Business Coach Casey Ryan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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