Shasheen Shah With Coherent Strategies

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Shasheen Shah with coherent strategies. Welcome.

Shasheen Shah: [00:00:44] Thank you Lee, it’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about coherent strategies. How are you serving, folks?

Shasheen Shah: [00:00:51] Well, the company Clearing Strategies is essentially a consulting and executive coaching company, if you were to call it anything but my primary role in my clients lives has been a trusted advisor. And typically these are CEOs and entrepreneurial CEOs that are growing and expanding their businesses, received a bunch of funding, may have had an exit. And you know, the kind of just look in the upper level, there are companies in their lives.

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

Shasheen Shah: [00:01:24] It’s inarguable merger between my own work as a young man in the world at age 19 kind of found the world of personal development, and my work as an entrepreneur and as a consultant working for some large big box companies and somewhere around 2004 2005, after kind of working in larger corporations and on my own journey, I realized that. You know, business and strategy wasn’t the hard part. It was it was people that were the challenge and began talking more about the. Execute. Using strategies that CEOs were being challenged with. It wasn’t a strategy with the people in dealing with the people and having some of the more difficult conversations and handling those issues, and hung a shingle called Coherent Strategies at that time of the Newport Beach and had an opportunity to work with a couple of executive recruiting firms. And next thing you know, people started calling and I’ve been very fortunate been able to run a referral based company since then.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:36] Now, when you’re working with folks, especially when you’re kind of just launching a practice like yours, did you have kind of a formalized methodology? Did you just have some best practices that you learn from being a practitioner? Like, how did you kind of go about and coming up with the coherent strategy kind of way of doing things?

Shasheen Shah: [00:02:58] Yeah, it’s an interesting question. You know, there was a. It was a book that Hartman had written. The organization was called From Coherent, From Chaos to Coherence, and it really just struck a bell about conversations around alignment in general, and it was about personal alignment in our own brand and how we show up in the world and then alignment and strategy and look at teams and what was missing. It was a question of alignment. So. You know, I think it was a combination of much of the work that I’ve done in the past, there are various different organizations and programs and books that I’d read and a knowledge and kind of a knack for business strategy. So. I would arguably say the major skill set that I had at that point was really listening carefully and interviewing, well, interviewing the CEO and the company well and not really trying to offer a out-of-the-box solution, but trying to read between the lines and hearing what’s actually being said to address head on the concerns that were spoken and a lot of times a lot of the concerns that were not spoken by the leadership team.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] Now on your website, you use the words courageous inquiry. Yeah, sure, that was not an accident. It implies some kind of being the ability to be vulnerable and to be brave. And to be have some self introspection. Yeah, why is that important in order to be an effective coach or consultant?

Shasheen Shah: [00:04:44] Oh, I mean, you know, I think that was a statement more for my client. Client today that wish to get engaged with me, I think as a coach or a consultant, you know, if you can’t get down to. You know, the humanness and the individual person and get to that level of really understanding the back story behind how we got to where we are today. And my mom talking about like mommy and daddy issues and stuff when we were a kid and Johnny at the playground and all of that kind of stuff. If you are not willing to go there, I think ultimately it puts a cap on how much you’re able to grow and be an effective leader. You know, at the premise of my practice is, you know, if you can’t develop. You know, a level of compassion and love for your own self and your own journey. And some of the dramas and the quote-unquote traumas that you’ve experienced and we all go through them, you’re not going to be as effective as I think you can potentially be. And I say that with a footnote because. It’s arguable to say that what’s out there in the marketplace today are a lot of tips and tricks and strategies that I think are extremely effective. You know, you can walk across coals and pound your chest.

Shasheen Shah: [00:06:21] You can, you know, put things into a certain matrix and there’s some formulaic ways. There’s some discipline and accountability. And you know, there’s models and paradigms you can follow. And all of those, I think, are extremely effective. The. The part of my practice that became intriguing for me was really looking at the experience of life that that CEO or entrepreneur was actually having. And. You know, it’s kind of categorize the kind of the two principle personalities that seem to show up, and it’s either the dutiful good boy or good girl, you know, who checked off the boxes and did what they were supposed to do and gained the admiration of their peers and their society and moms and dads and family. And they’re, you know, fine young men and women. Or they’re there’s another version that seems to be more on the other end of the spectrum is more of the rebel who’s like, I’ll show you. You know, and I never got my fair shake or I didn’t come from the right side of the tracks or people made fun of me or told me I couldn’t do it and they didn’t have or whatever. And they basically set off in the left saying, You know what? I’ll show you what you think.

Shasheen Shah: [00:07:37] Let me show you. And both in both instances, they’ve they’ve produced inarguably, you know, incredible results, built companies and have beautiful things in their lives and live pretty cool lives. And yet the lens through which I got to see a lot of these lives were just it’s opened up this doorway to an experience of life that never really matched what I perceived that their life was actually like. And. That’s primarily the role that I have been playing, especially over the last five to 10 years with my clients is is cultivating kind of this more sustainable longevity of an experience of life because you think about all these people are their coaches and consultants or their business people, they’re just trying to grow and live these happy lives and the pathways there that they take. Sometimes that they these pathways are fraught with pitfalls. If if we’re not careful and a lot of the sacrifices made, you know, climbing up that ladder are sometimes unintended. And, you know, it becomes this very unsaid, I mean, one of my clients said, you know, he said to me, it’s like, Well, shall I say the least, I can afford you now. So he’s like, So what do we do? You know, so that’s that’s really where. Of my practices currently.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:01] So now do you find that they’re kind of leveraging your relationship and your coaching or consulting as a sounding board, as a devil’s advocate, as someone telling them hard truths? Are you there kind of to hold them accountable? Is it? And if that’s the case of any of those are true, what is typically the point of entry because all of those things are kind of. Tricky to market to the public.

Shasheen Shah: [00:09:35] Yeah, I. I can tell you guys are marketing, absolutely, it’s so funny you say that because it’s truly the reason why I haven’t been marketing myself. It’s been too tough a conversation to have with someone who has no context of who I am. And this is why I made a decision years two years ago to run as one hundred percent referral based companies. So typically no client will come through my door these days unless they’ve. Had some relationship with somebody that has gone through the work and and to answer your question directly, yeah, I mean, I even I would even say, you know, the idea of saying, you know, a coach, you know, consultant, I mean, it kind of makes me cringe a little bit sometimes when I hear that word because, you know, I mean, I’m a guy, I’m a human being, you know? And and the only reason I would say that people have kept me around and continue to call me and kind of tying back what you said about courageous inquiry is that, you know, I’ve gone there with them, you know, they’ve shared with me, they’re their their internal conversations. They’ve taken me back to the playground. They’ve taken me back to the I’m not good enough or I don’t belong or God.

Shasheen Shah: [00:10:52] My mom always wanted me or my dad used to get pissed off. And you know, I, you know, I you know where I grew up and how I grew up and my whatever my spiritual community, my neighborhood or whatever it might be that it’s influenced my life. And, you know, one of my clients has been with me. You know, I love what he says. You know, he’s been almost going on 10 years now. It’s like, Dude, I just love keeping you around. He’s like, You’re you’re a rounding error in my in my in my budget. And he said, you’re one of the most important pieces of it because in the, you know, typically I talked to someone once a week and I got a call from John periodically, and he and his whole thing is and it really helped crystallize what it is that actually happens in these relationships. And he says, Listen, I’m making multimillion dollar decisions, you know, periodically and to have someone in your corner, that’s not there to be a buddy. That’s not my wife or my husband. That’s not, you know, a quote unquote mentor, but like someone that I’ve trusted with all of this information about me and knows how I think when it comes to making important decisions, you’re damn straight.

Shasheen Shah: [00:12:00] I’m going to pick up that phone and call you and you know, you’ve saved me millions of dollars over the years. So he said, so for your fees, he’s like, It’s a no brainer for me. And it really crystallized that that’s I think all of us in our lives need somebody that’s not afraid to. Go there to challenge you and maybe uncomfortable ways, but doing that from a very informed place, and so the process of working with me is, I mean, we roll up our sleeves and, you know, we put on our boots and we walk around and, you know, kind of the fudge for a little while to see what’s there. And we pull all this stuff out. We lay it out on the lawn, let it air dry and we look around saying, Wow. Ok, I got it. Some of the stuff we can keep it, a lot of the stuff we can get rid of. And, you know, I think it’s through that process, that level of intimacy in the conversation that I would say provides the most value to the clients that keep me around.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:57] So now, I mean, that sounds fantastic, and I think everybody should have a person like you as part of the team. How, though, is it kind of sold like, do you? Is it a retainer? Is it something where they, you know, I mean, I don’t even know, like, I see the value. It’s not even a question of the value. It just had to communicate this to somebody and say, you need somebody like me around that’s going to, you know, trust me, just share all your stuff. I’m going to be there. I’m going to listen. I’m not going to be a yes man. I’m going to poke in all your ideas and you know, we’re going to be better together. But just trust me on this. Yeah, you can talk to, you know, 50 other people that have gone through it worked for them. I mean, but it just seems like a weird thing that someone signs on for. And I think but I think it’s brilliant. I mean, I don’t confuse my questioning for really interrogating you about this because I I want to be you. I would love for people to pay me to kind of hang out with them, to kind of really dig deep and and be empathetic and yet strategic and help them kind of get to a new level, you know?

Shasheen Shah: [00:14:13] So it’s a pleasure to meet you, and I know we don’t know each other, but you really are on the sweet side of it all, and you’re absolutely right. And. It is why, you know, the joke is, you know, it’s like, well, I’ve got a friend that I love, and she’s like, So what should I tell him? I said, You know what? Tell him to get on the phone with me, and we’ll chat for an hour and I’ll really find out what’s going on in that person’s life. And and it’s an interesting what how when we say it’s like, you know, I don’t know, get on. I don’t even know what he does. I don’t even know what she does. But you’ll either get it or it’ll be the click or it won’t click. And I’ll tell you something like, I arguably I don’t know. And this past year probably turned down more opportunities for coaching than I’ve taken on, and it’s primarily due to this one fact. And this is something I learned from one of the best salesmen of coaching. And, you know, because I was so perplexed about the sales process of coaching and for the coaches that are listening out here, you know, it really comes down to, I said, you know, listening and when when someone does find their way on a phone call with me, the number one thing that I’m trying to assess is that is there something at stake in this conversation for them? It’s like, you know, if this doesn’t change for them, you know, what’s the cost for them or is there something you know, it’s that pain pleasure? Is there some level of pleasure that they really, really want to achieve? And again, how I just want to make a million dollars or I want to find the love of my life for, you know, these these these blanket sounding good outcomes that they, you know, a lot of people will lead with.

Shasheen Shah: [00:15:58] But when you really get down to it, if I can really get like, what’s going on and see that there’s someone there that has access to a deeper, emotional, reflective part of their personality and there is something they do want to make a difference or, you know, they want to be there for their kids or they want to make a difference in their parents’ lives or their communities at stake, or there’s something like that. It’s amazing. It’s actually not a tough sell. It’s just like, Oh, wow, then the question is, do I trust this? Guy shot. And, you know, is this is this the guy that I don’t even know what this guy who he is, I’ve never met, I haven’t even met most of my clients face to face and or at least I don’t initially, you know, now today it’s more Zoom and Skype and FaceTime, but it would just be a phone call and you know what you started off with. I think that this courageous inquiry is that you know what I would if I were to just, you know, able to say, Well, it’s what my client has said. It’s like, You know what? You know, what I appreciate about you is I never feel like I’m being talked at, you know, one of the things. That I will do in just about every call that I have, every time I have a call is be there with them with a real world example, if not in, you know, a distant past, if not in a more recent past.

Shasheen Shah: [00:17:19] Just that day, you know of where I got triggered and how I’m navigating the world. And probably the this is just reminding me one of the highest compliments I think I’ve ever received from a client was this woman who just wanted to just, you know, grow her strawberries and build a strawberry farm. And it’s just huge executive. And she said, You know what? She’s like, You know what? I call you? She’s like, You’re my permission. It’s like, I just feel like it’s OK for me to just be the version of me that I’ve always wanted to be. And it sounds so Pollyanna, even when I say it out loud right now. But that’s the truth. It’s like there’s just the sense of you go to a therapist and there’s this wall you can’t really share as a therapist with their client, your own personal stuff. So there’s that wall. So you’re sitting there in a therapist’s office, you know, talking and sharing all your stuff while they’re just sitting there looking at you, giving you some, you know, frameworks to work with or you go to a consultant and consult will give you tips and tricks and strategies and ways of thinking about stuff. But it’s rare to find somebody. But when you can combine both of those and be there with you emotionally, be there with you strategically and just kind of get in the sandbox and play around with some stuff, and I think that’s truly the magic of the relationships that I cultivate and my practice.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] So now is there a sheen for sheen?

Shasheen Shah: [00:18:41] There sure is. There’s a team actually for me to take the small village of people, but yes, I do. I leave her off of I own coach and I have a couple of other people that serve in that capacity for me on a on a spiritual side as well, on the metaphysical side and then just from purely just mentorship basis as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:04] So now let’s talk for a minute about your new book, The Kid in the King. Tell us about that. And what was the kind of impetus to write a book?

Shasheen Shah: [00:19:14] Yeah, great question. You know, and I want to answer this in a way, also for four other coaches and other people to hear as well, you know, because years ago it was you well, she seemed to have a book. You have a degree. Do you have a you know? Well, you know, you should write a book, you get a podcast going, get a blog going and, you know, get that going. You know, it’ll give you credibility. It’ll do this. And I was like, I just it just it made my stomach turn. I just wasn’t really good at any of those things. And I tried Twitter and I tried social media. And you know, if you look at my social media, it’s like pictures of like, you know, butterflies and sunsets and the moon and my dog and being outdoors and kind of more lifestyle in photography and. I remember one of my mentors said to me, it’s like he’s like, listen, I was like, I can’t think about writing like, well, whatever you do, just just make sure it’s a value and don’t. Be another hack out there, just don’t don’t don’t write a book to write a book. And so this book has taken me six years, and it started with this idea of looking at the individuals, the difficulty. It was managing individuals within an organization.

Shasheen Shah: [00:20:25] And I was in Vietnam and I remember presenting for this huge company, and I was supposed to be an English speaking event and there was like five different languages in the room and it was almost a train wreck. I mean, it was the jet lag that was the morning I had two translators. I would speak for one minute, they would speak for seven, and at lunch I was just like, OK, I’m done. I don’t know what to do. Luckily, I had the small group of people that as a feedback group and one of the things that. Resonated with them the most with this idea of at any given moment, there’s this king inside of us that really is capable of incredible things. And yet the other side of us, there’s this kind of childlike tantrum upset, you know, emotional sensitive side that kind of just gets in the way and can wreak havoc at the most unsuspecting times. And so here I was, getting translated and getting, you know, just I mean, a train wreck of a presentation and I decided to just go with the kid in the king and just did literally one of my first acting performances on stage at the Hanoi Hilton. No kidding. And in front of about 250 people and characterize these two different people.

Shasheen Shah: [00:21:42] And I use the phrase back then like, who is doing the talking? Was it your kid that’s talking? Or was it the king? And through that came this this idea that. What I witnessed. Well, the book had been called, you know, why two really smart people do dumb things, why is it that, you know, I’m talking to a guy that’s got multiple degrees from Harvard and Stanford? You know, it’s just killing it in the world, business and financially, but can’t speak to his wife and kids or has got some addiction to alcohol. Or he’s got, you know, porn addictions or whatever it might be. And he can’t just seem to right side the ship in certain areas, but it’s killing it in other areas. So it was in a way of addressing this duality that I believe all humans have to be and deal with. And it was also my opportunity and attempt to to just challenge the notion of this really masculine kind of, you know, style of of of of achievement that involved, you know, this this conquer and crush and, you know, discipline and accountability. And you know, you know, you can overcome this stuff. And and I would argue that all of those, like I said before, are super effective in maybe getting the ball to move down the field.

Shasheen Shah: [00:23:08] But man, they just can rob you of so much of the experience. And the problem, especially with leadership, is if you’re a guy or a woman that has motivated yourself through like self-flagellation, guilt, shame and just crushing it. Well, you’re not going to have the ability to motivate and empower others without pulling out that same hammer that you use and the number one issue that I’ll deal with with a lot of my clients is going to be. Well, I just can’t get them to do what I need them to do, and we look at their communication strategy and how they go about achieving the results they have was by just beaten, beaten down on that kid inside of him. So the kid in the king, that hidden inner struggle was, how do we effectively deal with this confusion between these two incredibly polar opposite sides of our personality? And instead of trying to crush and conquer it, the premise of the book is to really kind of not only, like, understand it, let’s take it. Let’s go beyond awareness. We got to come to expect it like we have to wake up every day and know that there’s this gun that’s on our hip. And if we don’t holster that thing and make sure the safety’s down and be aware of the fact that even if I bump into the wall the wrong way, that thing can go off and either shoot me in the foot or shoot someone else inadvertently and cause havoc, unintended right and an unintended way.

Shasheen Shah: [00:24:42] And so the idea of understanding this relationship differently. Finding a more, you know, a less adversarial and more loving relationship between the sides. Learning how to predict and see and anticipate that part of us coming down. You know, it’s like a pitch that’s coming high and outside, you know, you’re just not going to swing at it anymore. It’s like, I know what that looks like. I’m not going to take the bait. That’s where the kid and the king really was. That’s what the conversation of the kid in the King was really designed to bring forth is let’s let’s. Understand this in a different way, because if we really want to be effective, if we want to play the long game, if we want healthy relationships, if we want to have joy in our life, if we want to stop fighting and stop being so damn exhausted and tired, it got to learn to have some compassion and love for that part of us that got created when we’re just really, really young. So long answer, but that’s the heart of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:39] Now, is it written as a fable? Is it written as a business book? Like, what is the style of the writing?

Shasheen Shah: [00:25:46] I mean, it’s it’s so it’s I can I guess it would call like, you know, one part memoir, part tactical, you know, and maybe, you know, the other part is philosophical. So it’s a lot of, you know, one of the readers of the book early on, you know, I think one of the nicest things that I’ve heard said about it is like, you know, saying it’s great because you’re not talking about stuff. You’re talking about your own experience with these principles. And it’s just great. You know, it’s you out there surfing or skiing or in an avalanche or just traveling around. And it’s just kind of a hands on book. But it is. It is built with. It starts off with like a three minute exercise to just understand the duality, there’s an opportunity to understand the five questions of the emotional mastery process that I outline. There’s exercises about dealing with and writing a letter to your kid. We actually go there in this book. It’s like you write a letter to your kid, you name your kid and you write a letter. It’s quote unquote inner child work. I guess. I don’t know. I’m not. I’m not qualified to call it what it is, but it it goes there about your childhood experiences. There’s an opportunity to write a letter to your parents and really deal with any unreconciled anger, frustration or issues around things with your with your parents of origin or the surrogates that you had when you were growing up to really just polish off any little rust you may have.

Shasheen Shah: [00:27:06] And it’s not about being fine anymore. I’m I’m fine with that. That was a long time ago. Why are you making me write this letter? It’s about, you know, people that are really looking for that X Factor. So it goes to all of those places and then concludes with, you know, some more exercises of now that you’ve got that stuff out of the way, you’re not trying to be good enough and lovable, like, what do you really want? I mean, I think I mean, it’s funny for the coaches out there. I mean, you probably agree with this like the three hardest questions anyone’s got to answer for themselves. What do you want? Why do you want it and what are you willing to do to get it to really answer that question? What do you want? I mean, really authentically without being some like Sarah, I just want to save the world and I want to make an impact, I want to make a difference and you know, I mean, I think ultimately if we’re not really careful what’s underneath all that, I just want the world to think positively.

Shasheen Shah: [00:27:53] I want to look good. I want to sound good, I want to be admired. It’s really selfish at the heart of it. And so dealing with that and putting that into context, I think. You know, really allows for a different kind of expression to be available in the world. And that’s what this book takes on. It takes that on. So it’s it’s been ambitious and it’s taken 60 years. It took an entire rewrite during COVID because I read it and I almost threw up with my own writing because it was just bleeding and full of I was like, Oh my God, stop. It’s like, did my kid write that book? And so I got to rewrite it from the king’s perspective this last year. And, you know, I went through the whole thing with HarperCollins and all these different publishing houses, and it was like, Oh, we can get it out in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four. I was like, You know what to say, print. So I hit self-published and it’s out there now, so I’m thrilled to have it out there. I’m proud of the work that it is. And, you know, I think it’s not for everyone, but if you’re ready, I think it can make a profound impact for you and the people that you love.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:55] Well, sashaying, thank you so much for sharing your story. And I just really appreciate how you’re trying to bring humanity back into business and to and just never forget that we’re all human beings. And to give each other grace, give yourself grace. And we’re all kind of I like to look at us. We’re all kind of experimenting and we’re all trainees and we’re all doing the best we can. And it’s OK to say that, and it’s OK to not know all the answers. No matter what you think, everybody thinks you should know it’s OK to ask for help and to have someone like you in their corner is a gift and it’s great talking to you.

Shasheen Shah: [00:29:37] Absolutely. You know, you’re a very intuitive interviewer, and I really appreciated the time today, thanks for the great questions the opportunity to share with the audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:45] Well, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice or get their hands on the book, what’s the website?

Shasheen Shah: [00:29:50] It’s Sina.com, it’s my first name, and all my social media is at Shashi, and let me spell it for you. It’s S.H. a s h e n as in November, Sachin dot com or at Chasin you’ll be able to find me and the book name is the kid and the king. The hidden inner struggle high achievers must conquer to reignite and reengage with life.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:15] Good stuff. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. We appreciate the work you’re doing.

Shasheen Shah: [00:30:21] Thanks, Doug. Take care.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:22] All right, this is Lee Kantor Willis, our next time on Coach the Coach radio.