Jacob Lapera, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Jon Kidwell With The Kidwell Team

June 15, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Jon Kidwell With The Kidwell Team

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Jon on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

Business Coach Carol Benson

June 11, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Business Coach Carol Benson

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

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

Connect with Carol on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Joy Mindsets for Entrepreneurs
Mindfulness
Flow
Habits
Scheduling
Intuition
Positivism

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edward Gorbis With Career Meets World

June 9, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Edward Gorbis With Career Meets World

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

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

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

Connect with Edward on LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business Coach Casey Ryan

June 4, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

BRX National

Business Coach Casey Ryan

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

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

Connect with Casey on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business Coach Grace Hao

June 2, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Business Coach Grace Hao

00:00 /

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

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

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

Connect with Grace on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ivy Slater With Slater Success

June 2, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Ivy Slater With Slater Success

00:00 /

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

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

Connect with Ivy on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brand Story Coach Stephanie Zhong

June 1, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Brand Story Coach Stephanie Zhong

00:00 /

Stephanie Zhong is a brand strategist, story coach, and writer who helps mission-driven entrepreneurs define their irresistible brand stories so they can attract dream clients and grow their influence.

She’s the creator of Own Your Message, the first program of its kind that teaches students how to go from best-kept secret to undeniable authority by mining the hidden gems of their personal and professional experiences.

With over 20 years of experience in digital media, Stephanie has helped clients large and small grow their business with storytelling including Planned Parenthood, Teach For America, education startups, entrepreneurs, and consultants.

Stephanie’s expertise has been featured in Reuters, Washington Post Express, Balance The Grind, VoyageLA, and the You Should Write a Book About That podcast.

Stephanie is a M.A. in Comparative Literature from UCLA, a B.A. in English and African American Studies from Indiana University. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and is “Steph-Mom” to two almost-adult sons.

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Personal branding
Content marketing
Storytelling for influence and impact
How much of your personal story should you share as part of your brand
How to determine what parts of your personal story are important to your brand
Recommendations to integrate parts of one’s identity into their personal brand for people who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+
Suggestions for coaches struggling to bring their authentic voice to sales calls
One thing you can do to clarify your personal brand story today

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker1: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for coach the coach radio brought to you by the business radio embassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to barracks ambassador dot com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Speaker2: [00:00:33] We can’t hear here another episode of Koch, the Koch radio, and this is going to be a good one today. We have with us Stephanie Tsong, creator of the Own Your Message program. Welcome, Stephanie.

Speaker3: [00:00:45] Hey, Lee, it’s good to be here.

Speaker2: [00:00:47] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your practice.

Speaker3: [00:00:52] Absolutely. So I am a brand story coach for and I help entrepreneurs and coaches and difference makers find and own their unique brand story so that they can eliminate competition and just own their unique lane of influence and grow their business and impact naturally with their story and the own. Your Message program is one that I created as the first student myself when I was in the middle of a career change and thinking about how to make a pivot in a powerful way as somebody who’s normally afraid of selling. So the people who tend to come to me are people who have amazing vision. Their clients love what they do and they’re brilliant, but they tend to hide out. And so story when we can connect to our authentic story, it allows us to compel rather than sell people. And it makes the process of sharing and connecting with our dream clients really easy.

Speaker2: [00:01:54] So now what’s your back story? How did you get into coaching in this space?

Speaker3: [00:01:59] So I got into coaching from my background is I’ve been passionate, I mean, passionate, addicted to storytelling since I was a kid. And I had been doing all different realms of storytelling along the way, not realizing I could turn it into a career. So early on, I was I had been a writing teacher and then I was in the early days of radio as a pod, as a producer for a public radio station. I had been a marketing director and I had been a blogger. And secretly there was something in me that always felt that one thing that was really missing is our own agency to connect some of the most brilliant parts of ourselves. Never come to the table like. So when we’re applying for jobs or when we are pitching ourselves, we tend to lead with education and accomplishments and degrees and certifications. And there’s so much underneath us in terms of our identity, our personal experience, our life experience and our business experience that crosscuts everything that I felt like I like. I used to hide out a lot, but what I when I looked back at my earlier career, what I didn’t realize I was doing was that often times I was a wild card in my in my job search and that I had been using storytelling intuitively to get jobs that I wasn’t the obvious person for. And so as a result, like I had been able to pivot across those different careers because I was able to translate different parts of me that people didn’t expect would be a value into the next the next thing.

Speaker3: [00:03:48] And it was mainly because I knew that on paper people wouldn’t think I would be the one that they wanted. So I was always doing this kind of soul searching and crafting a narrative to say, hey, I might not be the person on paper you were looking for with this degree or that credential. But here is what I can bring that is of unique value. And then I would get the job, you know, so that turned into something for me as I had become a storytelling, as a mark, storytelling brought it into marketing. I started thinking about it when I was in my own business, how to be able to bring all these pieces together. And then I realized I really wanted to help so many people I was meeting who are brilliant, but they just hide out and they remain the best kept secret, especially coaches. Right. Coaches are so passionate about transformational change and it’s so hard to talk about change. That’s inner work. Right. And so I felt like I really wanted to just like I needed to empower myself to show up fully, like bring all the dimensions of me that are valuable to the table in my brand. Suddenly talking to people became fun. And instead of hiding out like I started to shine and I wanted to do that for others.

Speaker2: [00:05:10] Now you’re using the word brand and branding in it, and specifically personal branding. I’ve been involved in marketing and advertising for many years, and I think branding is kind of neglected because it for some people don’t see the ROIC associated with it. It seems like kind of a fluffy thing that is is difficult to kind of explain or show. But I believe that it’s one of those things that even if you don’t think you’re putting energy towards branding, your branding the the consumer the. Immer, The prospect is coming up with a brand for you, whether you’re trying or not, so you might as well put some intentionality behind it so that you’re communicating what it is you want to communicate. It sounds like you were able to kind of identify what your secret sources and you were able to get folks who might not see that, or maybe they made some assumptions about you that you were able to kind of either get in the door with those people and have a conversation to explain that you do have what they’re looking for. Can you share, like, a specific example of how that played out? Like what’s an example of somebody who might have put you in one box and you were able to kind of get in there and communicate? Well, it might look like I’m this, but really you’re I believe you’re trying to solve this problem and I can help you do that.

Speaker3: [00:06:38] Absolutely. So the first time this happened to me, I was a senior in college and I was an English and African-American studies double major, which are probably the two least marketable majors you could find in college. And I had a business minor when I got out of school. We were in a major recession where even I remember seeing on the news that they went to Harvard and interviewed all of these business majors who had wallpapered their apartments with rejection letters. And I remember thinking, my gosh, if they can’t get jobs, how in the world can I get a job? Right. So I had to do really I sat down and did the entire work and I thought and I had to translate what would an English degree and an African-American studies degree offer to the business world. And then it’s the way I saw storytelling. Again, this was intuitive, but I do it much more strategically today when I coach people through it. And I by the way, since people can’t see me, I’m also Asian-American, so I might as well have worn a unicorn costume to these interviews. Right. So what it is, is you’re not going to be everything to everybody, like you’re not going to be everyone’s favorite cup of coffee, but you’re going to be somebody’s favorite chai latte. And so I when I realized at that time that those the cultural competency that I was building in terms of being Asian and and studying African-American studies and then also the communications piece and some of the aspects of my English courses, like covered issues of ethics and things like that, that in business you need.

Speaker3: [00:08:30] So when I went out and thought about looked at businesses, I noticed that G.E. had been this was really early on before diversity, equity, inclusiveness was even the thing, by the way. So I was kind of mining that value in my own work. And then The Wall Street Journal put out a put out an article saying that GE was the first Fortune 500 company to then invest millions of dollars into a diversity initiative. So when I applied, I wrote my double down on my difference. Basically in the cover letter, I had done the research about what they were doing, why they were doing it. And then I directly tied my experience to that piece and landed an interview there. And then when I landed the interview and I went on site, there was a manager who brought me in and he had redlined my entire cover letter. And he had said, Did you write this letter yourself? I said, yes, I did. He goes, well, in this paragraph you say, you know, you claim this degree. He was just grilling me so hard about what in the world is an English degree have to do with finance. And this was an aerospace industry. And I talked about one of the classes I had taken around ethics and pieces. And so he started throwing these ethical questions that he has to deal with on the daily at me and how I would handle those things.

Speaker3: [00:09:56] And so at the end of the interview, actually, he was grilling me so hard and I thought, oh, my gosh, this guy doesn’t doesn’t want me here. But I felt like this responsibility to all humanities people to demonstrate what kind of critical thinking skills I had and about how cultural competency you’re going to need that if you’re going to spend millions of dollars recruiting diverse people. But if you realize that culturally people giving them examples of how people view time differently, how are you going to get the best productivity out of people? So at the end of the interview, he said, you know, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I’m going to highly recommend you for this. And I hope you come to work with me. And when I got out of the interview, the person who was leading me said, Are you OK? And I said, Yeah. Why is that? Because he’s known to make his own people cry. And you were in there an extra 30 minutes. And so we got into, I think, deeper conversations about business, like I can learn the numbers, right. But fundamentally, if you’re going to have a return, you need to understand how to bring out the best in your people. And so helping him to see another lens of that led him to want to hire me. And so I got the job.

Speaker2: [00:11:15] Now, what do you think was the reason that he pulled your resume out of the pile of all these resumes? Because without him doing that, you wouldn’t have had the conversation that led to the job, that the conversation is what closed the job, maybe. But what was happening a step before that got you in front of the decision maker that enabled you to shine and get the job right.

Speaker3: [00:11:46] So this is what what I believe about brand storytelling to write is that. It’s not a magic bullet, so in the terms of what I’m translating, I got I got interviews with companies who were recognizing the value of cultural competency early on before anybody else did. So if I were to have sent my cover letter and I did tailor all of my cover letters right to every single company, so I, I would find one or two things, whether it was my leadership skills and my act in my college career or my degree, it’s always about pulling out those personal pieces that align to the company. So I didn’t I didn’t you know, if I had applied to like 50 different businesses, there’s a good chance that a lot of them wouldn’t have even taken my interview. Right. But because GE had nationally announced this campaign and then I did the research, I built a bridge story. So it’s not just me pitching myself and saying, oh, I’ve got all these things right. And this is what I think fundamentally brand storytelling and marketing is about is understanding who you are, what aspects of you could bring unique value and help bring impact to the organization.

Speaker3: [00:13:09] What do they care about? And then you create the story that is the bridge between the two. So I’m assuming the recruiting manager then had made some of those connections. Right. And that this person, the person that he was one of the decision makers, there were three final managers that were on site managers, and he was someone who was a very difficult to please person. I’m sure it was a mixture of both the conversation we were having and exhibiting some thought leadership and engaging and some really rich discussion with each other, even if we didn’t agree on everything. But that some of those things like offering a new angle, the second piece is mindset’s. So one of the things in my program I talk about with storytelling is mindset. Plus message equals building your movement so you can have the perfect words. But if you don’t own your words the way you do. Right, rightly, I mean, you probably have experienced this. It’s like if we don’t own our message, it’s going to fall flat anyway.

Speaker2: [00:14:19] Right. You have to have that kind of gravitas and to kind of be able to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk, you have to be able to demonstrate that what you say is congruent with what you said you would say.

Speaker3: [00:14:34] Yeah, exactly. And that piece is really important. And because I had a strong I can only control my side of the conversation right by my side of the conversation was feeling really centered in, wow, this is a company that’s ahead Ahead of the Curve. This was in the early 90s. So really ahead of the curve in terms of the vision and that we share, we’re aligned to the same vision. And I had a business minor so I can articulate. So again, this is where I really believe it’s the combination. It’s not about just pulling one thing out and say, oh, I’m marketable because I majored in these subjects. It’s the whole combination of having a cultural competency business minor. I’ve taken those accounting classes. I’ve taken some finance classes and then leadership in terms of where I had demonstrated leadership, both at the level of in the different organizations that I had run, as you know, in college, too, so that my cover letter was about demonstrating, you know, you know, holistic, sort of a sense of here’s a whole picture of the different things I can I can bring to you. I could be a significant contributor to you. Right.

Speaker3: [00:15:55] And then that shifts the conversation for what we talk about. And so ever since then, then, you know, in terms of resume writing, then a lot of that. And I’ve helped many other people who might have been either a jack jack of all trades, someone who has disparate experiences, is like a scientist and an actor. And you’re like, how do I bring that together? You know, you’re a coach. I have a coach who I worked with, a coach who was a stand up comedian, and she worked with major companies like Amazon, Costco, all these senior leaders there. And she never taught. She never brought the comedy. Right. So in the your message, I’m like she was passionate about that. And she felt like businesses needed the comedy to actually innovate more. So I was like, well, why not bring these things together? And she did that in her bio. And then she got she landed a keynote speech. She wanted to be a keynote speaker, too. So she landed a keynote speaking gig with an international sportswear brand. And they said, we chose you in part because of the comedy. Now you’ve been leading it off the table, right?

Speaker2: [00:17:06] Because you she didn’t think it was important. But to you, this is like a again, a flashing red light where it’s like, dude, how are you missing this? This is like, yeah, this is separating you from everybody else. So instead of hiding it and being like everybody else, lean into it and separate yourself from everybody else.

Speaker3: [00:17:24] Totally. Right. Like, I see that is what I what I see as branding and something I wanted to bring back and kind of live together. It was something you said earlier about how brands are, how people really under underestimate the power of a brand. And that what I heard you say is that, you know, whether you define the brand or not, it’s going to be defined for you. It’ll be defined by your clients. It’ll be defined by your consumers, like whoever they like. The brand is ultimately going to be the experience as well as the product. And so this piece about mining are the gems of our story. Like, I’m really passionate about helping coaches and other difference makers, mine, all those hidden gems that you might have thought to yourself and. I don’t know that that’s really important. It sounds like a nice to have, but guess what? That’s stuff that people are, you know, in some of the best stuff. And when you bring it together, you bring more energy right to the conversation because these are things you’re passionate about

Speaker2: [00:18:24] And it’s more authentic. This is the it’s more it’s closer to the truth. Are you rather than this you that you’re trying to show to other people that it is exactly what you think they want?

Speaker3: [00:18:34] Yeah. Yeah. Which is like that’s where I and I’m really curious for people in the audience too, if they’ve ever had that moment right. When you’re like, I’ve got to pinch myself and suddenly you’ve just disassociate from all the from the brilliance naturally, because now you’re in a mode of what do they need to hear? What do I need to tell them? And I’ve had those moments, which is why I needed this program for myself and why I created it. And recognizing that if you’re actually speaking from that that place of knowing, oh, my gosh, like this these gems are really that’s really unique to me. That’s that brings something really fresh that actually brings something relevant in an unexpected way. And you can’t wait to tell people once you’ve made those connections conscious for yourself and you can put it into words, then suddenly you’re like instead of thinking, I got to sell, I got to let people know. I have to impress them. It’s more about, you know, like with my client, the coach who is the comedian. She’s now speaking out all over the place about the importance of levity and laughter to build team morale to actually especially in the time of the pandemic. She’s actually made it more relevant and it’s more fun for her. And she can’t wait to tell everybody. Right.

Speaker2: [00:19:54] Yeah, I’m with you 100 percent. I think that a mistake that a lot of folks make is that they try to be like everybody else. I think that you have to I mean, you have to have the core competencies. I don’t want to say that you can be totally kind of out there because that to me becomes counterproductive. But you have to be competent and show that you can do whatever it is they’re trying to do. But all those differences, all those unique kind of elements of yourself, that’s what’s separating you from everybody else. And I think that most people would be better served by doing more of that and shining the light on all that with the understanding I can do the the basics, foundational work of whatever my specialty is. I mean, that’s a I would come not kind of lean on that part of my resume. I would lean on that to me is of course, I do that. What what makes me different are the A, B and C here. This is what separates me from everybody else. And in my mind, it’s better to not be selling, but I’m vetting you to see if you’re the right fit for me, because this is my this is how I do things and this is who I want to work with and this is who I best work with. So if I can be clear on that element, then I’m not selling anymore. I’m choosing and I don’t like to be in the position of I’m hoping to be picked. I’d rather be in the position of I’m picking and I’m choosing you to see if you’re the right fit for me. And this is what I bring. I know what I can do. I don’t know if I’m going to be the right fit for you or you’re the right fit for me.

Speaker3: [00:21:31] Yes, and, you know, you’re bringing up a really excellent point and something that I, I learned through trial and error and then in the program we talk about a lot is there’s I believe there’s no such thing as rejection. It’s just about alignment and fit, like you said. Right. So it becomes a two way, a two way process of I’m going to share I’m going to share what I can offer and you are going to share with me what you need. And then we’re sharing those pieces of our humanness, especially in coaching. Right. You have to feel like this person gets you. You have to feel like they offer a unique perspective or the way that they go about coaching connects with you in order for you to have an impact. They could be the most brilliant person on the planet. But if you’re not connected to them, it’s not going to happen. Right. So that connection piece is really, I think, where story comes. So I used to be terrified. I was used to be terrified of selling even as a young girl. I was an amazing Girl Scout who couldn’t sell Girl Scout cookies to my neighbors, and I was terrified of it. And so for me now, what it looks like is if I I like you said, if I understand the places where I will naturally bring out my best and that certain types of clients. Fire me up, give me goose bumps, and then I bring my best, that’s alignment. And if the person doesn’t really vibe with what I have, they’re meant to work with somebody else. Right. That’s we don’t have alignment there, but there’s somebody else there that they can have that that make that magic with.

Speaker2: [00:23:13] Right. And it and it doesn’t have to I might know the person. And that’s the thing again, of the reframing of the selling is like, I know what I bring to the table. I know what my superpowers are. The clearer you can get on knowing your superpowers and what you bring to the table, all the elements of that, then you can determine, is this person the right fit? And if you think they are the right fit, they may not know it yet. But like you’ve been able to do throughout your career is when you felt that they were the right fit. You’ve been able to articulate and demonstrate that, hey, if you partner with me, good things are going to happen. And it’s almost kind of like your moral duty to try to help those people as best they can. They may choose not to work with you, but if you think it’s the right fit, you should be going after them. And with kind of this sense of responsibility, if I got something that’s going to help you and I would and I feel compelled to tell you about this, it’s not something you should be hesitant about or kind of kind of sheepishly go after it. This is something you almost have to do if you’re being authentic to yourself.

Speaker3: [00:24:17] I love that when you said moral duty and that you have to do it to be authentic yourself, you know, I just I could happy dance listening to you say that it is so true. And that’s something I didn’t realize either. And because in that moment when I talked about the story, I felt this moral duty because after I had done all of this work, I started out by believing, what do I have to offer right in the business world to, oh, my gosh, there’s some stuff that’s missing in the business world that they need. And I’m not the only one, but I may be the only person they’ve ever met who has this type of background. And this could open the door for lots of other people and we could have companies where people are really activating each other. So to your point, I think the you know, it’s it is our I think it is our moral duty if you’re meant to change the world with your coaching. Then playing small is not going to help the world and sharing your your superpowers and your zone of genius is not bragging, but it’s giving somebody an opportunity. You know, like you said, it’s about being of service. And this is where for anyone who struggles with selling, which I know a lot of listeners to this show, do having your genuine, authentic story gives you power that’s not braggy. And it becomes something that, like you said, it becomes this moral obligation to if you’re meant to help more people and people need to know about you, you’re just announcing it and you’re sharing it. And then those who feel really inclined to you, it’s like they get inspired to say, how do I work with you?

Speaker2: [00:26:02] Right. And they want to because there’s something in it for them because you’re aligned with them

Speaker3: [00:26:07] And you are dying to work with that. Right. It’s just such a win win. Right. It’s ultimately a win win.

Speaker2: [00:26:12] And that’s where you both can do your best work. I mean, that’s the key. It’s when there’s a misalignment is where the problems are. Those aren’t clients for life for you and those aren’t happy customers. Those are people that like, oh, well, I thought I was getting this, but I got this. So that’s you know, now I’m frustrated and maybe coaching isn’t for me. And then all those kind of negative excuses start popping up. But if it’s aligned, then everything’s easy and everything builds. And that’s where most people want to be.

Speaker3: [00:26:42] Yeah. And then you can actually when we own that. Right. And one of the things I think for I’ve noticed with working a lot with a lot of coaches in my program is that, you know, so visionary. Right. And then a lot of the transfer and they bring their brilliance without realizing it. It’s like unconscious. It’s like their zone of genius. They’re just delivering it to clients. But if you don’t know how to talk about it, you start to believe you don’t have. And unique, you know, unique super powers, and that’s where tying together, like being able to take this unconscious brilliance and and the hidden gems within you and articulate it into language becomes like the Lego brick click moment.

Speaker2: [00:27:29] Right. But that’s where you need kind of the fresh eyes and you need a coach. And this is where a lot of folks, I think, are not kind of getting the coaching they need in order to bring this element to life within themselves. They need the fresh eyes. They need this kind of unbiased, independent thinking person to look at them and say, here’s kind of what I see and you may not see it and you might have this all this kind of baggage that you’re bringing along, but you’re not elevating this stuff and you might be embarrassed by it. There might be shame around it. But this is all good stuff here. And, you know, in the right hands, I can help you kind of take all these elements, separate yourself from everybody else and really kind of lean into the superpowers and that you have so that you can kind of maximize your talents.

Speaker3: [00:28:19] Yeah, absolutely, that’s something I, I really. I really feel passionate about coaches being able to bring that out, I feel like coaches have immense power to change the world because, you know, everybody’s a transformation maker. You know, I’m a coach as well, too. And I realize that we if we can serve more people, there’s tremendous possibility, right, for communities, for teams, for individuals to to walk their walk differently. And that’s what really excites me. And I think in a in a field where it can be very easy as a coach to say, oh, my gosh, so many coaches like, look, you know, how am I going to going to stand out? And with the person that I mentioned who is the comedian and the leadership coach, she came to me with about 35 credentials. You know, she said is every possible certification. And what she said to me was she said, you know, Stephanie, my vision of success is that, you know, people come in through her certification for Bernie Brown’s courage to lead program. And she says, you know, in my heart, I don’t really want to lead that. I really want to coach people to activate this humor piece.

Speaker3: [00:29:37] And so I said, why not, why don’t why don’t you share your message around that and like, let’s cultivate that. And we had to mind backwards different clients that she had had in different certified programs that she had led and where she had actually unconsciously and naturally brought the hammer to the table. Right. That was her secret sauce. She was just like peppering over everything and being able to pull that out so she could have her own lane of thought leadership in there. Her coaching space like this is what she does. And this is what I mean by eliminating competition. It’s like whatever your passions are and what you said about experiences, we’ve even maybe had shame around. I think about, you know, one of the things about Jem’s is diamonds are are actually made under intense heat and pressure. So the things you have walked through, you have triumphed over like that is just all premium value on top of the certification you have, especially if you want to lead people through certain changes you’ve walked through, then, oh, my gosh, bring that out.

Speaker2: [00:30:43] Right. Well, that’s where I think that your value is. And with that specific client of yours, you gave her permission to do that. She probably knew in the back of her head that that was a good thing. But you kind of validated it and said, you know what, it’s a it’s the move to make. She obviously had the skills to do it. She’s been doing that work separately. And she didn’t think that it was worthy of being elevated into her coaching. And you gave her permission and that gift had a real impact. And that’s the value of a coach. And it’s a value of you specifically of helping your clients kind of, you know, kind of lean into these superpowers they have at their disposal. They have them. They’re you’re just giving them that kind of permission and you’re letting them know that these things exist. And they may not think they’re important, but if you can cobble together these three superpowers, all of a sudden you’re different than everybody else and you bring a lot to the table now.

Speaker3: [00:31:43] Yeah. And as you mentioned earlier, it becomes effortless because those are your zones of genius. Right. And you just you give them without thinking about it. And so when you’re able to articulate, articulate that in words with the energy that you usually have, when you’re exercising this brilliance, it’s you become unstoppable. Right. You become a magnet for exactly your dream clients. And if you’re doing it right, you’re repelling the people that are not your dream clients.

Speaker2: [00:32:13] Right. And you’re happier, less stress, everything becomes easier. And that’s how life really can be if you’re aligned. Right. And that’s right. Well, good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. If somebody wants to learn more about what you’re up to, can you share the website? They can get more information or connect with you.

Speaker3: [00:32:30] Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re interested. And so you’re for everyone’s welcome to go to Stephanie Tsong dot com. Stephanie and Tsong is spelled Zella’s and Xebra H, O and G. Stefanie’s on dotcom. And if you’re interested in doing a free concert call, you can book a clarity call with me if you are ready to put your crystalise your message together. And I also have a newsletter you can sign up for where I share biweekly different tips and examples of how people have found and articulated their special story and how they’ve activated it to be able to grow their business.

Speaker2: [00:33:13] Good stuff. Well, Stephanie, thank you again for the work you’re doing. It’s important and we appreciate you.

Speaker3: [00:33:20] Thanks for having me. It’s been a real joy to talk with you.

Speaker2: [00:33:23] All right. This is Lee Kanta Rules Wilson next time on coach the coach radio.

Rishon Blumberg With 10x Management

May 28, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Rishon Blumberg With 10x Management

00:00 /

Rishon Blumberg graduated from the Wharton School with a degree in entrepreneurial management. From concert promotion to co-founding Brick Wall Management, 10x Management and 10x Ascend, he has imbued his passions with purpose.

Founded in 1995, Brick Wall Management is a music management & entertainment consulting firm that managed, marketed, and shaped the careers of musicians like John Mayer, Vanessa Carlton, Citizen Cope & more.

With the formation in 2011 of 10x Management, Rishon brought his extensive experience managing creatives to the technology space – creating the first-of-its-kind tech talent agency. In 2019, 10x Ascend grew out of 10x Management, to help senior tech talent negotiate their W2 compensation packages.

Rishon also helps to administer The Kristen Ann Carr Fund for cancer research and serves on the advisory board of Musicians On Call which brings the healing power of music to the bedsides of patients.

Rishon’s first book published by HarperCollins Leadership was released in Sept 2020. Game Changer: How To Be 10x in the Talent Economy, reveals the strategies companies and individuals can take to become 10x.

Connect with Rishon on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Game Changer: How to be 10x in the Talent Economy

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker1: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for coach the coach radio brought to you by the Business Radio Embassador program, a no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to B.R. X Ambassador dot com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Speaker2: [00:00:33] We can’t hear another episode of Koch, the Koch radio, and this is going to be a good one today, we have with us with Sean Blumberg with 10X Management. Welcome.

Speaker3: [00:00:43] Hi, how are you?

Speaker2: [00:00:44] I am doing well. I’m so excited to talk to you. I’m excited to learn about 10x management. I’ve heard the phrase 10x. I love to hear how you guys do it and how companies can take advantage of that.

Speaker3: [00:00:56] Sure. So 10x management and 10x in general. What we think of as 10x is somebody who delivers exponential value to a company. And in our case we represent very senior freelance tech talent. And the premise here is that we provide rapid access to this type of talent for companies who have problems that they are having trouble solving. And the hope is that our people will bring them exponential value as well. The concept of 10x, it sort of crosses verticals. Anybody can be 10x in any kind of vertical in tech. In particular, though, as you can imagine, somebody who is really exceptional at what they do can can change dramatically the valuation for a company by solving certain types of unsolvable problems. And we’ve absolutely seen that happen on our end. So that’s sort of a little bit about us. We wrote a book called Game Changer How to Be 10X in the Talent Economy. And a lot of the the ideas that we’ll talk about here today are in that book as well.

Speaker2: [00:02:05] Yeah, that’s how I the first time I heard 10x was I I was talking to somebody in technology specifically about coding, and they were explaining to me that, you know, coders are important and critical. But if you have kind of an a player or a 10x player, it’s dramatically different. You’re talking about this is a person that can really do x exemplary work in much less time. They get it faster. They deliver a better result, a cleaner code in this respect that’s more efficient and it can dramatically impact your business. And I don’t think people realize that. I think a lot of times they settle for maybe A, B or C player when if they hold out for an A player or they, you know, kind of wait for their pitch, when that a player comes, it can make a dramatic difference in their business.

Speaker3: [00:03:00] Yeah. I mean, obviously, you’re preaching to the choir when you say that I could not agree with you more. We have a concept called rent fast or slow specifically to address what you’re talking about there, where companies are better off taking their time to find the right full time W2 employee, as opposed to just the quick, you know, this is the person I can get in sort of the best person I can get right now. So a lot of what we’re doing for companies is providing that stop gap of you can rent our person really quickly and get somebody who’s super high level. And, yeah, they’re not going to be a W2 option for you necessarily, but it gives you that time to find that right person who can be exponentially better for your company than other people. So I couldn’t agree with you more.

Speaker2: [00:03:46] Now, I’ve also seen this work because I’ve worked in some in some of the creative businesses and I’ve seen, for example, EDS. I’ve seen an editor do in seconds what another editor would take hours. So I think this transfers to other areas as well, not just tech or developers or coders.

Speaker3: [00:04:06] Oh, yeah, I we’re firm believers that this is more of a mindset and a capability rather than something that is domain specific. It’s sort of like the saying that, you know, intelligence is spread evenly across all races, colors and creeds, but opportunity is limited. I think that that’s true with tenex capability, you can have ten extras in any vertical. In addition to working with tech talent, we also work with entertainment. That’s sort of how that was sort of the first talent we ever started working with. In our book, we interviewed Bruce Springsteen’s manager. Bruce is really the first 10 extra we ever came across. He’s not writing code, obviously, but he’s so exceptional at what he does and everything he does, for that matter, from giving a speech to writing a book to writing a song, to performing everything that he touches is just amazing. And that’s why he is the icon that he is. And this is repeated in other in other verticals as well. I mean, we could probably talk about I don’t know the names of these people, but people that wrote algorithms for hedge funds and trading floors, you know, before those algorithms trading was done very differently. After those algorithms which were written by people who were exceptional, it basically changed the game.

Speaker2: [00:05:29] Now, when you’re when we’re talking about 10x. People and and their skill specifically, is this something that you found just on dealing with a lot of these folks? Is this something that you’re born with or is this something that you have maybe a propensity for and that you can really get good and get to that level? Or is it just kind of genetic luck that, hey, I’m this person and I just have these I’m a 10 year.

Speaker3: [00:05:55] Well, first of all, I think that’s a great question, and I think the answer is twofold. One is true 10 years, which there are not that many of them are born with it, but also work very hard at it. It’s like the stories of Michael Jordan, who is obviously a goat, and he may be the best basketball player ever, but he also worked harder than anybody else on the court, putting time into the gym, getting his reps in. And that’s true of other techniques. So you are born with that innate IQ and perhaps even IQ. And by that I mean the emotional quotient, how you deal with people, communicate, empathize with other people. You may be born with that, but I think you can also learn and improve on those skills. So the true 10 are born with it. However. You can really push yourself down the spectrum, you may not reach real ness, for lack of a better phrase, but there are definitely things that the average individual can do to be more 10x. And I can I can run through some of those. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So for starters, you want to be a continual learner every 10 exer and people that are pushing themselves down that spectrum are constantly learning, evaluating, reevaluating, getting feedback. We dedicate a chapter in our book to this and basically you should be looking for feedback in all directions. People that are at your level at work, people below you, people above you, people outside of your work world, you want to be able to get an accurate impression of where your strengths and weaknesses are so you can work on them and improve.

Speaker3: [00:07:35] So upskilling professionally and also constantly learning and re-evaluating how you approach problems is one thing. Having a mentor, a coach, somebody that has a vested interest in seeing you do well is a great place to start. Sometimes that’s a family member right in the first place, you might look as a parent and uncle, some family member that may be able to give you a certain level of guidance that you can’t have on your own, being able to see the blind spots that you yourself can’t see. We talk about something called Johari Window in the book, and one of the elements of it is things that other people see about you that you don’t see in yourself. And that’s where you really need that guidance, that coach, that mentor and the feedback from, because there are absolutely things that you don’t know about yourself and it can really help you improve. So I think constant learning is the number one most important thing, finding people that have sort of skin in the game in your life that can give you outside feedback. Those are a couple of tangible things that people can do to push themselves down the spectrum.

Speaker2: [00:08:45] And do you have to kind of the specialist like, is it difficult to be a generalist 10x or

Speaker3: [00:08:51] I think you can be a generalist 10x or because at the end of the day, it’s about being the best that you can at whatever it is you’re working on and whatever it is you’re doing. But I do think that where we see the most sort of public impact from 10 years tends to be sort of domain specific, somebody who is exceptional at writing front end or back end code or algorithms or somebody who is able to synthesize, like a lawyer who’s able to synthesize arguments in a much more elegant and eloquent way. Those are going to be people who are exponentially better. And I think that I sort of alluded to this, but 10 years are part IQ and part IQ IQ. Everybody knows about IQ. Part is that ability to relate to others. And the higher your IQ, the better off you’re going to be as far as success in things that you do. So if you have a super high IQ, that’s great. But if you can’t communicate with others and empathize with others, I can guarantee you that by and large, you’re not going to have the kind of success that you want. So if there’s one thing to truly work on beyond constantly upskilling and you’re improving, your IQ status is to be more human, to understand other people, to be able to communicate to other people with other people and empathize with the things that they’re going through professionally and personally now.

Speaker2: [00:10:21] So if you were talking to a recent graduate from college, what would be your counsel to them if they wanted to or they aspire to be a 10 X or in their career?

Speaker3: [00:10:33] Well, first of all, they should figure out what they want to do. Do they want to be in entertainment? Do they want to be in sports, marketing, management? Do they want to be that they want to be a coder? Whatever it is they want to do, they need to learn about that profession and discipline. So, again, I would try and find some sort of a mentor or a coach and learn what the process is to become better and excel in that vertical. So it starts with baby steps. And then once you take those initial baby steps and figure out what you want to do and maybe figure out your foot into the door of the first job that you have, that’s when you start applying the other elements like feedback and making people advocates for you by working really hard, having grit and fortitude, being a great team player, communicating well, finding people in your workplace who can give you critical feedback, trying to engage with your manager to to play that role and then find people that are in your same vertical but at other companies and network with them. Find out how their job differs from your job. Go to networking events. You really. Have to immerse yourself in whatever it is that occupation you want to pursue, learn who the players are, learn where they go, learn what they do, that’s sort of this constant learning process. And slowly but surely, you have to have grit and fortitude to stand up. But slowly and surely you will rise up the ladder. And then the key is, once you’ve risen, is to pay it forward and offer that feedback and offer that support for the people that you see in your organization that are exceptional, what they do and need to get that that boost in that leg up.

Speaker2: [00:12:15] Now, in your organization, 10X Management, what is the pain that your prospective client is having right before they’re hiring you? Are they startups where they’re just building a tech team? Are they like kind of frustrated? They’ve plateaued and they they need help kind of getting over a hump and they’re got a little bit of a crisis on their hands. Like like who who are the folks that are calling you and why?

Speaker3: [00:12:39] Yeah, I mean, we really see the full spectrum, everything from like a mom and pop start up without it, without a technical founder who needs to have an MVP built of their idea all the way up to Fortune. One hundred companies, multinationals. So it really just depends. We have a broad enough client base where we can sort of find the right solution quickly. For most problems, I will say that the barriers to entry tend to be companies that are more calcified in Old World, meaning that their procurement process is incredibly challenging. This is something we talk about all the time. It’s largely why we wrote our book is that we work with so many forward thinking companies. But there are still companies that we come in contact with who desperately need the help of the kind of people that we represent. But there are so many hurdles and hoops to jump through in order to be on board, it becomes impossible. So the companies that were really successful with working, working with our companies that are much more modern and people centric, focused, meaning that they’re looking to find the right solution, whether it’s a W-2, whether it’s a ten ninety nine freelancer, whether it’s domestic or international, they want to find the best resource to solve the problem. That’s a kind of company that we work very effectively with. I don’t know if that gives you the complete picture, but we have we run the gamut of all different types of companies.

Speaker2: [00:14:12] But is there something happening internally? Like are they did they just get funding and now they got to really build this thing out? Or do they just got a new client that has asked them to do something? They promise that they’re going to have a hard time delivering and they need help.

Speaker3: [00:14:28] The answer is yes. I’m not being that helpful here, but so I would say that there are several different types of usages. One would be adding capacity to a team. Let’s say you’ve got your own tech team at your company and they’re focused on a variety of different projects. And an edge case project comes up that that is important. But you don’t want to take your core team away from what they’re working on day to day. In order to build this, we’re often brought into to build these kinds of edge case pieces of tech products. Sometimes we’re adding capacity to existing teams when they have a product push, maybe they have a launch for something and they just need to add extra capacity. Sometimes we’re building something from the ground up. I would say twenty five percent of our projects are what we call Greenfield, where we’re coming in and we’re basically building the whole thing. But yeah, it could be a company just got funding and they want to ramp up and rapidly bring an MVP to market. It could be a capacity thing where a company just needs to add people for whatever reason, but they don’t want to add headcount on a two front. And it could be case projects or it could be in. This happens fairly often, often with the fortune. One hundred companies, they have lab groups and they’re looking for a very specific type of capability. And so they would come to us because we have people who do are experts at certain certain types of disciplines and edge case R&D related elements. And so it can really be a variety of of different uses.

Speaker2: [00:16:07] So now, if they’re not choosing you, are they just kind of networking locally, finding somebody that knows somebody, get some independent freelancer, or are they going to a recruiting firm and going to hire somebody permanently?

Speaker3: [00:16:21] You know, it’s it’s really all over the place, I would say a large chunk of the business that we do comes from referrals from other companies that we’ve worked with, which is obviously we think is a huge compliment and we love that. So that’s that’s a situation where, like you sort of said, they’re kind of networking their way into finding a resource. There are a lot of marketplaces that have popped up over the last 10, 15 years, up work being one of the bigger ones you’ve probably heard of. And, you know, when we started out hiring freelancers ourselves before we started 10x management, we would go to marketplaces like that. Up work was a combination of oDesk and I can’t remember the other company that merged together. But oDesk was was really an initial marketplace for tech talent. And the problem that we ran into was we had no real vetting mechanism. It was very hard to know what we were getting, the quality of work. And sure enough, it was it was very hit or miss. And so we kind of put that. But the concepts in the problems that we saw in the back of our mind and ultimately around 2010 when people started to talk about tech talent as rock stars, we’d already been working with rock stars. And so we thought perhaps the type of representation we do could could transport into tech. But there are definitely a variety of different ways people can find talent. The question is, what is it they’re looking for? And I think that the what you talked about as far as the techniques are being able to write code faster and more elegantly and get it right the first time, that’s a certain type of customer that is looking for that kind of person, because though that combination of talents is not cheap. Right. So if you want quick and cheap, that’s one type of tech talent. If you want really high quality, that’s going to be a different kind of tech talent. So it really depends on what your need is, where you will try and source that that resource.

Speaker2: [00:18:20] So now how do you kind of vet the talent to make sure there can Xers?

Speaker3: [00:18:26] So a lot of the people that we represent and we really have two types of relationships and our agency is is small by design. We’re not a platform. We don’t have tens of thousands of people. Most of the people that we represent came to us through a trusted source, either a customer we’ve worked with or another client that we represent has somebody who they think is great, that they referred us, and whether or not they come to us through that source or off of our waitlist. We have about a 5000 person wait list of people who have applied to be represented. We go through essentially four different vetting elements. The first is we do reference checks, which I think is sort of your basic low hanging fruit. We do a little cyberstalking, which is really just looking at all of their public personas and seeing how they present themselves, what they talk about, what’s important to them. And then the two most important thing which we important things, which we dive in most deeply on are personality based interviews, which happen with myself and my co-founder, where we really try to find out what makes this person tick. Who are they? What is it that inspires them? What makes them work? Well, what kind of projects will be good for them? How do they problem solve what happens when they come in contact with issues? How do they deal with those issues? And then the other thing we do is we do technical vet and we use our existing client base to vet new potential clients. The idea there being we want to ensure that even the weakest link on the chain is is pretty strong or is very strong. So that’s really the four step process that we go through.

Speaker2: [00:20:02] So that stage where you’re talking to them, that’s your kind of IQ analysis?

Speaker3: [00:20:07] That’s exactly right. Between that and the reference checks, we get a sense of how they work

Speaker2: [00:20:15] With others, with humans. It’s your human test with humans.

Speaker3: [00:20:18] Yes, it’s our human test. We want to know how they problem solve. What do they do when they’re blamed for something that either is their fault or isn’t their fault? Do they step up to the plate and take ownership of it? Do they pass it off to somebody else? We really want people who are going to take ownership of things that are problems that are created. And then the second thing is to propose solutions. We don’t want people who are just like, yeah, I’m sorry I messed that up, but I don’t really know how to fix it. Right. So we’re really we’re really voting for who you are, what you have to say, how you deal with problems. Do you step up to the plate and own things or do you push it up onto other people? And generally, I mean, we have a list of core values that we show to these prospective clients and see if that aligns with their own values.

Speaker2: [00:21:10] Now, any advice for folks out there that are in the hiring business and obviously they should call you, but if they’re going to try to do this on their own, is there some kind of dos and. From hiring, if they’re trying to do it on their own, that you would recommend, other than probably by your book, probably by your book, is probably a good starting point.

Speaker3: [00:21:29] It would be great. But I think that the four steps that we go through as far as vetting, I think should be done by anybody who’s bringing on a freelancer. If we’re talking about a W to hire, it’s a little bit different. We actually created something called a lifestyle calculator that weighs out twenty four different elements that could be in a compensation package. And we use that for prospective clients who we’re working with to help them negotiate the compensation package that compensation packages that they’re getting for W-2 employment. And we do that through our company 10 percent. But when we’re talking about freelance, especially tech talent, go through those four steps and focus, most importantly, on the personality elements and how they deal with issues and also be very upfront about what your process is as a company. Are you a company that insists on doing multiple stand ups throughout the week and they’ll have to be a part of that? Or are you not a company that does that? Like what is your cadence? What is your expectation? And then one of the things that we tell the companies that we work with when dealing with the 10 extras that we represent is you’re hiring them so that they can teach you what to do, not so that you can teach them what to do. That’s like a Steve Jobs quote, We hire the best and brightest so they can tell us what to do, not for us to tell them what to do. 10 years want to solve your problem. But if you micromanage a 10 year, they’re never going to succeed. They don’t they don’t work well under that kind of situation. So set up the expectations, set up the parameters and give them the space to do what they do while still obviously managing them. But micromanaging is a huge problem.

Speaker2: [00:23:08] Now, if there’s someone out there that wants to learn more, get a hold of your book or talk to you or somebody on your team, whether they’re talent or whether they’re looking for talent or what’s the website.

Speaker3: [00:23:19] So the two websites that I would say make the most sense is 10x management, the number 10, the letter X management dot com, and that is information on our tech talent agency, both how to hire people and bring them on for projects and also for people who might be interested in applying. And then for the book, it’s game changer, the book dot com, and it has a lot of information there, including a fun test that you can take to see where you fall on the spectrum. And also you can take it on behalf of your company to see where they fall on the spectrum. And my contact information is on the game changer, the book, dot com website.

Speaker2: [00:23:59] How many people who take that test or ten years?

Speaker3: [00:24:02] You know, it’s funny, we don’t actually capture the answers, so I don’t have a good answer to that. But I can tell you, when I took it myself, I was only about three quarters of the way there. So I think that most people will probably fall into that a third to seventy five percent range without outliers being below and above. If you’re above seventy five or eighty percent, you’re pretty well on your way to being 10x or at least understanding what it takes to be a ten extra good stuff.

Speaker2: [00:24:31] Well thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Speaker3: [00:24:36] Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker2: [00:24:37] All right. This is Lee Kanter. We will see you next time on Coach the Coach Radio.

Stephen Krempl With Winning in the Work World

May 28, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Stephen Krempl With Winning in the Work World

00:00 /

Stephen Krempl, CEO of Winning in the Work World, is an international speaker, best-selling author, facilitator, and corporate communications coach based in Seattle, WA. He has worked with thousands of leaders in more than 30 countries.

His career spans 25 years working for Fortune 200 companies, including as Chief Learning Officer, Starbucks; VP of YUM University and Global Learning, YUM Brands; Director, PepsiCo Restaurants; and Regional Manager, Motorola Singapore.

He is an expert on helping leaders stand out and get noticed in their organization even in an increasingly virtual and global marketplace. Krempl is the author of five books, including his latest release The 5% Zone, an international bestseller in six countries across multiple business categories.

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Type of Mindset that someone needs to have to even believe they want to do this
Where have you seen individuals get stuck and how could they overcome that block
Five opportunities that you can stand out in front of key management
Some techniques that you can maximize your impact in the 5% Zone
Why is being able to change Negative to more positive language paramount when dealing with Senior Mgt

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker2: [00:00:33] Lee Kanter here another episode of Koch, the Koch Radio, and this is going to be a good one today. We have with us Stephen Kemple with Winning in the Work World. Welcome Stephen

Speaker3: [00:00:44] A.. Thanks for having me. Great to be on the show.

Speaker2: [00:00:47] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about winning in the work world, who you serve and then how do you do it?

Speaker3: [00:00:54] Well, the winning it work well, as the title suggests, we help individuals either entering the workforce or those who have been in the organization to help to get a little bit more visible and stand out, especially through their senior management. So it’s all the people who are working there.

Speaker2: [00:01:14] So how did you get in this line of work? What was the catalyst for your business?

Speaker3: [00:01:19] Well, actually, it’s kind of interesting. I’ve had a pretty long corporate career in four Fortune 500 companies acting to more than 200 companies. And then at the end, I decided, what am I going to do? And the reason I actually found was I saw many of my colleagues being bypassed for promotion or getting that, you know, that choice project, not because they were not smart, hardworking people, but they just were not visible enough to senior management. And you know how that how important that is when you need to be picked, you know, by that. Right.

Speaker2: [00:01:55] So so now so in your career, I guess you were picked more times than your colleagues.

Speaker3: [00:02:04] Well, let’s put it this way, though. I think I understood the rules of the game, which is one of the techniques that we teach people. You have to figure out the rules of the game and then you have to decide in those five situations that the senior management either see or hear you, that you need to be seen or heard. Right. You can be at the meeting, but if you’re the quietest one or the one doesn’t say anything, then you might just be overlooked. So it’s a little bit of a strategy.

Speaker2: [00:02:36] So when did you realize that there was more to kind of moving up the corporate ladder than just doing good work?

Speaker3: [00:02:44] Well, I got to share a story. So this happened to me way back in my first first job. You know, the regional H.R. guy came to me and said, hey, Grimble, I’m going on a two week regional trip. I want you to review all our processes and tell me what’s wrong and missing. And when I come back, you let me know I’m going, wow, this is my chance because I’m really good at pointing out mistakes and finding faults. So the guy comes back and says, hey, come on in my room and tell me what’s wrong. So I went to his room. I said, Jason, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is missing. This is missing. And I don’t know who was in my position before I came in, but that person wasn’t obviously doing their job. He paused for about two seconds. Then he said I was the person that was in that position. And I go, whoops, I just put my foot in my mouth. Right? And then he said this, which changed my life forever. You said. Crumble, just remember this. If there’s a problem of something going on that is not right and the organization that’s probably somebody in the room, i.e. the most senior person that either has not fixed the problem or they are the ones that caused the problem. So what you should have told me was this. You said all you should have said was, Jason, if we just tweak this, this and this process and maybe improve this in this process and added this one thing, I hope our organization will be so much better. And I would have said, great job, please carry on. And then it dawned on me that most senior people don’t want to hear what’s wrong. They want to hear what you’re going to do to make it right and switch my total from a communications sample. One of the aspects is going from negative to positive right now.

Speaker2: [00:04:39] But to me, it’s it’s also kind of requiring of yourself to think more like an owner than an employee, like try to get to the heart of the problem and solve it, not just to kind of be a cog in the machine and just go along with a broken machine.

Speaker3: [00:04:56] That’s right. Don’t tell me of the problem. Well, you can raise the problem, but the one thing is more visible are the ones that can raise the problem, maybe provide a solution or provide some alternatives that, you know, that senior management should consider to get it done or fixed or resolved or improved or, you know, any one of those things doing it. And it’s really, really important to have that.

Speaker2: [00:05:21] Now, how do you counsel the individual that feels like they’re doing good work and that there’s somebody that’s doing lesser work, but they’re just able to either kind of I don’t want to say steal the work or maybe steal the credit or kind of, you know, pretend like they’re doing the work in front of senior management, but they’re really not.

Speaker3: [00:05:43] Yeah, so and this is not a fair world, as we all know. And some people I come across some of those in my my career as well. Right. However, they understand the rules of the game, though, that there are a couple of things that you have to consider. Firstly is there’s two numbers that we talk about all the time. It’s called ninety five and five. And that’s why the book is called a five percent. So. Right. So ninety five percent of the time you need to be yourself. However, in the five percent times and a five percent times we defined as being in the presence of people two levels and above in the organization, how you act in the ninety five is not the same as how you act in the five percent. So when you are in the presence of the person who is two levels above you, so your boss’s boss, your supervisor, supervisor, you need to really pay attention and figure out what they are looking for and give it to them. And most people will. Well, Stephen, you know, that’s acting and that’s not being true to myself. Right. However, that’s where you shoot yourself in the foot, because in a corporation, people act slightly differently at different times.

Speaker3: [00:06:59] And then most people go, well, that’s not being authentic. And then I give them this example. I say, look, you change all the time, though. When you are in the office, you act one way. When you go out drinking with your old college or university buddies, you know, you act totally different. And if you are married and you went to your mother in law’s house, you act totally different. And if you went to the game and your team is just scored, you act different. And if you are a person of worship, you act different if you went to that place of worship. So we know how to change, but somehow in the organization, people go, well, you see, I’m not like that. I will let my work speak for itself. And then they miss out on the opportunity because some of them don’t get to meet their bosses. The boss’s boss very often. Right. So, so. And unfortunately, that’s the the the truth. And I’m kind of telling it like it is now.

Speaker2: [00:07:53] What do you tell to the person, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of conversation about diversity and inclusion nowadays, how do you kind of counsel the folks that just may be? For a lot of people, there is that five percent time there in front of your boss’s boss. But for some people, you know, it might be a one percent or a point five percent time that they’re in front of that person.

Speaker3: [00:08:19] So totally right. So, you know, then it’s even even more important to focus on that point, five percent at one percent, because people kind of give you credence. So I do a lot of work in diversity groups. You know, I I come from a diverse background myself, so I know exactly the situation. And you. All opportunity as a diverse person, a person of diversity is actually better if you say, let’s say you and a one percent meeting and you asked a great question when you ordinarily would have kept quiet, you stand out even more. In fact, no more one. I call it the three X, right. Because, you know, people go, wow, you know, this Stephen guy, he actually thinks pretty clearly that I’m looking for somebody now who I remember I remember Stephen because he actually asks a great question. And that’s probably the only thing he said or had opportunity to say in that meeting. So. For those people who have zero point five percent, a one percent time, it’s even more importantly.

Speaker2: [00:09:30] So now let’s walk through a scenario like that. OK, so now I know I’m a maybe a person of color. I’m in one of these small subsets. There’s not a lot of me in this in that office. And I’m getting invited to one of those meetings. So I know a week ahead I’m going to be there and there’s going to be you know, all the muckety marks are going to be there and me. And so what am I doing to prepare No. One? What am I doing to prepare to kind of maximize my opportunity? Because I’m going to think strategically now that I read your book. So I’m thinking strategically. So now what do I do? What homework am I doing? Number one. And number two, after the meeting, what kind of follow up am I doing to kind of lock in that, to keep me top of mind?

Speaker3: [00:10:20] Ok, very good. You’re brilliant. So at the meeting, there are only three things that I tell people you can do. The only three. So those who are listening, taking this down, number one, you’re either making a point. So you either articulating a point of view, that means you’re you’re saying something, right? Number two, you ask a question. That’s the second thing you can do. On number three, you summarized. So you’re summarizing at the end because the leader will say any questions or comments. So if you if you are not familiar with the topic, then I suggest maybe you don’t do a you add a point of view because you may be out of your depth. Right. But you could ask a question, but that presumes you have a great question that you have already thought through and brought to the meeting because you know, the topic of the meeting or if the worst thing happens and you don’t you don’t say you don’t articulate a point of view. You don’t ask the question. And it’s right near the end, you know, is the opportunity. And when the leader says any questions or comments, you put up your hand and you don’t even have to say the all you have to do is says, you know, Lee brought up a great point about ABC and Steven over there brought up a great point about X, Y and Z. I think I like Lee’s point and I’m going to tell my peers to do exactly what Lee says. All I did was repeat what Lee and Steven said, but it sounded like I’m participating and carrying that information and doing something with it.

Speaker2: [00:11:55] Now, when it comes to asking a question, I’m sure that a lot of folks that are in that position are afraid of asking a question that might be considered dumb or obvious or to kind of show that maybe they aren’t knowledgeable and they should have known this.

Speaker3: [00:12:15] Yeah, well, that again, they’re a couple of rules. And if you read the book as well, they’re a couple of rules around asking question. Firstly, don’t ask them what we call a negative, a trapping question. And that is, Lee, you brought up this particular situation, but we don’t think it’s really good. So what are you going to do about it? So that’s trapping you, right? No leader wants to do that. They will answer the question, but their memory of you is you’re asking a negative and a challenging question. We say that any question can be asked either neutrally or positively. And most people just don’t know how to do that because they they think of the issue in their head and it comes straight out them. All right. So you can say, you know, nobody agrees with the new strategy and and so what are we going to do about it? Right. So that’s obviously a negative question. Or you could rephrase something like that and say, you know, how do we gain the support of all our employees for our new strategy? The answer is exactly the same, but the impression of the person asking the question totally different.

Speaker2: [00:13:32] But that requires kind of preplanning and kind of kind of doing your homework, you can’t just show up and think you’re going to be able to wing it on the spot. These these meetings are too rare and you got to kind of get the most out of them. So you can’t just go in there and think you’re going to wing this.

Speaker3: [00:13:50] You hit the nail on the head. We have another concept called just the work called preparation. Right. Most senior leaders prepare like mad or they just don’t tell you. Right. So I’ll give you an example. I flew down from Seattle to Santa Clara to have one of my clients who said, hey, Stephen, can you come and help me out? I have a 10 minute presentation to my CEO and I need some of your help. I spent four and a half hours with him on his 10 minute presentation. Right. But do you think that person’s going to stand up in front of a CEO and say, you know, I’ve been practicing with Stephen for four and a half hours and I like to make my presentation, know he’s going to go up, he’s going to stand up, deliver his presentation of a bang, and people are going to go, wow, that guy’s a great communicator. He has had four and a half hours practice with me. They don’t tell you, though, so most senior leaders to those people who are listening, if you have a one percent meeting, five percent or five percent meeting preparation is key, and especially if you know the only three things you can do. Right.

Speaker2: [00:14:59] Well, and it’s a it’s a great point that when something looks easy doesn’t mean it was easy. Yeah, there was a lot of

Speaker3: [00:15:09] Simple, not easy and easy is not simple. Right.

Speaker2: [00:15:12] Right. There was a lot of work to make it look easy. You know, there was a lot of sweat and tears to make it look easy. And people don’t appreciate it. They think like, oh, that’s a natural communicator. He’s just good on his feet.

Speaker3: [00:15:24] I was talking to one of the guys who was interviewing me on on on the podcast. And then he said, you know, I we were we’re doing a show and people always ask him, you know, Jason, how come you’re so comfortable in front of a camera? And he says. Between January of 2020 and April, I’ve already done two thousand, built many cars, you know, in that Pohlmann period. I’m a lot better at two thousand than I was at number one, though. Right. And people don’t realize that. Right. They see you doing the two thousand one. Right. But they never saw your number one to 10 or whatever you did in the beginning. People get more comfortable and then they become more confident. Right. And then and then that shows when you are prepared.

Speaker2: [00:16:16] So now in your work of coaching people and helping them with these kind of skills that you’ve gained over the years, how has kind of being an entrepreneur and running your own show been different for you or challenging for you as opposed to kind of climbing the corporate ladder?

Speaker3: [00:16:34] Well, as you know, for all entrepreneurs, depends what your goal is, right, in fact, probably the goals are very similar. You want to increase your business. You want to be visible in your area, in your industry or your whomever, your target audience you’re playing with. And you have to be seen as somebody who’s really good or an authority in that area of. The same skills apply to, you know, if I talk about visibility, yes, we talked about corporate visibility, are you visible in your community or your target audience that you do it right? Do you communicate? How do you communicate to your audience? Are you the person that is able to be clear and concise with their messaging, or are you the person that rambles on and on? So many parallels are the same, except that if you are an entrepreneur, you may not have the what I call the trappings or the infrastructure that if you are a leader in an organization, you would have. So, you know, I don’t have my team of 30 people. You could have an entrepreneur if you have a big business. And that’s what you want. Right. But most entrepreneurs don’t have the same infrastructure as they do, but they still have the same goals. They need to be visible. They need to increase their business and they need to communicate to the audience and be seen as an authority.

Speaker2: [00:17:56] So how do you build your infrastructure to help you become efficient so you can focus on your superpower and not get bogged down by all the stuff that is kind of the minutia of the business that’s required for it to run smoothly?

Speaker3: [00:18:09] Right. So so a couple of choices. Most people have either assistance or extended teams that come from other providers or other vendors that can provide either communication services to you, virtual assistant services to you, or even marketing services to you. So that’s a choice. Or you can have a small team, right? I have a small team and I also have a host of different providers that provide me the exact things that I need. And I’ve just chosen that choice. I in the early days, I decided that I did not want to build another organization of 50 or 100 people because in the end you end up managing people more than managing the business. So I decided to build a business where I have, as you said, do. Do my craft and then have other people just do the other things that are required to make a business run.

Speaker2: [00:19:14] Now, what’s more rewarding for you these days is having one of your clients get promoted or was it when you got promoted back in the day?

Speaker3: [00:19:23] Now, I tell you what, seeing my clients getting promoted is great. I had a lady that was in a large. An airline or aircraft company here in the US, we won’t mention names based in Seattle. There used to be house because of the class that we took and the technique she did in those five situations. So we said the only five situations that people see or hear you right. It’s the one on one meeting that the leaders have with you is the team meeting is either the small team of the large all hands or town halls, the conference call, the business presentation or the company socials. So those are the only five situations. Right. And she she did the many of the techniques that we did. She got visible and she got promoted. And and I’m I’m really proud of her.

Speaker2: [00:20:23] Now, we talked a little bit about this, so there’s the opportunity to shine during those five opportunities or being strategic at a meeting with your boss’s boss. How do you recommend kind of the follow up after one of those incidences occur?

Speaker3: [00:20:41] Yeah, I saw that there a couple of things. Right. And in in the book, we call it creating green X’s. A green X is something memorable that you do that people remember you by. One of the things that usually happens at the meeting. A couple of things. Right. So depending what time of meeting, usually the Boscoe, any volunteers to help me on this team? You know, most people duck their heads and get us out of the meeting because nobody wants to do extra work. So a possibility is putting your hands up and being part of a committee or putting your hands up and saying, hey, Lee, you know, I heard you mention that and talk. I don’t mind pulling a team together and doing a little bit of research for that for you. So that’s one thing. Sometimes just sending an email and thanking the person about what they said is another thing. How many people do that? They don’t know. I’m telling you

Speaker2: [00:21:38] How many, like you were an executive telling me how many people sent you a thank you.

Speaker3: [00:21:46] I can count on my hand one hand through all the years I’ve been there.

Speaker2: [00:21:51] Right. That’s shocking, right? That’s a missed opportunity.

Speaker3: [00:21:55] So I give you an example. At least I don’t teach people anything. I don’t do myself or I don’t suggest myself. So my youngest daughter was in her first job. Right. And this was last year. And she’s over dinner. She was saying, hey, dad, you know, my C.O. just got promoted. I just got an award. He’s one of the five CEOs in the United States that got this award. I go, wow, that’s great. Why don’t you send him an email? He said, No, I can’t do that. I just joined the company for three weeks. I said, no, no, no, you can do that. So, of course, that force that you bring your phone out and time even says, Mr. So-and-so, I just saw you on a zwart. I’m really proud to be a new employee. Great job. Something like that. Right. This one liner and send the email. She was hesitant to tell them when she pressed him. You know, then we stop the my bickering. Two hours later, she came down. She said, Dad. He replied to me, though, right. This is a simple thing most people think, you know, because the SEALs are a human being as well. Right, right. People want to get noticed even is that hey, great interview. I mean, it can be five words for having a great interview. I’m so proud to be on the team of being on the organization. People don’t realize those things. I have one more story to tell.

Speaker3: [00:23:15] Can I tell one more story? Yeah, I got that. So I was doing a talk in one of the top insurance companies in the US and on the East Coast. Right. And I was speaking to a group of 200 interns in that particular area that summer. So two hundred interns. Again, I’m doing my spiel how to win in the work world, how to stand out, yada, yada. And then right at the end after that, to your point, one intern, one out of two hundred wrote me a letter. Now, if she didn’t send me an email, she wrote me a letter. And in the letter, she essentially rearticulated most of my key lines that I said to her in the letter, which means she showed me that she was listening to me. Right. And like I tell people, if you repeat what your boss or your boss’s boss says and give it back to them, they think you’re brilliant. Let me repeat that, in case your listeners missed that, would you repeat your boss, your boss’s boss says to you, back to them, they think you’re brilliant. And for me here was this, this young lady who wrote a letter. Send it to me and said all how what she took away from that talked. Guess out of the two hundred and ten that year, because that company hired 16, do you think she was one of the six? I’d bet on

Speaker2: [00:24:50] Her

Speaker3: [00:24:51] Exactly. She was one of the 16. And I’m sure she figured out the rules of the game and going to get far ahead in that in that company.

Speaker2: [00:24:59] Yeah. And I can kind of affirm that same thing has happened. I can’t tell you how many young people I said, look, I’m available. You want to learn how to do this. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve interviewed thousands of executives. I had to do this. I’ve been doing it for years. If you want to learn more and you know firsthand, see how this works. I’m happy to do it. And like you said, it’s a handful of people that really take you up on that. And and and and then once they do, they they win. You know, they benefit.

Speaker3: [00:25:32] Exactly. It is it it really is funny because sometimes it’s not only the young ones, sometimes people who are mid career and who are dreaming is stuck also couldn’t figure that out because they they don’t do the things they get himself noticed. And I had the same experience when I was writing my book, Call your hired, done what you do that that was targeted at the call it college market. So I was into interviewing the CFO for Levi’s and I asked him, I said, you know, do you guys have interns? He says, yeah, I usually hire about eight interns every summer. And I said, oh, wow, great. Any one of these interns just stand out to you and did anything different since you’re out of the eight, only one. And it bothered to come to my assistant, booked some time with me half an hour interview. She came in, she asked me one question and I talked for twenty nine minutes right now. And then she said, did you did you hire any of those interns. Yeah, we hired two more. She one of them. Yep. She was the only one I met. So it’s like you knock yourself in the head. You have for heaven’s sakes people. Right.

Speaker2: [00:26:42] It’s right in front of you. It literally is in front of you and it’s free. It doesn’t require anything other than having kind of the guts to just ask and interact with something, be a little proactive. And it’s amazing what what’s available exactly.

Speaker3: [00:27:02] I mean, it’s like we said just now, it’s simple, but simple is not easy for some people who for some reason or the other. So but to get ahead and win and to work well, that there are many simple but practical things you need to do. Just do them. How about that? Right.

Speaker2: [00:27:22] Well, if somebody wants to get a hold of your books or work with you directly, what is the website to connect with you?

Speaker3: [00:27:31] Wow. Sounds familiar. Go to winning in the work world dot com. That’s the easiest one you can get to do to get there. And the book is called The Five Percent Zone Visibility Strategies that get you recognized and rewarded in any organization. And you can get that on Amazon. So it’s a five percent zone sometimes type type in my name, Steven Crampy, and it’ll pop up.

Speaker2: [00:27:58] Well, Steven, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you leave.

Speaker3: [00:28:03] Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker2: [00:28:05] All right. This is Lee Kanter Rules. How next time on Coach the Coach Radio.