Jacob Lapera, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Cat Stone With Third Age Mojo

June 26, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Cat Stone With Third Age Mojo

00:00 /

Cat Stone created Third Age Mojo because she have never been comfortable with the way we approach aging in our culture. We have a preconceived notion of what aging looks like, and this notion is based on inaccurate information.

In her 50s, she began to think about this a lot, and she decided not to follow the expectations placed on aging. She soon discovered that other folks her age shared her outlook on healthy aging and were searching for answers and ideas just like she was.

In March 2020, she created Third Age Mojo as a vehicle for exploring options for aging:

What is the Third Age and what is Third Age Mojo
The Third Age is the final third of our lives
We don’t know when we’ll pass on, but just for easy math, let’s say 90.
In that case your Third Age begins at 60.

The Mojo part of Third Age Mojo is energy, our energy. Some of us have misplaced our Mojo, and this happens for a lot of reasons.

There are two conflicting energies for which we Baby Boomers are responsible. One is the women’s movement, and the other is the importance our society places on looking young. Women became increasingly economically influential, and anti-aging became our mantra.

What Third Age Mojo is all about is pro-aging. About power aging. About loving our beautiful, healthy Third Age selves.

Connect with Cat on LinkedIn and follow Third Age Mojo on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

About the Six Pillars of Third Age Mojo
Why Cat wrote, The Joyful Aging Formula: Stress-Free Lifestyle Changes for Increased Longevity and Enhanced Physical and Mental Well-being
What Third Age Face Yoga is and other options for healthy aging after 50
What a Redox Cell Signaling supplement has done for aging process
Why Cat had to launch North of Now

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio in this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Cat Stone, who is with Third Age Mojo. Welcome.

Cat Stone: Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. First off, tell us about Third Age Mojo. How are you serving folks?

Cat Stone: Well, the Third Age is mostly known in Europe, but I thought it was a great way to describe people sort of 60 to 90, just to make the math easy. I make the Day We Die 90 so that 60 can start the third age. But anyway, I think that I hate when people say seniors or, you know, all those different things. I just wanted to shake it up a little bit. And Mojo is, as we all know, kind of magic. So Third Age Mojo is recognizing the beauty, the magic and the power, the untapped power we have when we get into our third age.

Lee Kantor: And so your work is primarily helping people in that age group kind of lead a more meaningful, more purposeful life.

Cat Stone: Yes. And, you know, there are six pillars to Third Age mojo. And the first one is health. So I really I have had Third Age mojo for five years. And it addresses all these different things like staying healthy, keeping your mind set right. A growth mindset is super important. And then there’s also money of course, which everyone thinks is number one. But it’s really not. But it is important. All of them are. Relationships are very important. And home becomes a kind of a different thing when you enter your third age. And these days, there’s all kinds of opportunities for a choice in what kind of home you want to have for the final third of your life. So that’s what Third Age Mojo is all about. And I just started it because I hated the way our culture depicts this time. It’s like work, work, work, discover, discover, discover. And then you go over a hill and it’s all downhill from there. I didn’t like that.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? What kind of led you to this point in your life where now you can focus in on this?

Cat Stone: Well, I have always been very health conscious, and that may come from, you know, my father was a type one diabetic when I was growing up. So we always had a garden and we ate, you know, very fresh food because diet was so important to him. So that was the way I was brought up. And then when I sort of launched and I moved to Houston from Pennsylvania, and I was on my own and I had no, I had no health insurance. So I thought I better stay healthy. So I continued and jacked it up, and it was just sort of life, well, was giving me signals to stay healthy. And that’s how I got to it. And then I saw so many people who would say, oh, well, I can’t do this because I’m so old. It’s like, no, we’re not going to hear that.

Lee Kantor: Now, throughout your life thus far, had you been primarily in the coaching realm? Well, being in, you know, maybe fitness and wellness. And then as you got into this third age, you said, I’m going to focus in on this group.

Cat Stone: Well, you know, it’s a strange thing is that I always did other things, mostly sales. I sold radio. I sold print. I was a sales person and a marketing person. And, um, I always did this on the side. And then I left my last job as an affiliate marketer. I was working for a company that created, you know, natural health, uh, products. And I would, uh, manage all of our affiliates who would send these products to their, uh, email lists. Excuse me. But on the side, I would do this. And finally, I thought, why I love this so much? Why am I making this my hobby that I have to sneak away to? So I left that job last year. And I, I that’s when I really started to do a lot of digital marketing and a digital creation for Third Age Mojo. I got my YouTube channel up and running and it’s now becoming robust. And my Instagram, I just love that so much. And of course Facebook and a Facebook group and all those things. So it really started slow, and then the wheels started turning and then I shed my job to do what I love. And here I am now.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, I’ve interviewed lots of coaches over the years, but I haven’t interviewed a lot of folks that are, um, working in the space you are. Is this kind of, uh, are you one of a few or is there kind of a community of folks that are working with these, uh, Third Age, uh, folks?

Cat Stone: Well, what I’ve discovered is that, you know, of course, there are a lot of life coaches and all of them. Most of them have a niche. Um, and then there are transition coaches as well that help people through transitions. But what I really discovered in my Third Age mojo, uh, journey was that a lot of people had trouble Disconnecting from their identity, from their profession or their career. And I must tell you that boomer dudes have the most problem, I think, because men seem to attach their identity to their job and and do that, maintain that for 20 or 30 years. And then this kind of leads you to a funny leads me to a story I think is kind of funny is that, um, you know, like 90% of the people who escaped from prison get caught. It’s because all they do is think about the escape, and they don’t plan for what they’re going to do after, you know, so they find themselves just wallowing in in what am I supposed to do? I can’t play golf every day, and we can’t travel all the time. And they they lose some of their purpose. So what I do, what I found, I when I discovered this, more and more and more. It was like knocking on my brain and I wasn’t noticing. But then I did notice. And I went back to school and got, um, certified as a as a retirement coach specifically. So I know other people are doing it, but I don’t know anyone else who’s doing it.

Lee Kantor: Now, our folks are, um, kind of responding to that. Do they do? Does it even occur to them that they might need a coach in this stage of their life?

Cat Stone: Well, you know, women take take to coaching. We’re more open to coaching than men. Men are supposed to do it on their own. So usually, you know, there there’s kind of three things that I, I’ve put this into three categories. The people who are planning and they’re mostly planning financially, but some of them are widening out or are spreading out into the other things that they’re going to have to address. And then other people have it right Directly in front of them and they’re like, this feels a little weird. I feel unsure of myself. And then there are the people who have jumped into it, and, you know, they’ve gone through what some people call the honeymoon honeymoon period. And, you know, they did the golf, they did the travel. They they were like, hey, I could just read the paper until 10:00 in the morning. And and then they go, wait a second, something’s missing. I, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t feel the meaning in my life. And those are the ones that are. They’re kind of in trouble. So they’re more willing. They’re feeling the pain. So they’re more willing.

Lee Kantor: They’re willing to, you know, have those kind of initial conversations to explore what else is out there. And then maybe they do need kind of a Sherpa through this, this stage of their life.

Cat Stone: Absolutely. They just want someone I believe this is how I see it. They’re there. They have some ideas that are kind of sleeping in there, but they don’t know how to pull them out. They don’t know how to put them in place, and they don’t feel that they can, uh, set goals, set realizable goals that they are going to achieve. They sort of have to have a coach, like in sports. You know, I know you can do this. I have to be back there as a cheerleader, and then I have to set those goals and then we’ll have meetings and say, so how is everything going with this step? You know, and when they get people just working them through it, one step at a time and they start to see it become real. It’s a very beautiful thing. And, you know, people just want to do all sorts of different things. And I’m just there to help them discover what that is and help them to do it.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned in your program there are six pillars. Do you typically, um, focus in on the health aspect first and then build off of that. Because without that, it seems like it’s difficult to. If you’re struggling there, you probably are going to struggle elsewhere.

Cat Stone: Absolutely, absolutely. You can’t enjoy any of those other things. And you know, the more I talk to people, though, uh, mindset will hold people back, like if you don’t have a growth mindset. And I wrote a little story on my Substack about letting go to grow. You need to be able to let go of all these things you were clutching for all these years as your beliefs, which may not have even been your beliefs. It was stories that were fed to you. But you’ve got to let go and open your mind, free your brain and and the rest will follow or something like that. But a lot of people have to be coached into opening their brain, and a lot of people hold on to those old beliefs, probably out of fear.

Lee Kantor: And then when they first start talking to you, what is the typical entry point? Is it something around health or is it something they read a piece of your content and they just are curious?

Cat Stone: Well, nobody will really come across right away with health, but you’ll find out later that, you know, high blood pressure, type two diabetes, you know, and all those different things that happen. Mostly people are just kind of a little sad. And they’ll, they’ll I’ll reach out to them and say, I don’t know if I can help you, but I’ve got sort of a process that has, you know, helped me personally and helped other people to, like, discover what’s really inside there and what you would like to do about it. And the one thing about who I am as a coach is I’m 70 years old. I’m living this with these people. I’m not, you know. And no, I’m not. I’m not putting anything on anybody who’s younger. But, I mean, if you’re going to listen to someone who’s 35, tell you what to do when you retire. Sometimes that’s a little bit harder to, um, embrace.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re talking to them initially, what does that kind of first conversation look like? Like what? What is the first thing they’re saying to you? Uh, to kind of initiate the conversation?

Cat Stone: Well.

Lee Kantor: Like you mentioned, being sad, like, is it around, like, I don’t get it. You know, I was supposed to. I retired. You know, I did everything I was supposed to do. And then now I’m feeling like, you know, I’m bored of fishing every day or golf every day or whatever I thought I’d be doing every day.

Cat Stone: Yes, there are a lot of things like that. But what I’ll do is before I even talk to them, I’ll send them some questions. Like what? How are you feeling about your current retirement situation. And then like, what did you expect of it and what are the things that have been important to you your whole life? And are you in touch with those things now? Um, you know, how how are your relationships? You know, a lot of relationships like, you know, 40 year marriages feel the strain of retirement because these two people didn’t talk to each other about their vision, or even if they did, once you get into it, everybody’s feeling uneasy and a little lost. So I ask people about, you know, what they’re experiencing, what they expected to experience, what they had expected to experience. And like longing they’ve had in, in their life. Like, because now is the time. Now is the time. I mean, we’re not we’re in the final third of our life. Let’s not put this off any longer. And so I talk to people. I wrote this article for my Substack about, you know, visualizing. You know, I personally meditate every day and I, you know, I’ve, I can’t do anything that I can’t see myself doing in my mind’s eye. So I encourage people to think about it. I just sit and maybe don’t think at all. And I really more and more, since I am finding it so helpful for myself, I talk to people about visualization and meditation. This is the time of our life where we can kind of just take everything that we’ve brought with us and sit with it and see where it goes.

Lee Kantor: And is there something that you’ve learned from working in this space for as long as you have that kind of triggers, that aha moment, is there something that you say or you ask your client to do that? All of a sudden the light bulb goes off and say, okay, I get it. Now, I, I understand that I am in more control of my situation and I can move forward with purpose.

Cat Stone: Yes. You know what? And people say this to me in all kinds of different ways. Like women say to me, oh, ah, I see it on my Facebook groups that I am part of. You know, it’s like, oh, I can’t sit down with my grandson and I can’t stand up again. What should I do? And I say to them, you need to do squats. And when people say, oh, you know, I, I don’t know what to do now. And I have to say to them, this is a time to take your own personal responsibility. This is your biggest challenge and it’s your biggest blessing and it’s your biggest opportunity to live the life that you see and feel inside you. So a lot of this is not like hardcore, maybe occasional hardcore. After a few calls, when people aren’t even reaching out to the goals they’ve said, it’s like, well, what’s keeping you? What do you think is keeping you from doing this? You know, you have to make it your responsibility. It’s your responsibility to stay healthy. It’s your responsibility to do all the rest of the pillars, and then nobody’s going to do it. Nobody. You’re you’re your own parent.

Lee Kantor: Right? But you’re kind of giving them kind of permission to try. I guess fear is holding a lot of them back that they’re there even at this stage when there’s, um, the the road is getting shorter, that they still are afraid that it may not work out or they’ll be embarrassed or whatever their issue is they’re afraid to. To try to live into that kind of purpose that’s in the back of their head.

Cat Stone: Well, you know, fear is such a powerful motivator. An anti motivator. It’s a powerful force. And so people will shrink into all kinds of things. You know, there’s fight or flight and all different things. And that’s why I think meditation is good because it takes you into that uh reflect relaxed and digest mode instead of, uh, fight or flee or all of those other things. You need to just sit there, take responsibility for yourself, let the fear go, or recognize the fear and sit with it and. Lose it somehow. Move beyond it. And that’s a great thing for yourself. Uh, development is moving beyond fear. And that has been a big thing for me to move beyond my fear. And then you feel really good about yourself. And in our culture, you know, seniors are always talking about or guys don’t put women do talk about becoming invisible. Well, that’s because you’re allowing it to happen. If you shine your own light and let your own energy come into a room where you’re helping people, which is one of the things you can do now when you’re retired. There are all kinds of different opportunities to join together with people, to do good things and to grow out of that. We’re really growing. We’re still growing, and this might be our biggest growth challenge ever because we are focused on ourselves and our mate, of course, and our families. But right now, it’s right now. And how are you going to develop yourself to interact with your spouse or, or reconnect with a family that you may have been, you know, neglecting a little bit because you were so busy. Now’s the time to get your act together.

Lee Kantor: And that’s where I think having a coach or somebody like you by their side to kind of encourage them to maybe ask the harder questions, to be there to, you know, help them get the, uh, inner fortitude to move forward and take a risk, maybe that they’ve hesitated doing for many years. And I think that this could really, uh, positively impact a large group of people that are silently struggling.

Cat Stone: Well, you know, the boomers are a gigantic bloc. We are huge. And more people are, you know, retiring every year. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but they’re they’re staggering. And, you know, we all have a longer time. You know, before, when you were retire at 65, some of the guys were dying by 68 or 60 9 or 70. So you really didn’t have you could do all those things, play golf, take trips, go fishing, and then you die. But now we’re living longer, and it’s given us another opportunity to think about becoming an elder. Think about, you know, what we can do for these younger people behind us. Because I really I really am a strong believer in intergenerational relationships. We can all bring so much to each other, and we give each other so much. If we approach it with the mind of a student, an open mind mindset.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think that, um, reframing is so important. And when you just the word you use just now, elder instead of senior, evokes something of a wise person that’s That sharing their what they know to you know others. I think that that adds a layer of, um, purpose and meaning to a life that maybe they thought that, hey, I did what I did, and now I’m just kind of running out the clock here, and and you have too many years to be doing that. It’s not. It’s like you said, you know, back in the day when people retired and died, you know, within a couple of years maybe that was effective then. But in today’s world, where you could live 20 or 30 more years, you can’t afford to just start feeling sorry for yourself when you’re bored.

Cat Stone: I mean, that would lead to depression.

Lee Kantor: And that’s what’s happening.

Cat Stone: I know, and that’s what’s killing people way quicker than they need. So we want to avoid that. And also, we could bring so much because we have so many years of experience and, you know, the mistakes we’ve made and the things that we they do these things like intergenerational things with college students who are notoriously so lonely, especially in their first semester of going away. And they’ve been putting them together with, uh, third agers. I’m not going to say seniors with third agers, and everybody comes out so much happier. And really it it leads to lasting relationships and so much learning and so much wisdom shared. And, you know, it keeps older people younger. So it’s a win win situation.

Lee Kantor: Yeah I agree 100%. Now you mentioned earlier that creating content and have and building community is important in your practice. Can you talk a little bit about the Joyful Aging formula, stress free lifestyle changes for increased longevity and enhance physical and mental well-being? How did that come about?

Cat Stone: That was because I wanted like a simple some people like to read, some people like to listen to these things. And it’s using the six pillars of Third Age mojo and addressing each one, you know, like with sort of suggestions for maintaining. And then we have some people who talk about their experience, you know, in these different, um, uh, pillars. And it’s just sort of a short, easy to read manual. And that’s the reviews I’ve been getting. It’s just like, no nonsense. It’s just kind of joyful. It is uplifting. And, you know, we’ve got I put quotes in it and stuff, things that inspire me and lift me up. And for everyone to know that there are so many of us going through this, not going through this, but living this and experiencing this and being blessed by this, that I wanted to put that together. It’s just kind of like a a little manual for stress free lifestyle changes, because there are lifestyle changes that we don’t expect, you know, and kind of it kind of slaps you upside the head sometimes. And it’s a little disconcerting. But if you have this manual to help you, it will help guide you through all of these things.

Lee Kantor: And then you mentioned several, uh, communities you’re part of. Um, or you’re kind of championing. Is that is that what the north of now is? Can you talk about that?

Cat Stone: North of now is the, um, coaching is my is my coaching business, uh, for coaching people into retirement, which I realized is a very serious step for people and will set the stage for the rest of it. You know, because the north of now is giving is intended to share courage with people. Share to share my enthusiasm. And that’s really all I do share because they have to figure out the rest. But I’m very enthusiastic about this. So north of now is is coaching.

Lee Kantor: Is that one on one is a group, is their community built into it?

Cat Stone: Well right now it’s one on one. But I have a lot of plans for different ways to go. You know, maybe, you know, one on one I could approach my one on one clients to see if they would like to get together in a group setting, just for a couple of, you know, get togethers to just see other people and share experiences. You know, it’s really incentivizing to get together with people who are doing the same thing that you are doing and facing the same challenges bravely and courageously. So it’s a real energizer to get together with people who are doing the same thing as you. So that’s something I think is good. And another thing I’ve been thinking of is, you know, corporations. They have, um, they have set ways of easing people into their jobs with training and different things. And it takes weeks and sometimes months. But I don’t know of any companies right now who are, who are doing that to kind of age people out. Although Merrill Lynch is doing that with my brother as a Merrill Lynch, uh, counselor. And he they’re aging him out like, right now he’s at retirement age. And he went from 40 hours to 20 hours. So he’s still, um, meeting with his clients, but he has someone who’s coming up behind him. So that is a good thing. So some companies are doing it, but for others, I would love to maybe do some work shops About what you might be facing and the things that you can do to make the transition smoother and happier.

Lee Kantor: And is there a story you can share? Don’t name the name of the individual, but maybe somebody you work with that you help them through a challenge that maybe they were kind of floundering a little, and they started working with you and they found a new purpose.

Cat Stone: Right? There’s one guy who in particular probably really kind of gave me the final push to like, hey, there’s something I can do here. He was talking about retiring, but he was doing so much with his position, and they were giving him so much latitude that he could travel to his place in Mexico. He could he could be here in Denver and he was within. He had an international team, mostly from India. So they were doing conference calling and things like that. And he kept saying, I don’t think I bring anything to this. But other people thought he was. So he was trying to slip out. And his boss, actually, who’s just slightly younger than him, was saying, are you sure you want to do this? Because he was really still providing a lot of value. But, I mean, he was into his 70s and, you know, all this traveling he did was sort of fun, but he was not feeling, uh, feeling the purpose. His he was kept going back to the purpose of his job. So, you know, you have to make a break. And a lot of guys will do this, like go back and you know what? Going back to something else. And that’s something I will coach people on like okay, you know, let’s think about what you’ve always wanted to do.

Cat Stone: Maybe we can make this situation a situation that will bring you more value and more, uh. I don’t know deep feelings than what you even have been doing for all these years. These the thing that you’ve been, you know, struggling to separate from. Maybe there’s something in your brain that’s going to make you feel even better. And so some people will go on to start a business. And I have a I have a coach also who works with me about starting a business after 50. He’s got like called startup after 50, and he’s got a whole team with him to help people. You know, he helps people make the plan. Then he’s got people to do the marketing. He’s got legal, he’s got banking. So if anybody wants to go in that startup way, I’ve got people for that. And I’ve got a lot of support counselors to help me with things that I’m not specialized in, especially Financial, because that’s even changing the way people have been planning their retirements financially. They’re they’re finding out now. It’s like, uh oh, I can’t afford to live past 85.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, that’s nobody wants to hear that news. Mhm.

Cat Stone: I know, but we’ve got ways to help.

Lee Kantor: Well that’s the thing. There’s more resources available to you if, but you have to kind of get out of your own head and reach out to a community and get some support from, from other people. And I think a lot of folks, you know, as they age and enter this third age, that they kind of seclude themselves. And then they think that they got to solve all these problems when there’s a lot of support and community available to them.

Cat Stone: That is so right. That is spot on. Yeah. And you’re not alone. And I mean, I, I, I, I have a coach, I have a coach and I have a therapist, and they keep me straight. And you know what? Therapy is not a bad thing for some people. I mean, I’m a coach. I’m not a therapist. But I can hook you up if you would like to try therapy. It really changed my life.

Lee Kantor: Well, Kat, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice or your coaching or your communities or some of the content that you’re putting out there, is there a website? Is there a way to connect?

Cat Stone: Well, there right now I don’t have my North of Now website together. I’m still doing things through Third Age Mojo so they can reach me at Kat at third Age mojo.com.

Lee Kantor: So third Age mojo.com is the website if they wanted to know.

Cat Stone: Well yeah third Age Mojo is the website and they should go there. It’s really nice. And my YouTube channel. I, I do a lot of different things, but now it’s sort of focused on self-care after 50. So it’s go to YouTube and just put in Third Age Mojo. And I do face yoga, and I do all kinds of self-care things so that we can take a little bit of time, even just ten minutes a day, to restore ourselves and keep ourselves strong and ready for anything we’re facing.

Lee Kantor: Well, Kat, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Cat Stone: Well, I appreciate you letting me share my story. Lee, thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Antoy Grant With ICF NYC & Mangoseed Entertainment LLC

June 24, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Antoy Grant With ICF NYC & Mangoseed Entertainment LLC

00:00 /

Antoy Grant is originally from the island of Jamaica and a graduate of Texas Southern University. She’s known for her exceptional versatility, dynamic presence, and her passion and commitment for both the entertainment industry and coaching field.

She is the President of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) New York City Chapter, where she seamlessly integrates her extensive leadership experience and coaching expertise to empower coaches, visionaries, leaders, professionals, and organizations across various mediums.

Her roles as an ICF Credentialed Coach, Creative Consultant, Motivational Speaker, and Author showcases a multifaceted skill set dedicated to inspiration, empowerment, and transformation.

As Founder and CEO of Mangoseed Entertainment LLC-NY and Mangoseed Productions-LA, she has overseen the creation of over 40+ diverse projects, including film and television productions, corporate videos, commercials, and music videos. Some projects include the films Gurl Talk and Pheromones, her new streaming platform Mangoseed.TV, and The Antoy Show.

Connect with Antoy on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

How Antoy become the President of ICF NYC
How coaching differs from consulting and therapy
What type of coaching and consulting Antoy does
How coaching can help people gain clarity, uncover blockages, and get to their goals
How the coaching industry is evolving

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Anthony Grant, who is the president and founder of Mango Seed Entertainment. And also she’s with ICF in New York City. Welcome.

Antoy Grant: Hi, Lee. It’s so great to be here today. I’m excited.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited too. Well, let’s first talk about mango seed. Tell us about that. How are you serving folks in that area?

Antoy Grant: Oh well. So Mango Seed Entertainment was kind of birthed out of my work in the entertainment industry. I started out when I was really young, modeling, acting, you know, writing. And as I worked in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry in New York. I felt really unfulfilled. I felt like a lot of the roles that, you know. Especially women of color at that time were doing, you know, we were going up for roles like the prostitute or the hooker or the prostitute, you know? That was literally what I was going out for all the time during, during the, you know, the 90s. And so it was just very unfulfilling. I felt like there were so many more roles that people could do, and I felt like the best way to empower myself was to create a company where I would have the power in my hands to write, produce, and create content that I felt was more representative of just everyone.

Lee Kantor: So did you actually do that? You started actually producing your own content?

Antoy Grant: Yes. The first thing I produced, I co-produced a show off Off-Broadway called Goddess City, and that ran for maybe two and a half years. Wow. It was very successful. It was a live show. And then that kind of led me to say, hey, you know, I think I want to move out to LA. So I ended up moving out to LA and pursuing, um, acting out there. And that’s where I started my company in Beverly Hills. And I was creating projects for companies within the Beverly Hills market. So a lot of internal videos like pitch videos, corporate videos, videos where, you know, they’re trying to sell their products, things like that. So yeah, so I got to do it some a lot of multimedia projects for the web. It was a lot of fun. Um, actually being in a space where I could create things from scratch, like from an idea to a finished product. So I really love that.

Lee Kantor: So did you purposely kind of not doing the live theatrical and moving on to video, but not just video to be like kind of through a streamer or a mass entertainment, but to be more industrial or commercial. Was that on purpose or did just circumstances kind of led you down that path?

Antoy Grant: I’ve always really had a fascination for television and film, and even when I was living in New York doing theater and, you know, TV and film there. New York is a very popular, you know, it’s Broadway. It’s all of those things. So it felt like a natural progression to do a theater production there. Um, but being in Hollywood, um, it kind of lends itself more to film and television. So I think it was just a natural, organic, you know, flow that happened. But I, I totally love film and I love television. I love the opportunity to do a retake. If you mess it up when you’re doing live theater, it’s just whatever you just did or didn’t do. That’s that’s it. So I really like, um, film and I like theater, and I like the opportunity to do different, um, takes on things and, you know, even do a better take than you did last time.

Lee Kantor: So then how did that path lead you to coaching?

Antoy Grant: It’s an interesting story. So I’ve since I was really young, people would always feel really comfortable telling me whatever was going on with them. I was I was a kid, people. I’d be like, hi, how are you? And they’d say, oh, I’ve had a terrible day. And, you know, they would go into telling me. So I, I always say that I’ve been naturally and organically coaching since I was a kid, but I just didn’t know I was doing it. So, you know, people had told me aren’t or you should really, you know, be a coach. And I was like, oh, no, you know, I couldn’t do that. And they’re like, yeah, but you’re kind of already doing it because I was always the go to person. If someone wanted to get started in an entertainment, if they wanted to, you know, do a production or if they were having relationship problems. I was just a really good listener and would always be able to kind of guide people if they wanted it so and about. It was around 2010 or so. My spirit was really feeling like, Anthony, you, you know, you should go to school and learn a little bit more about what this is that you’re doing.

Antoy Grant: And, you know, maybe it’s something you could expand on because I felt like I was doing it organically and naturally, but if I was going to do it professionally, I needed to go to school and know what I’m doing. I don’t want to mess anyone up, you know? Right. So, yeah. So I, um, went back to school and got certified in coaching and then, um, I, you know, I always have to do everything. I’m an overachiever to do it beyond. So I ended up deciding to go ahead and get credentialed, which, um, International Coaching Federation’s the governing body for coaches worldwide. Um, the largest. And so I went through their credentialing program to get my credentials. So yeah, so that’s kind of how it transpired. Um, I’m kind of still trying to figure out sometimes how does coaching fit into the entertainment business, but I think a lot of my work has has a through line with this, which is transformation, inspiration, empowerment and, you know, motivation. So I think, um, you can also do those things with entertainment or you can do it with coaching. So it all kind of ties in together that way.

Lee Kantor: Now are you doing your coaching primarily in the, you know, with the niche of entertainment folks, or is it kind of anybody can come to you and say, you know, I work at a nail salon and, um, you know, having trouble trouble, um, you know, of what my next move should be like? Is it industry agnostic, your work, or is it primarily in the entertainment industry?

Antoy Grant: Well, you Lee, that’s an interesting question, because this is probably the most confusing questions for myself. And I do a lot of marketing, like when it comes from my, you know, to my clients, I know exactly like you’re going to do, this is your brand, this is your demographics, this is this. But sometimes when it comes to ourselves, we’re kind of like totally confused. So as far as niche, um, I’ve been trying to niche down because that’s what people say that you have to do if you really want to target a specific audience. Um, but I find that in reaching down because coaching is, is coaching the person, not the problem. You know, um, a coach could theoretically coach anyone, but in from the business sense, when you’re marketing yourself, you want to make sure that you know you’re targeting a specific target, right?

Lee Kantor: Because it’s just not affordable to advertise to everyone. Like, it’s easier to advertise to dentists than it is to advertise to the world.

Antoy Grant: Exactly. So what, what I think I was having the difficulty was, was the niching to a who versus a what or a need. So recently I took this course because I’ve been really trying to figure out who my target market is, because when you’re when you first become a coach, you are kind of coaching everyone because you’re trying to get all your hours in in order to qualify for your credentials. So you end up coaching the nail salon person, or, you know, the guy starting a business or the person getting a divorce because you’re just trying to get your hours. But now that I’m beyond that, I need to figure out who my audience is. So now, after taking this course, I found out that you can also target kind of what you do. So I’m kind of I’ve looked at the through line that lands between all the clients that I currently have, and what I do is I can get people from point A to point B, I can help them get focused. I can help them put a plan together and support them in executing with accountability. So I’m still working on what that phrasing looks like. Um, primarily I work with leaders, creatives, um, and entrepreneurs, and I have a small niche of IVF clients because I went through IVF. So when I share my story online, people are very interested and want to work with me. Um, and the great thing that I learned also in this recent course that I took was just because you have a neat, it doesn’t mean like you’re stuck in that niche and you can’t go outside of that. So even though you’re marketing to, let’s say, women, you know, professional women, it doesn’t mean that you can’t if a, you know, if a man comes to you who’s not professional, that you can’t take them also, it’s just that you’re not marketing to that right target audience.

Lee Kantor: And that’s an important point for people. Who are. They feel like they might be missing out if they focus on one area. I think that that’s a misconception because a lot of times when you are focused, it’s like you said, you’re just investing maybe your marketing dollars and talking to the niche, but you can still coach whoever you want. I mean, that’s your practice. It’s like you don’t have to say, sorry, I don’t do that because my marketing says I only do this. That’s just the way to keep your marketing kind of focused. I don’t think it has anything to do with where your practice goes. I mean, your practice will go where it goes.

Antoy Grant: Exactly. So then, you know, it’s up to the coach if they want to work with that client in that specific niche or not. So that really that’s the piece that really made a difference for me is because when I thought about there’s all these clients I’m working with now that if I reach down, I’m not going to be able to work with. And I didn’t, you know, I didn’t like the feeling of that. Right. So but in knowing that I can target a specific niche, but if someone comes that’s not in that niche, I can still choose to take them. You know, if I if I.

Lee Kantor: Want if you want to. And that’s as I’m sure as your coaching career just continues to evolve, you’re going to work with exactly the people who you want to work with and that’s it. You’re going to be very selective at some point where you’re like, no, I only these are the kind of people they have to, you know, they have to make me smile when I meet them, or else I’m going to pass because I can.

Antoy Grant: Yes, yes. And I do that now, though I really I try to keep positive energy around me. Um, so in, in any circumstance I try to have those types of interactions. So, um, luckily I’ve been blessed to have primarily great clients, you know, um, and we really set up in the beginning of working together how we can best work together. And we create those agreements that we can reflect back on Gone. If things come up throughout our engagement. So it’s it’s very helpful to have that at the top.

Lee Kantor: And that’s a great lesson for all coaches because it’s a the vetting process is a two way street. They’re not just vetting you. You’re vetting them too. It has to be a good fit from both sides in order to be effective for any length of time, I would think.

Antoy Grant: Exactly. And I think one of the challenges I ran into a little bit was before I started coaching, working in entertainment and kind of being the go to person that people knew. If you want to get somewhere, do something, you know, contact and voice, you know. And so, um, then when I started coaching, which coaching is not consulting, which is more what I was doing before, I really had to clarify that at the top of the agreement, because people would pick me and say, oh, well, you’ve done all these productions so you can help me do my production. And I would have to say, yeah, but, you know, do you want a coaching agreement or do you want a consulting agreement? Because if you’re hiring me as an expert, it’s consulting. If you know, in the coaching engagement, you’re the expert on you. I’m just here as your guide. So those distinctions are really important to when, especially if you have an image that’s out there where you know, you’re an expert in certain areas and then people are hiring you as a coach.

Lee Kantor: Right. And that and in your specific situation, you were kind of wearing both hats at different times. So it’s important to be clear and get agreement upfront, like you’re saying in order to understand. So everybody’s on the same page when it comes to, hey, you’re not hiring me to get your production going, you’re hiring me to just be that sounding board and this, you know, kind of Sherpa. Uh, if you want me to do the production, that’s a different hat I wear. And I’m sure the pricing is a lot different for that.

Antoy Grant: Mhm. Yeah. So and I do both I do coaching and consulting. And that’s why clarity is vitally important at the in that initial consultation. Because I’ll go over what coaching is, what it’s not. And I’ll go over what consulting is and I’ll go over what. Therapy and counseling.

Lee Kantor: Right. That’s a whole other ball of wax there.

Antoy Grant: Yeah. That’s a whole other thing. But, um, you know, I’ll ask the client, are you? Which engagement with you best? Do you are you looking for someone who is going to, you know, give you all the answers? Or are you looking to find them on your own? So they have that option with me at least, because I do both. Um, but sometimes, you know, like I said, you have to have that agreement because you could be in a coaching engagement contract, and at some point they’ll be like, so, Anthony, what do you think? You know, what should I do? You know, and I have to reflect back to them. I’d be like, okay, so you know your situation best. What would what do you think?

Lee Kantor: Thing, right?

Antoy Grant: And kind of remind them, like, we’re kind of might be. Blurring the lines a little bit between coaching and consulting.

Lee Kantor: So when you got into coaching, how did the path lead to becoming the president of ICF in New York City? I mean, how did. I mean, is that just because you’re kind of a born leader that that just you’re you’re kind of wired that way.

Antoy Grant: You know, it’s it’s really interesting. And some days I’m still like, what? What am I doing? So I’ve always given back, like, no matter what I’ve, what I’m doing, I’ll always like be volunteering somewhere, doing something, you know, in addition to that. Um, and so when right before it was like literally right before Covid, I was I kind of moved, um, got a place in New York and I was looking for somewhere to volunteer. And, and so I said, okay. And then I found out that there was a, you know, International Coaching Federation NYC that were, you know, was looking for volunteers. So I’m like, oh my God, this is perfect. You know, I’m getting into this coaching thing, you know, and they have Volun they’re looking for volunteers. So I could combine two of my, you know, things that I like to do. So I started volunteering, I joined two committees and I was volunteering with them. And, you know, during that time I was still kind of like people were telling me, don’t you know, if you’re in entertainment, don’t tell them you’re a coach. And if you’re, you know, doing coaching, don’t tell them you’re from entertainment. And I just didn’t understand why I couldn’t be my full, authentic self in any given space, you know? And it’s not natural for me to be inauthentic. And I feel like if you’re hiding parts of yourself, you’re not being fully authentic. So I just said, you know what? I’m just going to put it out there.

Antoy Grant: I’m going to tell them, you know, I work in entertainment, but I just became a coach. And so I put it out there, and I was literally the only one that had, you know, all the technical skills that I had, like I could do graphics, edit camera, you know, all of that stuff on, on these committees. So I naturally ended up doing all of that stuff as part of my volunteer work. Um, and as a result of that, um, they asked me to be their director. You know, if I would run for director of marketing. And I said, okay. So I ran for director marketing. I did that for two years. I built out there. They didn’t have a director of marketing previously, so I built out their whole marketing department. Um, I, you know, got a marketing team together and, you know, establish how all the policies, procedures, processes that would work with the chapter and then. So, you know, when I, when I was done with that, I was like, okay, I’m going to go build my coaching practice. And they’re like, hey, do you want to be president? So so then I ran for president and I got it. It was it’s just it’s been that journey that’s been completely unexpected. I came in thinking, oh, I’m just going to give back over here. You know, some of my time, and then I end up being the president. So it’s it’s really a fun trip.

Lee Kantor: Now is, um, is marketing not something that when someone becomes a coach, that there’s a lot of, um, kind of teaching in that area or, uh, training in that area? Do they just assume the person is it knows how to do that part?

Antoy Grant: I don’t think that that at least right now, that is the focus. The focus is to train someone in the core competencies, the, you know, the the ethics, the core values, and pretty much the things that they will be able to pass the tests for ICF. Um, and so that’s the primary focus right now. I feel like, um, in a lot of the meetings I’m in with ICF and um, they’re moving more towards. Okay. So once people are credentialed how do they get, you know, get clients, which is an important aspect. A lot of the coaches within, you know, even my chapter, once they get their credentials, they just, you know, don’t know what to do next. They don’t know how to build a website. They don’t know how to do all of these things. So, um, it’s it’s a very important part. Um, I think, uh, the training now is primarily focused on getting people credentialed to pass that exam. Um, but beyond that, there’s not a whole lot, um, of support in that area. And that’s why I’m, uh, partnered with this. Um, he’s called the Billion Dollar man in the UK. He’s someone who’s created a lots of marketing successfully for many coaches and individuals and people like that. And we’ve created a new program that encompasses all of the pieces that we feel are missing for coaches when they, you know, decide to enter this building, you know, of coaching. So it’s like the training, it’s the business development, it’s the social media, it’s the I. So I literally we literally just formed this company and we’re in the process of building it out and filling those gaps in those areas that, um, that are missing for coaches.

Lee Kantor: And it’s not a slight on the coaching industry to not cover this. Most professional services, you know, like whether you’re a CPA or a lawyer. They don’t typically teach them how to do the marketing side. They teach them how to be a CPA or a lawyer. They don’t teach them how to market themselves as a CPA or a lawyer. So it’s not unusual that a professional services wouldn’t kind of put this at the top of their list of things to do, but it does seem that it’s a common challenge for a lot of folks that are in professional services.

Antoy Grant: Yes I agree. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, what is there some advice or some tips you can give that new coach when it comes to, um, business development? Is there anything you can share right now that might help them? At least some of the low hanging fruit of the some of the do’s and don’ts when it comes to this?

Antoy Grant: Sure. Yeah. So like the first thing, which is the thing I was having struggles with, was finding your niche. Um, and knowing that it doesn’t have to be a who it could be a what, and it could be a need that, um, that they feel, um, as their authentic self. Um, it doesn’t have to be like, you know, a specific type of person. It could be a, you know, a what? So that’s the first thing. Um, they they have to if they don’t have the business acumen and the business skills to do a website or do social media, There are lots of people out there that’s going to have to be an investment. Um, and finding, you know, the right person. You know, primarily people who focus on websites for coaches. And it’s best if you’re in a particular industry to find someone who specializes in creating websites for whatever industry you’re in. You know, do the research, look at, look at their work. Pick someone who’s style you like and, you know, get get it out there. Even if it’s a one page, even if you don’t have all the answers yet. Just something, you know, something about you, your contact page, if that’s all you’ve got. Um, and then definitely build your social media. It’s like such an easy way to get in touch with clients. Um, LinkedIn is very popular for businesses. Um, you know, even if you have one following, start posting consistently. Um, I know people have a problem with that, but now with AI, you can totally use any of the AI apps to put your authentic story in and ask it to create, you know, posts for you for 30 days or however many days or tomorrow. Um, so people that had excuses in the past like, I don’t know what to post.

Antoy Grant: Now have the support of AI to, um, to create those posts for them, but just putting themselves out consistently. Um, I always tell coaches because a lot of their work is virtual, that imagine that your business is a storefront business. And if it was a storefront, you would have to open every day at certain hours, and you would have to have offers for your customers and you would have to have merchandise. And that’s what, um, when you’re doing sometimes a virtual business, you don’t think about, you don’t want to you’re not posting every day as if you would open your storefront every day. You’re not giving people offers as if you, you know, would have merchandise in your store every day and you’re not having offering sales as Most storefronts do, so it’s important to act as if you are. You had to pay an overhead and you had a storefront. And just be present. Be in front. And not everyone’s going to buy. Just like people pass by your storefront. They may not come in, but they see you and they know you’re there and they, you know, get to know what you’re doing. So that’s probably, I would say, the most important things, um, and really do what you love because then it won’t be such a, such a grind to get up like, oh, I gotta get up and do this, you know? Um, if you stepped into coaching anyway, there’s a desire to, um, help people. Um, so really, you know, put that passion, find that true passion and how you want to help some. You know, everyone has a different lane that they’re in. So find your lane so that when you’re doing what you have to do, it doesn’t feel hard or it doesn’t feel like work.

Lee Kantor: Right? You’re excited to do it every day because you it’s your passion that you love it.

Antoy Grant: Yes. And also, I think one part that sometimes missing is self-care. And this is across all service platforms. Um, with ICF they do kind of build in built in. Um, if, you know, even when you’re doing your coaching hours that you do a certain number of, you know, paid hours and a certain number of unpaid, and then you also they suggest that you have a coach as well, because sometimes you’re taking in, um, a lot with your clients. So just really building in that time for either having your own coach that you can offload things with and run things by, um, or, you know, definitely making that time for your massages, your bike rides, your walks in the park, your time with family, your time with your pets, whatever that looks like for you. Naturally, building that into your schedule. Because if you don’t, it probably won’t happen. And then the last thing I would say is just celebrate all the wins, whether they’re small or big, um, along the way. Because if you wait for that big, big win, you know, it, it might it may take a while. But if you’re celebrating each each step of the way, it builds more momentum towards that final goal that you might have.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And I think that when you celebrate small wins, it it kind of heightens your appreciation and your gratitude of the little things that are happening every day that a lot of times we take for granted.

Antoy Grant: Definitely, definitely. And it’s just fun. It’s just fun to celebrate. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: Now, if it wasn’t enough that you were kind of running mango Seed and you’re the president of the ICF in New York City, you also have time to write books. Can you talk a little bit about. I mean, you must be a master organizer. Planner, uh, in order to be able to do all of these things. Uh, it’s at a high level. So can you share a little bit about your books and, um, what they are and where people can get them?

Antoy Grant: Sure. Yeah. Um, my books are on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Um, and they’re the. It’s called the best Year ever planner plus journal and best year ever goal workbook. And these were kind of born out of my work with clients and even just my people coming to me over years like Anthony, how do you get all this stuff done? Like, you’re always juggling like a million things and you’re getting that. You’re actually getting them done. So instead of telling each individual person one at a time, I figured I’d just put it in some books and then that way they could just go buy it and I wouldn’t have to, you know, tell them, um, all individually. So, um, what the book series is, it’s, um, it’s a a year, one’s a yearly planner and journal. It has a lot of prompts. You can start it at any time. It’s undated, so you can start in, you know, February or December whenever you choose to start and you take it through the year. It has daily prompts, weekly prompts, yearly prompts. It has it has quotes, it has affirmations. It’s everything I use to get the stuff I need to get done and get. Keep me in the right frame of mind and keep me focused. So I just figured I’d put it all in there and people can choose to use the parts or all of it if they choose to use throughout the course of the year. And then the Best Year Ever goal workbook kind of came second.

Antoy Grant: And that was because when people got the first book, they were like, can you just create one that’s just focused only on, you know, just accomplishing your goals, you know, without the planner, without the journal. So I created the second book, um, in order to just focus on goals only. So it was really fun to put it together. I, I was under kind of a lot. I put myself under a lot of pressure to, to write the first book and the second one, um, because I don’t know why. Writing for me, I have to be in the zone to write. But when there’s so many things going on, your brain’s not free enough to really be as creative as you need to be. So I kind of had to put a timeline on myself, and that kind of accelerated my brain having to kick into, you know, full gear to be able to juggle everything I needed to do. But it was it’s a it was a lot of late nights, a lot of sleepless nights. And this was before I came out. So I literally had to write everything myself. Um, so yeah, um, it was a lot of fun, though. Um, it’s another part of my brain that I love to, to use, which is writing and to write, um, something that I know is transformative, or when someone reads it, it’s going to help them. It was really a pleasure to be able to create that.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about, um, well, let’s start with mango seed. If they want to know more about that and need help in that area. What is the best website and coordinates for that? And then after, if you could share maybe the IFC. New York City, um, kind of coordinates for them if they want to learn more about coaching.

Antoy Grant: Okay. So, um, my website is my name. It’s an toi a n t o y grant grantee.com. Um, mango seed is mango seed. If you want to learn more about the International Coaching Federation it’s coaching federation.org. If you’d like to learn more about ICF NYC, it is ICF NYC chapter.org. So those are all the cool places to learn more.

Lee Kantor: Well, Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work in so many areas and we really appreciate you.

Antoy Grant: Can I can I share one more site because it’s the new site I forgot. Um, the, um, the temporary site that you can go to right now to learn and get more information. Laters. Um Marco robinson.com Marco robinson.com. And that’s and that’s for the new international coaching school that we’re creating that covers business and coaching and AI and social media and all of that cool stuff.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, Anthony, thanks again for sharing your story.

Antoy Grant: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Michelle Warner With MW Coaching & Consulting LLC

June 24, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Michelle Warner With MW Coaching & Consulting LLC

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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Michelle Warner, founder of MW Coaching and Consulting. Michelle shares her journey from attorney to coach, explaining how she helps mid to senior professionals and organizations overcome career stagnation and toxic cultures. The conversation explores the differences between coaching and consulting, the importance of self-awareness, and strategies for personal and organizational growth. Michelle also discusses trends among younger workers, signs companies need coaching, and the role of accountability in achieving goals, highlighting her individualized, empowering approach to client success.

As the founder of MW Coaching & Consulting LLC, based just outside Philadelphia, Michelle Warner partners with high-performing leaders and organizations operating in fast-paced, high-pressure environments.

Her coaching is anything but theoretical; it’s grounded, strategic, and shaped by real-world leadership challenges. Clients turn to her when they need to pause with purpose, shift perspective, and lead with greater clarity and impact.

She holds both a BA and JD from Villanova University and is certified in specialty areas including Strategic Planning & Execution, Power & Influence, and Communication Impact. Known for her directness, intuitive insight, and ability to balance boldness with empathy, she helps clients unlock their potential without losing their edge.

When she’s not coaching, Michelle is likely chasing the horizon—literally. A lifelong beach lover and restless adventurer, she believes every season holds the promise of a fresh start.

Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Michelle’s background as a former attorney and transition to coaching.
The role of coaching in addressing career fulfillment and organizational culture.
The importance of self-awareness in personal and professional growth.
Strategies for creating a coaching culture within organizations.
The distinction between coaching and consulting.
Addressing toxic workplace behaviors and promoting positive change.
The impact of societal conditioning on high-performing individuals, particularly women.
The significance of individualized coaching approaches and boundary setting.
Trends among younger workers regarding workplace expectations and coaching.
The role of accountability in the coaching process and its effect on client commitment.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Michelle Warner, who is with MW Coaching and Consulting. Welcome, Michelle.

Michelle Warner: Good morning Lee. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your practice. How you serving folks?

Michelle Warner: Certainly. So I work with mid to senior career professionals and with businesses that find themselves stuck in situations that are no longer serving their purpose. So for individuals, people who are feeling maybe a little trapped in their current position, not getting the recognition that they want. Not feeling fulfilled. Not knowing what’s next. And for businesses, I really dig in deep on those culture changes that are needed. I found over the course of my career that every company knows who their top toxic employees are, and unfortunately, it’s tolerated for too long in the business sense, and it opens businesses up to risk. So as an attorney, I’ve seen the bad side when it goes on too long. And as a coach, I get to help and be more proactive and help avoid those problems.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned formerly an attorney. I don’t know if you’re still practicing, but can you talk a little bit about your backstory and how you got into coaching?

Michelle Warner: Certainly. I fell into it a little bit accidentally. I was in-house for an organization. We had some HR challenges coming at them from the very directive. I’m the lawyer. This is how we have to fix this. Problem was not working. So I looked for additional tools and resources. Went to the center for Executive Coaching, really with the intent to broaden my skills as an attorney. And going through that training has absolutely helped me be a better lawyer. And how I ask questions, how I frame things, how I create more space. So as I was doing my training, I realized this was the pivot for me and that being able to stand next to my clients and support them and watch them tap into their own magic inside it said my soul in a way that I wasn’t looking for, but it came to me at absolutely the right time and it’s been the best change I ever made.

Lee Kantor: Now, have you ever been coached yourself prior to this?

Michelle Warner: I had been coached prior to that, so I had a friend of a friend who several years ago, at a time in my life when everything was up in the air, I was in the middle of a divorce and my mother was ill and really stuck Stuff myself and not knowing where to go, and a friend of a friend was doing her own coach training program and needed hours to get through her program. And I offered to be her guinea pig. And it was a very different way of looking at it, right? I was seeing a therapist at the same time, and he provided insights with the insight that this coach provided for me and the way she asked questions and framed things differently. It all blended together so nicely with what I was hearing, that it really made me able to look at things the other way. And then more recently, while I was in-house, we brought in coaches for a number of our leadership team members. So I had the benefit of having two really wonderful coaches that I worked with through that project as well.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with coaches, and at that point you were, um, part of the team and you were saying, hey, let’s get some coaches in for the team. How like how are you going to judge? Like if this is working, how are you going to vetting the coaches? Like what was kind of the thinking of implementing something like this, that it sounds like it was new to the organization.

Michelle Warner: It was new to the organization. Coaching is very personal. So having the right fit between the coach and the client. So with the organization, we went to a company, uh, where it’s a solopreneur, woman owned business, but she has affiliations and a team that she has built of other solopreneur coaches who she can tap into for engagements. So she brought a list, a roster of coaches, if you will, narrowed it down based on the information we provided about who was getting coached and what we needed. And then the employees were given the option from a curated list of coaches to pick who they wanted to work with, and that worked really well. So everybody got to choose, hey, I think this person is the best fit for me.

Lee Kantor: And the framing to the, uh, the team wasn’t. Hey. We’re fixing. Bob and Mary were. It was. Hey, we have a coach that’s going to really help. Kind of bring out the best in you.

Michelle Warner: Absolutely. We were working on a strategic plan and updating that. So it was brought in as part of, hey, we’re working on this strategic plan. There were a number of group facilitated sessions. And then the individuals we started with, the C-suite, uh, moved on to several directors, and then the planet is to roll it out beyond that. Um, and that’s still in process. So and when you ask, how do you know it’s working? It shows up in how people show up at the office. If people are experiencing negative feedback for behaviors that seem to get them what they wanted in the past, they recognize the value of changing to be more aligned with the company culture. And it’s not a good or a bad proposition. So when I go in and I coach clients, and even if I brought in by a sponsor company, it’s not like, oh, your company thinks you’re horrible, it’s your company thinks there’s a lot here. However, they’re noticing some conflicts with some of your coworkers, and they want to support you and make you the best fit you can be.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, you mentioned kind of the toxic, uh, employee or the person that could be a high performer and be toxic, or they could be a high performer and be a bully. There’s lots of ways that that kind of shows itself in an organization. When you’re approaching that individual. Do they have the self-awareness that that’s something that, hey, maybe I should work on this or hey, it’s got me this far. Why? You know, don’t fix something that’s not broken. Like. Like how do you kind of manage that individual?

Michelle Warner: So it depends on where they are. If they’re a little bit self-aware, we have something to work with. If they’re not at all self-aware. Uh, depending on where they are in their career and whether they’ve had any assessments like link, personality Profile or Disk or Bachman or any of the sort of big five personality type tests. If they have had those in the past, I won’t recommend an additional assessment if they haven’t had them. I’m certified to administer the personality Profiler, Which I love. It is a big five personality test, but it also looks at your motivations and your competencies. And those assessments aren’t the be all and end all. It is a data point. So I would start with those clients and talk about this particular personality trait showed up in your assessment. Let’s talk about that. And sometimes that sparks a deeper conversation. And there’s another assessment that I also love, the saboteur assessment that from Shazad Amin on his positive intelligence. And that looks at the ways we get in our own way and everybody has them, but we all show up differently when we’re not being the best version of ourselves. So if they previously had assessments, I’m going to look at those and we’re going to discuss those. If they hadn’t. I’m going to use link in a saboteur assessment to get a baseline to have a discussion with the client. Hey, what do you think about this? Uh. Does this resonate? Does it not? Let’s talk about it. Tell me about times when you haven’t gotten what you wanted. Because the reality is, what got you here can’t get you there. And we’re all a little hardwired to default to the negative. So being able to recognize when we don’t show up as the best version of ourselves and to self-regulate and to stop that and see the immediate effect of how people react differently when you’re not in a heightened emotional state. It really is life changing. And it’s not big, huge changes that need to be made. Sometimes it’s a very small thing that makes an enormous difference and then gives you something more to build on.

Lee Kantor: Now is your most of your work nowadays with the corporations and kind of steering them into kind of a coaching culture, or are you working mostly with kind of that, uh, executive that’s kind of at a plateau or is, uh, navigating a difficult situation?

Michelle Warner: I have a mix of clients with companies who know that they have, uh, things that they would like to see done differently in their culture. And then I have individuals who reach out and say, hey, I want to find some something better for myself. And I’m a little stuck. I don’t know how to get there. And then I also do some facilitation. Uh, I have, you know, so, for example, team building with an in-house legal department where they have identified what, based on their internal company surveys, where they think they would like to have more impact with the legal department. So I have an upcoming full day facilitation with them to really help them dive deeper in a way that doesn’t feel confrontational for their team, which is an amazingly strong team. But to improve and help them navigate where they go next?

Lee Kantor: Um, are your clients mostly lawyers or in the legal field, or you kind of work in professional services, or is it kind of industry agnostic at this point?

Michelle Warner: It really is industry agnostic, definitely more toward professional services. But the types of issues that clients come to are really universal struggles. What do I want out of life? What can be, you know, why am I not getting? Why do I feel unfulfilled? Why am I not getting the opportunities I want? And it you recognizing it’s the way I show up sometimes? And how do I do differently? How do I make small changes without giving up the core of myself. And I think particularly for women in business, to get to be successful, you’ve had to have a very strong personality, and then sometimes that gets turned on you as, oh, you’re abrasive or you’re seen as not a team player. And that’s not necessarily a fair characterization, but it feels incredibly scary to try and soften your persona when being the tough, confident in charge woman 100% of the time has gotten you to where you are now.

Lee Kantor: So how do you kind of coach a person through that specific challenge, like when they feel they had to be this way in order to get to where they are, and then maybe they have to be more of their whole self, maybe how they are not in the office in order to get to where they want to go.

Michelle Warner: It depends on how they’re feeling about it. Um, how I would coach them. I would work through. Yes. It has gotten you all of these things that you say, but this got me there. And what have you had to give up? What have you had to tolerate? What have you not had access to because you were stuck on this pass and really dive into those limiting beliefs, and to why you couldn’t be a little bit more vulnerable. Ask for help when it was appropriate. Say no when people were pushing your boundaries beyond the point that was healthy for you. You. And when you start to have those conversations and dig into that, people very quickly realize how you get, Yeah. Oh, I’m feeling really resentful because my boundary was pushed. Why did I feel that way? Okay, well, I wanted to do this. I had my plans. I intended to leave the office at 5:00 for my out of office life, whatever that is. And somebody came to me because they didn’t do their job. And it’s 445 and, oh, it’ll just take a minute and, you know, it’ll take more than just a minute and you’re going to be late leaving for your own life. But you give in anyway because you feel the pressure. So we will work around one. Why? They felt that they had to do that, and two, how to set boundaries respectfully and consistently so that you make clear what you are going to tolerate. And it’s really a personal and individual conversation because we all have different triggers about things that push our boundaries.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you see this as kind of. Blind spots, or do you see this as just, um, not having that self-awareness that this was happening? Like, how how do you see this in the individual, or is is it something that I’m sure once you tell them, it’s like, oh, I like you reframing it in a way that seems very clear now that, oh, I do have choices and I don’t have to give the guy a minute if I don’t want to. Um, once you once, you’re kind of giving them permission. Do they just not have the language?

Michelle Warner: So sometimes it’s not having the language. Sometimes it’s societal conditioning that we get trapped in the things you should be doing or the subliminal messages even. I mean, sometimes they’re not even subliminal. Right. Oh, well, good girls act this way. Oh, good girls don’t do that. Or really high performers. Or you see the people above you. Modeling behavior that is at odds with where you want to be. So for example, companies that say, oh, we’re family friendly and we have great parental leave options, but nobody ever takes it or there’s a lot of pressure or people are talked about when they’re taking that. The message that someone gets when it is time for them to exercise, that parental leave or family leave to care for other family members, they still don’t do it because the message that comes out is very different. And sometimes it’s it is a blind spot and you just haven’t thought of it that way. I was very fortunate early in my career. I had an amazing boss and mentor and I was, you know, 26. I was a brand new manager running a statewide program with multiple offices, and we were making some changes to the way things had been done.

Michelle Warner: And I somebody from the office, one of the distant offices, called and said, well, that’s not how we do this. And my response, because I was 26 and thought I knew everything was, I don’t care how you’ve done it in the past, I’m in charge of this program and this is how we’re going to do it. Yikes. Thinking about it now, it still makes me cringe. And she, of course told her boss, who was my peer. That peer called our boss. He called me into his office and said, listen. But what he did, in addition to saying to me, hey, you can’t do that. There’s a better way to frame that, I get this. He made very clear to my peer. I brought Michelle in. I did bring her in to run this program, and we will talk about how she conveyed information to you. But make no mistake, when she’s telling you things are changing. It’s coming from me. So he supported me and guided me. So externally, he had my back. But he also called me to the carpet and said, hey, that’s not okay. You can’t do that.

Lee Kantor: Right? But it was more about your communication, not your what you were planning on doing.

Michelle Warner: Correct. But I think there are too many people that when we talk about the toxic high performers, right, they tend to bulldoze over people because they feel like their responsibility to get something done. And what I found is a lot of them, nobody tells them. Nobody says directly to them, this is unacceptable in this workplace right now.

Lee Kantor: I agree 100%. I think that your I think what your boss did was very generous and, and that’s probably kind of how most bosses should be is to watch. You know, I got your back. And next time, let’s say it this way.

Michelle Warner: And unfortunately, a lot of people who are great individual contributors get promoted to manager without any additional training or any information on how to make that transition. How to be a good boss, how to manage people that used to be your peers, and now you’re directing them in some way.

Lee Kantor: Right. And not everybody is equipped to make that transition smoothly without help.

Michelle Warner: Yeah. Again, I think everybody can use help, even if you think you’re equipped or not. Because every new role, every new position, yes, you have transferable skills that you’ve brought from your lived experience, other places, but still, hey, this is how things are done here. Here are things that seem to be working well. I mean, not to lock people into. Well, this is how we’ve always done it. Because I think that is the worst thing any place can do, right? Uh, just that blind allegiance to this is how we’ve done it in the past, right? So look at what’s a critical look. And the beauty of coaching is that it creates the grace and space for people to just take that critical look. Take that pause. Think about those things and have somebody who’s not tied to a particular outcome other than what is best for the client. What is the what is going to be best for you? That’s what I’m going to help support and guide you toward. But I’m not going to advise and tell you, oh, this is the way it has to be done. And to to watch a client go from, I’m having this problem to I now have a plan on how to move forward with. This is just one of the most amazing gifts that I have gotten out of this.

Lee Kantor: Now is that. Um. I’m always curious when talking to coaches when it comes to the boundaries between coaching and consulting. And I know your firm is both coaching and consulting, but where does the. I’m here to ask you questions and and hey, do these three things begin. You know, if you just do these three things, you’re probably going to get a good result.

Michelle Warner: Well, I think there’s a false equivalency there. It based on my experience, others experience doing these three things will get you a good result. But that’s not always the case. It may not be the right result. So with my clients, if I am going to offer, first of all, I don’t jump in to save them, right? My clients are magic and fabulous and they have everything they need to excel within themselves. I just help pull that out. Shine a light. Reflect back as a mirror. So we are. My client and I are equals. I am not the person in charge. Unlike a therapy relationship or even like a consulting relationship. You have a problem. I know how to fix it. That’s not how I go in as a coach. It’s. What are you looking to get? How are we going to create this as equals? And then once we get in, and if they are working and they are really at a point where I do have some insight that might be helpful to them, I will ask for permission. Would you like some advice? Do you just want to vent about this problem or would you like to some advice? Or maybe to workshop some solutions on how to get that? So asking for that permission before giving me advice makes it more easily receivable.

Michelle Warner: I think we’ve all been in those situations, particularly with well-meaning friends or family members, when all you want to do is vent about something and they try and tell you and then, you know, your hackles get a little bit up and you get very defensive right away, as if this person who you know, loves and cares about you thinks you’re not capable of managing your own life. And but what I found is, even in those situations where my clients have accepted the offer of advice, if I say, well, have you thought about or in my experience, I tried and whatever it is and it’s it’s happened, you know, it’s almost universal. And they go, oh no, I could never do that. Okay. Well what could you do? Or. No, I don’t like that. But that just sparked an idea. So it’s not even about them taking my advice. It’s about putting something on the table that sparks a different direction.

Lee Kantor: And when you’re working with these individuals through these challenges, how do they know if they’re on the right track, that they have a good fit with you as the coach? Is there any kind of advice when a person is with a new coach or starting a relationship like this? How do you. Are there kind of signs or signals that, hey, this is going to work out?

Michelle Warner: Absolutely. So with my clients, I always do a complimentary discovery call before considering an engagement. I am very intuitive, so what I am looking for in a client is somebody who is actually ready and willing to dig deep, and sometimes people are willing, but they’re not ready. And for the client side, as you’re having this discovery, call with this coach. Do you feel comfortable? Can you see yourself sharing information with this person? Are you being treated as an equal in that conversation? Because if any of those things are no or if you’re a afraid and that’s not really the right word. But if you’re hesitant, if you don’t think, hey, this is somebody I can have an open conversation with and trust that they are going to create a safe space for me to tell them these really personal things about my life, um, or about, you know, my business, whatever it is, that’s not the right fit. So it’s a little bit of art and a little bit of science. I mean, as a client, what does your gut tell you? Do you feel comfortable with this person? And if you don’t, it’s okay to say no. I would much rather if there’s somebody that I don’t think I’m working with him. And there were a great group of coaches that I went through my training program with that we have a whole separate cohort that we all still stay in touch. I have coached with all of them. So if somebody comes to me and they aren’t, I don’t feel like I’m the right fit. I would much rather say to the client, hey, I’m not the right fit for you. I’m going to give you a couple of names of other people that I know and that I trust. I think one of them might be better than start an engagement with a client, get several months in. I’m unhappy. They’re unhappy. And that’s just a bad way to do things. And and it’s harmful to the client.

Lee Kantor: So again, your intuition is kind of your, your guide when it comes to this from the client standpoint. If you feel this isn’t working then you should probably get a different coach.

Michelle Warner: Absolutely. I mean, your coach should be listening to you. If your coach is doing all of the talking and directing, where are you in the center of that equation? Right. So even though my clients and I are equal in the relationship in terms of power, I expect my clients and I want it space for my clients to work through their issues. It’s not about a coach showing how smart they are and how how good they are. It’s someone who can sit quietly and listen intently and hear sometimes the things that aren’t being said and and dig deep on that. So if the client doesn’t feel like they are at the center of the conversation, so it’s not all about them. That may not be the right fit.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you seeing anything? Um. Any trend? Maybe when it comes to the younger workers, are they their attitudes towards work and, um, and their job seems a lot different than maybe previous generations like that. It seems to me that they’re less tolerant of this kind of bullying or misbehavior, and they’re very quick to pull the plug if things aren’t working out the way they would like. Is, are you seeing that in your coaching? Are they how are they, as you know, coaching clients? Or is there an expectation for them to have coaching as part of their job now?

Michelle Warner: I think some of them may have that expectation. I think there’s a balance. I think younger people who are unwilling to bend their boundaries and say, hey, you know, you’ve paid me for these hours and this is what I’m going to give you to the best of my ability. And getting out of that management expectation that they that the company owns you, so to speak, and that they have access to you at all times. Now again, the higher you get up in the organization, depending on what your responsibilities are. I’m not talking about if there’s an emergency situation or something that it really needs all hands on deck and it’s going to be an extension, but that shouldn’t be the norm. So I think younger workers are bringing a breath of fresh air with that and making people question why, right? It’s not healthy. It burns people out. The other reality is that the loyalty tax is real. If you leave and go to a new job, even if it is the same title, you will get paid more than if you stay where you are and work your way up. So I think companies need to take a look at how they’re caring about retaining their employees, rather than just recruiting them.

Michelle Warner: On the flip side of that, I think the younger A generation needs to learn to be a little bit more patient. They are not going to be the star right away. They are not going to come in at entry level and be a vice president in two years. Um, and I think sometimes they need to sit back a little bit and observe a little bit more and then offer those suggestions for moving things forward. Um, I think I love a hybrid work environment, but I would not be the lawyer that I became if I had started my career fully remote or even hybrid, because so much of what I learned happened informally because we were all physically in the same place. So I think the more we can find a balance and allow that flexibility, that remote or hybrid working gives companies and gives individuals to have a life outside of the office, but a little bit more structured. And again, I think it’s incumbent upon those of us who are a little bit older to stop talking about, well, this is how we did it, and find ways to convey that information and create that connection. So I think there has to be a lot more listening on both sides.

Lee Kantor: Now, what is kind of the pain that your corporate clients are feeling where, hey, maybe I should bring Michelle in. What what what are they? What are some of the symptoms that they have? Um, a situation that having a coach like yourself would benefit them.

Michelle Warner: High turnover in a particular department.

Lee Kantor: That’s usually. That’s kind of the. Hey, that’s a warning light. Um, if if we’re if we’re having a hard time hiring or we’re having a lot of turnover, that’s a sign that something’s amiss.

Michelle Warner: Yes. If they’re doing exit interviews and their exit interviews are all saying the same thing. If they have a compliance hotline. And when they look at the data behind the compliance hotline. And let’s say you have two out of ten departments that have far higher complaints into the hotline, regardless of whether they are substantiated as violating anything. Right. There are all of these early warning triggers that something might not be right. So what? And anytime they are getting the same message. You know, over a consistent time period or repeated from different people across different sectors, that’s when they should be taking a look at their culture and what they are tolerating and, and allowing and thinking about bringing in a code to take a look, to see what is beneath that.

Lee Kantor: And let’s look at the individual. What’s what are some of the symptoms that a coach might be beneficial for an individual.

Michelle Warner: So if they are consistently getting good performance reviews but not getting opportunities, they’re not getting promotions. They are getting a high reviews, but they feel like they’re checking it in. You know, they can phone it in and there they there are no more opportunities for growth. And if they’re feeling stagnant and stuck and hey, I’ve kind of done everything I could do here, but I don’t know what. I’ve been doing it for so long and I’ve gotten really good at it. It’s scary to think about what’s next. So any of those things where it’s, you feel like you’ve reached a plateau and you’re not happy with that plateau because there sometimes you get to a plateau and it’s okay to stay there for a little while. If you’re if you’re still getting fulfillment and joy and engagement, even though you recognize you’ve taken a little break and you’re not continuing an upper progression that you want, that’s okay. But if you’re unhappy being there, that’s when you should look for a coach.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share, um, that, um, describes maybe how you help someone get to a new level? Is there? You don’t obviously name the individual, but maybe share the problem that they came to you with and how you were able to help them navigate through that and get to a new place.

Michelle Warner: Absolutely. So this was actually I was a volunteer coach at the Pennsylvania Conference for women. And so again, very different than a normal engagement, right. You show up and folks sit down for, you know, 20, 25 minutes and have a chat with you and one woman came and she sat down and her stated problem was, I need to have a conversation with my boss because she’s showing favoritism to one of my direct reports. And so we talked about that. What was her relationship with the boss? What’s going on in the department? You know who else is on the team? And in just 20 minutes, because I created space for her to really think about the problem without the emotions of, oh my God, I have to have this conversation with my boss that I really don’t want to have. He had come up with a framework on a recommendation to her boss on how to realign the work that the team was doing, one to take better use of what she was perceiving as favoritism for this, one employee was really that employee had certain skills that the other person at that level didn’t really have the skills for and didn’t show any and like had very clearly expressed that they didn’t have an interest in doing anyway, but to create a more equitable distribution of work, to take some things off her boss’s plate, to solve a problem in a large in the larger company where there had been these gaps, which was causing some of these problems. And so she went from dreading a conversation with her boss to really excited to go back and put this plan that she came up with on paper, and then present it with her boss and have additional dialog.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it’s so funny. Just the power of reframing is so, so important. And having an expert like you to help kind of give them the space to find that is just it’s very it’s a gift really.

Michelle Warner: It is. And I mean, it’s a gift for me when my clients take that reframe and you see the energy in their body change, that you see their face start to light up and the literal light bulb going on, um, and they go, oh, wait, okay. And then they can take it and they can run with it. This thing that was right.

Lee Kantor: It was weighing on them, right? It was weighing on them. And now you’ve just lightened their load that now they they feel more in control that they, they are they’re not kind of the victim of the circumstance. They are the change agent of the circumstance.

Michelle Warner: Absolutely. And again, the the beauty of coaching is it creates that space. Um, and we all say, oh, well, I could sit down, you know, people say, oh, well, I could just sit down and think these things out myself. You absolutely could. But are you going to.

Lee Kantor: Right.

Michelle Warner: And when there’s somebody who’s there that, you know, is an accountability partner and that you know, that you have paid for to block off this chunk of time, it changes how you perceive it.

Lee Kantor: Right. And and to your point about the accountability. Um, I always tell people like you break promises to yourself every day, but you keep appointments. So when you pay, you show up usually, you know, so.

Michelle Warner: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: If you if you want the change to happen, you might need some help here.

Michelle Warner: Well and again we we all need that right. We all. If I know I’m meeting my girlfriend at the gym to go to yoga class, I’m more likely to show up than if I’m going myself. Right.

Lee Kantor: Exactly.

Michelle Warner: I don’t feel like going today.

Lee Kantor: Right? It’s raining. It’s cold. Right. But. Oh, I gotta meet Susan there. So then I’m showing up because I don’t want to let her down.

Michelle Warner: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Well, Michel, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the best way to connect? Is there a website?

Michelle Warner: Absolutely. The website is my coaching net. Um, my direct email is Michelle with two L’s at my coaching net. And then I’m also on LinkedIn under Michelle Warner.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Michelle Warner: Thank you. Lee, I appreciate you and I appreciate your time.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Business and Leadership Coach Marla Bace

June 16, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Business and Leadership Coach Marla Bace

00:00 /

Marla Bace is a business and leadership coach who helps successful professionals and business owners get out of their own way and move forward with clarity.

With decades of experience leading teams and driving results in large corporations and growing companies, she now coaches people who are great at what they do—but need stronger strategy, confidence, or communication to take their business or career to the next level.

Marla brings a practical, real-world approach—rooted in emotional intelligence and executive insight—that helps clients make smarter decisions, lead more effectively, and create meaningful growth without the overwhelm.

Connect with Marla on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

What brings high performers to coaching
Leadership presence and emotional intelligence
What most leaders get wrong when they’re trying to grow
What role emotional intelligence plays in making high-stakes decisions or navigating uncertainty in leadership

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Marla Bace, who is the founder of Marla Bace Coaching. Welcome.

Marla Bace: Thank you Lee.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Marla Bass coaching. How you serving folks?

Marla Bace: Sure. Well, I spent the better part of 30 years working in small, midsize, and fortune 500 companies. Everything from starting my career as a CPA to TQM, um, head of marketing, head of customer experience, and a bit of time as general manager for American Express Concierge. So I am taking all of that knowledge and I am working with my successful and accomplished individuals and or business owners in helping them bridge the gap from successful to fulfilled, one goal at a time.

Lee Kantor: So then how did you make the transition into kind of working in that type of industry, or in the variety of industries you work into now saying, okay, you know what, my new customer are these top performers, and I want to help them kind of become successful.

Marla Bace: It actually isn’t a new career. So when you start in public accounting, literally from the first day of your second year, you are mentoring and coaching people underneath you. And then throughout my career, I was fortunate enough to help from the inside and leadership teams, so many different companies. Between divesting, merging, acquiring that, I wound up with a lot of non-competes between gigs. And so I have always had my own LLC and I’ve worked with small business owners, whether it was, um, strategic marketing planning, growing their teams, creating employee engagement programs. So with 2020, um, I had been working in a small marketing strategic consultancy business, and our clients there were working too much on excuse me in their business and not on their business. So I wound up just pulling all my tools from all those years of expertise in helping them, identifying the right people to place under them to get something done, to create more time for themselves, to become more efficient in the areas they brought us in for marketing, sales, customer experience. And it just became sort of a natural evolution, where I then decided to go back and get credentialed by the ICF so that it wasn’t just through internal experience, but actually external experience that I stepped into the world of coaching. So I really leverage my hands on experience. And I’d say it’s a melding, if you will, of consulting and coaching. So a little different than the ICF, where they really teach that all of your clients have the answers within themselves. I work with those people who should have the intuition to have the answers, but they just need some validation or a sounding board from someone who may have done something similar to what they’re doing now.

Lee Kantor: So you’re working both with like an executive enterprise level organization that wants to be promoted, say, and then also an entrepreneur who wants to grow a business. So those are.

Marla Bace: Exactly, exactly. And I have a client who’s been an entrepreneur for 33 years and has decided to exit the business, but realized they need to grow their business first so they can get the right valuation. So when we say entrepreneur, I don’t just want people to think a startup.

Lee Kantor: And then, uh, so let’s talk about each one kind of separately, because I would imagine there’s different strategies if I want to be promoted, uh, as opposed to I want to grow my business to an exit.

Marla Bace: Yes, yes.

Lee Kantor: Um, so let’s tackle the, uh, enterprise level, um, person. That person is typically in mid management, upper management and one to be permanent. Or can it be a young person that says, I don’t even know how to navigate a career? Can you give me some guidelines and some some objectives so I can kind of accelerate quickly?

Marla Bace: It could be the younger person, but oftentimes, um, they’re not who comes to me, it is more the individual who’s manager doesn’t get to director or director and doesn’t get to VP. Or more often than not, because of my networking and my affiliation, it’s the SVP or the C-suite person that I’ll hear them say, I have a great right hand person. I just wish they would do X better so I could be more efficient. Um, so it can be an individual raising their hand, um, to get to the next level or sort of their boss or the HR department saying, um, this is a high performer. They just need work on 1 or 2 skill sets. And it’s usually around competence communication and leadership presence.

Lee Kantor: Are you finding that, um, as you’ve been in industry for a while, or is coaching just now commonplace, that more and more folks have a coach, whether they do individually or the companies are investing in them on behalf of the individual?

Marla Bace: Um, you know, that’s a really interesting question. Um, because I was fortunate enough that throughout my career I had two amazing Coaches. Um, one who really helped. Uh, I wound up in a C-suite position really young, and, um, it was in a mostly male dominated company, and, uh, that individual sort of fell into my lap. The company paid for it, and it was just really a great experience for me. And oftentimes I will ask myself, what would that person have done when I’m coaching? And that’s going back almost 20 years ago. Um, I think what we’re seeing now so much more is, um, with the advent of zoom and post Covid, everybody is working remotely and so many people went back just to, um, get certified. Or a lot of times I hear people saying, you know, their life coach. Um, so it’s become, I’d say, more prolific from a tapping people on the shoulder and saying, hey, I’m a coach. Are you interested in being coach? Versus probably 5 to 15 years ago it was HR or your senior manager saying, I want to invest in you. So I don’t know that it’s necessarily become more commonplace as much as it’s just, um, more talked about.

Lee Kantor: I remember something someone told me a while ago, uh, they were in HR and they were talking about training and coaching, and they said, um, do we want to like, what’s worse, investing in the person? Um, and they leave or not investing in the person and they stay.

Marla Bace: Okay. Yeah. That’s an age old quote.

Lee Kantor: But so.

Marla Bace: Yeah. Um.

Marla Bace: Yeah, it’s it’s interesting though, because I was more apt to stay, you know, so like I said, I had two opportunities and for me, it always meant that I gave the organization 150% because if they saw that in me, I wanted to give them a reason to keep investing in me, and I hope that’s still the case. I see it more for associate level people in the financial services world. Um, so some of the larger private equity firms actually have coaching benches where they give those associates. I think it’s 2 to 3 times within the early parts of their career, the opportunity to work with a coach. So I think it depends on the industry, the size of the company. Um, and probably how, um, proactive the leader is. Um, and I know for myself personally, I don’t know about you, Lee, but how many times in our careers do we get sent for training? And you sat in a classroom for eight hours and it might have been inexpensive, but how much of that did you take away? And then you went back and worked. No differently tomorrow than you did the day before. Um, whereas with coaching, there’s a bit of accountability and, you know, it’s personalized. So it’s to the benefit. It’s really to your benefit to, um, absorb it and work with it, at least in my opinion anyway.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And it speaks to the culture of the organization.

Marla Bace: Yeah, absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, when you’re working with your person in corporate, what? So is the objective always. Okay, I want to be promoted. Or is it sometimes, should I even be doing this?

Marla Bace: I have two clients recently. One would fall into each of those camps. So. And in one case, it wasn’t promoted so much as the individual had been literally tapped by the CEO of the company to come over from her prior organization. And she’d been working with them for two years. And she came to me because she’s like, I like, I haven’t gotten a raise. And I was like, okay, are you communicating the value you add? Are you making this person aware? And we went through and we realized in her case it was a lot about communication and engagement, working with the team and doing things to make that CEO realize what it was she was doing. And in the three short months of working together, we realized it wasn’t only so much that the CEO needed to know what she was doing. She needed to get the confidence in herself, to believe that she was adding value so that she could ask for the raise. And by the time she walked into his office and asked, she had this, you know, whole laundry list of talking points and everything else. She asked and he said, yeah, how much? And she said, 20%.

Marla Bace: And he goes, I’ve been waiting for you to ask. So a lot of times it can just be helping that individual, um, get a raise, get to the next promotion, get seen by their organization as far as, um, the individual within the enterprise. And then the other example I’ll give you is another client that I have that was working a bit in the nonprofit world and with all the changes in our geopolitical climate, really hated going into the office every day, she said. It went from being something I really liked to, not an environment I’m comfortable with, but needed to get out of her headspace, change of mindset for her to realize that she could go from the nonprofit world back into working for a law firm. She happened to be an attorney, and we just really worked on her mindset and shifted her perspective. Um, cleared, cleaned up her resume and cleared up her thinking process. And within a couple of weeks, actually wound up, um, back in private practice with a law firm, so it can really be across any of those things you talked about and even just mindset to get again from being successful to fulfilled.

Lee Kantor: Now you mentioned asking for a raise. Is there any tips or tactics you can share? Maybe low hanging fruit that a person should be doing or could be doing in order to be ready to ask for the raise? You know, the next time that they have the opportunity.

Marla Bace: Yeah, sure.

Marla Bace: Oftentimes, and I’ve seen this throughout my career, my best performers who worked for me were usually the ones who weren’t telling me all of what it was that they were doing. Um, they just assumed that I, as their manager or boss, had a bird’s eye view of everything that was going on. And if you are someone who is keeping the lights on and going above and beyond, and you are not making sure that the people around you, let alone above you, are aware of that. You may not get the credit for doing it, and it’s not because your manager doesn’t want to give you the credit. It might be that we’re in an age of do more with less. They themselves can be swimming, and they could be feeling that as long as they’re keeping, you know, the environment enjoyable for you to operate and acknowledging what it is they know you’re doing, um, that they’re doing their part. But if you haven’t, um, been your own best promoter in a very diplomatic, articulate and, um, non self-promotional way. And I know that sounds like an oxymoron. Um, you are probably not going to have as easy a conversation as someone who is doing that. So to me that’s the lowest hanging fruit. Um, and then the other is to really make sure that you’re aligned. Are you doing what you believe your job description is? Or are you doing what your boss and the organization believes your job description is? Plus, are you going above and beyond? Are you raising your hand for special projects, or are you doing the things to be seen so that if you were to ask again, it’s a no brainer.

Lee Kantor: Right? So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. And this is a logical next step.

Marla Bace: Yes, exactly.

Lee Kantor: Now let’s talk a little bit about the entrepreneur or the person. I think the example you mentioned was someone getting ready to exit when you’re working with them. Um, how do you help them get ready to exit? Like you, I would imagine you have to know pretty a good amount of their business so you can give them some direction or next steps.

Marla Bace: You know what’s interestingly, it doesn’t.

Marla Bace: Matter if it’s someone who’s been in business 5 to 7 years and they’re truly looking Game to start to put the right processes in place to grow efficiently and effectively. Or this person who I mentioned, who’s been in business for decades and is looking to exit. It’s and it’s funny because I probably would have self-selected myself out of my current clients case because of their industry. And it’s not always the industry. A lot of times it is being the people person and how you go about working with them. So for me, I tend to, um, read a room pretty quickly. So the people involved, the boss, where things are working, where they’re not, lift up the hood, identify what processes are missing, what can be enhanced? Are the right seats on the bus defined in the organization? And do you have the right people in those right seats so that you can effectively. Um, grow where if it’s someone in that 5 to 7 years, oftentimes I get the entrepreneur who the idea of growth is actually scary because they see it as more work and having even less time and all the reasons they wanted to be an entrepreneur to begin with don’t feel like they’re coming to fruition, and it’s usually because they haven’t structured the team around them efficiently. They don’t have, um, the right contractors and or, um, staff in place.

Marla Bace: They haven’t trained people. There isn’t the right, um, HR person in place so that there are leadership challenges, performance reviews, all the things that you think of automatically or organically in a larger organization can be done at a much smaller scale for a small organization, so that they have great environments and they have the right people in the right place, and they’re working efficiently and effectively. And then the organization is positioned for growth. And whether that’s for ten years or 3 to 5 years because someone’s looking to to sell. And then oftentimes it’s about bringing in the right advisors. So I have a very vast network because I’ve been inside for so many years. And for me, networking was about really building relationships, not making sales. So if I have, um, a CEO, for example, asked me for the right marketing organization, having still my tentacles into the CMO club as well as, um, some of the other networks, I’ll reach out and I’ll say, I have a client that’s in this industry that has this need. Who’s your top, you know, referral for a marketing agency. And I will bring to them 2 or 3 and then let them interview and get the right chemistry fit for them.

Lee Kantor: Is this is this an example where kind of the blurring of the lines between coaching and consulting, where it’s not just asking them, asking, asking them, you’re giving them actual actionable kind of next steps. And here is a list of names. Yeah.

Marla Bace: Yeah. So it’s like okay let let’s get a full service. You know, you’ve grown far enough that you shouldn’t have, you know, three different virtual marketing Vas, but you need a full service marketing agency. You’re in this industry you can afford about you know, they’ve shared with me their budget. I will open my network and, you know, identify, um, 2 or 3 people. And then like I said, I’ll. And usually we’ll go through the coaching process and it happens organically. They’ll look at me and be like, do you have a recommendation or do you have a referral? Because I don’t know anyone. I’m, you know, I’m this I’m the head of a law firm or I’m the head of accounting firm, or I’m the head of a manufacturing firm. They, you know, they’d be opening the Yellow Pages, so to speak, or, you know, typing into Google. So yes, that is where the lines get blurred.

Lee Kantor: Now you mentioned several industries. Is there a sweet spot of kind of industry? It sounds like it’s industry agnostic, but but you also have expertise obviously in marketing. So is that an area you lean into?

Marla Bace: For me, I am industry agnostic, but I can add the most value in the professional services space. So I’ve run marketing and customer experience for accounting and financial services companies, and in both of those roles have partnered directly with heads of marketing and the legal in the legal space. So working in those areas, I’ve had clients who are coaches. I have had clients who were other corporate employees who wanted to start a side hustle and helping them identify what that would look like without losing traction at their current job because that’s important too. I mean, you don’t want to jump before you’re ready to jump. So it’s helping people prioritize, figure out what their purpose is, and make every important decision, you know, based on what their ultimate purpose is.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there any advice that you can give when it comes to choosing the right coach for you? I would imagine sometimes maybe in a corporate setting, just a mentor would be beneficial. And it’s not necessary to have a coach per se. But is there a certain kind of, um, ways an individual can decide? You know what, maybe I should be pursuing a mentor rather than a coach. Or maybe I do need a coach. Uh, the. Can you explain the trade offs?

Marla Bace: Yeah, absolutely. And, um, I think it’s very one needs driven, two chemistry focused and and three budget. Um, so I often say I don’t do sales calls because I don’t. I believe there’s so many coaches out there right now that have different areas of expertise that they focus on, and I don’t have content. I don’t do masterminds. I really work one on one. So what I will do with people is offer them a free coaching session. You can book on my site, and I spend 45 minutes with you. And I will say to people, you don’t walk away with 1 to 2 actionable items from our conversation, or a different way of looking at something that I’m not the right coach for you, because I’m not the person who’s just gonna sit with you every week and have a philosophical conversation and hope that, you know, it’s helping you make progress again. I started my career as a CPA, so I’ve always been asked as that head of marketing, to tie something back to results. And I work with the clients who want to cut through the noise and see quick results. So that’s the type of coach I am. I can also mentor people. Um, but it is. It really is about how much time and effort you want to put into your development. So there’s some coaches out there that will ask you to sign up for a year long program, and it’s once a week mastermind twice a month meeting with them one on one. That’s also a time and resource commitment. So these are all things you have to consider. For me, when I work with people, I say give me 90 days. Most, most big hairy audacious goals can be achieved with a 90 day plan, or at least the path towards it getting started with a 90 day plan. So I look to work with people, you know, for 90 days to to six months, and then oftentimes they’ll come back and work with me again. But I always look at it as success. As they’ve achieved their goal, they’re moving forward and almost like they’ve worked themselves out from under me.

Lee Kantor: And is there a story you can share that maybe illustrates how it can work. Don’t name the name of the person, but explain maybe the challenge they came to you with and how you helped them get to a new level.

Marla Bace: Sure. Um, so I had one client who had actually been through many, many coaches and kept believing that she had a marketing issue. She didn’t, um, have enough leads coming in. And, um, when we sat down, um, and really had a conversation, I just asked a few eye opening questions and the first aha for me was, I said, do you have a financial dashboard that you can go to between when you sit down with your CPA? And the answer was no. And so I realized that this individual was making decisions in a vacuum and without facts and without data. So quite literally, it seems overly simplistic, but they happen to have been a solopreneur. But they had been in business 5 to 7 years they were well over $1 million. So, you know, you do the math and to say, oh my gosh, you didn’t have a financial financial dashboard. But it was in the spring of, I think, last year. And I had said to them, go back and take your American Express statements. And I had given them a very simplistic Excel spreadsheet for the last 3 or 4 months and fill this out over the weekend. We’ve come back together and take a look at it. And from that, I was able to see at a high level, they were operating at about a 20% margin and just by making some expense shifts. So instead of investing in every shiny new object, really looking at what your tech stack, what are the things that you need to have at your disposal versus what are nice to haves? How do we cancel some of those? How do we consolidate? We managed the majority of, um, overhead expenses. We took a look at the revenue. What’s ongoing, where are your spikes? Where are your troughs? And then realize what was really keeping them awake at night was with this idea of not having enough leaves.

Marla Bace: They were pouring a ton of money into advertising without a strategy. So we dialed back the pure ad spend to the point where we were able to see that on any given month, she could have anywhere from a 20 to a 40% net profit margin, depending on her, her revenue line. And then those months she could dial up the advertising if she felt necessary. But before we were even going to do that, then to take a step back and say, okay, who’s your ideal client profile? Where’s your clients coming from? What switched over the last six months so that your business is in a stable as it was? And it turned out it was their messaging. They were working in the technology industry right about the time all the layoffs were starting. Um, they had switched their messaging from Are you a successful tech individual that is looking, you know, that’s dealing with burnout or whatever that coach was dealing with to, you know, are are the is the environment and the industry keeping you awake at night? So what you wound up doing was instead of attracting the individuals who could afford to spend money and work with her, she was attracting the individuals who had just gotten laid off. So she was going through the same amount of sales calls, advertising and everything else that she had done six months earlier. But the reality of it was she was targeting the wrong audience. So we were able to get her, her income and her expenses under control, put a financial dashboard in place, work on our messaging and really turn things around.

Lee Kantor: And that’s a great example of of revisiting kind of fundamentals periodically is a good practice.

Marla Bace: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you. What is the website? What is the best way to connect?

Marla Bace: It’s super easy. It’s right at the top of the page. You can book a call. Like I said, I do free coaching sessions if you want to find out if you’re coachable or if you’re highly self-aware so that you can impact your career or your business. There’s also an assessment no obligation, no contact, the bottom of the page. So Marla Nbastore.com.

Lee Kantor: And that’s m a r a b a c e.

Marla Bace: Correct. Thank you Lee.

Lee Kantor: Well, Marla, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Marla Bace: Thank you.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Katherine Gyolai With Katherine Gyolai LLC And Find Love Safely

June 9, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Katherine Gyolai With Katherine Gyolai LLC And Find Love Safely

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Katherine Gyolai, CEO and Founder of Katherine Gyolai LLC.

She is an ICF-certified individual and team coach. Prior to launching her coaching practice, she built a successful career as a branding and marketing executive working in everything from boutique agencies to Fortune 4 companies, from startups to billion-dollar corporations.

In addition to her coaching practice, she is a healthcare marketing consultant as well as the founder and CEO of Find Love Safely, a personalized matchmaking service for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Connect with Katherine on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

CliftonStrengths assessment–leaning into what makes us unique and where our talents naturally lie
Coaching couples using CliftonStrengths (compatibility does NOT equal sameness!)
Building empathy within teams using CliftonStrengths
Coaching female entrepreneurs
Find Love Safely: matchmaking for adults with IDD

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Katherine Gyolai, who is the CEO and founder of Katherine Gyolai LLC, which is a coaching firm, and also Find Love Safely, which is a matchmaking service for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Welcome.

Katherine Gyolai: Thanks so much, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Why don’t we start first with your coaching practice? How are you serving folks in that manner?

Katherine Gyolai: Sure. So through my coaching practice, I serve both individuals and teams. For individuals, my focus is primarily on women, specifically women owned or female entrepreneurs. I really love to coach anybody who is on the precipice of change. So that can be somebody in a business setting who is going from being an individual contributor to managing a team, perhaps, or it can be somebody in more of the of their personal life where perhaps they are a mother and they’ve stayed at home with their children as they were younger, and now their children are off to school or heading off to school. And so they’re the women are really wondering, what’s the next step in my life? Do I go back to work? Do I continue to stay home with my children? So those are sort of two of my sweet spots with the individual coaching. I also love to coach couples, and I do that through using Cliftonstrengths, which used to be called the Strengthsfinder assessment. And what we often think with couples is that sameness compatibility equals sameness. And that’s just not true. And what we learn through the Cliftonstrengths assessment and through that work is that it’s really the understanding of one another’s strengths that make a couple truly empathetic and and compatible more than it is the sameness of that couple. And then finally, through the coaching, I also coach teams. And again, I really enjoy using the Cliftonstrengths assessment to coach teams. I find that the team work, the team coaching helps to build empathy, and so we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes a little bit better. And in order to be able to make the team work better as a whole.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re doing your coaching, it sounds like you’re it’s not just strictly this is business, and I’m helping you become a better kind of business person or a better worker in your business. It expands beyond that into more personal areas.

Katherine Gyolai: It does. The coaching that I like to do really involves and incorporates all aspects of somebody’s life. And so we, you know, we look in the personal life and the personal support that people have and in terms of how that informs what their professional lives can be. And again, like in my example of the women who are, um, stay at home, currently stay at home moms and sort of wondering what the next role in their life is going to be, that wouldn’t you know, it’s finding it’s helping them find who they who they are beyond being a mother. It’s helping them tune in to that inner voice, what’s right for them. There’s so much pressure out there to either go to work or to stay home. We women are getting it, getting that kind of pressure from all over the place. And so my job and my passion is really around helping women find what is right for them and their circumstances, because it is not a blanket approach. For some women, it does make sense to go back to work, and some women it makes sense for them to stay home and that’s really where their heart is. And so I think of myself as as helping draw out that inner voice and then giving women permission to lean into what that voice is telling them.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work? Were you always kind of involved in this type of coaching?

Katherine Gyolai: No, my my, my. I’ve spent most of my career in branding and marketing and around Covid, like many of us, I had a bit of an existential crisis and wondered, you know, am I really doing what I’m supposed to be doing? And while marketing is great, what I love about marketing, what I enjoyed about marketing throughout my career was the ability to try to figure out, uh, decode and then connect with the consumer on the other end. Not so much about what campaign is, is, um, flashy and and and that, but really more about how can we truly connect and communicate with that end consumer. That was always what really energized me about marketing. And, um, so around Covid, I decided to pursue a coaching certification. And, uh, and, you know, I went through I went through a whole journey of what do I what do I want to become? Do I want to go more into therapy? Do I want to become a therapist? I’ve always loved the the the inner workings of how people connect, how they communicate, how they relate to one another. That’s always been fascinating to me. I really like journeying with people, um, along the ups and the downs. And so I, I just decided at that point to pivot. I continued in marketing, but was pursuing a coaching degree, um, on the side. And so now I have made the the full pivot from the marketing world into full time coaching. And then also, um, my other business, Find Love safely.

Lee Kantor: So how did you, um, make the transition yourself, going through a big transition of having worked for somebody in kind of a worker kind of mentality, where now you’re an entrepreneur and now it’s kind of an eat what you kill world as a coach. How did you get your first customers, and how do you kind of keep your pipeline full when it comes to marketing, or you’re just using the same tactics you were using as a marketer for others?

Katherine Gyolai: Yeah, well, certainly having a marketing background helps and and having a passion for how to connect with people on the other side helps. Um, I would say I lean a lot and did in the beginning and continue to lean a lot on my networks and my relationships that I’ve built, um, in order to, to keep that pipeline full, um, continuing to connect with them authentically and, and provide, you know, valuable service, right? When you’re providing a service that is working and, people are appreciating, then it’s it’s pretty easy and word can spread. Not to say that keeping my pipeline full has always been a breeze, but it really, I find, is more about the relationships than anything else.

Lee Kantor: So for the listeners out there that may be contemplating their own coaching practice, how do you create that initial bridge when a person sees you a certain way and now you’re asking them to see you a slightly different way, how do you kind of make that transition?

Katherine Gyolai: Well, I can tell you how I how I did it for me. I don’t know, um, you know, I don’t I can’t say that I have, uh, you know, a magic wand that it, that I was able to use. But for me, I my, my whole, um, being my whole way of existing is sort of in that coaching realm. And I don’t mean that to sound so grandiose that it’s like what? You know. What are you even talking about? But for me, I really. When I told people I was a, I was becoming a coach. Um, the answer was not, you know, the response was not. Oh, really? It was more like, yeah, finally, finally you’re doing that because I that is what I, it’s sort of just how I show up in the world. I’m very curious. I ask people lots of questions. I want to get to know them. And I ask those deeper questions. I love to go deep. In fact, um, I that’s that’s my happy place. Small talk is really exhausting to me. Uh, I don’t enjoy it at all. And so I’m much more comfortable in that deep space of asking really thought provoking questions. And so the transition from marketing to coaching was a pretty seamless one for me, because that’s how I’ve been showing up in my career, um, for most of my career. And so that’s it was not a big leap for those who know me and for those in my network.

Lee Kantor: And so for those initial people that you were talking with to share and be vulnerable, they were already sharing and being vulnerable with you. That wasn’t kind of a leap.

Katherine Gyolai: No, not a leap at all. And that’s how they know me. That’s how they knew me for those initial ones. So they knew me as that person. Uh, it was a it was almost like I was I was finally becoming who I, who I really am, just in a work setting in a, in a professional setting, um, versus sort of trying to put the, the round peg in the, you know, what is it, square peg in the round hole. Um, so it was it was actually a really natural transition for me. It made a lot of sense to to those in my network and those in my support system.

Lee Kantor: Now, how did, uh, your business Find Love safely come about? Was that kind of an outgrowth of your couples coaching?

Katherine Gyolai: Yeah. So find love safely. I am a mother and stepmom to eight children, four of whom have an intellectual and developmental disability. And so when my son was 20, he is my son with down syndrome. He came to his father and I and said, can I join Tinder? And we just about panicked and said, no, you you cannot do that. And so I but he was clearly expressing a need and a desire for a girlfriend for connection with somebody other than his family and his coworkers. And so I began this search online for how I can help him date safely. Um, he is, you know, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are extremely vulnerable to online scamming. Um, one of the recent statistics I saw, it’s not so recent, but, um, but I saw it recently. It was that in 2022, uh, people with disabilities lost $33.7 million to online scamming, and that was up 71% from 2021. It is a real problem when I am out in in in public at representing Find Love Safely, I have people standing in line waiting to tell me a story of a loved one who’s been taken advantage of online. Um, typically romantically, through a romantic scam. So I knew that online dating and apps and Tinder and match, right? Those just are not going to work for my son. And I began, um, seeking something that that would would work.

Katherine Gyolai: And I, you know, I’m a big fan of love on the spectrum, as so many are. And I thought, well, that must have been based on a real life service that exists already. And I did some digging and it just there’s nothing out there that exists. So I decided to create it. I was in a position to be able to create it. I have a real passion for this population. And so I built the kind of matchmaking service that I wanted for my son. And it is. It’s not an app. People like to say, oh, it’s an app or it’s an it’s an online dating service. It’s not at all. Um, the only thing that happens online is that you submit an interest form. Everything else happens with a real person, which is me in the Twin Cities. Or we have a matchmaker out in California as well who’s servicing that population. And so, uh, find love safely is really find love safely, I feel is a culmination, a true culmination of everything that I have done in my personal life and my professional life. Um, it brings together my coaching. I have coaching videos on my website that where I, um, coach members or find Love Safely members through some of those, um, not well, simple is a word, but some of those sort of basic dating concepts of what do you say when you are meeting that person for the first time.

Katherine Gyolai: How do you handle rejection? Um, what do you wear on your first date? Those those things that you and I have maybe had to learn through trial and error that are a harder lesson sometimes for the disabled community. So I’ve got my coaching videos there. I’ve got a blog for guardians, and then it really is a true matchmaking service. I’m trying to broaden the community, um, of the disabled. And, you know, we kind of tend to be in our own little circles, right? I’m in my little school district with my kids, and I know that I know that there are adults now, but and I know the other adults in this area and then, you know, go ten miles up the road and there’s another family that knows the adults in their area and the families in their area, but we’re not as connected. And if we don’t fill that space there, people, bad people are going to come in and fill it for us because there is still a deep longing for connection and relationship and friendship in the disabled community that, um, we need to be answering for that, and we need to be able to have an answer for that. Uh, otherwise the scamming is going to continue. It’s going to become more pervasive, um, which is a really, really scary thing and something I’m I’m pretty committed to stopping.

Lee Kantor: Now, I’m a big fan of that show as well, and it’s really kind of breaks your heart to see the parents rooting so hard for their children and the children trying their best. And then I think sometimes the the audience gets frustrated with, come on, you know, it’s right there. Like it seems doable. How do you, um, how do you kind of find the people to participate, to be part of this? Because I would imagine, like you said, you know, people’s networks are usually pretty small, and that just the geography of it and the, the convenience of it, I would imagine you’re going to find her in real life, you would find a match that somewhere near your work, or somewhere near where you hang out or where your hobbies are. Where do people with these kind of disabilities, where do they go if there wasn’t, you know, your service to help them? How was the matchmaking happening before you?

Katherine Gyolai: Uh, it’s a good question. Um, you know, I the answer is probably that it’s happening more organically. Maybe somebody at work, maybe somebody at the Special Olympics swim meet that they’re part of. Um, maybe somebody they went to school with. And the transition plus communities, which is the 18 and 2018 to 21 year old. Not every state has that Minnesota does. Um, so it was it just sort of was not happening. Actually, there’s nothing like this that solves that crisis. Um, if they’re not meeting organically, then you know, where where they’re just meeting somebody at work, or they’re meeting somebody as part of their Special Olympics team. Um, then they’re probably meeting people online. And, um, that rarely works out for the for for most people, and even less so for this precious community. So, um, the answer is that they they just aren’t meeting people necessarily that they are able to date. And and the other thing I find with this, with this, um, community, and when I say this community, I’m referring to the intellectually and developmentally disabled. My theory is that they silo their environments a little bit. So work is work. Church is church. Um, school is school. Dance class is dance class. And I’m not there to date in any of those. Uh, I’m there to do dancing or I’m there to work or I’m there to be in church. Um, and so to create this environment where you’re here to date Suddenly opens up their mind in ways that they maybe would not have been before. Um, we have speed dating events, which is really exciting and people love those. We have another one coming up, um, at the end of this, at the end of either end of June or beginning of July, we’re getting that date firmed up for, for Minnesota.

Katherine Gyolai: Um, and they’re, they’re to date, uh, we have a story of this is a great example, maybe a good answer to your question. Lee. Um, we have a story of a couple who saw each other every Wednesday night for eight years in their dance class. They have been in the same dance class for eight years together, and they never spoke. They saw each other at the speed dating event. They were immediately smitten and they have been inseparable ever since. So it just took creating an environment where dating is what you’re doing here, and dating is the purpose. And you can have a dating mindset at this event for that, for it to open up their minds a little bit to the possibilities of who could become a romantic partner or friendship partner. We also match for friendships. I have some people say to me, I just want to meet more friends, or I just want to have friends who aren’t toxic. Can you introduce me to more friends my age? Um, I do that. We do that as well at Find Love Safely. So, um, you know it. Just to answer your question, it’s it’s not happening. Uh, until now, Find Love Safely is really the first and only service of its kind, and, uh, I my dream is for it to be in every major city in the United States. Right now, it is just in the Twin Cities. And so in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Minnesota. And we have a location in the San Francisco Bay area, and we’ve just recently launched a location in Los Angeles as well. Um, but my hope is that before too long, we have one everywhere.

Lee Kantor: And then in order for that to happen, you have to find. Are you looking for parents? Is that who typically is kind of launching in a new environment? Is the parent of a child that is going through this?

Katherine Gyolai: Yeah. It’s both. Um, and so the way that our model works is that essentially a parent or an appointed agent is the language we use now that an appointed agent can be a guardian, a conservator, a supported decision maker, power of attorney, someone who’s been appointed to care for that member or to to to support that member or a parent. So they essentially sign up with them. Um, safety is part of our name. It is paramount to to what find love safely is. And so member contact information is never shared. That’s what makes this a little bit different from, uh, Tinder or, um, you know, a hinge or some other service. All matches go through that support person, um, so that it keeps member phone number and email and even last name keeps those safe. So, um, that support person, that adult, it’s it’s 99% of the time. It’s the parent. They are signing up essentially to walk alongside the member throughout this journey. So I send matches to the Guardians. Those are the parents. That’s who I communicate with as the matchmaker. And then they work with their member to say, hey, we got a new match. Let’s take a look. Let’s look at Sophie and see what we think of Sophie. And does she is she seem like somebody you might want to meet that way? The parents have.

Katherine Gyolai: It’s almost like they can be a human firewall around these individuals who are normally so, so vulnerable. Um, so the parents are there to really protect their, their child’s information. And again, we say, child, I should be saying young adult, they’re, um, 18 and older is the age that, that people need to be to be part of, um, safely. But the parent is there then to guide throughout the dating process. They know who their member is talking to so they can help take care of that. You know, make sure that that process is going well, that that’s safe, that that’s a safe experience. Um, and, and that, that really they’re working together. Um, and then the final safely member always has the support of that parent or appointed agent. And at any point those parents can decide, yeah, let’s let’s have the kid, you know, let’s have our kids exchange phone numbers or let’s, um, you know, let’s have them go on a date first, and then if it goes well, then we can have them exchange phone numbers. But but that parent is in place to help make sure that the amount of support is right for that member and that, um, everybody’s on board with, with how it proceeds.

Lee Kantor: And then the the coaching element is you share, I guess, videos or some tips or some strategies for the individuals to kind of make the most out of those, um, matchmaking, uh, incidents.

Katherine Gyolai: That’s right. So I have videos, uh, on the website. I also, um, we’re considering adding coaching as a service to find love safely. So, um, Mary the matchmaker out in California? She’s an occupational therapist. She’s also a certified social skills trainer, so she has some coaching experience. I am, um, ICF certified, so I certainly have coaching, um, experience and certifications. And so what we are what we are going to be doing is adding an element of coaching before and after dates. So that’s going to be an an add on to the membership where you can purchase like uh, coaching for getting ready for the date. What are your concerns? What are you you know, let’s let’s kind of go through how we can show interest. How can we how can we end a date if we’re not interested in seeing somebody again? You know what? Let’s talk about consent. Let’s talk about what unhealthy date behaviors look like. Let’s talk about what healthy behaviors look like. So coaching them through the, you know, the experience before the date and then doing a debrief after and doing some coaching after. So that’s coming up. But currently, uh, we have videos on the website where I’m coaching them through things like how to decide what to wear on your first date. Um, those things may come really naturally to you and I to figure out how to dress, if it’s bowling versus a nice restaurant versus a walk out in the park. Um, it may not come as naturally to everybody. And so spelling some of those things out, uh, is really, really important for this population.

Lee Kantor: And then when they are going through, uh, the matchmaking, have you been doing it long enough where you’ve had matches?

Katherine Gyolai: I have, yes. Yeah. So I just launched this Live Safely in January. Um, I really launched it for my son. I, I, I used to tell people, if I can find a young woman for him to be happy with, then this nothing else can happen. And I this will have been a success and I’m really happy to say he is my first and favorite success story. He has found a young woman named Stella who has down syndrome and they share their lives together. They speak every night on the phone via FaceTime. They sing worship songs to one another. They love to sing Justin Bieber songs together. They do push up contests, they cook together and then they go on dates together. They just went to a movie together this week. So, um, I, you know, he he really feels that she is going she’s she’s his wife. He’s his future wife. So what a it’s been a wonderful success story and he’s not the only one. It’d be easy to say. Oh, great. Sure. The founder, the founder, uh, the founder’s son has success. It’s an easy one. But there are there are several others who’ve actually requested that we pause their membership so that because they have either found, um, found love and they’re like Matthew and Angela, who were the couple that I, um, told you met at, you know, had known each other for eight years, but then started dating, starting the Valentine’s Day event. So they have paused their membership. Several others have paused their memberships because they have expanded their community so much, either through friendships or through potential romantic partners that, um, you know, and our model is we send you unlimited matches until you tell us not to because it’s an annual membership. And so we we’ve certainly had success stories, and we’re building up those stories now and writing them and adding them, adding them to our website.

Lee Kantor: And how many, um, how many young adults are in this boat where this would be a useful is it millions? Like, how many are there about.

Katherine Gyolai: Uh, in the United States?

Lee Kantor: Yeah.

Katherine Gyolai: Oh, millions. Yes, yes. I don’t know the exact number, but it is certainly millions. Um, definitely. Definitely. Who are you know who? Uh, it can be, uh, anywhere from high functioning autism. And I just, you know, I tried out the dating apps, and it’s just not working for me. And I’ve gotten scammed out of money, and I’ve gotten scammed by people saying they are who they say they are or who are. People are not who they say they are. Um, high functioning autism. I have some members who are nonverbal, um, and they only sign. So it’s it is a wide, wide spectrum. And, and you know, I don’t even know if you could say that the you know, I don’t yeah. I don’t know that even I think this is I think this is something if, if people are willing to have that support person in place. Right, a person who doesn’t have disabilities would not be interested in having their mom vet their dates for them. Um, and so really that that alone, that model alone sort of filters out and makes sure that somebody has a disability before entering, uh, find love safely. But I am also laying eyes on them in a virtual call. So nobody is eligible for matches until a matchmaker has had a phone call or a zoom call with the member and their support person. It’s another way that we ensure safety. So, um, but to answer your question, Lee, certainly it’s in the it’s in the many millions, um, of people who would be eligible for this service.

Lee Kantor: And then when you started in Minnesota, was it something you just started running ads like, how did you even get or was it just through your network? Like you knew a lot of folks and you were like, hey, I’m going to start this thing. So sign your your, uh, young adult children up.

Katherine Gyolai: It was um, I didn’t do ads. It’s a combination. Um, it is of, you know, the latter. So I, I have two children with down syndrome. Two children with autism. Um, actually, one of my children has a dual diagnosis of autism and down syndrome. And so then I have a daughter with autism and a son with down syndrome, and then another son with, um, undiagnosed disabilities or unspecified. They’re not. There just wasn’t a diagnosis to go along. So we’ve got the range even just within our own family. Um, and so I had lots of connections that way, just by being in this world very organically and naturally of of having children in this world. Um, so I had lots of connections that way. I will say the excitement around Find Love Safely when it first launched and continues is just remarkable because there’s there really, truly is nothing like this that exists anywhere. And so this has answered find love safely is the answer to many, many, many, many, many parents and guardians and members needs. Um. And so when people heard about it, it was extremely easy to gain traction because people were so excited because nothing like this exists. It really it got its own traction. And, um, it was it’s been so successful in the Twin Cities. That’s why we I knew, I knew I have to get this out to the rest of the world, and I want to do it sooner than later.

Lee Kantor: And then it just organically grew into California through people you had already known.

Katherine Gyolai: Yeah. I was introduced to Mary in California through somebody seeing me on LinkedIn saying, would you mind if I made an introduction between you and my friend Mary, who’s out in California? I talked to Mary ten minutes into the conversation. I said, how would you feel about being a matchmaker out in San Francisco? Let’s see how this goes. And she said, yeah, let’s do it. Um, and so we just launched in San Francisco in May, and we already have members there growing every day. Um, launched in, in Los Angeles just about a week ago. Um, so it’s, you know, it’s it’s really growing. It’s really taking off. We’re doing a speed dating event in partnership with the San Francisco Autism Society out in the Bay area, um, in August. So that’ll be really, really exciting. Um, the traction is just there because there is a huge need to get our this vulnerable population off of online dating apps just off of them. It is it’s really, really, really scary as a parent and guardian to worry about what your kids are able to access online anyway. Um, and then knowing that you’ve got, you’ve got, uh, a loved one with a disability, it’s just even it’s just that much scarier. So the traction has been really I haven’t had to pay for any PR, I haven’t had to take out any ads. It’s just been people willing to share because this is such a needed service.

Lee Kantor: Does the folks at love on the spectrum know about you and what you’re doing?

Katherine Gyolai: Uh, I don’t believe they do. I’m trying to get them to know about me. Um. Very much. I’d love for them to know about me. I think there’d be a really great synergy there. Um, I know some people who know the love on the spectrum producers, and so, um, if you’re listening, keen, I’d love to have a conversation with you, but know that people I’ve been approached to potentially do, um, a series about this work and and about the journey of the actual matchmaking, you know, and love on the spectrum. You see the relationships unfold between the adults with disabilities. But it it could perhaps be really interesting to see the process of the matchmaking and then the experience of the parents. You know what what the what the back. You know what the back story is before they get to the date. What it might be really interesting to see all of that too, and I’d love to share it.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I saw that some of the parents of the of the people on there have their own podcasts and they are, you know, kind of sharing their stories about them in particular, but I think there’s a a lot of people care about those folks and they are interested and want to help if they could. So this is, I think, an amazing service and what a gift you’re giving folks. I mean, um, you know, this is this must be such rewarding work for you to be able to take something that’s so challenging and to make something so useful from that.

Katherine Gyolai: Yeah. Thanks, Lee. It it is incredibly rewarding. I mean, I just really I said it earlier, I feel like this is a culmination of everything in my life has led to this. And being able to do this, to do this work. Um, it’s been exciting to solve the problems and to figure out how are we going to make this work in a way that’s safe but appealing and not restrictive, but also, um, protecting, uh, this population? Um, it’s it’s it’s extremely exciting. Uh, and I’m so privileged to be able to be in a position to do this work, so I’m excited to see where it goes.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about your coaching or find love safely, what is the website? What is the best way to connect with you?

Katherine Gyolai: Yes. So for my coaching website is just Kathryn Jolie. So that’s k a t h e r I n e last name g o l a.com. And then for my matchmaking service, that website is Find Love. Com.

Lee Kantor: Well Kathryn, thank you so much for sharing your story today doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Katherine Gyolai: Thanks so much, Leigh. I appreciate the time.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Stéphane Breault With Imagine Franchise Consultant Inc.

June 9, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Stéphane Breault With Imagine Franchise Consultant Inc.

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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee Kantor is joined by Stéphane Breault, founder of Imagine Franchise Consultant, shares insights from his 15 years in franchise consulting. He discusses the challenges franchise owners face, the importance of leadership and franchisee engagement, and the impact of private equity on franchise networks. Stéphane also offers advice on attracting quality franchisees and emphasizes the need for steady, sustainable growth. The conversation highlights strategies for scaling franchise businesses and the qualities that make both franchisors and franchisees successful in today’s evolving franchising landscape.

Stéphane Breault – Elite franchisor executive coach & author of For Franchise Leaders Eyes Only ABOUT THE GUEST (for host reference only) 20+ years as a franchise CEO and 15+ years as an executive coach has worked with over 100 franchise networks in North America and Europe Creator of the Franchisexcel© system for franchise growth and leadership, Founder of Imagine Franchise Consultant Inc., a firm specializing in strategy, leadership, and executive coaching for franchisors.

He’s a former Chairman of the Board of the Canadian Franchise Association Elected to the Quebec Franchise Council’s Hall of Fame in 2018 Author of For Franchise Leaders Eyes Only, a strategic and actionable leadership guide for franchisors Stephane brings a rare blend of real-world franchise experience and bold, results-driven coaching.

With over two decades leading franchise networks and another 15 years advising CEOs across Canada and Europe, he knows what it takes to turn potential into performance. He’s helped more than 100 franchise systems navigate growth challenges, build stronger leadership cultures, and scale in a way that creates both economic and human value.

He’s also the author of the book For Franchise Leaders Eyes Only, a straight-talking playbook for anyone serious about building a world-class franchise network.

Connect with Stéphane on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

What is the biggest misconception franchisors hold when it comes to growth
What mindset shifts distinguish founders who successfully scale from those who stall
What impact does leadership from the franchisor have on overall network performance
What elements must be present to achieve true alignment across a franchise network
What recurring errors do even seasoned franchisors continue to make

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Stephane Breault and he is with Imagine Franchise Consultant. Welcome.

Stephane Breault: Thanks. Yeah. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about imagine. How are you serving folks?

Stephane Breault: Oh, okay. I started imagine 15 years ago after a career as a CEO of Franchise Network. We sold the publicly traded company, and I decided to start my own and help franchisors to face, uh, you know, all the challenges that franchisors have and, you know, share my experience, but also share my knowledge and help them to grow. So what we do basically at imagine franchises executive coaching. So I work with franchise CEOs who are owner of the franchise and, you know, network of about, you know, 25 to 200 franchise operation, mainly in Canada. I’m from Montreal, Canada, mainly in Canada, but since the beginning of 2025, aiming to, uh, to work with, uh, American franchises, because we share a lot of things in common. And I really want to help as much people as I can.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re talking about a franchise or you’re talking about people who have already got their PhDs, they’re already in the business of franchising, not someone who has a concept that might consider being a franchisor.

Stephane Breault: Yeah. That’s it. So the existing franchisor, so they’re they’re active. They have, uh, you know, 25, 30, 50, 100 units. And uh, mainly I concentrate, I focus on the CEOs because normally that’s that’s where we start. And, you know, Enfranchising, we have a bunch of entrepreneurs and that the tough the toughest part for those CEOs is because, you know, switching from the entrepreneur to the franchisor leader, that’s a that’s a tough call. And I’m there to help them to step up so they can step up and scale up.

Lee Kantor: Now in a lot of cases is does it require kind of a change of leadership because the person who got you there may not be the person who is going to be able to grow the business because they are two separate things. One is creating a concept from a blank piece of paper and then having it grow. And then another thing is taking an existing thing and then scaling it. So do you find that in some cases, it’s best to just kind of leave the founder behind and then just find a CEO slash manager who can take the growth to a new level?

Stephane Breault: Yeah, sometimes, sometimes the discussions, you know, we have this discussion. I’m, you know, depending on the level of the franchise, you know, the number of franchisees and stuff like that. This this can be really true. Say, sorry, but you’re not the guy who will, you know, be the next step. So we might find you a COO or find, you know, you must you must find someone, a general manager, someone who will lead the network. And as a CEO, you will learn to become a CEO with not necessarily an operating role. So that’s that’s the toughest part. You know, uh, that’s one of the one of the toughest challenge. The other the other challenge I see, uh, is the CEO who’s really great. A great CEO, but, uh, the team is too weak. But those people are the ones who help the CEO to build the network to up the up, up to their what they are today. So, uh, you know, changing those people, finding new roles for the introducing new people. It’s it’s really hard to. So it’s kind of both. Boat. Boat. The toughest challenge I see with the CEO in franchise now.

Lee Kantor: Do you work primarily in, um, food, in um services, B2B, B2C? Do you have a niche that you have kind of, uh, kind of a sweet spot in?

Stephane Breault: No, that’s I have a quick service, uh, franchise background, but I’ve been franchisor of other kind of system. And since 15 years I’ve learned a lot about a lot of systems. So quick service is, uh, you know, I know it very well. So it’s not the point. Uh, now I focus a bit more on the wellness, the fitness, the education, uh, and helping people around the house, you know, or so. So it’s more like that, uh, quick service is part of my clientele. Actually. I have what, uh, three clients out of ten, which are in the quick service. The other part is are in other type of, uh, franchise industry.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with, um, kind of franchisees, uh, how has it changed over the years since you’ve been involved in this industry? I mean, um, I’ve done a lot of work interviewing franchisors over the years, and it just seems like now the franchisor is more of a professional franchisor, where they might have a portfolio of brands that they’re working with, or they might be in one kind of cluster group where they’re just serving, like you mentioned, home. So they could be the doing pool service, they could be doing painting, they could be doing landscaping. They could have a variety of businesses built around this one. Um, homeowner, consumer.

Stephane Breault: Um.

Stephane Breault: But the, uh, I think because of the, the technology, a lot of things are a lot simpler, uh, to, to manage compared to what it used to be. So the information is a lot simpler to get. And, uh, it changes a lot, uh, when you have franchisors with multiple brands to to lead. It’s a it’s another type of challenge. So they need those brand leaders to be a different type of people. Uh, keeping the entrepreneurship in within the network is tougher. So sometimes, uh, it’s not always nice. You know, uh, multi being a multi brand franchisor looks good on paper, but it could be a real challenge because you have your own you know, the first brand you build will always be your favorite. And uh that that’s tough to manage when you look with the large groups which have uh, you know, I mean like large group with thousands of restaurants. I don’t work with them, uh, mainly because I like to. I love to work with entrepreneurs. So that’s that’s why I’m not necessarily looking for a large franchisors like that, but with large groups, the, the key there, I think it’s getting to be more too much financial, not enough franchise oriented. So that’s that’s another culture, which I think is very different. So for entrepreneur who wants to go multi brands, I think they should think a lot about it because it’s a it’s not an easy game. It looks easy but it’s not easy.

Lee Kantor: Now any advice for the franchisors out there that like you said they’re in that kind of emerging where they’ve already proven themselves but they’re maybe are frustrated at the speed of their growth and maybe they’re at 25 and they’d like to get to 100. Or is there a way to attract potential franchisees that you found to be more effective than other things? Is there any advice around attracting, you know, great franchisees to the system?

Stephane Breault: I what I see, which is.

Stephane Breault: The most powerful is share the right stories, the franchisee stories. Stop. Stop saying you’re good. Let your franchisees talk about it and use those franchisees testimonials. Uh, real video, stuff like that. In your recruitment. It’s going to be a lot more powerful than you saying that. You’re a great franchise and you got the best business model in the world. That won’t be. It’s not as effective as making sure that you let your franchisees, uh, be a brand ambassador and and having them talk about it. The rest is more, uh, you know, everybody wants to grow, uh, growing fast is not necessarily good. Um, growing too fast is not good, that’s for sure. But, uh, you know, there’s a speed there, and there’s kind of a time, you know, time. Time will help you. So growing fast. Too fast. You don’t have the route. So it’s to support. So it’s going to be tough. You know it looks good. But then a year or two after, it’s, uh, it’s not good. So so yes, it’s fun to grow and to grow fast, but making sure that you follow the the real path and it takes, you know, people look at the franchise and say, how come they got 500 units? Well, but they’ve been around for 25 years. You’ve been around for five years, so don’t expect to be a 500 franchisees in five years. It’s not realistic. So it’s it’s tough to get the right one. So steady growth is probably the best the best thing to do compared to growth to rapidly. Then you get other business model like ads or regional, uh, franchisees or whatever. But that’s that’s technical. The point that I want to say is as a franchisor, you want to grow, make sure that your franchisees are your brand ambassadors, and the steady pace is more important than the speed.

Lee Kantor: Now, are there certain qualities you look like look for in a potential franchisee? If you’re the franchisor, are there some must haves and some some red flags for you. Like, do they get extra credit if they’ve already been a franchisee at a different brand, or is that a negative in your mind? Do they have to, um, you know, have run a business or is that a negative? Like, what are kind of the do’s and don’ts of choosing the right franchisee for the franchisor?

Stephane Breault: That’s a good question. Um, depends. I would say depending on on the type of franchise, uh, being in having been in business before is a good is a good, uh, asset. Uh, some some not necessarily. But uh, depending on the type of franchise, uh, the the question about, uh, are you a have you ever been another franchisee in another system, or are you still active in another system and wants to, you know, acquire a franchise of our brand? That depends on on the character of the person. And the character takes time to discover the character, so it’s not a fast process. So, so my my advice to all franchisors is take the time you need to know the person before trying to get to a deal. You know and know the person is not 1 or 2 interview. It’s more than that. So so you you need to make sure it makes sense for both of you. Because otherwise, you know, it might look good. So you you sell a franchise. But if if you have a how can I say if your franchisee is in the mentality of I’m the buyer, I’m the client, you’re the you’re the supplier. It won’t go far. So that’s that’s what I see often.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, when you’re working with the franchisors, what are kind of some signals to you that, hey, this franchise has some legs. Uh, what are some milestones or markers you like to see where you’re like. Okay, I can see this one. We got a chance on this one. And then maybe the flip side of, okay, if this is happening, that’s kind of not great.

Stephane Breault: Mm. Um, the first one is, uh, the quality of the, uh, the differentiation in the marketplace. I don’t care if you sell, uh, great burgers, but if you cannot differentiate yourself in the marketplace, um, you’re going to be like everyone. So it’s not a it’s. So I’m looking for differentiation. The other part is because they already have franchisees, I work with franchisees, and I ask my clients to to give me the financials of the franchisees. I want to make sure that the franchisees are making money. If they’re not making money, we won’t talk about growth. We’ll talk about let’s make sure those guys make money. See? So depending on the situation, uh, if it’s too bad, that’s another thing. But that’s also the other factor too, that I’m looking at is, uh, the the qualification, the franchisee qualification process. If it’s too thin and, you know, like, oh, you got the money, so let’s go and move on. Uh, probably I won’t work with this kind of franchise. So I’m looking for brand builders and not promoters. So someone who just wants to sell, sell, sell, sell franchise to be able to sell to a larger organization won’t won’t be my client, that’s for sure. I really love to work with brand builders who will, uh, put not only their heart, but also their head into it and, and, uh, work for, for the long term of their brand and their, their franchisees.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share about, um, a franchise that came to you or franchise leader that came to you and you were able to help them get to a new level? Don’t name the name, but maybe share the challenge that they were having and how you were able to help them?

Stephane Breault: Yeah. Uh, just one, uh, just, you know, five minutes ago, I was with him as a, as a, you know, a CEO, and I coach him, uh, he recalled me three years ago when we started working together. Uh, he defined himself as being a restaurant operator, opening restaurants. Okay. And his view of franchisor was very limited on, uh, you know, get those guys to do the job, and we’ll take care of the take care of the rest. And today, three years later, uh, he’s opening one franchise, uh, every second week, uh, two weeks, 111 per two weeks. Uh, and it’s slow. It’s growth a bit because of the capacity of his team to absorb everything. But once every two weeks, he open a franchise. Uh, the the philosophy is the culture changed a lot. The franchisees are a lot more, uh, engaged and responsible. Just for an example, the franchisees are making their, uh, their audits themselves. And, uh, the business, uh, advisor, which we call success coach, uh, in this network, uh, are working with the with the franchisees, uh, based on their evaluation of their franchise and not on their, uh, franchise performance report. So it’s it’s another way to look at it. And they really improve the quality and the the success, the, the, their, uh, throughput there in, in quick service. Their throughput is, uh, is, uh, phenomenal. Uh, they just, uh, share with me that last month the, their, uh, comp sales were plus 37. Uh, so that’s, that’s massive. And and they just did you know, they’re doing the right stuff because they focus on the right the culture. The mission is clear. The the the the values are here and they work with their franchisees. They don’t work like a franchisor telling stuff to their franchisees. They work with a franchisor working with the franchisees to make things happen.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you have any thoughts about, at least in the United States right now, there is a drive for more private equity firms and these large financial conglomerates that seem to be scooping up a lot of franchises. Can you share your opinion of whether that’s a good thing, or that’s something that maybe has some unintended consequences down the road that we might be dealing with?

Stephane Breault: Same thing in Canada, by the way. Uh, so, um, I think on the value, you know, on one side for the franchisor work, you know, ten, 15, 20 years to build a brand. And, you know, it’s great because they can have a lot of, uh, you know, the wealth creation is, is is massive. Um, Uh, what I’ve seen so far is some are great because they let the, the, the, the management in place and they’re trying to not to disturb the culture. So some fun. You know, I a couple last year I worked with with one investment fund who acquired a franchise network in Canada. And the reason I work with them is because they have a philosophy of you let the management do what they do and you help them to succeed. And we’re not there to control the operations. So their philosophy was a lot more, uh, effective. And to making sure that the changes of ownership was not destructive. So that’s that’s one of the things. So some are more disruptive, some are less. So I think that the ones who are less will have greater success, because what I see with the others. And we, you know, I have a couple of examples of franchise network who were super good with the owners. They’ve been sold to a large investment fund, and two years later, nothing is working. You know, it’s all the culture. People are gone. Uh, I can talk about the famous chain in Canada who’s been bought by, uh, an American investment fund a great deal for for the shareholders. But, uh, you know, now you look at this chain and it’s it’s now an ordinary chain. And it used to be an extraordinary chain network. So sometimes it’s, you know, it’s ordinary. And I think we will we will, you know, this is a timing for that. Uh, I think we’ll see a lot of resale of those networks because the investment fund, uh, will will not be able to generate the value that they were looking at.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, that’s what I’ve seen as well, where the, you know, when you get a bunch of math people into a room to try to to buy a brand, like you said, the importance of the brand and the differentiation, and they’re just looking at it from a standpoint of mathematics. You know, then it makes sense to, okay, let’s get rid of one pickle. Let’s get rid of, you know, instead of this type of, uh, ketchup, we’ll use this type of ketchup because we’re going to save a penny. And then all of a sudden you just suck the personality out of the brand.

Stephane Breault: Yeah. And it’s, you know, uh, one, one thing managing a franchise network with a PNL is probably the worst thing to do, because franchise network is not about. It’s about the people we’re creating everyday, the experience with the consumer. So if you if you just manage by the PNL, you know what? It’s not about the numbers. It’s about, you know, the top numbers. And franchisees will make the money if it’s a good system. Them, uh, and you help them. But the day you decide to cheap or to, you know, just to look at it from an ROI perspective or for a EBITDA perspective, you get into a situations where you lose the the faith. One of the critical in my book, I talk about, uh, franchise Excel, which is my the model I use to, uh, to work with my clients. But there’s a part which in there which I call the formula of success. And the first, the first part of the formula of success is faith and faith, not in God, but faith. Faith in the, the, the, the network, the the franchisees, the management’s working together and so, so, so. And when you buy, when large large investment fund buy, the faith is going away. So the the one of the key essential part for the success is just going away, people. You know, the management is gone. People change and it’s now just a job and stuff like that. So you know, it’s it’s it’s sad for a lot of network. See.

Lee Kantor: So yeah I mean it’s tempting like you said because it can be a lot of money for a handful of people at the top, but it usually doesn’t trickle down to the franchisees who are really the heart of the brand after after the franchisor has kind of created it, but the franchisees are living it in different markets around their country, so they’re the ones who take the hit. They don’t get any of the financial benefit. They just take the hit from that transaction.

Stephane Breault: That’s sad. So yeah, but I’ve seen some good I mean like, uh, good transaction and make sense and help the as a matter of fact, you know, help to grow the franchise. The at the right level so they could have, you know you know, benefit franchisee could benefit. But too often I see just a PNL Personnel management and just financial. Just looking for the return and the exit strategy. Uh, so growth for, you know, some those investment funds, their horizon is, you know, 5 to 7 years. So, uh, you know, in franchise, uh, you can do a lot of damage in five years, right?

Lee Kantor: And that’s and that’s when they’re buying it. They’re looking to offload it at some point. It isn’t somebody with a dream that is like, hey, I’m gonna, you know, build this world, uh, based on my idea. These people are it’s a financial transaction that they’re looking to get out of it at some point. So that means the numbers have to keep going up, or else they’re going to lose money and they don’t want to do that.

Stephane Breault: So what they do, they force the, uh they will force growth. They will force everything to, uh, to make sure. But that doesn’t mean that it’s going to stay and it’s quality, and franchisees will pay for that. Most of the time. That’s right. You’re right.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about your book, the franchise Excel system, um, or just coaching from you or somebody on your team. What is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Stephane Breault: Yeah, the best way to connect will be with my, my website as uh, imagine franchise.com. Uh, and then you’ll, you’ll find me and we can have a discovery session talk, uh, you know, whatever are the issues and see what we can do or not together. And, uh, in all respect of, uh, what I the entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, Stefan, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Stephane Breault: Thank you, thank you.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Dr. Diane Dreher With Diane Dreher Coaching & Consulting, LLC

June 6, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Dr. Diane Dreher With Diane Dreher Coaching & Consulting, LLC

00:00 /

Diane Dreher, PhD, PCC, is a positive psychology coach, professor of Diane Dreher Coaching & Consulting, LLC and author of The Tao of Inner Peace, The Tao of Personal Leadership, The Tao of Womanhood, Inner Gardening, and Your Personal Renaissance.

A graduate of the University of California, Riverside, she has a PhD in Renaissance English literature from UCLA, a Master’s degree in counseling from Santa Clara University, and PCC certification from the International Coaching Federation.

She is a regular blogger for PsychologyToday.com, professor emeritus and associate director of the Applied Spirituality Institute at Santa Clara University and senior research advisor/lecturer for the Positive Psychology Guild in the United Kingdom.

Connect with Diane on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

About Diane Dreher Coaching & Consulting, LLC
Her mission

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Doctor Diane Dreyer and she is with Diane Dreher Coaching and Consulting. Welcome.

Dr Diane Dreher: Thank you Lee.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How you serving folks?

Dr Diane Dreher: Oh my gosh, I do lots of things these days. I guess we all need to. I’m a positive psychology coach, researcher, and author. I do individual coaching and workshops. I give I do research on hope. I write books and articles to help people discover their strengths and move forward in life with greater direction, joy and hope.

Lee Kantor: Now, for folks who aren’t familiar, do you mind sharing a little bit about positive psychology. Um, what are kind of the the principles behind that and what attracted you to it?

Dr Diane Dreher: Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, about around the year 2000, a group of psychologists, including Martin Seligman, who had been elected to the presidency of the Association of Psychology AA, decided that psychologists had been looking at dysfunction. They’d been studying depression, attention deficit disorder, anxiety, mood swings, all the problems that people have, and they hadn’t really studied what helps people flourish. You know, they’d been looking at the dark side of human nature, which is there, but they hadn’t really focused on the bright side. So since then, there have been lots of studies of what helps people flourish positive emotions, obviously. Goals. Hope. Relationships. In fact, Martin Seligman has an acronym Perma, which is Positive Emotions. You know, a sense of engagement, relationships, positive relationships, meaning, and a sense of achievement or accomplishment. And that positive psychologists have been branching out, but they realize that we need to have the light in our lives. You know, we need to have something to look forward to. So that’s what’s been happening in the field of psychology. Positive psychology.

Lee Kantor: So how did your career path lead you to that? Did you sample the other kind of types of psychology to pursue? And then you landed on this one like because it resonated. Like what? How did you get here from there?

Dr Diane Dreher: Oh, wow. That’s a great question. My background I’m now a professor emeritus of English and associate director of the Applied Spirituality Institute at Santa Clara University. And I’m a senior research associate in the Positive Psychology Guild in the UK. But to get there, I started out majoring in English because I found a lot of inspiration reading Renaissance literature when people were discovering themselves in the world on a new level. So I got a I went to UC University of California, Riverside for my bachelor’s degree, UCLA for my master’s, and PhD in English Renaissance Literature. And for years I taught Renaissance literature and creative writing at Santa Clara University. But my students kept coming to me asking for advice. And I felt like, okay, I need to know more. So I went back to school at night while I was teaching during the day, earned a master’s degree in counseling from Santa Clara University and got really excited about, again, health psychology, positive psychology, and how I could help my students really discover the power within them to go out and make a difference. I also got a coaching credential from Mentor coach. I’m now a professional certified coach with the International Coaching Federation, and I use positive psychology techniques in my coaching. I ask all of my clients to take a short survey to discover their strengths, to set goals, to develop a sense of agency and possibility, and to really move forward with positive energy, which we need a lot more these days.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, I’m a big believer in focusing on strengths. Um, but there’s another side of the coin where they say that it’s important to work on your weaknesses. What do you say to that?

Dr Diane Dreher: Oh my gosh. Um, there, you know, obviously we need to be aware of our strengths and our weaknesses. Like, for example, if a person really wants to be a professional basketball player, but is about five foot three. That may not work okay, because, you know, I went to UCLA when Kareem Abdul Jabbar was there as Lew Alcindor. Standing in front of me in the lunch line. And I looked up at him and thought, oh, wow. We have certain innate tendencies and and, you know, strengths, physical strains, intellectual strength, artistic strengths. Uh, and we need to be aware of those and also be realistic about what’s possible for us. But if we spend too much time focusing on our weaknesses, uh, we don’t see the possibilities in front of us. There’s a a philosophy in business, uh, consulting called appreciative inquiry, where people go. I did this one time, uh, with a group going through transitions, trying to figure out what to do next. If they look at what didn’t work, they can’t really begin to think about what could work. So Appreciative Inquiry takes people through, uh, you know, inquiry, looking at what worked in the past. When in your company, did you feel a real sense of joy, energy and purpose? And, you know, success, a sense of camaraderie, what was going on, what was a bright spot, and collect all these insights from people and then use those to help them plot their way to a more possible future. And then along the way, with appreciative inquiry, the, uh, the problems, the weaknesses get taken care of because they’re they’re moving through, a plan that really moves them toward achieving their strengths. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, absolutely. I’m with you on that. I think more time spent making your strengths stronger is a better use of your time.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah. And there’s research that shows that. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Now in your work with your coaching and consulting, is that primarily with individuals or do you work with companies as well?

Dr Diane Dreher: I mainly work with individuals one on one, but I do, uh, give kind of presentations and workshops to groups. I did a recent presentation on hope for relay for life in my community, which is a group of cancer survivors. And so there was a group, and it was fun to to sort of, uh, give a presentation on hope and have people set goals and respond and all that. So I like to work with groups. I guess it comes from my many years as a college professor. I like to work with a group of people and bring out what we collectively can come up with together.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your coaching clients, what is kind of the the challenges that they’re struggling with where they’re like, I better call Doctor Diane because I need some help here. I’m I’m frustrated. I’m not getting to where I want to go.

Dr Diane Dreher: Mm. Good question. Um, people come to coaching and my coaching clients reflect this when they’re at a transition point in their lives, when they. I have a lot of people who have, uh, recently graduated from college, and then they’re trying to find their first job. And this is a transition point or, uh, sadly, uh, a number of people who are currently unemployed and figuring out what do I do next? Or a person who, uh, was trying to finish writing her dissertation, and she’d never done that before. So I was her dissertation coach, and we had a big celebration after she finished and became a doctor. You know, uh, client name. So, um, when when people are. Yeah. Well, they’re wrestling with a new challenge and they don’t really know where to go, and there’s there are no roadmaps. So collectively in a coaching partnership, we create the steps and we discover the path together.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you discern when a person should go down a path for coaching versus going down a path with like some psychologist or somebody, um, in that, in that, um, kind of field?

Dr Diane Dreher: Oh, yeah. Very good question. Um, the International Coaching Federation says that coaching clients are creative, resourceful and whole. There are people who, uh, are functioning, You know, they may be frustrated and confused, but they don’t have a major psychological dysfunction that they’re wrestling with. If, uh, and I’ve had to do this, actually, if I have a person who comes to me as a client, we have an intake interview and seems to be chronically depressed or have a bipolar, you know, dramatic ups and downs. I’ll refer that person to a therapist.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working, when you’re working with your clients, are you sometimes their first coach they ever had, or is coaching now so ubiquitous that people are having it earlier and earlier?

Dr Diane Dreher: I’m usually their first coach. There are a lot of people who get referred to me through the alumni office at a number of universities. And so I’m their first coach. Or they get referred to me by mentor coach where I did my training.

Lee Kantor: Now, what are kind of some of the do’s and don’ts when starting with a coach for the first time? How do you prepare them to get the most out of that interaction?

Dr Diane Dreher: Okay, well, I have an intake interview. I ask them what their what they want to get out of coaching, what their goals are. But first of all, I assure them that everything we we say, uh, either in person, you know, zoom whatever is confidential. Because without trust, there can be no, uh, no coaching. I mean, it has to be just as as, uh, as meeting with a therapist is confidential. So also meeting with the coaches confidential. And I ask them for permission to coach them at that point, because that’s something I have to do. Uh, in terms of my coaching, uh, background. And then we talk about, you know, what they want, what they’re looking for, what their goals are, what’s been stopping them. And I very often take them on a visualization, having them tell me visualize where they are now, and then going up in a helicopter and looking at where they’d like to be, and describe that in as much detail as possible. Because I’m a firm believer in the the power of positive visualization and also actually putting it into words, expressing what it is they want. And how does that feel? And then we look at the distance between where they are now and where they’d like to be, and the steps they need to take to get there and any roadblocks that might come up. And then coaching is a partnership. So I work with them on their timeline. We meet as often as they would choose, and we check in about the action items that they choose for themselves at the end of each session, and then at the beginning of the next session, they give me a progress report and we move forward.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you think that this type of support and accountability, this, you know, hearing people and listening to what their challenges are, that this type of interaction, this coaching dynamic is something that more and more people should at least try, especially in today’s uncertain world that we live in. There’s so much chaos. It seems that people do need kind of fresh eyes on things.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah, I feel like we need, uh, we need partners, we need mentors. We need, uh, people that can, you know, have our back, listen to us, give us unconditional positive regard, as Carl Rogers would say, and believe in our possibilities. Because, uh, as you just pointed out, our world is very confusing, very challenging, and it’s very easy to lose hope.

Lee Kantor: So what do you say to the people that are kind of at that point where they’re losing hope?

Dr Diane Dreher: Oh, well, um, I actually have done research on hope, uh, which has three strategic steps. So I tell them what those steps are. My colleague Dave Feldman, who’s a clinical psychologist, and I published a research study on Hope in 2012 which took the the psychological definition of hope, which is positive attitude and positive action. And there are three steps in hope theory goals, pathways which are steps to the goal and then a sense of agency or motivation. And we took a group, groups of students through these three steps had them write down their goal, had them write down three steps to their goal. And, uh, an obstacle that might come up for each step, and then an alternative that they could take for each step. And then we led them through, uh, some encouraging, uh, possibilities. How could they build their motivation? How can they confront some something called the inner Critic that visits a lot of us when we’re doing something we don’t really know how to do and we haven’t done before? Okay. And tell ourselves. Yeah, but the last time I did something, you know, look at your past achievements, I did it. Then I can do this now. Give yourself positive self-talk. Um, have little affirmations that you can put by by your desk or up on the, uh, your mirror in the bathroom.

Dr Diane Dreher: Have have a friend that you can share goals with, you know, build and and take care of yourself. Get enough sleep, enough good food, enough exercise to keep your energy up. What can you do? Goals. Pathways. Agency. So we took our participants through this. Had them visualize themselves with their goal after they’d written down all the steps and taking each step, meeting each obstacle, overcoming each obstacle, building a sense of momentum and visualizing themselves reaching their goal. Hey, terrific. We got significant results in goal, achievement and hope. And, uh, our article was published in a positive psychology journal and has had over 500, uh, acknowledgments included in other studies throughout the world, because these three steps really work. So I, I tell my my clients, this is hope. Really these steps work. We can all do these things. They’re simple and but to focus on positive attitude and positive action and to take these actions can really make a difference. So I have my clients set goals steps, and if they try something and it doesn’t work okay, what else can they do? And you just keep moving forward because it’s too easy in this world to get distracted, depressed and just give up.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I was when I was younger, I, I read a book called Hope is Not a Strategy, but it sounds like you figured out a strategy for hope.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah. Um, the concept of active hope was developed by C.R. Snyder, a psychologist at the University of Kansas, which has these three component parts goals, pathways, and agency. And Snyder was the dissertation advisor for my friend Dave Feldman. Apparently, Dave told me that Rick Snyder used to go around and ask all these successful people what what they did to get to where they were and, you know, leading a successful life and all these different fields. And they all had these three components. They had set a goal. They had, you know, developed steps to reach the goal. And they did things that that built their sense of motivation or agency. So he had these three components describe them, developed a hope scale that you can take to see how high your hope is. And what Dave and I did was we applied Rick Snyder’s definition to active steps which help people build hope.

Lee Kantor: It’s so funny that people, a lot of people, have all this negative self-talk within them. The first move is something negative usually, and then there’s so much value to having this positive self-talk and reminders of all the positive things you’ve done and all the accomplishments that you’ve made in your career or life, and that all the hard things you’ve done and people just either they forget it or take those for granted and they dwell on the negative.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah, we have psychologists who pointed this out. We have a negativity bias all human beings do. Because when we lived in, uh, you know, the jungle, as it were, uh, and you heard some strange noise, you’d have to expect the worst. Instead of having a sense of curiosity and saying, oh, what is that? You know, because it could be a snake that could bite you and, you know, be rattlesnake. That would be pretty fatal. Um, so it’s a survival tactic. You know, there’s there’s a part of us that that looks for threats and that scans for threats, and that can save our lives in an emergency. But if we let it become a constant in our in our way of looking at life, then we don’t see the possibilities. You know, we need to be able to open ourselves up at the appropriate time, which is most of the time we’re not in a survival mode. But, you know, our negativity bias puts us there unless we have something that we can do, like building active hope to counteract that.

Lee Kantor: Or having conversations with people like you.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah, or people like you. Yeah. In fact, one of the ways of building motivation is to hang out with positive people, be each other’s cheerleaders, as it were. My friends and I got through grad school at UCLA by doing that. Uh, when I first got to UCLA, I graduated from Riverside in June, and in late August, I moved to LA to begin graduate school in the PhD program. And I was a first generation college student I had. Nobody in my family had had, uh, you know, gone to college and, uh, let alone in a PhD program. So I was visited by the inner critic which said, who do you think you are? You can’t do this. And furthermore, at orientation, most of the other grad students in my class already had master’s degrees. So I thought, oh, gosh, this is this is challenging. And then we had a test in one of our classes and I thought, okay, what can I do about this? So I invited all my, uh, accomplished colleagues with master’s degrees to my apartment for a study session and said, I’ll bring pizza. You know, come over, let’s my place. Let’s all study together. I figured I could use this session to, uh, pick the brains of my smart friends so I could survive the exam. Well, what happened was we all helped each other, and we became a very close set of friends. And we went through grad school meeting, celebrating, sharing our our wins, sharing our struggles, and that that sense of community was such a positive aspect of grad school. And it happened because that was that was my strategy to pass this one test, because I figured they all knew more than I did.

Lee Kantor: It sounds like a variation of Benjamin Franklin’s, uh, strategy of, um, asking for a favor in order to make a friend.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah. Yeah. Um, in fact, one of the one of the things I also believe we need more of is a sense of community and companionship, a sense of support, which since Covid, uh, really eliminated a lot of our neighborhoods. I don’t know about where you live, but a lot of places that I used to go, the coffee shop. I used to have lunch with my friend Tina is closed. The local pharmacy has closed. Uh, a lot of restaurants closed because during Covid, people didn’t go anywhere. They just stayed home and had things delivered. And understandably, because, you know, there was a threat to, uh, their lives. But now, uh, a lot of what is what was familiar to us has gone away. And we have to rebuild community. And if a person is moving to a new town or a new place or a new job, that person community doesn’t just happen. We have to build it. And that’s part of what it takes to be a whole, you know, flourishing human being is to have a sense of community.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think that there and people have to relearn how to be part of a community, too. It’s it’s different than an online community. An in-person community is a living, breathing thing. It’s it’s different.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah, absolutely. Late. And again, there’s really interesting research by a psychologist named Barbara Fredrickson who talks about the importance of cultivating community, even what she calls micro-moments of connectivity, which, uh, was, you know, waving at a neighbor, uh, exchanging a kind word with somebody that you meet at the grocery store or whatever. She’s found that these little split second probably, you know, small connections can strengthen the immune system and lower the sense of inflammation in both people, you know? So, uh, I read Barbara Fredrickson, and I’d be walking around the neighborhood with my dog waving at neighbors.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Having a dog is a great way to do that. That’s a an easy way to, uh, get yourself out of the house and interacting with folks.

Dr Diane Dreher: Yeah. And just, uh, I. Frederickson has also found that if enough of us do that, there’s a kind of a ripple effect that can bring a sense of connection and positivity to an entire community. So I wave at my neighbors thinking, hi, it’s good for me, it’s good for you. It’s good for all of us.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. You’re improving the the value of your neighborhood. Yeah.

Dr Diane Dreher: With just a simple gesture. Right. I mean, it’s not really altruistic because it benefits us, too. So it’s a win win.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about your practice or connect with you, what is the website? What’s the best way to learn more? And we didn’t even get time to talk about all your books, but I’m sure on your website is information about those as well.

Dr Diane Dreher: Sure. My website is comm, which is d I e d r e h e uh. And it has my books. It has As meditations. My blog. Uh, positive insights about what we can all do to, uh, to help make our our lives more positive, to help us achieve our goals, to help us discover the power within us and around us to flourish.

Lee Kantor: Well, Diane, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Dr Diane Dreher: Thank you, Lee, and I appreciate being on this wonderful program, and I’m very happy for all the positivity that you spread out there to everyone who’s listening.

Lee Kantor: All right. It’s been a joy. Uh, this is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Kevin Eikenberry With The Kevin Eikenberry Group

June 6, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Kevin Eikenberry With The Kevin Eikenberry Group

00:00 /

Kevin Eikenberry is the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group – a leadership and learning company based in Indianapolis, IN with a team across the United States.

He has spent over 30 years helping organizations and leaders from at least 53 countries become more effective. Global Gurus has listed him on the list of most influential thinkers on leadership for the last four years. His blog and podcast are among the most popular on leadership.

Remarkable Leadership, From Bud to Boss, and The Long-Distance Leader, The Long-Distance Teammate, The Long-Distance Team, are among the books he has authored or co-authored.

He believes his new book Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence, is his best and most important work yet.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Flexibility as a Leadership Skill: Why adaptability is essential for today’s leaders and how to develop it.
The Power of Adaptability: How leaders can cultivate a flexible mindset to thrive in uncertainty.
Leadership Mindset Shifts: Overcoming traditional leadership barriers to embrace a more adaptable approach.
Moving Beyond Style: How leadership styles, and strengths can keep leaders from being as effective as they want and need to be.
Adapting to Change: How leaders can shift their strategies to remain effective amidst uncertainty.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Kevin Eikenberry, who is the chief potential officer with The Kevin Eikenberry Group. Welcome.

Kevin Eikenberry: Thanks for thanks for having me. Lee.

Lee Kantor: I am excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about the Eikenberry Group. How are you serving folks?

Kevin Eikenberry: Well, we’re in the business of helping leaders get better so the world can be a better place. Because you know what, Lee? Nothing positive happens in the world without someone leading. And so leadership is a high leverage sort of activity. And that’s what we spend our time doing, is helping leaders and their teams get more effective so they can get better results.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Kevin Eikenberry: Well, I was born. Oh, you don’t want to go back that far. So I have been doing this kind of work for a long time. I started the company almost 32 years ago, and prior to that I worked in corporate America. And really our business started in that all around learning in general. And we very, very quickly moved into focusing on helping leaders learn again from that leverage perspective that we talked about. So the back story is working in corporate America involved before I left, after doing sales and marketing roles, getting involved in sort of adult learning stuff, corporate learning inside of a large fortune ten company and then left to start the company. That’s now the Kevin Eichenberger.

Lee Kantor: Now before that, as I understand, you grew up on a farm. How had how did that impact kind of your view on the world?

Kevin Eikenberry: It it absolutely is true. And it did impact my view of the world. I think it has a lot to do with my work ethic. It has a lot to do with because we had a farm and other farm related businesses about thinking about what what customers really mean and how do we take care of customers. So I think it helped me in a lot of those kinds of ways. And, you know, I went to Purdue and studied agriculture and people said, how do you end up doing what you’re doing now? Well, I went to school to learn about growing things, mechanical systems and biological systems, and now we deal with human systems. So it’s still about systems. It’s about thinking in the big picture and then helping to create the learning that’s required so that those important things we want to have happen can actually happen.

Lee Kantor: And then you have a new book out, Flexible Leadership, Navigate uncertainty and Lead with confidence. What what kind of drew you to the concept of flexible leadership?

Kevin Eikenberry: Well, I’ve been as I said, I’ve been in this business doing this kind of work, written a bunch of books over the years. And and to me, this is the, the time. What’s different about our world today is things are more uncertain and complex than ever. And so if we think that we can lead the way we did five years ago and get as good of results as we did five years ago. That’s not a very good bet. In fact, I don’t think we can get as good a results because the world is changing and if we’re not changing with it, we can’t get the results we need. Now, I’m not talking about changing everything. A whole lot about leadership. Lee hasn’t changed at all. But the stuff that has changed matters a lot. And mostly this comes down to changing how we lead, not the what of leadership. Not the principles, not the not our values. I’m not talking about changing those things. Those things are rooted like a tree, but just like a tree. It has to bend and flex in the breeze. We have to be able to approach things in new ways. When we see the context is changing and that’s what the world is, is changing. So what do we need to do to adapt to those changes, to get to get the results we really want?

Lee Kantor: So now how do you recommend to your clients? Um, how to know what change is real? What change is fleeting? What changes? Is foundational.

Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I think the first thing we have to recognize is let’s just talk about the word change for a second. So when when organizations talk about making organizational change or changes happening, what we end up doing is acting as if everything is changing. When the reality is everything is not changing. Much of about what’s going on in our business and about our work processes aren’t changing. But if we only focus on the change and we don’t have the context of what’s not changing, then we overreact, right? So we have to keep that in mind. And that will actually help us lead the changes that are happening. If we can get people to be clear on here’s what’s the same and here’s what’s new. That’s the first piece. And the second thing is to look at the change from the context of where it’s taking us. Right. So we talk about, uh, a context map or a framework that helps us see the situations that we’re in to help us decide how we might need to flex. And so five years ago, ten years ago, 15 years ago, a whole lot of our work, the work of of organizations, the work of leaders was in what we would call the clear context. We knew that we knew the cause and effects. We could apply best practices we could build, process processes that allowed us to continually and repeatedly get the same result every time, which was awesome, because we had an awful lot of things that we knew about. And as long as we applied based on what we knew, we’d be in good shape. But there are far fewer things that we know have all the information about anymore, right? With with globalization, with further specialization, with new technologies, with new ways of work, because of pandemic. All of those things create more unknowns. Um, and in fact, oftentimes we don’t even know all the things that we don’t know. And so once we can recognize that, that’s the context that we’re in. We can start to recognize that we need we need to lead differently in those moments.

Lee Kantor: But then how, as a leader, do you lead in the moments where there is so much chaos and so much uncertainty? Or how do you know where where the true north is if it seems like it’s always moving?

Kevin Eikenberry: So the first thing is the true north should still be what? Excuse me? What the goals and purpose of our organization is. So we have to keep that in focus and then say, what do we need? What do we need to do or try now? And I think the word the word try becomes really important. Because what. Excuse me again. So if you look back over the last few years, what organizations wanted to do after we came out of a pandemic was do what they’ve always done, which was create a new policy, which would be the new way we would do work. And we can now look back over the last 2 or 3 years and see that those policies that people implemented didn’t work very well because they were operating as if they now had all of the all the Intel they had all the insight, and they knew everything. When we don’t. So when we’re in a situation where we’re sure that we don’t know everything, we need to not try to set policy, but rather pilot things, try stuff, take small risks, do small experiments and experiment doesn’t mean try something. Just we’re going to try this and then we’re going to roll everybody else into that in six weeks.

Kevin Eikenberry: Try this, try this, try this. We’re thinking about an organizationally. We got to try multiple things so we can start to see what we learn from those experiments to help us make better decisions, because we start to get more information as we do that. And that’s not typically the way we’ve led in the past. We’ve tried to come up with a new way, and now this is where we’re headed. And and that’s getting us the kind of results we’ve gotten in the past, which think about it this way. Oftentimes people will say, Lee. Uh, man, if I know now if I had known six months ago what I know now, I’d have done something differently. And every time that we see that happening to us, that was a time that we should have done more testing and trying rather than just taking a single action six months ago. So the better we become at recognizing that we don’t have all the answers, the better chance we have to adjust the way we would lead compared to what is our natural or learned response.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you help companies that may, like you described historically, might have experimented on a whiteboard and, you know, spent months and months of planning and then implementing whatever that brilliant idea was, and then tell everybody to fall in line to this more nimble, um, experimentation way to innovate and grow. That requires that’s going to have more failures and learnings, uh, rather than, you know, a big success or in some cases might have been a big failure. How do you kind of get that cultural shift? Because in order to have a culture that embraces experimentation, there is going to be people who are going to try things that aren’t going to work. And in a lot of organizations, especially large ones, they’re not very, um, they’re not usually holding up the people who, uh, who created a bunch of failed experiments. Those are the people who usually get fired.

Kevin Eikenberry: I think I think you’re right. So I think there’s a couple of things. First of all, that’s a really astute point that that in many organizations we can talk people talk about we want people learning, but they don’t really want them to make mistakes. Right?

Lee Kantor: You can learn all you want as long as it works, if it doesn’t work.

Kevin Eikenberry: And yet we all know individually that’s not how learning really works, right? So I would say a couple of things. So if you’re listening to me and you’re a CEO, then you have a chance to start to change that culture. But most people who are listening are probably somewhere in the middle of the organization. Maybe you’re a frontline leader. Maybe you’re a leader of leaders somewhere in the middle. And I would say the best thing you can do is to start trying this in small ways. And I mean, the way you described it, Lee, is the way people often think about it. Like, we’re going to try this on a big scale. I’m saying try it on small stuff. I’m saying just try stuff in little ways. Start getting people to work on that adaptation muscle, if you will, and and don’t make it on things that are sort of career limiting if we fail at first because as people get used to having the psychological safety to try stuff, uh, then there’ll be they’ll get better at the trying, we’ll get better at the learning. And the other piece is when we’ve only done one thing, and then if it fails, it’s a problem. It’s just it’s a big deal. But if we’re if we’re trying to fail forward rapidly, then the steps are smaller. The mistakes are smaller, and we we move on to the next one quicker. So, uh, in every one of those cases, it helps make it a bit safer. In the big picture, if all we’re talking about is big things, big tests, uh, that are highly visible, those are going to be more risky if we’re in the middle of the organization. But there’s lots of smaller things we can be trying just to see. And if we’ll do that, we got a better we have a better chance of success. We do, though, as leaders, to your point, need to recognize that we’re now asking people to do stuff that might not be what they’re used to or initially comfortable with.

Lee Kantor: So how do you build the culture that allows, you know, failed experiments to exist and still get a high five and still keep their job like it? To me, there’s a trust gap in the sense that a lot of times leaders tell people to take chances and to do experiments, but when it comes to the actual it not working. You know, that’s not like, oh, that was a good learning. You’re promoted. That’s usually not the case. It’s like, wow, that person doesn’t have a lot of good ideas. Why are they on the team?

Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah, it’s easy to say that I want that. And then it’s also then easy to blame people when they’re the one. They’re the ones that make the mistake. Right? So what I would say to leaders in A is as kind and yet as direct a way as I can, is that you need to go first. Being a leader means going first, which means don’t just start asking other people to try stuff. Try stuff yourself. Uh, and when we do that, we’re sending a different message, and we make. And when we’re the ones that have done the testing or we’ve tried something different, which fundamentally is what I’m suggesting, if we’re going to be flexible as a leader, we’re going to do it differently. You know, in a conversation, in a coaching moment, um, in a decision that we make, we might do it differently than we’ve done it before. If we’re willing to try things, adapt ourselves, we start to set the tone for others. Um, if you as a leader are listening and say this all sounds really good as long as they do it right. Uh, then you’re running all the risks that Lee’s talking about.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re working with your clients, do you have kind of a sweet spot in the type of firms you work with? Um, are they small? Are they large? Are they. You mentioned working for the largest of the large enterprises. Is that kind of where you spend your time? What’s the ideal client fit for you?

Kevin Eikenberry: So, uh, we’ve worked with with people, you know, in doing this for over 30 years, we’ve worked with just about every kind of industry you can imagine. But typically we are best suited because of the size of our organization to work with organizations or decision units of 10,000 employees or less. So we obviously work with some very large organizations, but but often that’s with a division with a. Region or something where they have decision making power and it’s not 50 or 70 or 100,000 employees, but it’s ten, five, eight, 10,000 employees that they have some buying power around. And so organizations really in the 2 to 10,000 employee range or decision makers in that 2 to 10,000 employee range is probably where we’re best suited and have had most success.

Lee Kantor: And industry agnostic, like it could be a service company, it could be a manufacturer. Doesn’t matter.

Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah pretty much we’ve we’ve had the chance to work across a lot of industries over the years. And you know, at the end of the day, everyone wants to ask, Lee, have you worked with people in our industry? Have you done this? Have you done that? And the answer is whether it’s yes or no. The reality is what they’re trying to find out is can you help our situation. And the situations are way more the same than different, right. Um, and so we have had a chance to work with folks in lots of different industries, both manufacturing, service and pretty much name it over the years.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the pain that your customer or prospective customer is having the day before they call you? What is frustrating them where they’re like, I got to get Kevin and his team in here.

Kevin Eikenberry: Well, it could be one of three things. It could be that they’re having trouble developing the leaders that they need for the future. So that could look like succession planning leadership pipeline. It could be that they’re that the leaders are the fact that their leaders aren’t as effective as they could be is causing retention or turnover problems. Those are probably the two biggest ones. And then the third one is just organizations that recognize that if we’re going to be more successful, we know that the the, the leaders are what will help us get there and are willing to invest in them, sort of, regardless of any other specific situation.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you have any advice for folks that maybe have grown up leading teams that were all in the office altogether human to human? I bump into people at the water cooler and now they’re dealing with more remote work. Maybe it’s global. Maybe it’s they’re just not seeing their people in person as much as they used to. Any advice for that type of a leader?

Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah. Well, um, before the pandemic happened, I co-wrote a book called the Long-Distance leader, and I’ve been leading a virtual, almost entirely remote team for about 15 years. And so I would say about three things. Number one is, as leaders of teams who are remote, virtual, hybrid, whatever way you want to say that, number one is you have to be more intentional about everything because you’re not going to see people a lot of water cooler. You have to make sure that you’re making time to interact with folks along the way. That’s the first thing. You have to be more intentional. Number two is you have to think differently about the way you communicate. We have so many different ways, mediums with which we can communicate, and we need to make sure that we’re using the right communication tools for the right times. And that includes don’t forget the phone and remember the webcam, because that’s the next best thing to being there in person. And then the third thing I would say is that we have to acknowledge that not everyone’s experience about where they’re working and when they’re working is the same. How they’re experiencing it may be different than us. We need to make sure that we’re connecting with our folks well enough to know how they’re doing, so that we can help them succeed moving forward.

Lee Kantor: What about advice to the young person who, um, hasn’t learned what it’s like to be in close proximity with their boss? How should they? What should they be doing in order to be promoted, to kind of get the most out of their experience in this new job? That might be remote?

Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah. You know, it’s really interesting. The first part of what you said is we have we have a we have a group of folks who came into the workplace and never went to the office. Right. And so now maybe they still haven’t, or now their challenge is I’m now in the office. What do I do? But whether that’s the situation or they are remote. Either way, we would suggest that you think about how do I become more visible, but do that in an ethical way. You don’t want to be the person that is just trying to be seen, but rather what you want to do is be seen in ways that’s that’s in alignment with the culture of your organization. But it’s also seen as not being just for you personally, but for the good and benefit, and with the intention of helping the entire team. If you’re doing those kinds of things, if you’re willing to volunteer not just to be seen, but because you want to add value, if you are willing to offer the chance to mentor others that are coming into the organization or whatever those things might be, as long as folks see you as doing it with good intention and see you as getting your core work done, as well as the things that help you be seen as adding additional value. You’ll be in good shape.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, where should they go? Is there a website? What’s the best way to connect with you and learn more about your books and your practice?

Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah, if you go to the you want to learn more about US organization, just go to Kevin eikenberry.com. That’s Kevin e I k e n b e r r y.com. If you want to learn more about the book, just put a slash flexible. After that that’ll point you to everything related to the book. Flexible leadership including getting you a sample chapter. And in terms of me personally, along with those locations, you can also just connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to have you do that.

Lee Kantor: Well, Kevin, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Kevin Eikenberry: Thanks so much.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Vladimir Baranov With Human Interfaces

June 3, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Vladimir Baranov With Human Interfaces

00:00 /

Vladimir Baranov is an Executive Coach at Human Interfaces for Founders and Technical Leaders. He coached and mentored at various U.S. and U.K. incubators and accelerators, with a primary focus on launching, developing, and sustaining startups. He champions innovation, particularly in transforming ideas into tangible businesses (zero-to-one approach). He also focuses on integration of frequently misaligned perspectives of business and technical challenges.

He’s a serial entrepreneur, having founded three companies with successful exits in fintech and spacetech, demonstrating proficiency in scaling businesses through various funding stages. His entrepreneurial journey, encompassing roles such as Founder, CTO, COO, and CISO, lends him a comprehensive perspective on creating optimal data and technology services.

Vladimir holds MBAs from Columbia and London Business Schools and dual degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Stony Brook University, where his studies spanned software development and robotics. He is passionate about enhancing communication strategies, studies organizational and social behavior, and is an avid reader.

Connect with Vladimir on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

How engineers and scientists struggle at running the business
Getting mindset right is one of the important things when running a company
Analogies help cross knowledge gaps
AI makes a lot of things easier

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Vladimir Baranov, who is a founder coach of Human Interfaces. Welcome.

Vladimir Baranov: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Lee. Excited to talk with you.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about human interfaces. How you serving folks?

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah, yeah. So I serve a lot of tech founders and help them embrace the human side. A lot of technologists, including myself, have spent so much time with computers. We don’t spend enough time with people and figure them out. And as you go and grow your own business, it’s one of the most important things to master is how do you interact with market? How do you interact with your own team? How do you be a leader to the teams that you are leading.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory?

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah, that’s a great question. I started out as an engineer. I spent about 15 years in finance. Uh, one is exposure to large banks, building trading systems. And then I co-founded a business in wealth management, SaaS, and grew that from two people from about 150 and eventually selling after seven years to a larger company. Then I had a little bit of realignment to purpose. Uh, and I joined a aerospace company as a third person. We grew that to about 35 people with a few million dollars in government contracts. We were able to launch two space instruments. So it was a very exciting journey, but I wanted to see how much more impact can I make. I was, uh, basically having a proverbial lever in my hands, and I was looking for a pivot point. If I’m to quote Archimedes, and I feel that right now I’m in the right place where I am helping others to start their businesses and be better leaders, and I could be the small multiplier in their success.

Lee Kantor: So why did you choose coaching rather than consulting?

Vladimir Baranov: That is a great question. I feel consulting is a great profession, but it is predetermined by the client who is asking you what you want to consult for. Well, in coaching it’s a lot of conversational interpersonal discovery, the Socratic method of that, that is very attractive to me. You get to know the client much better and then together you define what is their destination. Well, in the consulting, I feel when you are coming in and obviously there are different variations of everything in consulting, you come in already for a task that has been predetermined for you, and sometimes you cannot refine the problem statement.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re doing coaching, is it difficult for you to see maybe some engineering solutions that would be easy for you to either implement or do when the client that may be struggling. And in coaching, obviously you’re asking a lot of questions. You’re not you know, you’re not the doer anymore. You’re just the asker.

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is a very interesting question and actually comes down to the nature of coaching in a sense. I always tell the people that I work with is I’m very careful with my mentorship kind of moves or advice because I can teach them how to catch tuna in the pond, but their reality in their context, is catching shark in the ocean. And I do appreciate the Socratic method of coaching, where it helps us discover their context together, because the best person who can make the right decision in that context is my client, and my responsibility there is to provide them with instruments and questions which help them discover that context. By me. Introducing my own bias of my experience kind of shatters the connections that they can make between my experience and their reality, if they’re still in the process of discovering it themselves.

Lee Kantor: So have you landed on kind of that ideal client profile for yourself?

Vladimir Baranov: Oh, that’s a that’s a great question. I’d say there is a two different people that I work with. One is a founder who is pre idea, uh, who perhaps maybe is hesitant to kick the project off. They might not know where to start. They might not know what kind of business they want to work on. And the second kind is somebody who’s been in the business for maybe a few years, and now they’re starting to encounter those, uh, leadership, uh, issues where team starts growing and their ambitions start growing, but they’re lacking, uh, the experience or perhaps they’re ignorant of their reality, which prevents them from moving forward.

Lee Kantor: So they get to a point, um, where they they need kind of the fresh eyes on things.

Vladimir Baranov: It’s a fresh eyes and fresh questions if it comes from coaching, because one of the biggest things that we do for ourselves, unfortunately, is we lie to ourselves all the time about our own reality, and I’m not in the process of calling somebody a liar, it’s more highlighting the opportunities that might exist on somebody’s plate, but they’re not visible because they obscured by our own belief in our own greatness.

Lee Kantor: Now, are there kind of symptoms that these people are going through that are maybe signals that they should open themselves up to some coaching with you or any coach, really?

Vladimir Baranov: That is a fantastic question. Actually, I’m going to write it down for my own purposes. Um, what, uh, I generally notice is that a lot of founders who are getting help through coaching might experience things like overwhelm there, where now they start seeing that they have so many things to do, and there is no way that they accomplish them all. And they need, uh, help figuring out the context of prioritization and figuring out which one to start working on. Um, another one is, uh, going through options. One of the privileged and non-privileged and stressful position of the leader is that sometimes there are decisions that needs to be discussed in a very private and confidential way, where somebody who is not in any way involved with the company, um, and that is another opportunity to kind of walk through the options, to kind of have a hold that space, hold that privileged, uh, hold that, um, confidential space to process the options and help the client, uh, through questions to select the right approach. So the two components that I see, one is, uh, figuring out how to get things off the plate, uh, to, um, how to process options and three, how to get started. Uh, because sometimes when we haven’t done things, that’s where a lot of ignorance and help, uh, helps.

Lee Kantor: So now when you’re working with somebody, Um, what does the first conversation look like? Is it just you asking questions, or is it them asking questions like, what are those initial conversations like? Can you give us kind of a rundown of what that experience feels like?

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah, yeah. If I have to label that our first initial conversation is more bound in discovery. Uh, I am not in my client’s context. And also, uh, this is the first time I’m meeting the person, and we haven’t talked about it before. And also, sometimes client themselves might not have the thing which they want to discuss figure it out on their own. Structured, labeled uh, approached, organized. And first a session or two we spend doing two things. One is discover a context where they’re coming from, what is actually the problem and where they would like to end up, and the kind of the last part of the conversation. We try to work out the outcomes, which we can quantify and certify as we’re going through coaching in a sense, like, are we actually able to see whether or not coaching is being successful?

Lee Kantor: So you’re really going to, um, hold your coaching to kind of a really strict ROI, like, are you getting something tangible out of this? I expect this to happen at the end of this amount of time. Like, so you’re looking at it like you would as an engineer.

Vladimir Baranov: That is that is correct. I would say as an engineer, as a business person who likes their KPIs. And a lot of my founders who I work with, they also like, uh, KPIs to work with. Um, there is a slight challenge with coaching and because of the nature of the conversations, can get esoteric. Like how would somebody know that they are now a better leader? And we have to rely on more qualitative measures of where the client themselves assesses whether or not they have achieved certain outcomes. But for most of the outcomes, we try to get it down to more specific accomplishment. Like, for example, I was feeling more overwhelmed or less overwhelmed. Do you feel like you have figured out prioritization? I have not figured out prioritization. Do you feel the conflict with your team or your co-founders, or your C-suite is at the same level or below? Uh, before you start a coaching.

Lee Kantor: So at the beginning, are you are you asking them those same questions to get some sort of a baseline?

Vladimir Baranov: Uh, yes. And my question would be very much open ended in the sense, like, what kind of outcomes would you like to achieve and how would we know we get there? And once they list out those priorities, we’ll have a conversation about how we would know for sure that we got there. So then you can walk away with a positive feeling that we’ve done good work.

Lee Kantor: So now, um, how I mean, how does or does it, um, does I have anything to do with your work nowadays? It seems like every business is, um, playing around, at least at some level with AI.

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah. No, absolutely. Um, I think AI is here to stay. It’s a marvelous tool. Um, for me, it helps me with a lot of things, like, uh, thought patterns, uh, creating options. Uh, in a sense, if I have an inkling of certain scenarios, um, I would like to plug it in sometimes into a limb and say, like, tell me like 25 different ways this can evolve. And then I would select the scenario which is more applicable to what I’m thinking about, and then develop further on my own. Um, I can go ahead and plug in multiple podcasts that I’m listening to and ask it to summarize, say, saving me countless of hours. Um, sometimes with, uh, agreement of the client, I would record our calls to keep our notes for the following conversations. Uh, ready? Um, I think it’s also pretty good for suggesting posts. It’s a really good for crafting plans. Coaching plans? Um, so I’d say, like, I’m using it a lot.

Lee Kantor: So that’s how you’re using it. How do you recommend your clients use it?

Vladimir Baranov: That’s that’s that’s a great clarification. Um, what actually happens is that, uh, when I speak to founders, there’s definitely tends to conversations to go towards, uh, social presence and marketing and advertising. And I think that’s where I right now is the greatest, where it can generate almost infinite amount of, uh, different kinds of ads and presentations. And those are the kind of tools that I, uh, hand off, uh, with certain instructions, uh, for my clients. Um, I definitely, uh, suggest that, uh, anytime they get stuck, that LM is really one of the best ways as a first step to get options for the ways forward.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, in your work previously, you were part of startups that scaled and were able to you were able to exit, um, does does the wins in that world. Can you share a little bit about emotionally how that makes you feel, as opposed to working with one of your coaching clients and they get some aha moment or they move to a new level. How does that compare?

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah, I can tell you, um, if I can be open for a little bit, uh, when I started a coaching, initially, it felt incredibly lonely that I had no team around me to with who I can process things with. I feel like as if I need a coach at that point. Um, no wins to share. Um, what I have discovered as becoming coach and become more experienced coach myself is that through the longer relationships, not one off coaching, not like two session coaching, but with the clients that I have, uh, worked with for six, seven months, a year and longer. Um, I am in tune with what they’re going through in a way that their wins become my wins. Um, and their struggles become my struggles. And I feel responsible to, uh, serve them in a way that they become wins over a longer period of time. So I would say that sort of feeling of loneliness eventually disappeared, and my clients became an extension of that team and that transfer of emotion that I was able to give, uh, there. Now, I have inkling that working with a smaller team and working on specific project together, having the same context, will give me a different kind of satisfaction, but I think I will have to try it at the same time, if I’m ever done with coaching and report back to you.

Lee Kantor: So when you decided to become a coach, um, did you was this just kind of based on your own knowledge in your life of, hey, I’ve talked to a lot of people. I’ve mentored people in my job, so I think I can pull this off. Or did you kind of go through some sort of a methodology to learn a certain style of coaching? Um, like how did you develop your own kind of authentic coaching voice.

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah, that’s that’s a great question. Um, I has been always a student of self-improvement. Uh, since my early 20s. I was fascinated by the fact that you can go ahead, read something on the internet or in a book, try it yourself and just be a become a little bit better in whatever thing you’re trying to perfect. Communication, presentation, your speech, uh, your body language, your business habits. And it kind of that habit stayed with me throughout my life, um, as part of being executive at my startups and the companies that I’ve scaled, I was able to experience, uh, mentoring and coaching at work when I was working with my coworkers and my employees, and it gave me inkling and understanding of what that might be. Um, what I did to formalize that is I went ahead and I took training with the Berkeley Coaching Executive Institute, and thereafter also got certified with International Coaching Federation to make it more formal. So, um, I was able to get, uh, that understanding how to data properly. And on top of that, I had a privilege of experience of being coached by other great coaches, which led me to the path which I’m on now, and I’m able to leverage that experience to be a better coach myself.

Lee Kantor: So do you have any advice for other coaches out there when it comes to growing their own practice? Um, did you have, um, a built in pipeline for your kind of initial discovery calls and the, and the path towards clients? Um, and any advice you can share for others when it comes to growing a practice, you know, from scratch, like like you’ve done.

Vladimir Baranov: Yeah. No, that’s that’s a great question. And one of the discoveries that I had to make for myself, uh, is that coaching is 30% coaching and 70%, uh, marketing. So creating that pipeline, um, some of us are privileged to be in the highest echelons of corporations, and that becomes a little bit easier. I actually have an anecdote where I spoke with one of the coaches recently. They retired after a while, and they and I asked them, so what? How did you create your pipeline? And the person said, well, I send an email to 14 of my reports and ask them, like, would they sign up as coaches? And and they said that, uh, 12 out of 14 signed up right away. So that’s that does not reflect reality for a lot of coaches who are trying to build a pipeline. Uh, for me, I would say I had to build it from scratch, leveraging my own network and eventually studying more of art, of marketing and advertising and sales in order to develop that. But for more specific, um, uh, kind of, uh, tips if, uh, your audience is looking for that, um, the best people to match is the ones who already support you, the ones supported you in the past and have a conversation with them of where whether or not they or maybe somebody around them could be a client for you. Um, I can obviously dive into many details, but I’d say that’s where the core of it. Because in a sense, like supports like. And people who were champion or champions before will be your champions again now as you’re developing this pipeline.

Lee Kantor: So now is um, what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Vladimir Baranov: I love it. Um, I would like, uh, more introductions to people who are running into types of issues that I mentioned before because I would like to help them change their life.

Lee Kantor: And then so is it tech startups? Is that a sweet spot? Or it could be any business.

Vladimir Baranov: Good question. So, uh, the sweet point is, um, a technology founder, somebody with a lot of engineering and technology background who is either about to start a business or have been working a business for a few years. Um, this is where, uh, they start encountering the problems as the as far as prioritization, team conflict, uh vision, uh setting option selection, uh which I can help process uh, for them.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Vladimir Baranov: Great question Lee. Uh, so I’ve created a link and it’s, uh, human interfaces SEO slash podcast. Uh, and if you go through that link, uh, you can, uh, reserve a complimentary coaching session as part of being audience for this great show.

Lee Kantor: Well, Vladimir, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Vladimir Baranov: Thank you so much, Lee.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.