Thomas Strehle With Focal Point Coaching and Training

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 BRXambassador.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 good one. Today we have on the show Thomas Strehle with focal point coaching and training. Welcome, Thomas

Thomas Strehle: [00:00:44] Lee. How are you? It’s great to be with you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about so-called focal point coaching and training. How you serving folks?

Thomas Strehle: [00:00:55] You know, Focal Points starts with Brian Tracey, who’s our founder, who I would encourage our listeners to Google him. Very interesting guy, world class motivational speaker over 80 books. And what I really like about Focal Point is, you know, our mission is to change the world through business leadership and training. And we have a metaphorical pebble on the pond where we like to impact the world through clients, then their families, you know, the businesses with which they’re operating in the communities. And it kind of permeates from there. So we have a very engaged clientele and a very engaged list of coaches. And I’m really proud to be a franchise owner for focal points. Fantastic.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:40] So now what’s your back story? How did you get involved in a focal point? Like what were you doing prior to Focal Point?

Thomas Strehle: [00:01:48] Well, it’s you know, it’s interesting. I’ve had the fortunate opportunity in my life to serve in the military. So I’m a retired lieutenant colonel. I then served 30 years in global, mostly HRR positions in business with some terrific companies and, you know, with some terrific leaders. And, you know, at the end of that 30 years in the corporate world, I wanted to go off and do the fun part of what I used to do and H.R., which is to influence leaders, have an impact on businesses. And I’ve just been able to, you know, I think capitalize on all of that kind of lifelong experience and working with some really, really outstanding clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:31] Now, when you were in H.R., you said you spent quite a few years in H.R. was coaching an executive coaching and leadership coaching with that kind of a thing when you started or did it start to become a thing maybe towards the tail end of your career? Where was coaching kind of seen from the perspective?

Thomas Strehle: [00:02:50] You know, it’s a great question. And I would even say going back to my days as a lieutenant in the military, were you always influencing leaders? And I mean, that’s really what coaching is about. It’s not providing a solution. It’s having, you know, the individual kind of analyze the situation and come up with the solution for themselves. You know, just I’d like to just describe a couple of the people that I’ve had a chance to work with that I have believe I have influenced significantly through my both the military and the corporate career. I mean, I’ve, you know, had a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who I was on his staff and I believe provided a lot of input to his leadership. The current leader of the of so. Com, which is the Special Operations Command, as somebody that I’ve kind of mentored throughout throughout the evolution of his growth into a four star general back to kind of the corporate sector. You know, I’ve been a senior leader on the staff of the current CEOs of Constellation Brands, Beams, Country and Bank of America. And I’ve also been on the staff of the guy who, again, you can Google and I won’t mention his name, but he’s the current chief of, you know, chairman of the board of Apple. So all of these individuals I described, these kind of cool, high powered individuals is only to say that it was a journey, a different journey with each of them. And, you know, part of it was them influencing me and my leadership style, certainly. But almost in every case, I was in a position to help influence something about how they developed and about the decisions they were making to impact their business. And just very, very fulfilling. I mean, I was I’ve kind of been coaching my whole life, to be honest with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:42] So now when you’re working with folks, is it something that you believe that everybody has this kind of leadership within them and it just needs a little coaxing to come out? Or is it something that you believe that people are kind of born leaders and that those are the people that you really got to maximize their talents?

Thomas Strehle: [00:05:04] You know, that’s that’s really a great question. When, as you’re describing this, I’m thinking of, you know, Vince Lombardi, who said leaders are made, they are not boring. And I like to always go back to, you know, a lot of coaching organizations. They’ll kind of take on anybody. One thing I like about Focal Point is just as the clients are very selective about who they pick to work with at focal point. We’re very selective on who we pick to work with as well, and, you know, there’s this kind of adage in the coaching business that you try and focus and identify, you know, during my certification, it’s like, OK, straight to figure out who is your ideal client. And when I look at my list of people I’m either currently coaching or I’ve recently coached, you know, I’ve got everything from a professional sports agent, multiple CEOs, entrepreneurs of very small businesses who just have an idea. And they’re working through this idea to figure out how to bring their business to life. Startup companies. I’ve worked with a bunch of small business owners in the Boca Raton area who are actually just looking at the cycle of their business. Where is their cycle and the evolution? Are they in a growth cycle or are they in a stagnant cycle? And how can I help them kind of get through all that? I also work with individual leaders and teams.

Thomas Strehle: [00:06:34] So I’ve got individuals who are saying, man, you know, I just can’t get my team motivated and I can’t get them to communicate. And then maybe their teams are struggling. And especially in this environment, on the work from home, it’s just there are some incredibly new components to the whole leadership challenge. That’s very interesting. You know, and then again, just again, maybe a couple of examples on the military side. You know, I served the Z to camp for the commander of Berlin and this was back. I’m dating myself a little bit, but during the Cold War, when the wall was still up. So we had lots of challenges around soldiers and motivation and being on an island in the middle of the, you know, the Cold War and also served. You know, this is an interesting one. I think about it. I had a chance to serve as the head of riot control for the second airborne division at a presidential election. And this was a few presidents ago, not a recent one. And I as I watched things unfold on January six, I thought, man, the challenges, the leadership challenges that those guys have on the ground are much different than I faced back, you know, back a while back. So it’s just, you know, many problems remain the same and many, many things change. So it’s just a very dynamic time.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:58] Now, can you talk about the decision that you went through when you were leaving corporate and you were kind of starting this new act in your career? Why did you just kind of say, you know what, Thomas has lived a wonderful life, a very life with a lot of diverse experiences. I’m going to do it. The Thomas method of doing coaching. But you decided instead to buy a franchise, the focal point franchise. What was kind of the thought process there of going it alone rather than kind of joining forces with focal point?

Thomas Strehle: [00:08:34] You know, that’s that’s another great question. Lee and I had had a few iterations through my career where I did did coaching on my own, which was a fantastic experience. But when I looked at focal point, what focal point provides me, first of all, is all of the philosophy that Brian Tracy philosophy and all of the tools and resources that I need to bring the best product to the client. I mean, literally, you could present me with any any issue. And if I’m not an expert or haven’t been exposed to that in my personal career, I can tap either one of our two hundred focal point coaches to help me or look at a library of of resources available on uncertain topics. And, you know, it’s just it’s a terrific foundation to do that. Further to your question on the whole franchise. But, you know, I came down to Florida where I had a second home, and my my idea was to buy a franchise I hadn’t really focused on on being a coach. And I looked at many of the different. I thought, you know what, I want to do something different after this. Thirty years of corporate life. So I looked at everything from fast food to pets.

Thomas Strehle: [00:09:55] I’ve got two beautiful weimaraners, big dog lover. So I thought, wouldn’t that be cool to do something you’d really enjoy? The focal point opportunity just kept passing by my way. And and then I thought about what do you really enjoy doing? And that is influencing people. I like to joke that in my my career I was always the first stop was the complaint department, you know, in about about 10 percent of what I did was being able to do the true coaching, sitting with executives, influencing the business. And I thought. You know what? There’s a reason focal point keeps crossing my path. This is an opportunity to have the power of a structure and an organization behind me, but also to tap my my strengths and my experience and what I’ve done, you know, and I continue to learn from focal point. And that’s that’s the neat thing. So I’m not out there as a coach, just kind of winging it and going straightly. Did this. This might work. He did that. This might work. I’ve got the power of just a tremendous amount of experience behind me and the philosophy and the tools to help me with my clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] Well, walk me through what it looks like when you’re beginning a relationship with a new client. Like what is the pain that they’re having? Are they frustrated? Have they never had a coach before? Or are they like like what’s usually that point of entry when you start working with them and then walk me walk me through what that kind of maybe initial conversation or first few kind of action points are?

Thomas Strehle: [00:11:33] You know, we have a I probably would spend normally I would have probably four different conversations with the client before we would mutually agree to work together. We spend a lot of time getting to know the client. What other challenges, what are their financial goals? What what is their team like? How does their team operate? How do they communicate? And then we we really look at the client herself for himself, for example, if there a small business owner don’t know what are their long term plans. So do they want to divest of the business eventually? Do they want a growth model? What cycle in the business cycle are they in? And we can go through, like I say, probably starting with a very casual conversation. Then we take it to the next step where we’ll do a phone call to kind of get to know each other more. Then I do what we call Strategic Business Review, where it will be an in-depth, probably a 90 minute conversation with that with that leader or business owner to really get to know them in depth. And we’ll get into very, you know, ask in that second, third and fourth question to kind of peel back the onion on on on what it is about this client that that I feel that I can contribute. That’s going to to be a success. One of the things I know many of our listeners have probably heard of, you know, some of the behavioral assessments and many of you have probably taken, you know, the meeti, the Myers Briggs or the predictive index at focal point.

Thomas Strehle: [00:13:17] We use a talent insights assessment, which is called The Desk. And I love the desk because the business really allows us to get to know the person. So once that once the client is signed on to your question and maybe what are the first steps, I would then ask the client to take this risk assessment, which is about a 30 minute online assessment and the depending on which iteration of it. For example, we’ve got a very, very quality aspect of the deaths that surround emotional intelligence, which is so important, such a great important characteristic of leaders and business owners. You know, the report is about I don’t know, I’ve seen reports that are, you know, a couple of hundred pages, which is just overwhelming. But then I distill that down and try and further get to understand, you know, what are the behavioral drivers and motivators of the leader and what what is their level of emotional intelligence by using a behavioral assessment. This will then help me to get a better understanding of the client, what their needs are. But most importantly, how are they wired as an individual? And again, it’s just a window of insight into how I can help them as a coach to meet their fundamental needs and improve whatever areas they’re looking to improve.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:54] Now, how much self-awareness does it require for someone to really benefit from coaching, because it sounds like if I was working in a company and my boss said, hey, you need a coach, my frame of mind may not be in the right place in order to take advantage of that opportunity. Does it take a level of humbleness, a level of vulnerability to even be open to getting a coach or benefiting from a coach?

Thomas Strehle: [00:15:25] You know, that is an absolutely critical factor. I mean, I get clients all the time, and as an H.R. senior, H.R. leader and CSIRO, we often encouraged and presented opportunities for employees to get coached. It really depends on the individual, some of them are completely resistant. Some are absolutely enamored that you’re investing money and getting them developmental opportunities. I’ll be honest, if I had somebody that called me today and said, you know, you know, Tom, my you know, I just had my review and I’ve been ordered to get coaching to improve, you know, X, Y and Z, I would certainly have an intake conversation with this individual. But it’s very likely that I would not accept this person as a coaching client, because I’ve I really have been in this movie before, both as a role and as a leader and as, you know, an executive coach where the person is just going through the motions and if they’re not committed to coaching. And one of the things, again, I think that’s unique, a focal point. You know, we actually take them through, call it a forum, but we ask them to sign a commitment that they’re going to do the prep, for example, that they’re going to take the assessments, that they’re going to commit to the times, that they have a schedule.

Thomas Strehle: [00:16:59] Because to your to your point, I mean, it’s exactly right on. There are many people in the corporate world, they’re saying, you know, Mary or Jim, you know, we’re requiring you to get a coach. Those are generally not good candidates for coaching. And I’ll be honest from the selfish part of me, because I’m doing this because now I want some sense of satisfaction out of what I’m doing. If somebody is just going through the motions, I mean, I had a recent client that was just going through the motions and I was like, you know what? You’re not getting your money’s worth because because you don’t want to be coached. And I’m fine to sit here on a call and just chat with you and have a have a have a good ole time. But, you know, it’s our sessions are demanding that we require homework and preparation and insight, you know, and we require a degree of humility and and self-awareness in order to have a successful coaching relationship.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:00] Now, if you were giving advice to anybody that maybe was in your shoes focal point and they’re, you know, they’re exiting kind of their corporate life with their enterprise life and they’re entering this new world of coaching, is there any kind of dos and don’ts when you’re making the leap into a coaching practice that you can share?

Thomas Strehle: [00:18:20] Well, I think, you know, I’m coaching is a challenging career and there’s a lot of competitors, first of all, there’s a lot of independent coaches, there are a lot of coaching franchise type of models. And I would say, one, there really has to be a passion around it from your end. And and I think it really you know, it’s really helpful if you’ve had experience coaching before. This is not a profession, you know, as as easy as it may be described sometimes as well. You know, you can just sit down and use your experience to help somebody Coach the Coach through. You know, we were a lot of different hats. And in our certification, we’re always told, you know, don’t be a psych psychologist or psychiatrist or psychologist or, you know, don’t be you’re not a life coach. You’re more of a business coach and a career coach. And you know what? Inevitably, you end up kind of being all of the above, because if you have a strong relationship with the client, you know, you’re going to talk about what they do in their in their off time. You’re going to encourage them to balance their lifestyle. We even have an assessment that I give as part of this intake that I talked about, you know, where we try and understand what are the important motivators outside of the office in terms of their personal relationships and in terms of their physical fitness. And because all of these things really are part of the whole person concept. So, you know, I guess the advice I would give is make sure you’ve really explored it. You understand the not only the satisfaction pieces, but the implications of it. You know, we’re not here to give advice. We’re here to help people develop their own solutions to real issues that are that have implications on their personal life, their family, their business and employees and their communities. So make sure you understand the full plethora of of responsibility that you have before you dove into this as a profession.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:31] Well, Thomas, if there’s anyone out there that wants to learn more about your practice and get on your calendar, what is the website are the best way to reach you?

Thomas Strehle: [00:20:42] Yeah, I’m at you know, my website is Thomas Strelley, that’s to show him as Astarita Ellie Dot focal point poaching dot com or by email is T straley just my first initial Strelley at focal point coaching dot com and I’d be happy to talk to anyone that is exploring. Coaching is an opportunity or someone that has heard something I’ve said and will be interested in exploring whether coaching is right for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:16] Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you, Leigh.

Thomas Strehle: [00:21:21] It’s fantastic. And I appreciate you guys this program and the emphasis you put on a very important aspect of growing businesses and people.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:31] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.