Latest / Coaches Rising / 288 - Barrett Brooks: Leadership, Grief & Presence-Based Coaching

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288 - Barrett Brooks: Leadership, Grief & Presence-Based Coaching · Coaches Rising

• 0:00
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: welcome back.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the coach's rising podcast.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm delighted today to be joined by Barrett Brooks.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Barrett is an executive business coach, a writer and CEO of present space coaching and he coaches seven figure creator founders helping them to grow sustainable businesses while staying aligned with their values and well-being and deeper sense of purpose.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what we're
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: How Barrett coaches his clients, what's the common themes, the common trajectories that his clients go through, and what kind of moves does he make with his clients?
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about grief, we'll talk about how our relationship to ambition needs to grow as we grow in our entrepreneurial leadership.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about realigning actions with values, holding space for client resistance.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the role of presence in effective coaching.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And really listen out for later on in the conversation, Barrett shares how he went from starting his coaching practice to now running a highly successful coaching business.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of things did Barrett do?
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a real masterclass in agency and sovereignty.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I learned a lot from him.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is just such a beautiful conversation.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive in.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the podcast with Barrett Brooks.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Barrett, I am delighted to be with you today.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm delighted to see that you've taken on Stuart's sip of a present-space coaching.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we were just checking in, I was sharing Dirk was a dear mentor and friend of mine.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, that makes me very happy to meet you.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'm, we're gonna unpack today, their coaching work you do with clients, and also the importance of present-space work in the world, in the coaching that you do.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, how does that sound to you?
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds amazing.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm thrilled to be here at Joel and a big fan of you and your show.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So thanks for having me.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you could just begin by sharing a little of like who you are and what is the coaching work that you're doing with clients who do you work with and I can't be.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I always start with the most important, and I'm a father and a husband first.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been married to my wife for 10 years this year, and we have two young children here at home.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we live multi-generationaly here in Portland, Oregon, in our home.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got House full of humans, and it's a beautiful thing.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been a coach, I guess I started coaching in 2011 actually and kind of came in and out of it over time in between other roles at organizations and kind of had my path through the startup world.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I worked in software for a long time.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was a senior executive at a scaling software company and like many people in that environment burnt out doing that.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: and went on a little walk about to find what I was meant to do next and found my way back to coaching.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I did that about three years ago now, I took it on full time as my primary role that I play in the world professionally anyways and have been working with entrepreneurs who I call creators.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of the background of who I worked with at the software company
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are people who have very large online audiences, YouTube channels, podcasts, and Instagram followings.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I like to say that I work with them on the inner journey of outward success.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a perception of everything that the world sees about them and what's expected of them.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's their actual experience of that.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I help them transform at the identity level, what their experience is of their business and their creative work so that they can sustain it for a
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, most recently, as you mentioned, I just stepped in at the beginning of 2026 to the role of Stewart of President's base coaching, which is a huge honor.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's something that BB Hansen who's been on the show before invited me into about 18 months ago, and we had a long journey in conversation about how to do that and how to do it well, and that's my exciting new chapter.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that kind of brings us up to today and very rapid fire in nature.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Excellent.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we'll go and pack.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think several facets of what you shared.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we can just dive straight in and you talked about this, this in a journey of outer success.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm of course every person is unique.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But do you see like a common,
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: challenge that these creators that you work with experience you know you mentioned like an identity shifts like could you sketch out like the kind of challenges they come in with and then this journey you take them on yeah so the people I'm working with just to kind of ball park it usually have hundreds of thousands to millions of followers on their top platform online
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, I have a very modest following online.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's nearly unfathomable for me, even.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Although I have spent a lot of time with folks in this position.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a very unique thing to have a life on the internet in that way.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to earn your living attached to being persistently online.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I find is that it leads to a host of things.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first is just the typical kind of hedonic treadmill type thing of, I've gone at this big, why don't I double it?
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'd say that's kind of one bucket of people who come to me, they say, I'm really stuck here, and I'm not sure why I'd really like to double my company, and I want your help.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: nice okay that sounds good we'll see what's really going on and not at all in a patronizing way of course like I believe them that they want to double their company and what we often find under the surface is that that's usually a proxy for other motivations that they have or other things that matter more to them.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a second bucket of people who are usually going to burn out of some kind, usually create a burnout.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are different flavors of this, but I often find what fuels that is that they feel like they must continue creating in order to continue earning a living, and they feel detached from that creative work now.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so whatever got them into it, this kind of inner urge to create and make something in the world, they've gotten away from either by chasing what the algorithm
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Turning it into a factory of production, of creative work, or whatever it might be, and they now feel trapped between continuing to do it versus earning a living and a very healthy living.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Many of the people I work with earning in the millions of dollars a year from their work.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that the stakes are very high, and that way it's easy to put a number on how high the stakes are for them.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the last much more rare bucket, which I'm sure many other coaches here can relate to is when they come to me proactively and they say, I just want to continue to develop.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I have a good thing going and I'm entering new territory.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes the first two categories get to this point as well.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think about these folks as they're transitioning from being an individual creative to being a CEO of a small company.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: and needing to transition into leadership behaviors not just creative behaviors as a quarter of their success.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're working on building all of the normal competencies that are required to lead a team versus to be an independent creative person.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a wonderful and fascinating journey when we can get there.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm hearing even though there's a unique set of challenges for each of these people that I'm guessing from what you alluded to like often it's actually
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: not just about tactics and strategy, but there's actually an identity kind of challenges state within within these challenges they bring.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you say something about, I mean, because it's kind of, you know, even though you're working with creators, I see these challenges with some of the executives I work with, they're kind of, yeah, you know, somewhat familiar in those
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: have a growing belief that the challenges are fairly universal in terms of people who are leading and the context just changes.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we can get into the philosophical angle on that later.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the thing I see is that many people who come to me think that it is tactical or strategic in some way that if they just think harder they'll be able to get through it.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And usually they come to me or often they come to me maybe even as a last resort.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've tried everything I can think of, every tactic, every strategic approach, everything that I can find, and so I guess I'll try a leadership coach now.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not always the case.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, some people seek it out earlier in the journey.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what I find is that most people believe that if they can just find the right tactics, tap into the right knowledge, that they'll be able to work their way through these challenges.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like anything, it is developmental, almost always, for the folks that I'm working with.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And by developmental, I mean, we all get shaped by the patterns of our life.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: everything that we've been through experiences, relationships, the ideas we've encountered, all of that conditioning shapes how we show up to our work.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as leaders, if we don't understand the ways in which we've been shaped, and then actively work with those ways, and choose how we move forward, then we get stuck.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I find is that although a lot of the people I work with had a very high ceiling with their default behaviors, you know, it got them really far, usually they're pretty good at being like Atlas and carrying the world on their shoulders and taking on the burdens of everyone else or doing it all alone, those are usually adaptive behaviors to something they experienced early in life or many things they experienced early in life.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when they outgrow the capacity for them to do it all
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Meaning when their business out grows, the capacity for them to do it all themselves.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now they have to confront these things because whatever relational pain they've experienced now starts showing up in their work relationships, whatever conflict pattern they have influences how they manage the people they hire.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so like a common issue I see is that they turn over people for a year or a year and a half and they just can't seem to find anyone who can do the job.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's interesting.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's really going on there?
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And usually what we find beneath the surface is that there's a relational pattern or a conflict pattern going on that's been there for a very, very long time.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that now they have to choose.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do I want to work with this in a new way?
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or do I want to stay alone in this business and be okay with where it's grown to?
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's just one, you know, relationships are not the only way that this shows up, but there's many patterns that people show up with that are behavioral and that are adaptive and that are wonderful or have been wonderful up to this point and getting them here.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now they're starting to break because it's no longer sufficient and it's that deeper layer of seeing that and being willing to work with it that I find creates the most change for folks.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before we go into how you do that, I'd love to just kind of sketch out, one of the themes I'm hearing here is like, yeah, they were doing it all themselves, and now they're scaling the growing, and that way of working just doesn't work anymore.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They need to delegate to empower a team to lead the team.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a kind of theme, but I'm also hearing, and I wonder about this, you kind of alluded to it that, you know, and I think this may be more unique to content creators, but they, you know, they have this action, you know, they're something they created, like the, you know, that spoke to people and it took off and
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, are they in a kind of artistic dilemma where, you know, they've, they've like, they're doing more.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're in the operations.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're actually, you haven't got that space to, you know, to be in the kind of creative sourcing energy that had them.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: initially touch people.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, is that, is it, what is the move there?
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it, is it kind of again delegating so they can get back to that creative ship in a new way?
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder, yeah, how you, you see what I'm sharing.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, for sure.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it shows up constantly.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll give you two exact two concrete examples just to kind of anchor it.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is let's imagine that you are an at home cook.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You really love food and you have young children and you decide I'm going to create a blog and Instagram page and a YouTube channel helping other parents of young children cook very healthy food that's also delicious so that their children will eat nutrients.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: common challenge parents face and let's say over the period of 10 years you grow your audience into 2 million people.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, now your children are not young anymore and perhaps your recipes are still centered on toddlers or four year olds or whatever it might be but your life has completely changed and what's important to you has changed over that time just like all of us we grow and we change and we could become interested in new things but the
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: $1.5 million that your schedule to earn this year is dependent on you continuing to post recipes for spinach muffins for toddlers or something like this.
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, example one.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Example two, you're graduating from college and you become really interested in productivity as an area of interest and you start a YouTube channel to share what you're learning.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it just so happens, you resonate deeply with people on over time, you grow your audience to three million subscribers
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: and you have graduated far beyond productivity, maybe you're into spirituality, or maybe you're into much deeper topics that are a little more esoteric and out there, and not as appealing to three million people.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you do?
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you end up in these situations where a term for it might be called audience capture, where you've gone from growing audience because of what you are interested in and sharing with them to the audience saying we want more of what you used to make.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have this kind of dilemma of do I keep making what my audience has come to know me for?
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or do I risk transforming and sharing who I really am?
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I'm really interested in and where I am continuing to grow,
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: at the risk of losing audience, and how might that affect me, the people I employ, the business that I run, and inevitably, in my experience, sure, you can shrink back from that challenge and say, well, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and see if I can get there.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's kind of a path to the soul, slowly dying over time, and losing interest, or if I'm not dying, certainly shriveling up.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the alternative is to have the courage to find the overlap and to see what your audience will tolerate, how you might solve both and treat it more like a polarity than an either or.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where I think a lot of the interesting work happens is how can we do both here, maintain your level of interest and enthusiasm that got you here and also bring your audience along for the ride.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know people who've, it's interesting there's a spectrum, you know, so I know people who've been incredibly artistic, you know, if I use that kind of archetype where they are really resistant to audience capture, you know, so so they've like purposely
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: like being kind of contrarian to their own following, you know, they won't be captured in that way, and that has had an impact on their earnings and their audience, you know?
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and then I, you know, I know people who've, you've, you've, like, you describe, uh, you've built suddenly like I've got this thing, and I don't, I just don't care about it anymore, but it's paying the bills and
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, I've got a payroll and people I care for.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, because I think, I think there, you know, in any entrepreneur will kind of maybe come up against what you're describing, potentially come up against it.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: What you talked about, you know, kind of finding that kind of generative edge in a sense of like trying out new things.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do you think is the way through where, you know, someone can kind of re-align back with what's most inspiring to.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I imagine a lot of people might be like, well, this is where I sell up, I get out, it's not my thing anymore.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you help people move through that process?
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of two, I mean, there's many layers to it, obviously, but there's two layers I'll talk about right now.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is the macro process they're going through and then one is the kind of micro process.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so at the macro level,
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the same in both cases.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's create the space, turn our attention to what we can notice in the moment, and then make new choices going forward.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just the basic behavior change process.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the macro level, it's really hard to do when all of your incentives are, for example, to be online always.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you have,
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just very hard to describe what it is like to have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers on any given platform and how much dopamine is available at any given time.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dopamine and cortisol.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you want, if your inner experience right now needs to be confirmed with something mean, you can find it in a comment on a post that you've made within the last week.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: if what you need is motivation to go do something you don't want to do and a reminder of why you do it, you can find someone sharing a meaningful story in your comments from the last week.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the amount of time that many of my clients spend online chasing those feelings without realizing it is a lot.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes their entire waking life is interspersed with interacting in that way.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so at this high level, there's just creating a little space from the work.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe building some systems so that things can continue to get published on a reasonable cadence.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of it is building enough trust that if you aren't online constantly that everything will fall apart that you can have a little space from it for a little while.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason you have to do this at the high level of just creating some new habits and systems to step back is you need enough space to figure out
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who have you become in the process of all of this?
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's important to you?
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where are you going from here?
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if all you're doing is reacting to the momentum of what you've already done, it's impossible.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: You cannot, you can't.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You cannot consider who am I and where am I going?
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's at the macro level and then there's the process of asking some of these bigger questions.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's going on for me right now?
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: What am I experiencing at all levels of my experience and my soul and my body, my heart and my mind?
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's scary for people to tap into that when they've just been on a treadmill of momentum.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's at the high level, and then at the day-to-day level, it's things like, hey, let's do a little self-observation log for a couple of weeks, and let's just see every time you have an urge, you know, maybe delete an Instagram for a month.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's document every time you have an urge to hop on there.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: What was going on?
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, what do you notice about your experience right before you wanted to go to the typical tool that you have available, and what happened right afterward?
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's just a very basic day to day stuff that almost seems silly when you're talking the scale that a lot of these people are operating at, but is no different from anyone else in terms of behavior change and altering at the identity level.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's kind of those two layers to it, the macro, and creating enough space for the identity level questions to emerge.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the day to day, what's going on?
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are the triggers and how are you responding to them?
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what can we learn from that?
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And both of those become really important.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we've got a lot of tools for getting at them over time.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think what you share is so important here.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think in an AI world as well, maybe going to be increasingly so for everybody,
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: reinvention and adaptability is going to be so important.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also when the playing field gets so level because the barriers that stopped people building companies, you know, because they're just couldn't afford the resources I are just disappearing.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it comes back more and more to, you know, who am I?
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: What am I most passionate about?
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do I want to create?
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's something I like to believe this.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's true.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that when you can feel when something's solid aligned, you know, I mean, I know that's true in music and art and performance.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like you can just feel it.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that currency is going to become more and more valuable.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, in our team,
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're like, okay, we have to make space for the map.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We call it the magic, make it space for magic.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because otherwise, you get in that hamster wheel of doing and the processes and everyone's time is all squeezed and full and there's no space for that deeper observational presence space where where novelty and innovation creativity comes in.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the stillness is terrifying to people.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it just really is on average.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would say, stillness and quiet terrifies people.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, it's in, perhaps for a good reason.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's in the stillness and quiet when we really learn what's going on beneath the surface.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're able to see what emerges for us and what's going on emotionally, what's going on in my body.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Am I tired?
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, do I have grief that I haven't processed?
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there something tugging at me or pulling me forward that I may be not been able to see because that would require a lot of change of me?
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's so much that emerges in, yes, illness or presence that allows us then to have new material to work with, but choosing presence, choosing stillness
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we've got so much going on and so much we can turn our attention to it in any given moment, it's extraordinarily challenging.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm very grateful that it's built into my work and that I get to go away and be in presence with other people in our trainings because it's a forcing mechanism for me to do my own work as well.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't have that, you really requires a lot of discipline and a lot of choice to step into it because who knows what will emerge from it.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: feels like it's going to be coming ever more important capacity when uncertainty and the pace of change picks up.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like what is the one of the factors that will allow us to navigate?
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's going to become a prime kind of capacity is like, is present?
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you say, you know, we've opened up that topic and we're still going to come to the
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you think presence is important?
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, gosh, I could get some big questions a little a few years, so I'll try to keep it a little tight.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the fundamental level, I think being present to our own experience of the world, of our lives, of our inner experience, is the ultimate kind of tool that cuts across everything else that we do.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can remember at the University of Georgia where I went to college, I went through a two-year leadership development program that focused on individual development and organizational development in each year.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember thinking that I had so much self-awareness at the time.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were, and I knew how I reacted to things, and what was important to me, what my values were.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now, looking back, how shallow that was relative to what I understand of self-awareness today.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And all of that is rooted in becoming more present to my own experience at deeper and deeper layers over time.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, the importance of presence to me is that if we look out in the world, what we're faced with today, I think it's pretty easy to observe reactivity and leaders and to observe action that comes from on health or pain or vengeance or broken relationship dynamics.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of that, in my opinion, digs our holes deeper and forces us to do even more work over time to get back to even in terms of creating a sustainable, just and hopeful world.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of my core drivers is hope and not from a place of naive optimism but from a grounded centered reality of what's possible.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it is absolutely an necessity to be present to our own experience first.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We cannot create wholeness and hope from an inner brokenness.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just don't believe it's possible.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the president's piece is that's how we access everything that needs to be healed in ourselves.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when we acknowledge that, when we work on that, it becomes possible to then heal aspects of the world and the systems that we work with in.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these things are interrelated.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's only as we heal and grow ourselves that we can then heal and grow this systems we operate in.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when one stops, especially when the individual healing and growth stops, we're not able to grow beyond that and the systems we're in.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So to me, Presence is the entry point and to all of the growth that we're being called towards and all of the possibility for creating hope in the world, it begins with becoming present to our own experience.
• 27:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: For you, I see Presence based coaching as let me say this way.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see an emergency in the world.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've spoken about this on the podcast of
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: a different modality of coaching, which is less about performance explicitly and more about deeper transformation.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it works much more with the immediacy of the moment, rather than trying to kind of close the gap from one place to another, it's that the new identity of the way of being is
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, you mentioned presence as a healing factor and it's that this identification, I think this probably gets as to, you know, what you named earlier about the identity shift.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's the this identification in the moment from, you know, what was kind of half conscious.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: into a wider space that allows it to be met with presence in a way that, you know, this kind of healing and integration can take place.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's a kind of very different feel than kind of self-improvement paradigm, as we've called it, often Steve March has been naming this well.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, how do you see presence space coaching and presence in relationship to what I
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, the the term that I've used and working with clients is that my hope for them is that they'll get to a place of centered ambition.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not that we will take away all of their ambition to create or to build or to grow.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even a company or their revenue or whatever the metric is that they're using, but that it comes from a place of groundiness and awareness and intentionality rather than just automation and always chasing the next thing.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there's room for both that we can continue to grow and build things and see what we're capable of, but also not to do it to fill an unfilible hole at the identity level.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I say that, I mean that for me, my unfilible hole came from feeling that I was not essentially loved by my dad, even though I know for a fact that he did love me.
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's still with us,
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had to see the ways in which I was chasing, filling that hole of love that I wanted from my dad.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: In all of the ways I was showing up in the world, before I could then realize I can't do that that way.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no amount of achievement that will go back and change the way my dad and I interacted when we were younger.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now that I see that, I can also see the ways in which I'm
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: that desire is coming out sideways in my actions.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can say, you know what?
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to do that that way anymore.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm now instead going to choose pathways that are centered on who I am today and a trust that my dad did love me.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: and he is proud of me and everything I've done up to now can fit in that paradigm of he loves me and he's proud of me and so now everything I do going forward doesn't have to try and compensate for that.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just an example and a true one for my life.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if we come back to what happens at the identity level, it's learning what those unfilible holes are that we're trying to compensate for, that we're trying to account for in our actions.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And becoming present to them in my experience of this is that nearly every person I work with has a very long backlog of grief that they need to work through.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's big grief and it's little grief.
• 31:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was very short.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had a developmental delay where I was 4 foot 10 inches, going into high school, which is quite short.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And just the burden of that, of being made fun of, of how girls looked at me, of sports, just everything that that made it difficult.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so that's like a little thing of just day-to-day you experience it.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't really notice it as it goes along.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's things like trauma and real, real, real hardship that happens in an instant.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of these things add up to a backlog of grief, though, in the west, at least were very, very unskilled at processing.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in my experience, a big part of the thing that opens up the identity shift is beginning to process through some of that grief of our experience of life.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I don't go digging back into the traumatic history of my clients, obviously, I'm not trained for that.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what I am trained in is seeing the ways in which those same things that might be rooted in hardship from the past are showing up at work today.
• 32:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe someone's pretty sad for the amount of time they spent working while their children were very young.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they have yet to acknowledge that of how much it cost them to get to this point and what they've lost in the process.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But only once they've processed all of those moments lost with their young children, can they fully appreciate all the moment still available to them going forward with their teenage children, for example.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: and getting through that backlog of grief, kind of, if I almost think of it like brings you up to the present, the present moment, and then it allows you to begin working with where are you today?
• 32:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I won't say that the core thrust of my work is being a grief coach, it's definitely not.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an element or a stream of my work, but I do notice it's a trend that seems to be necessary for most everyone if they're going to work at the identity change level.
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that doesn't fully answer your question and all of the depth I could go into, but it's an example of the type of work that's necessary.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it and I think collectively that grief work is really important right now as we go through a transition.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's, I love hearing that you include that in your work and one of the conversations we've had on the podcast is this distinction between
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: therapy and coaching, and I think you named it really was a really clear way of talking about it.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't go back into the past and we're working with what's showing up here now in relationships with the coaching topic.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you work with grief when clients tap into it?
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's the kind of move you make in those moments with clients?
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I'm going to begin to sound like a broken record I can imagine and this will be a common experience as I continue to do this work I'm in now, but I think a huge part of my ability to work with grief is my own processing of my grief and really having worked through that and that being a huge aspect of my own development means that I can be present to someone else's in the moment without it triggering me.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I see it come up for someone, I really don't have the urge anymore to try and fix it or stop it or apologize for it.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can truly just be you and I together right now and as whatever needs to emerge emerges, whether it's tears or anger or whatever bodily sensations are coming up for you.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can just be here with you and I can allow you to move through them in the moment experience of it, which is a microcosm of the bigger process you're going to have to go through.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I won't say obviously that's not what leads us to getting to it, but I think a huge part of being able to work with things that need to be grieved is a tolerance for things that need to be grieved.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I notice that many people generally and coaches, especially when we're in training, the tiers of the easiest example are right because they're tangible.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: A tier is an extremely triggering thing for many people, because of so many things that we've experienced, whether it's stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about is like a classic kind of,
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: 80s, baby type experience that many people had, or just in it societal intolerance for people crying and it making people uncomfortable, we bring all of that into the coaching conversation.
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever our context is around sadness, grief, and moving through it.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I love to say, I look at my bookshelf right now.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: My number one most recommended book to clients and other coaches alike is the wild edge of sorrow by Francis Weller.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's the perfect approachable introduction to what grief really is versus what we think it is.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I observe that we think it is is when someone dies, we're sad.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's one little piece of how grief shows up in our lives over time.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's grief is the loss of every path that we hope to might come true.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the world, in our family, in our personal life, for our children, every path that we hope between might follow that is no longer available is something that can create grief and our ability to process that in the moment as it's happening and move through it, not to get to the other side, but as it's own skill set, I think is one of the fundamental skills needed for the world that we live in.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not to say that it's so much worse today than it ever has been in history.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: In many ways, the world is so much better and life is so much more comfortable for us.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But throughout every stage of human development at this societal level, there's been things to grieve.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And many, many...
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh, wisdom traditions have process and ritual for moving through that and we lost that along the way and so I think a huge piece is building the skill of recognizing, processing, and being in community with grief and as coaches our job is to do our own work on that just this is like everything I believe we can only take plans where we've been.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we have to learn those skills on our own.
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we can be present with someone else's grief and work with them through those same tools so that they can move through it.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you find that the grief, so you just named it, I think it gets us into the transformation as well, that so the clients come to you, they've got this thing going on and it's got traction, it's scale.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But now they've hit the wall and they've tried lots of things, but they've come to you and it's about actually it's not about only tactics, you know, maybe tactics are useful, but it's about this identity shift.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, is this where a grief comes in for you that actually what needs to be surfaced are the relational identity, they're at the identity that's showing up in relationship to the coaching topic, which will have this element of grief inside of it.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over this gets back to the identity shift.
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So can you work as how you approach that and then how grief often shows up?
• 38:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's how it shows up in the moment and the grief plays out in ways of you can imagine it as essentially a can't believe who I've had to become to achieve all of this.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe all I've had to give up to achieve all of this.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And only once I acknowledge that, can I then begin to embrace the choice that's in front of me?
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of how it seems ironic, because so many people become entrepreneurs so that they can have choice and freedom and the ability to do what they want, but then they end up feeling victim to or subject to the thing that they've created.
• 39:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's usually reflective of deeper patterns that they have going on in their lives.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of the process of identity changes, acknowledging and reclaiming agency.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: in all of the ways, acknowledging, for example, that I could choose to shut my business down today.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is a choice I can make.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could choose to go start looking for a job.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it seems absurd to most entrepreneurs that I'm working with because of the amount of money they're making and the resources they have available, but it's true, but many people can't acknowledge that until they say, but think of all that I've given up to get here.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so now we're tapping into the sadness.
• 40:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Think of all you've given up.
• 40:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: What have you given up?
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you name it?
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me right now what comes to mind that you've had to sacrifice to get to this point that would make it seem ridiculous to shut it down and go get a job?
• 40:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these are the kinds of ways that it starts to show up where maybe someone comes into a session and they say, I just don't know if I can do this anymore.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: tired.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm stressed.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: My team isn't doing their jobs.
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I don't have any ideas for more YouTube videos or Instagram reels to make.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: What am I doing?
• 40:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what are you doing?
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, wow, I think I'm supposed to be running a business.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think I'm supposed to be growing my audience and making all this money and launching a new product and making 12 videos and taking the sponsored work that's coming in.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot going on there, huh?
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I don't like any of it.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't like any of it.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's surprising to me.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it's going quite well.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I have a liked any of it for a year.
• 41:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's going on there?
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I started having to take sponsored deals for companies I don't actually believe in.
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now I make stupid videos about stupid brands I don't care about.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's gotta be hard promoting something you don't believe in.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I hate it.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to make a single video, because I don't want to keep promoting these things.
• 41:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, why'd you start doing that?
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I don't ask the white question in coaching, but for the sake of the story.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, someone offered me $25,000 for a single video one time, and I thought, can't hurt.
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot of money.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is a lot of money.
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Was it a meaningful amount to you?
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really helped me make the college payment I needed to make that month.
• 42:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you sacrifice something that you valued to make a college payment.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does that make sense in hindsight?
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, can you have compassion for why someone would make that kind of choice?
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what would you give up by doing that?
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I gave up a core belief.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I said I would always maintain, which is that I will only promote things that are truly believe in.
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't do that.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now I've made a habit of it because the money feels really good.
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: what flashes through their mind as they're thinking about the sadness is every single deal they did, where they promoted something.
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: They wouldn't actually want someone they love to buy, but they did it because the money was really good.
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is grief.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: In real time, emerging in response to a lack of motivation at work.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: and there's a thousand different versions of that, but I think that really brings home the way that this can show up for people and how they need to get to the point of saying, I don't think I meant to do that, so that they can say, do I want to keep doing it now that I'm aware of it?
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So imagine there's a process there that you're helping them in the conversation to recognize the patterns and the journey and in doing so, there's a kind of level of honesty and compassion and awareness which then, you know, and there's an embodied sense of just being okay just to feel that grief and it seems like also fear could be there too, you know,
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was afraid that if I didn't accept that 25K for the sponsorship, then I wouldn't have any money.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm afraid if I stop doing these things, then people will stop following me.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So do you often find that's a core component too?
• 43:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: for sure, and I'm glad you asked this.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we work in different channels of awareness, right?
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's what were you thinking?
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What were you feeling emotionally?
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: What did you experience in your body?
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are you experiencing in your body right now?
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: As we're talking about this, of course, there's the external context.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: What we're going on in your relationships, my kid was in college, that type of thing.
• 44:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we have these different ways we can kind of turn the lens on, the situation that was going on.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the invitation is usually to try and bring it into the moment of right now.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have something like this going on right now or can you imagine having a deal come in tomorrow?
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It says well now it's $50,000 and it's a brand you really don't align with what comes up for you and really trying to make it immediate Right here between us in the conversation and notice everything that happens for them.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have this urge to take it because of all these reasons and I have this pit in my stomach because I'm going to have to follow through on all of this work in the deadlines and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's okay, great.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you know what it feels like when you're in the situation.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: What else is possible right now?
• 45:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I guess I could say no, but it's $50,000, okay?
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's imagine some different future where we're out there and it's a year from now.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you've completely revamped the way you do sponsorships.
• 45:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you don't do them at all.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what you know is you feel completely aligned to the money you take and exchange for promoting things or to not taking that money and earning in elsewhere.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we get into this future state of what's going on, and what do you notice, what are you feeling, how do you know you've been successful, and usually what emerges like in this example, if you're listening, you might be able to say, well, it's just like take sponsorships from companies you believe in.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well sure, it's an easy thing to just say to someone, although that's not our job as coaches, but usually what someone has to arrive at is they'll say, well, I guess to stop taking money from brands I don't believe in, I'd have to believe it's possible to receive money from brands I do believe in.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: For sponsorships to work for me, okay?
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, do you believe that's possible?
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they do or they don't?
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: we work through the belief level and then say, okay, well, practically, eventually, obviously we get to some action that they're going to take in the world.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're observing themselves and the being part of being out there in the world as an entrepreneur or the action and what they need to go do differently.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in this case, maybe we end up at a spot where they say, well, I would have to be the one pitching brands instead of them coming to me for some period of time because I would need to make a list of all the brands I believe in and then go see if they'd be willing to do a partnership.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's an interesting solution here to this problem.
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So rather than just feeling what's coming in, you go out and you get the deals with brands that you want to work with.
• 46:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay?
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's exciting.
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: What comes up for you now?
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, now I have fear that they're going to reject me.
• 47:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't even know how to do that because usually I just get to say, yes, to things coming to me.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, great.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now we've got material to work with, right?
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you can't get there without acknowledging, I'm really sad I've been taking these deals that I don't believe in.
• 47:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: which goes back to that route of where we began the conversation on grief, sadness, and now it comes up in the moment and coaching.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: How would you then work with someone you've moved through that grief?
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you've got this material where, you know, I love what you're saying.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, they've kind of felt like what would it look like if I had what I wanted, what do I really want, what's aligned and they're feeling the felt sense of that.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: What then, but then this fear comes up, and, you know, there's the least around that.
• 47:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would you work through that part of the coaching engagement?
• 47:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is honestly one of the hardest parts for me as a coach, because once I can see it, because of what they're saying to me, and it seems pretty clear that they know what's needed.
• 48:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: like what the change is that would bring them into alignment, bring them peace, really ultimately what this is not what I sell, but this is what I think I give people as peace.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's my goal with my coaching.
• 48:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's to be for them to feel alignment in peace with where they are and where they're going.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And once I can see in an element that's clearly clicked into place, in the moment in the coaching session, this will deliver more peace for them.
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is very hard for me to know almost every time that they're going to dance on that edge for a month, three months, six months, sometimes longer.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before they're willing to really take the leap and say, okay, I'm going to give it a try.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: When that's happening, I really have to be at my best to have tolerance and unconditional positive regard and all of the qualities that we owe our clients as coaches.
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's really where my practice comes in.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of not pushing, not kicking them off the cliff to go do the thing I know that they know they want.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But to say, OK, they had to dance at the edge for a little while.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's my job to continue working with it, to let it keep coming up, to let them keep doing these deals that they don't want to do, because that's going to be the material for the point at which it ultimately becomes too painful to keep doing it the way they've been doing it.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're willing to confront the fear of this new way, the thing they already know that needs to be done.
• 49:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we'll force them to face all of these difficult emotions.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: they will come to it in their own time.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm not going to collapse in the face of that.
• 49:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll still hold the mirror.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll still reflect back what I've heard and how it's continuing to show up.
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's not my job and I can't do their work for them.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It takes something away from the client for me to rush it.
• 49:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think my job in that case is to continue holding the thread of the work.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: to say what I'm seeing developmentally, to reflect back when I hear them saying that they're taking another deal, using this example, that they're taking another deal that they don't believe in, to ask them how this is familiar or similar to ones in which they've said they didn't want to pursue it in the past.
• 50:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then to have ultimate tolerance for them making a choice that they say is not what they want, and to still believe that they have the possibility of growth in the future.
• 50:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, of course, a lot of coaches listening will really recognize this place that clients get to and that they can, you know, kind of stay or hovering around this.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, in a sense, like it's like they're still commit this still a commitment or an allegiance to
• 50:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: different parts of them, and I've also danced around this one, because it's an edge for coaching, isn't it?
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where it's like, okay, I want to be compassionate, and I don't want them to kind of comply, so I'm not going to come across this, you know.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: advocate and too strongly being a drill sergeant and things like that.
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But on the other hand, there is something about like provoking provocative and, um, yeah, not collapsing, as you said, you know, and it's a real dance, isn't it?
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is a real dance.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, to share, like, I'm not perfect on this either.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've had to have my own learning.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I'm always in my own learning journey.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can remember I had one client who,
• 51:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: They had an employee, okay, so I'll try and give it in a quick version.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they originally had an employee.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first employee they hired that became the right-hand person.
• 51:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: They relied on for everything.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Was an amazing personality fit for them.
• 51:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they let their guard down and really learn to trust.
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: very difficult for them relationally.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that person ended up having a child and left the company.
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this right-hand person that my client had relied on forever, that they grew to trust, that they let down all of their guard against left.
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this triggered so much from the past, a abandoned met knowing they couldn't rely on anyone, just a lot of different things came up.
• 52:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: They brought them into the company, they kept a little more distance from them, and this person just really wasn't delivering.
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they had been working with this person for a couple years by the time that I worked with them.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this was the history, but when I worked with them, they had the second person in the role that from my seat, clearly was not doing the job the way they needed them to.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they kept dancing up against this thing of I used to have this employee that I really believed in, trusted, relied on, and I wish I could have people like that, but I know it's just not possible anymore.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: As evidence by this other employee that I now have.
• 53:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking, well, you have to let this person go to find out.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can't, you know it's not working.
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like someone being an over romantic partnership that they know isn't gonna work long term and they stay in in anyways.
• 53:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a similar kind of dynamic.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But,
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were scared of not having any support at that point.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, if I let them go, I won't have the support that I need and I'll be overwhelmed and drowning in work and I won't be able to do what I need.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we sat on this edge for so long and it just kept coming up that they didn't feel like they had the support they needed at work.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't have the team in place they needed.
• 53:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were never going to be able to make progress session after session after session.
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And finally one session, you can imagine like a scene in a movie where someone's trying to like duck around a barrier or something.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like I was the barrier just with the mirror, and the client just kept trying to duck around the mirror.
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't want to look in the mirror, and I just wouldn't let them.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I said, you are staring at this thing, which is that you are scared of letting this person go because you don't want to open yourself up to the hurt of hoping for someone incredible and being disappointed again.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have said that to me, and you're continuing to tolerate someone in a role that you don't like working with and that isn't doing their job.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've showed me their metrics, you've showed me that it's not working, and it's been
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to your point, I was at the point if I have to be more provocative here because they are avoiding this to the degree that it is causing suffering for them.
• 54:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I will never forget the scene mail I got after the session.
• 54:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got an email from the client or a text.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember one of the other.
• 54:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they just said, I'm asking you not to approach that topic anymore.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You made me uncomfortable.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not ready for it, and you're pushing too hard right now.
• 55:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it was devastating.
• 55:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I thought, wow, I really pride myself on being a developmentally focused coach on being client focused on unconditional positive regard.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just, I pushed too hard.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was too much.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And over time, you know, in the moment, of course, I had a massive reaction of feeling like I had failed my client.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Over time, I think I've become a little more balanced that it's possible that it was in service of their development, even though it was deeply uncomfortable.
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I could respect the boundary going forward while that may be still being the right thing for them.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that I would do it a little bit different, but I don't think I was like 100% wrong in the situation.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I share this story because I think so often we share kind of from the mountain top coaching stories and not the what it's actually like to be in relationship to clients and to fail and to have to do our own learning and in relationship to that.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I won't say that that kind of thing happens all the time, but occasionally a couple times a year I probably do have a session like that at a breakdown with the client where I need to respond and I need to grow and I need to
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a thank you for sharing it because I think it's true.
• 56:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it would be great if we did share more of those.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: moments of where we did we didn't work out for us and because we learned a lot and I have I think this is one of the and he goes to something he said earlier which is like we've got to do our own work and our own development because those moments of struggle in my clients are as you say like they're a mirror back to me it's a mirror back to my own development as a
• 56:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: as a coach.
• 56:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is being a developmental coach is not an easy path.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a thrilling path because it is a real, it's like a vocation.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like I want to serve as deeply as I can, which means I have to keep looking at myself and the ways in which I get stuck.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a coaching and supervision has been important.
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: BB been someone who has, you know, the
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Getting you feedback on them.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, and I've done that in groups, you know, where people watch my coaching session, and it's, it's a very vulnerable thing, and it's, it's such a powerful learning experience.
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's very humbling, very humbling for sure.
• 57:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I get curious to go in the direction.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask you about presence-based coaching, but I'm curious.
• 57:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, for many coaches listening, I think they are too.
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you, you're building this coaching business?
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, do you find your clients?
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what's, yeah?
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's, can you tell me a little bit about being a coaching entrepreneur?
• 57:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think that's a, that's a skill that a lot of new coaches don't realize they need to learn how, how's that being through that journey and how do you find clients?
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it really is one of the most difficult aspects of if you're going to pursue coaching through the path of entrepreneurship, it's a separate skill set entrepreneurship from coaching.
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: In many ways, they couldn't be more different.
• 58:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Entrepreneurship you really have to be willing to promote yourself to put yourself out there to be self focused and coaching is so much about others and and of course there's the developmental aspect of yourself but I find that the same qualities that make coaches good at coachings often tend to make them bad at promoting themselves and unfortunately what that leads to is a lot of the people who are best at promoting themselves and
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: may not be great coaches, although they may claim the title of coach.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is one of the ways that the industry has struggled because the faces of coaching for the average person out there on Pick Your Platform, online, where people show up, think of coaching as the people best at promoting themselves.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: not necessarily as the people most skilled at helping their clients develop, because these things are not the same.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'll begin with a belief I hold, which is that I believe if you are a truly exceptional coach.
• 59:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I won't go so far as to say you owe it to the industry, but I do think that you do a great service to the industry by learning the skills of marketing and entrepreneurship so that you become a prominent coach that is aligned to where we want the industry to go.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll start there.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that there's something that you contribute to this industry by being more public by being more open, by being more present in the public sphere as a very highly skilled coach, which if you listen to this podcast, it probably means that you care a lot about the craft or you wouldn't be listening to it.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that means I'm speaking directly to you.
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're listening, I'm speaking to you about contributing to the industry by raising your profile.
• 1:00:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want you to
• 1:00:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: because what I noticed typically comes up is a lot of body sensation.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you have a pit in your stomach, maybe you have a fluttery chest feeling, maybe you have a tightness in your throat, all of these carry meaning for why you might hold yourself back from promoting what you do and getting in front of a potential clients.
• 1:00:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, principally, how do we get clients?
• 1:00:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do I get clients?
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll try and teach the lens of what I actually did, not what I think should be done.
• 1:00:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think in terms of what is the shortest possible path between you and your ideal client?
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it can be really easy to say, I'm gonna go build a big Instagram following and then I'm gonna build a newsletter that gets people to give me their email address and then I'm gonna do all of these email automations that are gonna teach people about what coaching is and sell them into my coaching practice
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, a lot of it's pretty stressful.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm always interested with folks of if you're thinking in those terms and you're not getting clients right now, what's a much shorter path?
• 1:01:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what's the shortest possible path you could follow to get in front of clients?
• 1:01:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the shortest path, in my opinion, is always email someone you know that would make a good client and tell them that.
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if I were starting, again, this is exactly what I did.
• 1:01:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I made a downloaded my list of contacts from LinkedIn, which thankfully I had maintained over time and it was mostly people I knew.
• 1:01:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I went through all 2000 or whoever however many it was.
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I ranked them on two scores.
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: One was likely to have a network of people who matched the client that I'm looking for.
• 1:01:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just gave a scale of one to three.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the second one was likely had to want to help me, one to three.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this just gave me a simple multiplier for every single person I knew on LinkedIn.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maximum scale of nine.
• 1:02:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So level three, they have a network that would help me level three.
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They want to help me and I started emailing the people with nine's first.
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, I'm starting a coaching practice.
• 1:02:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's the type of people I think I'm going to work with.
• 1:02:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I was horrible at describing who I wanted to work with, what I was going to help them with.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was mortifying looking back.
• 1:02:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it was through this process where I learned where I wasn't being clear.
• 1:02:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so close friends would email back and they'd say, I don't really get it.
• 1:02:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who?
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or...
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your framework, you know?
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the one, two, three of what you're teaching?
• 1:02:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, I'm not teaching.
• 1:02:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm coaching.
• 1:02:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I started to be able to see what was it that I needed to tell people so that they would know who'd ever refer to me or so that they would know that they were the right person for me.
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even though that didn't yield a lot of clients by reaching out one to one, it did it yield some initial ones.
• 1:03:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It gave me a lot of learning on how to talk about what I do, and so I really encourage any coaches getting started to begin with, who do you know that could either be a client or refer a client?
• 1:03:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this requires you to know two things, who's an ideal client, and it can't be anyone.
• 1:03:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And secondly, what is the transformation that you're going to help them through?
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you think about my story at this point, this is what I've grown to, not where I started.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I work with entrepreneurs who have large online platforms of hundreds of thousands to millions of followers, who are earning at or about a million dollars a year or more.
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And are looking to transition from being just a creative person to becoming the CEO of their company and all of the competencies that come with it.
• 1:03:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of how I position myself publicly.
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I know what I work with people on is so much deeper than that.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just about becoming a CEO.
• 1:04:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not about growing your revenue.
• 1:04:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about who you are as a human being.
• 1:04:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the way we talk as coaches is not the way our clients talk when they're looking for a coach.
• 1:04:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we can't use our like deeply spiritual, practiced, present language when we're trying
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we have to learn to speak their language.
• 1:04:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when you hear me talk about who I'm for, I'm trying to help them identify themselves in the language I use.
• 1:04:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then if I, so if that's who I'm helping and what I'm helping them with, I might list three to five common challenges people are having when they are looking to make this transition because they might not see them.
• 1:04:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I can't really want to be a CEO.
• 1:04:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, are you struggling with one of these three to find things?
• 1:05:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it might be stuck at the same revenue level for a year or more, feeling burnt out and victim to your business, like you can't take a vacation.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Having a team who's not performing and you feel like you can't get the help you need because you're the best that everything that needs to be done in your business.
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, things that people can relate to when they're in my client base.
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's hard is you have to pick.
• 1:05:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to pick who you're for and you really have to know them and what they're struggling with in the moment.
• 1:05:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these are precursors to being able to then going and doing outreach in any format to be able to effectively attract the right people.
• 1:05:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so who you're for, what you have them with, what they're struggling with, direct outreach to people in your actual network.
• 1:05:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: that you know that could refer clients or be clients.
• 1:05:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And once you've exhausted that and only once you've exhausted that, then we should go to other things that are slightly further away.
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So again, the principle is what's the shortest possible path?
• 1:06:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the shortest path is direct outreach.
• 1:06:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's next?
• 1:06:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I did was I figured, well, I have a pretty good network in this world that I have on entrepreneurship that I'm in.
• 1:06:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I bet I can go give workshops at conferences with relative ease and that'll put me in rooms with the people I'm talking about.
• 1:06:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I both got invited and pitched myself speaking as a workshop speaker, and my goal was to speak in rooms of advanced creative entrepreneurs.
• 1:06:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I looked for events where creative entrepreneurs were gathering and where they had an advanced track for their workshops so that I could at least separate the people.
• 1:06:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was looking for people at least earning a full-time living as an entrepreneur, a creative entrepreneur, and I wanted to speak in those rooms.
• 1:06:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I learned was that I was bad enough at telling people what I do, that if I could just demonstrate it, it would be a much easier shortcut to helping people know if they needed my help.
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So my workshop format became, if I had an hour, I would do 10 to 15 minutes of content and 45 minutes of live coaching.
• 1:07:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would usually work through two or three people who's many coaching sessions, right?
• 1:07:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't like a full, long, 45 minute with one person.
• 1:07:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I teach on something that I felt like spoke to a challenge that those people typically have, and then I'd ask for volunteers to be live clients in front of the room.
• 1:07:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this does two things.
• 1:07:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, it comes across like a high wire act.
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a magic show where people say, oh my gosh, I can't believe he has no idea what they're going to say, what's he doing up there?
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you trust your skill of coaching, all you have to do is coach.
• 1:07:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: and what it does is it sells the process for you.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: By doing it in front of a room, people can say, oh my gosh, did you see that moment?
• 1:07:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want that.
• 1:07:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I did that in front of rooms, that led to clients.
• 1:07:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And anytime I was at one of these conferences, I would also host a dinner party.
• 1:08:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I would book a table for 12 at a restaurant.
• 1:08:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would go through the speaker list and the attendee list if it was published.
• 1:08:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: If there was an app, I would go through all the people that were attending.
• 1:08:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would invite about 20 people to get 12 attendees.
• 1:08:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was trying to invite people I thought might make great clients.
• 1:08:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It would typically cost me 750 to $1,200 depending on the city we were in to have a nice dinner, you know, a couple bottles of wine and just buy everyone dinner.
• 1:08:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't, there was no pitch.
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I said, look, these are, this is peers getting together.
• 1:08:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a peer to you, you are peers to the people at the table.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to build community at things like this.
• 1:08:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't like going to networking events, so I like to create the space.
• 1:08:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just come join me, I'll buy your dinner.
• 1:08:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: and we'd have dinner.
• 1:08:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And typically we'd all exchange contact information.
• 1:08:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the biggest change I made that started yielding clients instead of just making it a nice evening with other talented people was when I got their contact info within the next week I'd send them a voice note.
• 1:09:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And only if they were an actual fit for my coaching practice, I would just say that to them.
• 1:09:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone got a voice note, thanks for coming.
• 1:09:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was delightful to meet you.
• 1:09:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here was something that stuck out to me about you.
• 1:09:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for the people that were a good fit, I'd say, and you're the type of person that I started my business and the hopes that I could serve and work with someday.
• 1:09:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so never any pressure from me, but if you are ever in the market for a coach, I hope you'll call me first.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that one change started yielding multiple exploratory sessions after every conference that I was at where I hosted a dinner.
• 1:09:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because people, like I was talking about the type of people I worked with, and the people who I was talking about didn't see themselves in it, they were too humble.
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were still thinking of themselves like they were five years ago, not like how I see them right now.
• 1:09:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so me saying to them, I'm talking about you,
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: made a huge difference for them to want to have a conversation with me, and so if I think about how I got full, that was it.
• 1:10:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was the whole plan, and I got full doing that, and then a whole bunch of other stuff started working from there.
• 1:10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you're starting, that was the whole game plan.
• 1:10:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't do my podcast.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have Instagram content going on.
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't really getting many referrals at this point.
• 1:10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just reach out to people directly.
• 1:10:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: give workshop set at conferences where I did live coaching and host dinner parties where I then follow up with a voice note and that was it.
• 1:10:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was the whole thing that got me full.
• 1:10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.
• 1:10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of, um,
• 1:10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't know for a little blueprint because, you know, I guess everyone's going to find their own version of what you described, but it's it's bold to and it's, you know, I think a lot of coaches struggle with that, you know, like you said before, it's like they love the intimate conversations with people.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: putting the spotlight on others but actually getting out there and the world interacting with the kinds of people that they might coach is more difficult and that but I noticed like because I have coaches who reach out to me and it really works you know I mean I do it with clients too it you'd be surprised by how a meaningful people are to
• 1:11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you say, like, you know, that you're the kind of person I love to work with, could we have a conversation?
• 1:11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think I could support you.
• 1:11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, you don't even have to say that in the initial reach out.
• 1:11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just say, hey, and discovered your work.
• 1:11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is who I am.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can we talk?
• 1:11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But people, people love it.
• 1:11:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: they really do.
• 1:11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean just to emphasize that point last September, I emailed a client.
• 1:11:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've now been working with for about five months and it had been on a little to do list on my desk.
• 1:11:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can actually point out it right over there.
• 1:11:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Email name.
• 1:11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Since I met them at a conference eight months before or something like that nine months before and finally one day I had an opening
• 1:12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've had on my to-do list for nine months to email you and say, ever since we met at the event we met at.
• 1:12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have thought you would be a perfect client for me.
• 1:12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I can help you and you are exactly the kind of person I hope to work with when I started my practice.
• 1:12:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And no pressure, I'm not going to follow up a hundred times.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you think you would benefit from coaching right now, I'd love to have a conversation.
• 1:12:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they replied, and they were like, you know what?
• 1:12:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I thought that ever since we met, too.
• 1:12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what's funny is I was so busy over the summer and earlier this year, I couldn't have done coaching.
• 1:12:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you had reached out earlier, it wouldn't have worked.
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But right now, the timing is perfect.
• 1:12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing this, this and that, and I need help on it.
• 1:12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to schedule next week.
• 1:12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is it going to go that way every time, no?
• 1:12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I just said, look, I've won opening right now.
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're the person that came to mind when I thought who would I like and not opening.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was true.
• 1:13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was honest.
• 1:13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was open handed, just like everything we do in coaching.
• 1:13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the response was, I've been thinking the same thing.
• 1:13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it's just not that complicated, but it is scary.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: because what we think is, well, that person's gonna email back and say, how dare you, this is a ridiculous email.
• 1:13:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe that you take this approach with people or whatever story we have in our head, right?
• 1:13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And most of the time, like let you need the name the story because that releases it.
• 1:13:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So name the fear thing and take it all the way to the end.
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then they're going to go on social media and tell their million followers, what an idiot I am, and then I'm never going to be able to coach again and like whatever.
• 1:13:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Great.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you name the really scary version.
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the best version now?
• 1:13:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do the best version too?
• 1:13:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now what's the average of those two things?
• 1:13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the average of those two things is more often what's going to happen.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that as coaches, we have to learn this skill set of asking and naming and sharing what it is that we do and for whom because that's what allows us to get to do what we're great at.
• 1:14:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the cost of doing the work that we're really meant for to your point of following through on our vocation is a little bit of discomfort.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in doing that, I think you'll have a lot of empathy for the process your clients are going through.
• 1:14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's beautiful.
• 1:14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we could talk about this for a long time, and I want to make sure, as we, so maybe there's a part to coming up, you know, I feel like absolutely there is actually at some point.
• 1:14:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do want to give some space.
• 1:14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: talk about presence-based coaching and you've taken on stewardship for it.
• 1:14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you give us a sense of where presence-based coaching is at in terms of what's going to happen now and what your plans are for it?
• 1:15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the coaching schools, let me say this, I get emails from people a lot saying, who do you recommend
• 1:15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where was where should I go and get like awesome coach training and there's like three four places.
• 1:15:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I always ask like are you a bit like this or a bit like that?
• 1:15:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's like three four places I recommend present space coaching is absolutely one of them.
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, could you tell us a bit more about what you're applying for it?
• 1:15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:15:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, number one, thank you, Joel.
• 1:15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm really honored by that.
• 1:15:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, that's a reflection of Doug, the founder of BB, who's been the steward for the last eight years.
• 1:15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm really grateful for that.
• 1:15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, I feel the same, which is why I decided to take this path was that from what I've seen in the coaching world and what I experienced, going through presence-based coaching training was that,
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I developed to such a great degree by going through it that it couldn't help but translate to my coaching work.
• 1:16:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yes, we teach coaching, but really we teach you being the client and developing on your own so that you can serve your clients.
• 1:16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that process was so beautiful for me that
• 1:16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: when BB asked me, if I would be open to a conversation about this, it felt like a no-brainer.
• 1:16:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Actually several months before I had such my wife, I don't know when or how, but this feels like a thing that I'm supposed to be involved in.
• 1:16:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually said this feels like a thing I'm supposed to run.
• 1:16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: In my mind, it was like in 20 years or something, not immediate, but within six months, BB had reached out and proposed this.
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: President Space Coaching has a long history of about 20 years that it's been around.
• 1:16:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was started by a man named Doug Sillsby, who passed away in 2018 of lung cancer.
• 1:16:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would say he was one of the kind of like leaders of making the coaching industry into what it is today.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: and he had a background in mindfulness practice and somatics back before that was certainly I think that was popular in the coaching industry.
• 1:17:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a master coach with Strosi Institute and brought all of this work together.
• 1:17:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: He saw an opportunity to bring together
• 1:17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: neuroscience, semantics, or what happens in the body, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence all into one curriculum where you can learn to tap into all of these different channels in your client's development and that he could teach it through the lens of experiencing it as you go through training.
• 1:17:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think one of the most surprising and beautiful elements that people who come to training is that we don't do simulations, we don't do theoretical conversations.
• 1:17:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: You get to be both client and coach throughout our training.
• 1:17:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so if you and I Joel are training together and we're partnered up for this exercise, maybe we have an hour together, we're gonna practice a coaching framework.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're gonna get 30 minutes as client, not gonna get 30 minutes as client.
• 1:18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: and we're bringing real issues in our development, real challenges that we're facing, and we're working on those together.
• 1:18:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what happens through doing this is because of the structure, you get to experience being a client, you get to experience being a coach, and you get to experience being an observer of the process for everything that we teach.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because you get all these different lens on it, lenses on it, what I notice is that it really depends the level of awareness of what it actually takes to help people through their development.
• 1:18:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so anyways, not to go full sales pitch on it, but that's why I find it beautiful is that we really give people different seats and different lenses on what it means to coach and to be coached.
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I hope we're going to do going forward is that I would say, BB was the perfect steward for making sure that the work lived beyond Doug and keeping it stable, keeping it steady, keeping the quality exceptional, and we've continued to welcome, we probably have trained about 60 to 75 people per year over the past five years.
• 1:19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: My background in entrepreneurship and leading companies means that I've got this perfect blend of real coaching experience and operational experience where because of how high quality I think that our training is, I want to reach more people with it.
• 1:19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want us to serve thousands and thousands of people.
• 1:19:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think if we can grow towards serving several hundred people every year, that would be a really great outcome over the next few years.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what we've got coming up is we'll continue to offer our two signature programs, present space coaching, which is our entry level, living in presence coaching course, which is our advanced training, these are level one and level two in ICF terms.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll expand to out here near Portland, so we've traditionally done training on the East Coast near Asheville, and we'll have training footprints both in Asheville and here in Portland for folks in North America, depending on what's more convenient for you.
• 1:20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll run more programs than we've run in the past, just in terms of quantity and date available.
• 1:20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then what I'm really excited about is Doug had a stream of work.
• 1:20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just happened to have this book on my desk right now, not a purpose, but it's called President Space Leadership.
• 1:20:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was Doug's third book.
• 1:20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would say it was the work emerging for him when he got his cancer diagnosis.
• 1:20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, he actually finished the book almost exactly when he was diagnosed and this stream of work essentially flips it and takes all the same coaching tools and looks at it through the lens of leaders or clients and Doug's terms or you're in my terms and says here's all the same tools but for you as leader.
• 1:20:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I actually think there's a 10 or 100 x greater need for that in the world than there is to train coaches, not because coaching is not important, but if you just think about proportionally what do we need?
• 1:20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, every coach needs 10 or 20 clients.
• 1:21:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that inherently means we need 10 or 20 leaders out there in the world.
• 1:21:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Leaders of families, leaders of communities, leaders of organizations, leaders of governments.
• 1:21:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to bring that work back, that was a training stream that we did for many years as an organization, and that we haven't been running for the last few years.
• 1:21:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to run pilot program to bring that back.
• 1:21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was traditionally run and inside corporate environments or organizational environments.
• 1:21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to open it up for public registration for leaders, executives, managers,
• 1:21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: activists and start running that out again this fall and I think that that will be the thing that actually becomes even bigger than the coach training work over time.
• 1:21:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know this of course will have to see how it goes but I have this hunch that leaders are thirsting for deeper work, deeper knowing of themselves and a deeper understanding of the complexity of the world and all that we face.
• 1:22:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know for certain that the complexity in this world is growing, not shrinking with time, and the leadership skills required to adapt to that are going to be more and more complex in response.
• 1:22:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we have something that we can share with those folks.
• 1:22:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So anyways, that's a lot of where I see us growing is
• 1:22:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: establishing a base of training for coaches that we maintain and that we fill on an ongoing basis.
• 1:22:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then really seeing how can we go meet leaders where they are in the world and train them in a similar methodology but through the leadership lens.
• 1:22:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that may create some interesting overlap over time for those communities to intersect.
• 1:22:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's beautiful.
• 1:22:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when that book came out and it's maybe in a sense it was like ahead of its time and yeah, it's very rich and I think now people really see that presence is one of those capacities that we need.
• 1:22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if I have to
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: as things break open and become more fluid, it's the presence that is actually the grounding capacity that allows the complexity to shift from being that something that's overwhelming a little bit scary to something that's actually its life unfolding and coming forth and there's
• 1:23:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think you're right with it.
• 1:23:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The need is there for leaders and they're sessioning it now.
• 1:23:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
• 1:23:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:23:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so yeah, this has been such a enjoyable conversation bar.
• 1:23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really really enjoy speaking with you.
• 1:23:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Got to share that.
• 1:23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, that's the silly.
• 1:23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't just say, yeah, thank you.
• 1:23:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But just saying that because there's something I said at the end of podcasts,
• 1:23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's like, yeah, just just really great to meet you and I hope we get the chance to do this again on the podcast and thank you for sharing so generously and authentically about your journey and the work you do.
• 1:24:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you, Joel.
• 1:24:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very, very mutual at everyone who I thought I was doing this told me that I would really enjoy meeting you and you did not disappoint.
• 1:24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been really, really delightful.
• 1:24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'd come back anytime and I hope we have a lot of overlap going forward.
• 1:24:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
• 1:24:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just come where can we find out more about your coaching and present space coaching?
• 1:24:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the team set up a little quick landing page for listeners at barrettbrooks.com slash rising.
• 1:24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll offer a couple of resources there in a way that you can stay in touch.
• 1:24:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you can join my email list, presence-based coaching email list there.
• 1:24:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just give people one place to go.
• 1:24:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's B-A-R-R-E-T-T-brooks.com slash rising.
• 1:24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great.
• 1:24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll make sure we link to that in the show notes as well.
• 1:24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 1:24:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, barrett.
• 1:24:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:24:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Joel.
• 1:24:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here we are.
• 1:24:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're at the end of the podcast.
• 1:24:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just have a heads up again.
• 1:24:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coaches rising.com.
• 1:25:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Put your name in the sign up box there.
• 1:25:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll also find some about other offerings or online trainings for coaches there.
• 1:25:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just want to end by wishing you well and I'll see you again next time.