders as well as executives at a variety of different companies and really help strengthen their ability to both lead and grow their organizations.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:43] So now we’re always working primarily with immigrants.

Edward Gorbis: [00:02:48] So I was and it’s not necessarily something that I will say that I formally have to work with immigrants or FirstRand is just naturally I can empathize with their story more. I understand it more and can understand where they’re coming from. But that being said, I work with other individuals who don’t necessarily fall into that bucket.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:07] Now, when you’re working with first generation professionals and entrepreneurs, do you find that they proudly identify themselves as that or is that something they kind of keep on the down low?

Edward Gorbis: [00:03:19] So it’s funny that you ask that, because what I found, especially over the last year, we’ve had this heightened conversation around just different race and backgrounds and ethnicity. What I in speaking with a lot of people is that companies, for example, have employee resource groups or urges that focus on specific individuals, whether you’re black or Latino, X or some other demographic. But oftentimes there’s this underlying pin that I found, which is people don’t necessarily want to be bucketed as being Luddin X or black. They might come from Nigeria or Ethiopia or somewhere in South America, whether it be Chile or Argentina. And they simply understand that they came to America like many immigrants, due to be hyper successful. So it’s not something that they traditionally identify themselves. But as I put out more content, have more conversations like this one, people simply realize I’m an immigrant, I’m a hard worker, and I came here for a very specific purpose. So I’m starting that conversation with a lot of companies with different voices. And it’s been really interesting to see this narrative shift, at least through the conversations that I’ve had with a variety of different folks.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:38] Now, when you’re working with those folks, are do you feel that they have maybe a greater sense of urgency than folks that have been around for multiple generations?

Edward Gorbis: [00:04:48] One hundred percent. I always tell people that if you don’t struggle, you don’t appreciate. And for me, I’ve realized that oftentimes most immigrants have some level of struggle. You don’t have to be an immigrant to struggle. But oftentimes they come to America because their life, wherever they currently are, is not as good as they believe it can be. And it’s that struggle that gives them that drive that edge to really be successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:15] Now, where did their parents come into play? Is it something that the parents are like, look, dude, I sacrificed a lot to get you here and Nasier, so don’t screw this up and I need you to have the pedal to the ground.

Edward Gorbis: [00:05:29] Absolutely. It really obviously depends on at what age do you immigrate to the States? For me, I moved here when I was five. Other people move here when they 20, 25, 30 are really just depends on who and what is driving you. But oftentimes a lot of that edge does come from your parents. Even ancestral kind of experiences really push people to want to continue to flourish and do other things and propel themselves to that next level. So it really depends on the individual story to understand where that edge really kicks in.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:04] But there is some kind of you find a consistent when you’re dealing with these folks, a consistent kind of. I don’t know if I want to use the phrase, but I’ll say it anyway, like chip on their shoulder, that I got to prove something quickly. I don’t want to let down my family. There’s a lot of pressure on me to succeed and I’m going to do whatever it takes. There are less about victim blaming and more about I got to make this happen any way possible.

Edward Gorbis: [00:06:30] Absolutely. You’re spot on because oftentimes those people really understand how short and precious life is and there’s zero time to waste to go into the complaining game or victim game. It’s really about a growth mindset, opportunity mindset. And that’s really a big part of how I try to partner with people is making sure they’re focused on the right things and channel their energy in the right way.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:54] So what are some of those things you’re helping them focus on? So if they have the work ethic, they have the desire, they have the kind of can do attitude, what is it that they’re lacking in order to take their career, their life to the next level?

Edward Gorbis: [00:07:11] Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think, again, this applies to anyone, but in general, especially for the immigrants, and first then it just boils down to, yes, you have that energy, that work ethic. But oftentimes what I find people and I tell people is that they need personal guidance. They really need that personal GPS system to help steer them in the right direction. So for me, it’s about one making sure that we pour the right foundation together, which is really predicated on having the right type of mindset. So, again, even though they have this hunger and desire, it’s not always fixed, meaning sometimes it deviates into our world of complaining or playing the victim game. So strengthening one’s mindset is the core of what I do. And then beyond that, it’s really understanding what do they want to achieve, having that goal alignment, having that clear crystal pathway to what do we need to tweak, improve, elevate, kind of further educate them on and get them the right tools and skill sets so that they can actually flourish and go out and achieve whatever it is that they want. Most people, and let’s call it failing or not achieving what they actually want is because they flounder and they kind of wave through life and they’re not sure of what they really want. There’s no clarity. So I try to get some of that clarity. I try to elevate their minds in a way that they’re showing up in a powerful way every single day and having that growth mindset through and through.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:39] So now this mindset. How did you kind of develop this is this something that you did on your own or you read a lot of books or had a lot of mentors or had a lot of coaching yourself and then kind of put it all together? Like, how did you kind of come up with this philosophy?

Edward Gorbis: [00:08:56] It’s probably a cocktail of all of them, to be honest. The truth is, I’m a huge mindset nerd and I have always loved reading psychology, books, neuroscience books, metaphysics, spirituality. And I’ve kind of kind of combined all of this into my own format of mindset. And what really makes sense to me has worked for me. And now I spend a lot of time teaching others as well through conversations such as this or through talks through one on one coaching, through just group coaching at companies as well. It’s just really helping them understand how do we look at life in a way that makes sense, that isn’t actually taught in school. Right. I think you and I both wouldn’t have had the success that we’ve had in different ways if we don’t look at life in a particular way and shown up with the right energy. So for me, it’s about helping people understand how the mind actually works. It doesn’t need to get hypertechnical, but it’s helping them understand how your brain thinks. So why things a certain way. And then once we unpack that, then we can really curate what you want your conscious mind to look like.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:06] So you believe this is universal, like this would work here in America? I would work in any country, any group. If they followed this kind of methodology, they’d be able to achieve some level of success.

Edward Gorbis: [00:10:18] In my opinion, one hundred percent, I’m not going to say that we need to 100 percent replace classic Western medicine in the sense of just any sort of mental health practices. People deal with different things. But if you’re ambitious, if you’re hungry and you are ready to actually do the work, then yes, I 100 percent believe this would work across the board.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:41] So let’s give our listeners some homework. What something they could be doing today that could help unlock some of this.

Edward Gorbis: [00:10:50] Yeah, so one of the first things that I share with anybody is that it’s really important to understand where our belief system comes from because our beliefs are decisions that we have every single day and they drive our results or beliefs, drives our thoughts, our thoughts, drives our feelings, our feelings, drive our actions, our actions drive our results. So in order to actually understand how we’re showing up every single day, we have to unpack what our current belief system is. So the homework assignment that I often give to people and I would share to anyone listening is take a piece of pen and paper, spend five, 10, 15 minutes. Just give yourself permission to do this exercise. Sit down, write down. What do you actually believe? Right. It could be I am not a great public speaker. I will never get a job. I will never get a promotion. It’s OK to write down what we call limiting beliefs. Write them down. Now, I want the next step is actually give yourself permission to come up with any belief that you actually want for yourself. So flip everything upside down. I will get that job. I will get that promotion. My success is inevitable. My life is abundant, money is abundant. Whatever it is, you can go down the list. You can have one belief. You can have 50 beliefs. Write them down. And the next column, I want you to really write down all the supporting evidence in your life to prove that these beliefs are true. Do this every single day, and the reason this is important is because we will actually start to change all of the neuro synaptic connections in our brain and start to operate more powerfully. This exercise works. It is kind of the first step that I have everyone go through, every client go through. That’s what I write about in my book, Unbreakable Mindset, which is free to everyone. And it’s really about changing the way we look at life because our beliefs drives every single result in our life and it is so important to show up powerfully.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:56] So the activity of. As if as behaving as if is what helps kind of unlock the mindset and break some of those preexisting biases and kind of inertia, it may be in the wrong direction for people.

Edward Gorbis: [00:13:12] That’s exactly right. The ultimate goal is to Dehghan betrayed a lot of these old thinking patterns

Lee Kantor: [00:13:19] And that that’s what is holding people back by kind of falling into these, uh, kind of, uh, it’s almost like a record stuck on playing the same, you know, kind of thing over and over again. They can’t kind of get the escape velocity to to skip to keep moving.

Edward Gorbis: [00:13:40] That’s exactly right. I think oftentimes people hear this type of thinking and they brush it off or they might read it in some sort of inspirational and motivational post, whether it be on Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter. But it’s not something to gloss over because how we think and what we believe really dictates and produces our destiny. And oftentimes people end up on the hamster wheel because, look, our mind really works like a search engine and whatever questions we ask ourselves. Right. So if you wake up and you’re asking yourself, how do I show up the right way for my clients, how do I put out the best podcast? How do I show up powerfully in this interview? Your mind is going to find all the right answers for you through all your previous experiences. Well, if you ask yourself bad questions, you’re going to get all the wrong answers because your mind only has access to everything it’s experience before. So we have to do the work if we want to actually show up better, more impactful and more powerful every single day.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:41] So can you share a story of maybe somebody we’re working with, whether it’s individual coaching or group coaching or maybe what happened at a keynote that you gave or business you were coaching where you were able to help take that person or that organization to a new level? I don’t name any names, but maybe talk about what their challenge was and how you helped them through it.

Edward Gorbis: [00:14:59] Yeah, absolutely. So one of the examples that comes to mind is I was working with a woman who works at a multinational company that will stay on name, but she was working in their L.A. office and essentially they were heavily headquartered at a New York bar. And I’ve been working together. She’s just a high performer, super motivated and really wanted to step into that next leadership position. She’d never been in one and she wanted to take that next leap of faith for self and her career. The reality was when her and I were working together. Yes, there are some mindset tweaks that we had to make along the way. But she kept telling me this narrative, the story about all the reasons why she will not get picked to be that next leader in the West Coast because of geography reasons, because she’s not getting noticed. There’s not enough eyeballs. There’s politics within the company, you name it. We’ve all heard these excuses about why something will not happen. I’m sure anyone listening can come up with those for themselves. I’ve had them in the past myself as well. So all we did was just have a conversation about what are the right questions to ask yourself.

Edward Gorbis: [00:16:14] What does she actually believe? The she believe that she is an incredible leader. Does she have all the actual evidence in her life to prove that she has been successful? Are there ways for her to show up? So the leadership team in the New York headquarters actually sees what she does. When we started asking all of these questions and she was doing all the work, all that prompted her to do is simply ask herself the right questions. She started to find ways and opportunities to get in front of the leaders, to show herself off to everyone within the company so that people can actually understand what she was doing. Well, when that happened, within 30 days, she got the promotion that she wanted. So what I always tell people is that oftentimes we overcomplicate things to ourselves because we’re not asking ourselves the right questions. We’re not operating through the right belief system. We’ve tell ourselves a story that’s not being true and it’s actually hurting us day in and day out. And we cause more self-inflicted pain than we need to. So if we do the work, we show up and we commit to it, things start to show up for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:23] And then so this sounds like for most people these are kind of self-inflicted wounds. This isn’t really the universe collaborating against them. It’s us kind of collaborating against ourselves.

Edward Gorbis: [00:17:36] Exactly. I always tell people that life is working for us, not against us. And things don’t happen to us. Everything happens for us. So if we understand that if we show up the right way, everything will show up for us as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:50] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation about your work, your courses, your book, what is the best way to connect with you?

Edward Gorbis: [00:17:59] Absolutely. Thanks for asking me. The easiest way to find me is I hang out in a couple of places on the Internet, but you can visit my website at Career Meets WorldCom. Everything is available there for you and you can always contact me through there or via link. Then I spent a lot of my time there connecting, collaborating with folks. So find me on LinkedIn, that Edward Corvus.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:24] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success, Edward. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Edward Gorbis: [00:18:30] Thanks so much, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:31] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

 

 

Business Coach Casey Ryan

by

casey-ryan
BRX National
Business Coach Casey Ryan
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Alan-Carroll-and-Associates

casey-ryanCasey Ryan, with Alan Carroll and Associates, is a life and mindful communication skills coach. She is a former corporate hospitality manager who parlayed her love of leadership and helping others achieve success into a private coaching practice for entrepreneurs.

She assists clients in goal-setting, business planning, and incorporates mindfulness to take actionable steps in achieving the mindset of a business owner. Her passion for business and well-being led her to pursue speaking and hosting workshops to corporate clients about how to better implement self-care and mental health practices in the workplace.

Connect with Casey on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Overcoming fear and becoming a powerful speaker through mindfulness
  • How do we coach our clients through fears, how do we get them to realize their negative habits
  • The root cause to overcome the stumbling blocks of ineffective communication (personal and professional) and fear of presenting to an audience
  • What does “mindful communication” mean
  • How can learning mindful communication change someone’s life

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for coach the coach radio brought to you by the business radio embassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to BRX ambassador Dot com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach, and this is going to be a fun one today, we have with us Casey Ryan, who is with Alan Carol Associates. Here to talk about the mindfulness in action workshops. Welcome, Casey.

Casey Ryan: [00:00:46] Highly. Thank you so much for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Allan Carroll and Associates. How are you certain folks,

Casey Ryan: [00:00:55] Allan Carroll and Associates? We are mindfulness in action workshops or seminars. We base ourselves around public speaking for business professionals or individuals. And the difference with mindfulness and action from just a traditional public speaking workshop is that we focus on getting down to the root cause of the fear of getting up in public speaking and how to accelerate your sales skills, public speaking skills. And we do that. We get down to the root cause of the fear through the idea or practice of mindfulness.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] Now, does everyone have the same root causes that always kind of similar for most people?

Casey Ryan: [00:01:43] Yes, pretty much. It pretty much comes down to a fear of being seen as being you. You are in the spotlight if you’re standing up in front of a smaller sales group or even just at a dinner party, perhaps. And all eyes are on you and it gets down to that root fear of being seen, making a mistake, someone else’s judgment. And that can cause anxiety in someone of what is someone else thinking about me. And when that does happen, the biologically or physiologically, the brain will kind of go into overdrive and then it’s just a snowball effect. And yeah, the root cause pretty much with everyone would be a fear of judgment. To put it into a cute little nutshell. It’s the fear of judgments, the fear of being seen

Lee Kantor: [00:02:39] Now, or do people have different like does this get triggered by different things? Like maybe someone’s comfortable having a conversation one on one with someone, but they’re not comfortable maybe making small talk at a dinner party or they’re very uncomfortable making a toast at a wedding or, you know, or like you said, standing up in front of the team and, you know, giving a report.

Casey Ryan: [00:03:04] Right. Everyone’s comfort level varies. I can say for myself in particular, if it’s a smaller group, I actually find that I have more nervousness or anxiety in front of a smaller group, because that way it’s there’s more eye contact. It’s it’s more face to face. People are probably listening to me more intently for me personally, getting up in front of an audience, I don’t have as much trouble because it’s not as it’s close. So, yes, there is everyone has varying degrees of what their comfort level is or what will cause them to have that fear or anxiety. Sometimes it is a smaller dinner party. For most people, it is a larger group because they know that there’s more eyes on them, there’s more judgment that could happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:56] And then part of this practice is you said kind of leveraging mindfulness. Can you explain what mindfulness is?

Casey Ryan: [00:04:04] Oh, man. Well, I think there’s a lot of different definitions or ideas of this principle. The idea of mindfulness. Most people would say that to be mindful is to allow a thought to happen without judgment. And I think that’s the key, is without judgment. We would like to take it a step further, just to use a definition of the word mindful would be to be conscious or aware of something. And if you can be conscious or aware of something, then you have an opportunity to change it. Right. And and that’s where we can get down to that root causes of fear is we we allow our participants are we show our participants how to be mindful of their habits, how to be mindful of their their maybe if their body is shaking or if they get caught on words. How do we become mindful of that? How do we slow down our bodies? How do we slow down our thought process to become consciously aware of what is going on in our brain and in our bodies?

Lee Kantor: [00:05:20] Now, when someone’s kind of in that state and they’re feeling that kind of anxiety or fear is a couple of things are happening simultaneously. Right. So, like in one in. Into your mind might be kind of racing and spiraling and kind of catastrophizing the situation and then simultaneously your body is actually physically things are happening, right? Your heart is beating faster. You might really be sweating. You you could be physically shaking like all of those things are happening at the same time. And then does your body kind of go in overload with all this stimulus that, hey, I got to chill out. This is where mindfulness really could play an important role, where it can if you have those kind of mindfulness skills, to be able to kind of reset and just say, OK, your body is doing this, OK, these things are happening and you’re able to sort through them and kind of manage them.

Casey Ryan: [00:06:15] Exactly, and that is where what you had just mentioned, that our body will go into this overdrive and that is. It is a survival tactic that the body has its physiologically ingrained in us, we perceive a threat from the audience. Oh, their judgment judgment could mean that I’m socially ostracized and that just it happens without conscious thought. That is something that is ingrained in us as human beings and other animals have it as well. And what we will do is that you can be. Mindful of it, consciously aware of it, and then the mindfulness portion comes in more of this, you know, I guess you could call it a Buddhist principle of mindfulness, that idea to what you had just mentioned. You can have those feelings. You can have those thoughts and that physical reaction without judgment. So we teach you to be mindful, to be consciously aware of what is happening in your thought process and in your body. Oh, my heart’s racing. I’m starting to shake. I’m starting to sweat. You can become aware of that. And we also teach you tactics or skills to breathe, pause, acknowledge what is going on and to have those things happen without judgment. OK, I’m sweating. I can take a pause, I can take a breath. And very quickly, as it becomes more and more habit, is you practice the skills that we teach in our workshops to overcome that, you know, very, very quickly. All right. I’m sweating. It’s OK. I can take a breath. I’ve got this. And the more people practice that, just like a meditation or learning to play guitar is learning to play an instrument is a great example. You make a mistake, things are going to happen. Take a breath, reset and then go on. Can be aware of the mistake, but it doesn’t get you caught up to the point where you start making more mistakes and sweating, more stumbling over words and then completely bomb.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:38] Now, is this something that the reason, I guess it affects so many people and so many people have this fear of public speaking in general? Is it early on? It probably doesn’t happen that often. So when it did happen early on, you might have gone through this anxiety in this natural, like you said, kind of sequence occurs and you didn’t know that. You didn’t have the repetitions. They described the practice, and so it became overwhelming. And then from that point forward, it became something, you know, I don’t do that or I can’t do that. And some people maybe are more comfortable in that environment, says, I love that this is I love that rush. You know, they reframed all of that anxiety as adrenaline and, you know, like because a lot of those bodily functions, you could look at them in a different way and saying, that’s me having fun. You know, I like that feeling. It doesn’t have to be negative of, oh, this is anxiety. It could be. Oh, this is exhilaration.

Casey Ryan: [00:09:41] Absolutely, and that’s something else that we look at is how do we take nervous energy and turn it into positive energy? How do we take the energy that your body is naturally producing? And instead of shaking, learning to use your body in a constructive manner through gesturing grandly or facial expressions. So, yes, absolutely. How do we take the nervous energy and turn it into positive energy? And as you said, some people really thrive off of the crowd and they thrive off of that energy. Even I’ll use Tony Robbins as an example. He he says before he goes on stage, he has this routine where he pumps himself up. And because there’s this nervousness that he has, but he jumps around and he pumps himself up and he changes the physiological makeup of this is something that is potentially a threat from the audience to this is great. I’m going to go out there, you know, I’m going to kill it. I do mine wear with my public speaking, not just in the workshops, but other engagements that I have. Of course, the negative thoughts still run through my head. The story that I tell myself to curb the anxiety or the fear is I’m here to be of service to to these people that have asked me to speak. I’m going to do a great job. Someone is going to get something out of it. My intentions are good. You know, I’m here to help. And and that really helps. And sometimes I do say if I mess up, you know, no one’s really going to notice. So there are different ways that we can channel the energy into into a different light. There are different thoughts that we can tell ourselves to, you know, to overcome the fear.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:47] And these kind of workshops, when you’re working with folks to help them through this, is this something that takes months is something that, you know, they read a book and they get the information like how do they how quickly can they kind of. I feel like they’ve made an improvement that’s tangible.

Casey Ryan: [00:12:07] Our workshops are three days long. They are depending on depending on the client. So we have normally, I would say when we’re in person, they are eight hours per day. So three days at our eight hour long workshops. And we give them all of the tools you get, all of the tools that we teach and we really have you stand up and practice, practice, practice. You will get up in front of the rest of the participants and practice at least twice per day. And as a coach, we would correct you through your I don’t want to call it a mistake, but make you aware of the habits that you have and then also redirect. Oh, Lee is doing this. Lee, are you aware that you’re shaking your head when you speak? All right. Some people have a head bobble. Are you aware that you’re doing this? And and then we correct that as we go through. We also will give homework throughout the night. But then most importantly, say, one of the big questions that we get from our participants is, can you really transform me into a professional public speaker in just three days? And the honest answer is, we don’t know if you will get up and give a TED talk after just three days, but we give you the tools and supplemental materials afterwards that you can use to practice every single day within casual conversation as well, where you can be mindful that when the time comes to get up on stage or have a sales meeting or an engagement party or something, you will feel comfortable speaking in front of that audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:02] Now, let’s talk a little bit about your back story. How did you become aware of Allan Carroll and associates like how did that kind of get into your radar?

Casey Ryan: [00:14:11] I have been doing I have been a private life and business coach since two thousand and eighteen. And so I focused more on life coaching or building, building a mindset for entrepreneurs. And a good friend of mine had taken the Mindfulness and Action Workshop, I believe, in about two thousand sixteen. And he absolutely loved it. It changed his life and he became a coach with Allen Carroll and Associates. And he came up here to visit in Chicago a few years back and was just raving about this. And you have to see it. The transformation in the students is just absolutely powerful. It’ll bring you to tears. And I said, this sounds like something I would love to do. And he got me in contact with Allen Carroll and his wife and they flew me down to Washington. I purchased Washington, DC, and I participated in one of their workshops and had an interview with them. And if you could imagine what a public speaking workshop coach interview would look like, it was very uncomfortable. And but they they loved me. And from there I started coaching with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:36] And then so you felt that this was a good resource for you and the folks that you coach, that this could help you help them more effectively?

Casey Ryan: [00:15:46] Oh, absolutely. For me, as a as a private coach as well, learning to slow down the mind and be consciously aware, this idea of mindfulness, to be consciously aware of our thoughts and how we react might not respond, but quickly react to those thoughts. For me to learn this skill from Alan Carolynn Associates immensely changed my coaching practice, I mean it immensely. It immensely changed my personal life as well, not just when I’m speaking to someone, but to be consciously aware of what is going on. Hey, let’s slow down the thoughts. What are you telling yourself right now? What is the physical reaction to be able to have that concrete skill and be able to bring that to my coaching clients as well? Has been a game changer

Lee Kantor: [00:16:48] And that transcends public speaking like that could be in in lots of different areas outside of standing up in front of other people.

Casey Ryan: [00:16:57] Absolutely, absolutely. It could be you’re walking down the street and you see something that disturbs you, a lot of times people just they might make a face, they might kind of wince, maybe their heart starts racing. But if if someone continues to practice these skills of full awareness, mindfulness and notices their thoughts, they’re walking down the street. They have that judgment. You can become aware of the judgment. You can start to question why am I judging this? What about this disturbs me? And then we can start to change our thought patterns. We can really start to dig deeper into what makes us tick. And if we if we’re aware of that and we understand it, we can start to change it. And when someone can do that, realizing that most of our fears, they’re not real. Right. Most of the things that disturb us are not outside of us. They’re within us. And when we take that time to pause and become aware of things, we can really start to change our judgments. And instead of reacting to something, we can learn how to respond because we’ve made a conscious choice.

Casey Ryan: [00:18:19] Most people. Whether it’s public speaking or just walking down the street and something disturbs us, those things are habitual. We are just through life experience. We have just been programmed to do that. Right. It’s the beauty of our brain efficiency. But what happens is that most people then start to sell themselves short in life because they start to listen to that automatic thinking, the fear that is there, instead of taking a step back and asking for first being aware that the fear is there and that it’s not real, and then asking, where does this fear come from? Is it valid? Why am I listening to this voice, which is not the true you. It’s just a habitual thing that we’ve created throughout life. And when we can when we can do that, we can start to then go back and say all the facts that are on the table, do not match the fear that I’m having here. Right. And then you can start to take smaller actions to to change those fears. Right. We can start to build new habits.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:28] Right, but they have that self-awareness is a critical component of this, and it sounds like the mindfulness where if you can really embrace and lean into mindfulness, you can kind of take that beat and discern between something that’s really a threat or something that’s just kind of you on autopilot have seen threats that maybe rhyme with this threat. And you’ve already assumed that this is so when in actuality it probably isn’t.

Casey Ryan: [00:19:57] Absolutely, absolutely. And as you had mentioned in your previous question, that what we teach, we centered around public speaking because that is how Alan Carroll got started in in his endeavors 30 plus years ago with Cisco Systems and teaching teaching their salespeople. But what we have transformed into is this, you know, using the principle of mindfulness. So while we teach this on the platform of public speaking or presentation skills, we aren’t just saying when if someone takes our workshop, one of the main things that we let them know is we’re not just teaching you about public speaking. We are teaching you how to react to life. And one of the most threatening things in life can be public speaking or this fear of being seen. So this isn’t just when someone is on a stage, it is in casual conversation. How do I make my message more effective to someone? How do I if someone says something to me that disturbs me, how do I not react to them and get upset and start to shout, how do I educate them differently? And it’s also a reflection on life to be consciously aware of, of the actions and the choices that we make in life. We’ve had countless I mean, what I say countless. I mean countless students during a one of our mostly one of our public workshops say. On day two, I’ve called my wife, I’m questioning everything that I’m that all these decisions that I’ve made, I called my wife and my children and I told them how much I love them. Right. When we have time to pause and reflect for a second and we are not on autopilot, we really start to appreciate what we have and perhaps start to question some decisions that we’ve made.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:05] So I think that this is tremendously valuable, especially to entrepreneurs who feel a lot of responsibility and weight on themselves for the success of their endeavor, whatever that may be, whatever size that is. But it would help to me. It doesn’t require other people like this would help me if I’m feeling overwhelmed or if I’m planning my business or if I’m setting goals for my organization to have that kind of. OK, let me just take a beat and just really assess what’s going on here and look at what’s real good and try to discern what’s not and what is kind of this tape in my head that maybe I’m just kind of going through this autopilot and really let me kind of look at the situation as it is rather than what I think it is. I think to take that beat and to be mindful of that transcends not just public speaking and maybe public speaking and presentations. Is your entry point to an organization or an individual. But I think that this practice kind of goes well beyond that, because these skills are transferable to me, to lots of different areas of life.

Casey Ryan: [00:23:18] Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And that is that is our tagline, is the power of a pause, right. When we can learn to utilize truly the power of the pause, this space a moment in time that can really transcend public speaking or presentation skills. Absolutely. Absolutely. I get it. It’s how do we how do we interact with our fellows? How do we interact with ourselves and how do we interact with with life? Basically, what are the thoughts that I’m telling myself that caused me so much fear or nervousness?

Lee Kantor: [00:24:00] Well, it’s a it must be such rewarding work when you see so many light bulbs going off and having the impact you’re having on all these folks that are going through these workshops and really kind of learning about these skills and hopefully improving and getting better at these skills, because I’m sure you can learn the skills in three days and intellectually understand them. But to really use them day to day is it becomes like a practice that you have to do every day.

Casey Ryan: [00:24:27] All right, again, you can do it in casual conversation with one of our call it homework, things that you could do to practice every day speaking in front of the mirror and learning to pause in between words and in that space of silence. Listen. Being consciously aware of the thought that you’re telling yourself, are you telling yourself this is ridiculous, whatever you might tell yourself, we want you to be consciously aware of that. Right? Slow everything down. And we mostly we mostly teach business professionals. We have contracts with international companies. And we we bring people into our public workshops that their companies will send them to us. And really in the professional or the business world, communication skills are it might not say let’s have great communication skills on the job requirements, but once you get in there for the interview. Communication is key. You know, the technical abilities might land you the interview, but if you can’t sell yourself and your technical abilities to the interviewer, you may not get your job that you’re that you’re hoping to get looking for promotions or people that get chosen for the best projects. Communication skills in the workplace are key to advancement. Right. And to just building great relationships. And that’s really where we’d like to to come in with our business professionals is not just, again, when you’re on a stage, but how do you effectively communicate with your coworkers?

Lee Kantor: [00:26:14] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the website?

Casey Ryan: [00:26:20] Our website is a seeI, so it would be Alan Carolynn associate, so ask a mindful you, so ask a mindful and then why are you dotcom.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:36] Good stuff. Well thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Casey Ryan: [00:26:42] Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:43] All right, this is Lee Kantor, we will see you next time on Coach the coach radio.

 

 

Business Coach Grace Hao

by

Grace-Hao
Coach The Coach
Business Coach Grace Hao
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coach-with-grace

Grace-HaoGrace Hao is the founder and President of Coach with Grace. She is grateful to be inspiring leaders locally, nationally, and internationally through her speaking, writing, and educational programs. She is a co-author of several Best Selling Books including, Build it Big, More Build it Big, and Mom Entrepreneur Extraordinaire.

Grace is a Certified Coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches (WABC) Certified Business Coach (CBC). She has more than 20 years of experience as a business owner, facilitator, and professional speaker. She recently received the honor of being named the National Advocate of the Year for Working Mothers and Outstanding Mother of the Year by the American Lung Association.

Grace loves being a devoted wife, mother of 8 amazing children and enjoys serving profitable corporations, educators, leading executives, non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs, and the government.

Connect with Grace on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Coaching with Quick Connects
  • Accelerate a Paradigm Shift
  • Co-Dependence or Independence
  • Coaching Competence & Confidence

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for coach the coach radio brought to you by the Business Radio Embassador program, a no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to B.R. ex Ambassador Dotcom to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach radio, and this is going to be a fun one today, we have with us Grace Hao. Welcome, Grace.

Grace Hao: [00:00:44] Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Koch with Grace, who you serve serving.

Grace Hao: [00:00:54] Yes, we are a S.B, a certified women owned small business, as well as a minority business enterprise. We get to work with people all over the world and servicing them with learning how to coach and then applying this leadership best practice with those that they get to collaborate with and serve. So it’s an honor to be a part of this profession.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:19] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved with coaching?

Grace Hao: [00:01:22] Well, it was it was not intentional. Somebody had offered me offered to coach me. And I was so resistant to that idea, I was like, no, thank you, because I thought that coaching was about fixing people. I thought it was about, you know, somebody is broken and someone’s going to come in and tell you what to do and how to do it and fix you. And so I was very resistant to it at first until I discovered really what coaching is and why it is so valuable. And my and transparently my life transformed. This was over 20 years ago. And, yeah, it’s it’s a completely new life and a new world as a result of coaching. So thank you for that question. I haven’t thought about that in a while now.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:14] Can you share a little bit for the folks who maybe have never been coached and they might be hesitant as well? Can you kind of give them the elevator pitch about what the coaches and how they can really take your business to a new level?

Grace Hao: [00:02:30] Yes, so a couple of things to keep in mind with coaching, coaching is known for accelerating success in high performance. It’s known as the leadership best practice. I like to use the term. It creates a space for people to awaken their creativity and inner wisdom and bring it to light and life. I think that coaching is such a gift. It’s it’s an invitation, not an expectation. So a couple of quick indicators of when we can know when when we’re more likely being coached than we are being trained. And that’s where there’s a lot of confusion around coaching versus training. And so a quick indicator would be when someone’s coaching us, they’re likely asking us questions. They’re likely listening. They’re likely looking for our best answers. When we’re experiencing training, a quick identifier is like is to look for the person that we’re communicating with is likely telling or sharing or giving us guidance or more, offering their suggestions of what to do and how to do it. That’s more of a trainer or mentor approach. And I think that that’s an important distinction to be aware of, whether you’re a coach or someone considering coaching. I like to use this quote. We I’ll share it with you really quickly. It’s one of my favorites by a gentleman, by the name of Carl Gustav. And he said those who look outside dream, those who look within a wakin. And that’s what I believe coaching can offer people.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:13] Now, can you walk us through what it’s like to work with you or somebody on your team? What is kind of the what’s my before and after? Like, what’s the pain I’m having before I discover you and your team? And then what is like a possible outcomes for me after I started working with you?

Grace Hao: [00:04:30] Sure. So, I mean, you know, it’s interesting, people come for different reasons. I had one lady, she said, Grace, after our first couple of coaching conversations, she said, I feel like I’m so good I don’t want to waste any of my coaching time. And I was like, well, this is the best time for us to work together. So it’s not just when there’s a pain. There were three best times to coach. So one of the best times to coach is when there was a significant goal. You’re stressing for something beyond your current business or life circumstances. Number two, when there’s a roadblock, it could be a limited belief, something that’s hindering your progress, something that’s standing between you and the life you prefer. And then the third best time to coach is when you’re looking for more clarity, whether that’s clarity around a plan, clarity around your vision for your business, your why, your dream, clarity around how to go from where you are to where you’d prefer to be. And those are three best times to coach. And so it’s what I like about that is that when people are saying, gosh. I have a challenge, this is when I want to seek out a coach or I, I want to optimize what myself I want to optimize my approach to my career or my relationships. So with us, people look to us and it’s interesting. I’m I’m a wife of one and a mother of eight. So I find that I have a lot of clients that look to me for coaching because because they know, OK, this is a business owner. She’s been in business for over 20 years. She works all around the world. I want and she creates she’s constantly and in innovation and creativity. I want to work with somebody that can relate to me. So and I’ve also worked with couples. I’ve worked with individuals, people. I’ve worked with CEOs, people that are looking for that extra edge in their career or even in their family life. That’s the people that come to me and then also people that are now committed to.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:52] Go ahead, I’m sorry.

Grace Hao: [00:06:55] Oh, sorry about that, Leigh. Please go ahead.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:57] Well, I was just wanted to clarify. So what I’m hearing you say is that it’s not only people that are struggling with the problem. These are just people that also want to take their business to new levels. They don’t have a necessarily a problem. They just want to make the most of the opportunity.

Grace Hao: [00:07:14] Yes, they want to maximize their moment. They want to maximize their time. They’re like, OK, this gives me this gives me an edge to accomplish something beyond where I’m at. I could be happy with the way things are going. I’m looking to accelerate that. I’m looking to multiply that impact. Also, what I’ve what some of our clients do is they they are looking to be coached so that they can strengthen their tools because they’re leading organizations. They want to experience the gifts that they’re getting. So they’re not just saying, OK, I’m doing this for myself. I’m also being model that that’s a best practice. I see every great coach has a coach.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:03] And then the people who are some of your clients, actual coaches.

Grace Hao: [00:08:10] Yes, many of my clients are coaches, many of my clients are applying coaching best practices in their businesses and in their relationships. Many of my clients are looking to create a coaching culture. And so they’re willing to be vulnerable and and to be reflective and to be coached through that any any process that they’re walking through. And then they can authentically, when they go to offer the gift of coaching, they can say, well, this is something that I’ve experienced firsthand. This is I to have a coach. I, too, am willing to be vulnerable in order to take my life to a new level.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:55] Now, are you finding that more and more organizations are trying to help their people kind of develop some leadership skills? And leadership is an important component of a lot of people’s work nowadays.

Grace Hao: [00:09:11] Oh, yes, we people are what they’re doing is they’re saying we want we are definitely looking to optimize the people in our organization that are representing our brand. A lot of organizations are have gone through transitions and they’re looking to they have let go or they have retired out. A lot of people that were the matriarchs or the leaders of of their organization during our global recent global staycation. And so now how do we how do we on board and then develop and identify, identify and develop these these next level, the leaders. So what I’ve done actually with one of our one of our clients, we we created a coaching curriculum for a major bank. And they use this as part of their leadership development for managers, middle management and above, because they want them to use these skills as they’re interacting with one another. So they’re bringing out the best in the people that are representing the brand. So, yes, the answer is absolutely. Yes, they’re looking to to develop leadership. They’re they’re doubling down on that investment. They’re saying, OK, how can we how can we develop these soft skills, these communication skills within our people?

Lee Kantor: [00:10:37] And can you share maybe some advice for those organizations to to do that, is there some low hanging fruit that they can be doing themselves before they enlist the aid of a coach, that they can help their people with these soft skills?

Grace Hao: [00:10:56] Sure. So one one thing that they can start doing is start to exercise, asking themselves some self coaching questions. So and what I’ve heard one woman said this to me. She said it was so it was so brilliant. She goes, Grace, I want to make sure that when I that I don’t that I that I don’t need you. I don’t need or rely on you. And I said, well, she said, I want to make sure that I’m not needing you. And so this is an important point for all coaches is how to not create codependents, how to create independence. This is an important piece of our profession and part of our accreditation through the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches is to do authentic coaching, and that is that there is a cycle to coaching. It’s not forever and always. One of the strategies, though, that I shared with this woman when she reached out to me and with this concern, as I said, I want to get clear. Have you exhausted all of your tools before calling me to be coached on this particular situation or not? And she said, Grace, I had to exercise all of the self coaching that I could, and I still was not I was not getting that clarity that I was looking for. I know as a coach, you will ask me the questions that I will not ask myself. So I thought that was a powerful message I wanted to share with you. In addition to that, though, so self coaching is that exercising and and using the tools that we already have. So using our who, what, when, where and how questions on ourselves coming from a place of discernment and curiosity, not judgment. The judge comes in many forms and sometimes it shows up in our questions. Usually the judge comes in the form of a why question. Why aren’t you further along? Why did you do that? Why are you like your sister? You don’t know what the why questions, the painful why questions. And so being mindful that why can carry a lot of judgment whether we’re using it on ourselves or someone else. So asking the two most strategic questions that we can ask ourselves begins with what and how.

Grace Hao: [00:13:23] So what are my possibilities for today? How could I, how could I, how can I work through this? What are my options, especially right now? There are a lot of people in our world that feel a little bit out of control. They don’t they feel like a lot of decisions are being imposed upon them. And so one a few self coaching questions that I’m going to give to all of you right now based on your quest, your phenomenal question, Lee, is what is within my sphere of influence? What do I have a stake in? How could I move forward, forward with this? What are the possibilities? What would be an alternative? These are questions that we can ask ourselves to put ourselves in the driver’s seat, give ourselves options versus an impossibility versus defeat. And so those are a few tips that I wanted to share with you as far as self coaching and to start exercising that muscle and ask yourself, oh, and remember, always the more beautiful answer for the more beautiful question, always the more optimized mindset for that optimized question.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:43] And do you find that? Some people just can’t get it out of their own way in terms of they do things to self sabotage themselves when like success could be right around the corner, but they’ll find a way to make a wrong turn or to to put a roadblock in front of it.

Grace Hao: [00:15:03] Oh, yes, oh, yes, there’s actually I’ve been doing quite a bit of study on positive intelligence and mental fitness and understanding, we have actually ten forms of self sabotage that we can activate and oftentimes our sabotage is our strength overused. Sometimes our sabotage is our strength overuse. So, for example, judgment is is one of our saboteurs. And there are three specific ways that we judge. We can judge ourselves, we can judge others. And then the most the most cunning and and least obvious. And it’s actually sabotaging our success in judging situations and circumstances. So the judge comes in three forms. So being able to identify that and label it say, oh, that’s the judge not that’s my judge. That’s the judge. How can I have discernment around this? What is the gift and opportunity in this situation? What have I discovered and learned? How will this be a gift for the rest of the journey? So, yes, there are there and and we all have them. So it’s not that we have immunity. I have them. The key is, is how the key is to be able to identify it and then be able to look at it and say, OK, that idea that thought may have served me in the past is no longer relevant. So I’ll share with you a quick story. I had a client one time, if I may. Lee, may I share with you a quick story? Absolutely. OK, I had this incredible client that called me up one day as I was coaching her and she said, Grace, I think I’m going to step away from my business and my career. I just don’t want to speak in public anymore. And when she said that I had already had the privilege of seeing her speak and she had humor, she had visual imagery, she had exercises, she was fantastic at speaking. I was so impressed by her. And when she said that, she was like, I think I’m going to step like that. I want to speak anymore. I was a bit surprised, actually shocked. And and I asked her a question. She said, well, I just don’t like speaking anymore.

Grace Hao: [00:17:34] And I said, well, where did that thought originate? And sometimes those that little question gives people an opportunity to be reflective and to go a little bit deeper than a surface response. She said, oh my gosh, that that originated years ago, originated when I was a little girl. And I said, tell me about that. I said, well, yeah, I remember an instance where I was my dad told me, shut up, zip my lip and that I talk too much. And so I’ve kind of carried that with me since then, that I was meant to shut up my lips and that I talk too much. So speaking is is is talking, which I didn’t want to do because I was told this and I said, well, what do you think your dad could have meant in that moment? And she just stopped and she was like, oh, my gosh, Grace, he didn’t mean forever. He was he was frustrated in that moment with me, he said he said that because I was chasing him around, he was working in the fields. He was getting ready to you know, we’re farmers. He was working out in the farm. And I was chasing him like a tail. And he was like, I got to get this done. He didn’t mean set up, zip my lip and I talk too much forever. He just meant that in the moment. This is her saying this. She was like she and she just started she just started crying because I asked her I said, when was that? She said, Gosh, Grace, that was 50 years ago. I was five years old. And she said, Grace, I’m going to I’m going to go I’m going to call you back. Let’s talk next week. So I said, OK, the next week comes around. We see 2006 Grace. I’ve cut my hair. I’ve called my company. I am a new person. I’m I’m not going to call the coach. You I’m going to give you a little report. Here I am on the move. I told them I volunteered to speak anywhere at any time to represent our organization. I’m a new person. And this is what was powerfully is that she had told herself a story that that sabotaged her and that was going to take her away from all that she was capable of because it was an outdated belief system that was no longer relevant.

Grace Hao: [00:20:08] I see, and I saw her years later, and again, the transformation was sustained and this was this was one conversation in less than 30 minutes, transformed a person’s decision that could have sabotaged her, her present and future as a result.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:27] Yeah, she was carrying around this weight for 50 years. That was just really a misunderstanding. And then you were able to shed light on it and kind of make it go away. It’s an amazing story.

Grace Hao: [00:20:39] Oh, thank you, Lee. And the key is, is that she was willing, right? Absolutely.

Speaker2: [00:20:48] She shared and was vulnerable and and was open to listening and she was ready to listen. And that was great.

Grace Hao: [00:20:57] And she was ready to listen to herself. She keeps we as coaches, we create an environment for people to to come up with their own solutions. And when they come up with their own solutions, they own them and they transition from dependence to independent to empowered to inspired.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:18] Yeah. And that’s why the action happened so quickly, because it’s there. They they figured it out. Grace, if there’s someone out there that’s frustrated or, you know, maybe in a good place that once to get to a better place and they want to get a hold of you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

Grace Hao: [00:21:34] Sure. It’s coach with grace, dot com coach with grace, dot com. The best way to to get in touch with us. Absolutely. And we have a couple of complimentary trainings and we have information about the programs that we teach and the coaching that we provide.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:51] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Grace Hao: [00:21:56] Oh, my gosh. You are, too. We thank you for the difference that you’re making in this opportunity. It’s such a privilege. I’m so grateful.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:05] Well, I’m grateful to have learned from you. Thank you again for sharing your story

Grace Hao: [00:22:10] And you as well. We’ll see you again soon. Lee, I appreciate you. All right.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:14] This is Lea Kanter. We’ll see you next time on Koch, the coach radio.

 

 

Ivy Slater With Slater Success

by

ivy-slater
Coach The Coach
Ivy Slater With Slater Success
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slater-success

ivy-slaterIvy Slater is the CEO of Slater Success, a boutique training, consulting and coaching company focused on growth strategies and leadership development for high-level, service-based businesses. Ivy is a professionally certified business coach, speaker, internationally bestselling author, and podcast host.

She’s scaled her own two businesses to multiple 6 & 7 -figures and speaks nationwide on the topics of leadership, sustainable growth, and the value of relationships. In 2020, she was a recipient of a Power Women of New York and of Long Island award, presented by Schneps Media.

Connect with Ivy on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Building a company that has coaching as a modality in serving clients
  • Being a coach does not a business

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for coach the coach radio brought to you by the business radio embassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to barracks ambassador dot com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] We can’t hear another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have with us Ivy Slater with Slater Success. Welcome, Ivy

Ivy Slater: [00:00:43] Lee, thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Slater Success, how you serve in folks

Ivy Slater: [00:00:51] So Slater Success as a coaching and consulting company. I’m a speaker, author, trainer. I help leaders really do their best. We will come into organizations and help them scale and grow. We look at a variety of things from team to financial to marketing strategies, building books, business, and truly that help that leader who’s in charge of it all work at the top of their game. So they lead to their organizations and achieve what their goals are.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] So now what’s your back story? How did you get into this line of work with always a coach?

Ivy Slater: [00:01:26] Oh, goodness, no. This is this I’d love to say the second it’s actually the second business I’ve owned before this. I was in the printing industry in New York City. I was where I raised my kids. I would say I grew a printing company and grew some children at the same time. I was in the industry for over 20 years. So I truly led the growth of that business. Head of sales, you know, kind of like what we’ll say is that you wash the windows, you do the sales, you do the finance, you build a seven figure company in a very male dominated world. And I was I had a great, great period of time until I reached my mid forties and I was like, when am I going to do when I grow up? Like, what’s the legacy I leave behind? I’m making a great living. I built a seven figure organization. But what about me? What am I leaving behind what’s what’s significant here? And that’s when I knew I needed to look at my next chapter.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:27] And then I of all the choices you chose coaching, what drew you to coaching?

Ivy Slater: [00:02:34] I’m going to say I don’t know if I chose it or if it was just something I did. So one hundred percent mid-life crisis at forty five. And I was with a friend of mine. We were working out, we were in court for those of New York City or New York area listeners. We were doing walking legends as one of the New York City parks and I said, I don’t know what I’m going to do next. What’s this legacy like? I’m going to I’m going to lead. I had all these bold dreams and aspirations in my younger self. I built a great organization about what happens next. And she goes, you ought to be a coach. And my response was soccer. And she laughs hysterically. I’m like, come on. You know, I can’t. I was a dancer. I have a degree in dance, a degree in communications. And I said, you know, I blew out my knee in my early twenties. You what are you talking about? And she looked at me and she said, you know what? Either you help me build my business, you help me see past what I thought was possible. You expanded my horizons. I started growing a business, reaching levels I never reached before. I said, OK, but what’s with the coaching thing? And granted, this was 07. So coaching in 07 wasn’t necessarily what coaching is today. And I went home, you know, after we finished our workout, give each other a sweaty hug. And I go home and I hit the computer and I was like, what is coaching? And of course, soccer comes up basketball, tennis. And then somewhere around page three, we got into what the the new or at that point industry of coaching was. And I said, well, what is this look like? Like what do I need to know? And I am a huge fan of market research and I think we so often forget to do it and it’s so important and so impactful.

Ivy Slater: [00:04:28] So I went to what my belief system was, is let’s let’s find things out in the marketplace. So I started mentioning it and talking to every person I knew about. Have you heard about this industry coaching? What is it? What is it mean? Do I go back to college? I’m getting a degree in therapy, psychotherapy. Explain further. Is this a business thing? I’m not really. The person is going to sit on the couch and listen to people’s problems. You know, I’m a solution oriented businesswoman. What does that mean in this field? So I truly, truly interviewed people. I spoke to my attorney. I spoke to my accountant. I spoke to other professionals in the in various different degrees of industry. And I just immersed myself in 30 days of market research. And it might not sound like a lot, but you also have to I am who I am. I’m a businesswoman. I’m a decision maker. And I was like I wanted to know enough to make a decision, to take an action, to then make my next decision. So is this an. Something I’m going to be interested in, why would it interest me? What impact can I leave, what legacy like who does it align with, Ivy Slater as a woman, as a businesswoman, as a mother, as in all the facets of Ivy? And so I did that. And then when I said, I think this makes sense. I sat down and this happened in April, started in April of 07, I’m going to tell you, by the end of May, June one, at that time I was enrolled in a certification program.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:06] Now, as a dancer, you mentioned being a dancer at the start of, I guess, your career, did you have a coach then?

Ivy Slater: [00:06:16] I we had you as a dancer during class every day, even if you’re in a show, you’re in class every day. You have to have your foundation down, and I strongly believe in mentors and teachers and coaches, you know, a dancer doesn’t look at a coach. You look at your mentor, your teacher, you might be following this specific teacher in modern dance or ballet or in this theory, in this style, or that you are immersing yourself in one hundred percent. So early on, I thought it would be really easy to build later success. I was like, I know what I’m doing. I built a business before. I know what I’m going to do. This is how I’m going to do it and be complete transparency. The first couple of years was not good and I’m being really polite. OK, if you didn’t have the answer, I’d probably put it in a much, much more harsh answer. But it really, really stunk. I was like I was used to pulling in X amount of money and running a business, a salary, a building our clients. And I was like, this is not happening. And I had to kind of stop and say. What can I do about this and how can I do it? And I said, well, I the there are things obviously, you know, and there is a ton of things you don’t know. And are you going to move your pride away and hire somebody who could show you what you don’t know? And I did

Lee Kantor: [00:07:55] Now, so as a dancer, you leaned on mentors, experts will call them whatever you want, but some sort of coaching to help you get to a new level in your dance, in your business. When you were in printing, did you have the same infrastructure? Do you have mentors and coaches or people that helped you achieve success there? Was that kind of on your back?

Ivy Slater: [00:08:20] I always, always believed myself in surrounding myself with people who were smarter than me. So there was when I got involved in printing, I was in my late 20s and there was this great, great guy who is in my world, and he he owned several different printing or printing. He owned actually two different printing company pieces of the building. He was a great businessman. And I would just say, hey, Rich, can I talk to you? Can I ask you some questions? And it would be notorious of I would be like, what are the early jobs on press in the morning? And I’d show up with, like an extra cup of coffee and like, have my eye out for him, you know? Hey, can I ask you about this? And it’s like, how do sit down, Ivy? And then it would be like, you know, who you really need to talk to. Larry outside. Larry’s going to be great with sharing this information with you. And I always believed in surrounding myself with people who know more than me. And if you want to, I look at it as coaching, I look at it as today for Slater’s success, we are in our 13th plus year and I still have a coach in my world because if I didn’t, I would be spending all the time focusing on my clients goals, their organizations, and forget to put the work into my own organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:52] And is that a challenge you find with other coaches? Is that sometimes it’s like the cobbler’s children, you know, they’re focused so much on their clients that they’re not kind of doing that. The blocking and tackling for their own organization.

Ivy Slater: [00:10:09] A thousand percent. True. You know, we we especially it’s so many people who go into the coaching field are givers. We were here to help. We’re here to make a difference. We’re here to help others. And you have to remember the fear about putting your oxygen mask on first. If you don’t help yourself, you can’t help others. And I think it’s important to always have somebody is holding you accountable, somebody that you have that special place that you can work on your organization, that you can work on yourself, you can work on your goals, your dreams, your desires. Because if not, we just fall into the same patterns every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] And then you probably don’t even recognize you’re in those patterns

Ivy Slater: [00:10:54] A thousand percent, and I’m going to tell you, I was recently I took a couple of days off and I went to, what, like a spa type of hotel? I don’t know, whatever retreat with my daughter. We did a mommy daughter thing for a few days and May, Mother’s Day, etc., etc.. And as a former dancer, they had this wall of photos up. And I love I love some great quotes. I’m always attracted to quotes. I have always been. And all of a sudden I didn’t even see who wrote the quote. But I looked at the quote and I said, Oh, that’s you, Ivy. It’s talking to you. And then I saw who wrote it. And I was like, Of course it is. So if you look at so he he was never my my mentor officially because I’ve never met him in my life. But he was somebody I looked up to and admired and followed my entire dance world. And the quote said, I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. And I saw it was written by Baryshnikov and growing up, Mikhail Baryshnikov was my idol, my, you know, my unofficial mentor, right. If I could have paid him to coach me, believe me, if I could have found a way, I would have. I so admired what he did. I admired it in his innovation. His determination, his uniqueness is willing to push boundaries. And I’ve always done the same thing for myself and not because I’m in competition with any other coaches out there, I want us all to succeed because we could all make a huge difference. But if we sit complacent and and do just what we do and we try to get another client and we don’t work on better and improving ourselves on a regular basis, we’re not being of service to every person we touch.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:48] Right, I think it’s almost kind of your duty to be kind of that lifelong learner, continuous learner and try to make yourself as good as you can be so that you can serve your clients even more.

Ivy Slater: [00:12:59] Absolutely, absolutely. Now, you been in that one hundred percent, now

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] You bring up an excellent point of mentors and coaches can come in a lot of forms. It can be somebody, you know, you write about, saw a TED talk on it. It doesn’t have to be a formal coaching relationship. But having a relationship with some sort of coach is kind of key, I think, for people to to get out of their own way and maybe eliminate some of the self sabotage or some of the biases or kind of issues that they’ve created for themselves that they may not see in. And that’s where elevating these informal coaching through an author or inspirational quote or something like that, where you need that person that’s kind of giving fresh eyes to your organization

Ivy Slater: [00:13:48] If it’s successful. All you know, I think it’s it’s out of service to us all. There are always going to be challenging times. There’s also times of expansion in and we live in it. We live in a world of abundance. It’s so easy to get caught up in, especially in running a business. That’s one of the things I say about coaching, coaching. It’s not a business. Coaching is a modality of business delivers.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:15] So what is. Walk me through what you mean by that.

Ivy Slater: [00:14:18] Ok, so I have been brought in by various coaching coach training organizations to talk about this in theory. Being a coach is not having a business. Being a coach is a modality coaching is a modality of business delivers. Slater Success is a coaching consulting training company. One of the things we do is we do coaching, so we will help our clients create their strategy. And we will work with them, holding them accountable to the actionable steps and in that accountability, there’s always a lot of coaching in there. What obstacles are coming up? What is holding you back? Where are you hitting that brick road? Where you hitting that dead end? Right. But as a business model. Right. Remember, I’m a businesswoman. I’ve been a business woman for over twenty five years. Plus, plus. But don’t talk don’t say that to anybody, guys. It’s what is the business structure so, so many people are like, well, I coach, I was like, OK. Why do you coach, who are the people coming to you, what is the problem they have? How were you going to deliver your service? How are you going to scale that? What are you looking to achieve in the goals of your organization? So coaching is something that is a delivered piece, but it’s not the business itself is that makes sense.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:55] Yeah, that’s just one of your deliverables.

Ivy Slater: [00:15:58] Right. And any coach, we. Work with is what? What is the coaching they’re delivering? Sometimes it’s marketing, sometimes it’s sales, right? Sometimes it’s strategy, sometimes it’s inner work, sometimes it’s life work, sometimes it’s transformation. Sometimes there’s, you know, grief coaching. There’s so many things. What is the delivery of the coaching is something the business delivers, but it is not the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:30] Right. And so you help your clients kind of discern the difference between that and then maybe help them productize other types of deliverables.

Ivy Slater: [00:16:41] Right. Because coaching is something that can be delivered. But I’ll never say coaching is actually the business. Right. And I guess business has marketing structure, a sales structure, a financial structure, a team structure where. Right. That’s a business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:58] And then some people probably think that, oh, I’m going to be a coach and then I’m going to and that’s my business and I’ll be doing coaching. And they don’t realize that that’s just one thing they’re delivering or even if it’s the only thing they’re delivering, it’s just they have to separate it from the business that they’re getting into.

Ivy Slater: [00:17:17] What you have to look at yourself. So if you’re a coach, are you also the CEO of that organization?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:22] Right. And the salesperson and the marketer and the correct and the service deliverer, like, you know, where does your job begin and end?

Ivy Slater: [00:17:31] And the mind set of looking at it is the CEO. So how right how are we going to deliver these services? Where are we growing this company to? Am I going to be the only coach or they are going to be other coaches? Are there going to be group programs? Are we going to be doing trainings? Are we going to be doing workshops or seminars that we’re going to be speaking or are we paid to speak or are we not paid to speak? What is the whole thing look like?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:56] And then when you’re working with your clients in this way, they’re probably these are like eye opening kind of things for them where they’re just like, oh yeah, I never looked at it that way. And all of a sudden now they have multiple revenue streams and they can really grow their business.

Ivy Slater: [00:18:10] Yeah, I don’t love building a business on only one type of revenue stream because it leaves you vulnerable. You know, in the same in the same way back when I was selling printing, I didn’t agree with just having, like, you know, just having a few big clients. It’s like, well, you lose one client or something happens with that client, they get acquired, you know, back in the day, Fairchild Publications was one of my biggest clients that acquired OK, they got acquired several times that they were my client, but. Right. What is the impact if that’s one of your main revenue streams, when you have something that could be vulnerable in going to a global pandemic this last year, are people paying for one on one coaching? Do they want group? What are the new problems they’re having? How are we rising to the occasion to listen to the problems that are occurring, occurring today? And how are we being of service in that area?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:08] Now, when you’re working with your clients, do you have kind of a sweet spot of an ideal client or is this kind of industry agnostic or do you have a specialty?

Ivy Slater: [00:19:19] I definitely work very much in the professional service area, so service based businesses in the professional area. So I work with enormous amount of law firms and attorneys in the accounting space, CPA, CFO organizations, financial organizations, a lot in the agency model area and some with some coaches and consultants who are looking to scale

Lee Kantor: [00:19:42] Now, are they what’s the pain they’re having before they hire Slater success? They plateaued or is it are you working with individual kind of workers within the firm or are you working with the firm itself so you can serve all of their employees?

Ivy Slater: [00:19:57] We come into two different areas. One, we work with the leadership team on where they’re looking to scale to next, so it could be that their leadership team has expanded and we come in and helping them now grow and expand to their next level with their leadership team sometimes, which brought in just about sales and sales teams and helping them in doing a lot of training and accountability on building a book of business. I do a lot of leadership work. And that could be from organizations that are reaching their first million to 10 million and more, so sometimes it’s it’s the C suite and the top tier leadership. Sometimes it’s within a department, within an organization, depending upon the organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:46] Now, you mentioned at the beginning of your career coaching was kind of it was more exclusive. Now more and more folks are kind of getting coached and believing in coaching. Are you finding that more organizations are offering coaching to their people?

Ivy Slater: [00:21:01] Well, I’m finding first thing is more organizations actually know what coaching is. So my early days, we actually had to explain what the value of bringing in a coach to an organization. Now, it is a very common term. It’s a common knowledge. So I think that’s a huge win win in it’s not unheard of if the organization brings it in. Sometimes people say, oh, I want to join this peer mentoring coach group or something like that, and organizations will cover part of it or all of that. So it’s a common conversation paid for and supported in various ways.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:43] So you’re saying that that being offered it used to be a perk only for like the highest levels of the organization. Now that’s kind of trickling down further.

Ivy Slater: [00:21:53] Yeah, it was either a perk for the highest tiers of the organization or somebody brought in or a problem in the organization. They bring the coach in to fix.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:03] The board was fixing the CEO,

Ivy Slater: [00:22:06] Fixing the CEO, this person on the you know that they can’t play nice in the bullpen. Can you come in and fix that

Lee Kantor: [00:22:15] Fix, Bob?

Ivy Slater: [00:22:16] Right. Exactly. I not work. I love to do I believe truly in elevating the whole team. And so in unless I hear a story, a story about a client in a large global organization, VPE and I was brought in to work with him, it was kind of like a perk. They threw him. But he also had some goals that he was being passed over. So it was it was a win win on both sides on OK, we’ll throw you a coach moment and. I will say after working with him for our contracted period of time, I always stay in touch with everyone. And what was really cool is it was about three to four months after we concluded. And one of my just random touch phrase, hey, just thinking about you want to check in and see how you’re doing. And the response back was not only was I promoted. But two of my people on my team were promoted on based on how we’re running this team now. And in one of my new acquisitions of what we’re managing, the review on their people has been a program they thought they were going to have to throw out is a program they’re now loving. So that’s what the long term win is about. It’s about full elevation of the team not fixing the person.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:42] Wow. And that goes to the heart of what you got into this business for, is to create that legacy and those ripple effects that must be very kind of rewarding to be to hear that

Ivy Slater: [00:23:53] That’s where the joy is.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:54] Is the joy nowadays of seeing those kind of successes where you’re seeing your clients and your clients colleagues succeed based on your coaching as much as, you know, getting that big printing deal back in the day?

Ivy Slater: [00:24:08] Exactly. It’s truly it’s the ripple effect and it’s the relationships you build now and the relationships that last from here to eternity if you put the effort in. And that’s that’s a huge, huge ripple impact. Now, seeing clients who have gone on to whether their current client or a recently passed client or a past past past client and staying in contact and them saying, oh, my goodness, I I want to let you know this happened in my world, whether it be business, personal or whatever, but they’re still owning the work that you guys did together.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:44] Now, let’s talk about the importance of relationships. I know you wrote a book about how relationships are kind of a keystone in growing a practice and a business.

Ivy Slater: [00:24:56] Absolutely, I will say relationships are the golden ticket to success. When you actually work those relationships there, somebody I had lunch with just literally in the last couple of weeks that I go back close to 20 years with when I follow the line of business we have done together from printing, through coaching, through leadership, through referral sources, through this woman, it ties to seven figures, through one relationship.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:29] Wow, that’s amazing. And that and just the fact that you track it is amazing. I mean, how many people are able to do that?

Ivy Slater: [00:25:37] I am a numbers game. I like a number one. No, truthfully, I see and think in numbers. It might be the dancer in me that I grew up in counting forward and backwards and eight. More importantly, it’s always the leading numbers tell us the story and are we actually willing to read that?

Lee Kantor: [00:25:55] But if somebody is out there that wants to learn more and take their practice, their business, their professional service agency to a new level, what is the website to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Ivy Slater: [00:26:08] It’s Slater success dot com. And then in the book, for you to love the book, it’s actually if you go to say the success that dot com and scroll on down, you will come to getting a free chapter from the bar to the boardroom and the bar to the boardroom. It’s choreographing business success. So authentic relationships, please grab that free chapter and then if it intrigues you, go to Amazon and grab the book.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:34] Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Ivy Slater: [00:26:41] Thank you for having me. It’s been a joy while

Lee Kantor: [00:26:43] You’re doing important work and we appreciate you. Thank you. All right. This is Lee Kanter, Rules Hero. Next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

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