Founder & MD of Archipelo Coaching with a background as a commercial sales leader in some of the big dog media organisations, Gary shares some of his story to help us look differently at selling and move to a more confident style of listening and serving our clients as they decide whether to sign up.
AKS: 0:00 Welcome to A Listening Life, the podcast for coaches who are finding it really hard work to build a sustainable, profitable business, full of clients. I am Aly King-Smith sharing inspiration, stories and lessons learned from some of my successful peers and colleagues who have managed to crack the code and break through. My conversation today is with the generous and giving Gary Cole, founder and MD of Archipelo coaching.
GC: 0:25 “Replace the word selling or flogging stuff, which is the market trader image that people have, with you, are simply seeking to help them. Helping versus selling. Everything is an experiment. One of three things happen when you try and experiment, you either hit the jackpot, it fails, or you find something in the middle where you can evolve from it. So there’s a two out of three chance that an experiment will kind of go someone, gonna be brave enough to try these things and to give it a go on.”
AKS: 0:55 A Listening Life is a business dedicated to helping coaches who are tired of trying to grow their business into something that makes them happy and brings in the money. Podcast, events, mentoring and courses. Find us on Instagram at a Listening Life and through the website listening-life.co.uk.
My conversation today is with the generous and giving Gary Cole, founder and MD of acapella coaching. Like me, he has a commercial sales background before becoming a coach and then a leader of a consultancy. So I was especially keen to invite Gary to speak to me, trying to work out what we can share sales leaders to help where we coaches get going more easily is the focus of my work at a Listening Life. So we both hope this conversation really helps people who find sales cringy to recognize that it is possible to do it without the cringe and be a thoroughly good guy like Gary. So introducing Gary Cole, speaking to me in September 2022 from his office online.
AKS If I take you back in a time machine to the moment in your business coaching career, so your second career, I think at-least second, where you suddenly thought I think, “This is a thing, I am going to be able to do this as my main job. My Listening Life is my main business life.”
GC: 2:12 I probably would say there’s two answers to that I will probably park the second answer and give you the first part, which is I have had a successful corporate leadership career. I have worked at O2. I have worked at ITV, telegraph, few startups. And I would love it. Sadly, I think the last job I had at OTU was on paper, my dream job, it was the commercial director for a large part of O2. But in reality, I was really just analysing spreadsheets and playing political games in leadership meeting environments. And I felt like really what had got me to that position in the first place was, one of the things that really taken me through my whole career, was actually having a sort of natural connection and talent with people, people of all types, my customers, the teams that used to work for me, and my stakeholders. And I felt like I was spending less of my time doing that and more of my time doing parts of the job, which I have had to learn to be good at and I didn’t like at all. So I didn’t find it nourishing and I have the chance to leave on a voluntary redundancy basis. And I remember that I had an incredible zeal and determination and grits to commit to my wife that I said, “I am going to do this and give me a year, and I will make a career, I will make a successful... Year one will be as successful as my last year at O2. And if it’s not, I promise that I will go back to the corporate world.” So I sort of gave myself a challenge. And I respond well to personal challenges. And actually, I had quite a high desire to not return to that environment. I felt like I would have had a good chunk of my career and life at that, in that time, but I desperately did not want to return to it. So I felt an incredible grit and desire and zeal to make a success of it. So it was June 2012 when I set the business up, which was just over 10 years ago.
AKS: 4:16 Brilliant. So some real fire into the pan there of, “I have promised my lovely wife not going to make this work. And I now have a year,” So what happens then?
GC: 4:26 Oh, well I initially set the business up without having done my professional qualification. I chose to do the PG cert with barefoot. So I was actually, sort of set the business up and I was out selling my very rough raw and ready early product offering before I was even qualified as a coach. And I only had really one job in the whole of the back end of 2012 and my first job was working with the NHS, the leadership team at the NHS in Sussex. So I can’t really claim honestly that... so my first paying job was 2012, but really, I always feel like January 13, was the day that I kind of really started trading properly. But I did have that initial three-month period where I was selling it, feeling like a fraud, genuine fraud, I think because I was selling my services as a professional coach without having been qualified. But it was something that I was prepared to do just shorten that timeline, and get myself towards that goal.
AKS: 5:28 And we will know lots of people who are wonderful coaches before the coaching qualification that just takes it deeper, I think, doesn’t it? So I am sure you were delivering great people development at that stage. And I am going to come back in a wee while to when you describe that very easily as an offer a product and offer. So I am very tweaked by that. So let me come back to that. But for now, keep going. So you have had a brave first few months, you have been to London NHS contract, it would be interesting to find out how you got that as well. But now we are in January 2013, you start to feel like it’s the new year, it’s the proper launch?
GC: 6:01 Well, I know, a big part of this conversation today is to help people pick up small tips, big tips of anything they can do to help themselves. And I would like to be really honest and say that. First of all, I got an introduction to meet the CEO that was from a mutual business contacts, we might return to the power of your network a bit later. But I was lucky in the sense that I did a very good job of my first intervention, I did with that leadership team. And the CEO said, “Will you stay on doing two days a week for nine-month period?” And I agreed to that. Now I look back. And I consider that extremely lucky for me. And also not luck. But it was fortuitous for me at that time in my business. Because that essentially enabled me to transition. I didn’t then have this kind of huge binary lights on, lights off moment or off lights on moment. It enabled me to transition, it enabled me to have enough as a financial buffer to use the rest of my time to fine tune and give myself a bit of breathing space to take my acapella to market. And I think if I could go back in time, I would definitely do the same again. And my early tip for people to listening is think about your transitional journey and do not do big. It’s just a question of risk. If you do big, like lights off, big lights on. It’s just a question of risk. And I think I was lucky enough to have a transitional period were of nine months to really almost essentially do two jobs, which was to continue setting up my business. But at the same time, earning a consultant wage with the NHS.
AKS: 7:35 Yes, you can obviously imagine I am itching to project that the idea of it being lucky because it’s lucky that the NHS team near you needed some development. But it’s not lucky that Gary Cole ended up with an interim job that just made that transition easier. So I have heard some nice stories of people building that transition. Some people have done it by having a big pot of cash ready, so they can work for a year without needing to earn any money. Other people have done it with a few days a week working for someone. Other people have done it by working in a cafe for a bit while they do some coaching. But I really agree with you that some thinking around that transition is very healthy, very helpful for getting braver, because then you make better decisions, don’t you? Based on it safe, it’s an abundant mindset.
GC: 8:19 Yeah, it certainly gave me in a cold hearted, callous business sense, it gave me a financial buffer. So then I could let use the rest of that time to trial and pilot’s conversations. I wasn’t under pressure as I wouldn’t have been as under pressure as I would have been had. I have just gone out cold and said, “Right, my business now lives, coming by for me.” So I think the transitional year of 2013 really helped me, just almost as a bedding ground. And I think I am humble enough also to say as well, I think it took me at least that long, if not some years later to overcome a quite genuine sense of self-doubt, ego fear, impostor syndrome, all of those horrible things that we all go through. It enabled me to just work through some things myself internally. And I think we all have it, every person I know does and anybody that doesn’t admit to it is a bit of a liar, I think but I certainly had it and it just enabled me to perhaps soften my feelings of self-doubt. Like I was a fraud as a professional coach.
AKS: 9:22 Yeah, nice. So there must have been a bridge period then. So we go from an interim that’s working to that moment when you think, “Oh, this is properly working now.” So what happened to step over that hurdle?
GC: 9:36 Probably, if I go back a tiny bit, my career in the most simple sense possible was I worked in professional sales worked in professional management and I was of course a professional leader. So as a direct consequence of that, my proposition that I created an acapella was ostensibly, almost like a tiered level of services, which is I will help you lead better, I will help you manage better and I will be helping you sell better. So my products have a very kochi spin on it, but very much based on my historical career experience, and I think they gave me a level of assurity and confidence that I knew what I was talking about. It was the approach I was continuously trying to get, right. So in that lovely period of 2013, when I did have that transitional phase, I was able to sell my pants off, quite frankly, to all sorts of people that I knew, lots of people I didn’t know. I am good at selling. And I do like selling. And I was able to convert a lot of those into 2014, but of course, it was just me. And, when you are selling a company of just me, and I was punching way above my weight, some very large organizations to some very experienced teams and, I got away with it, and I did okay with it. But I think, I do think I look back at the turning point, at some point in 2014, when I realized the value, stopped saying me and I, because you do look like a one-person band doing that, and to start selling the product the company offering on the basis of wheat, and the us and suddenly you sound like a lot more credible, and stable, and a bit more the sort of company that larger organizations would like to work with. So that will happen for me in probably 2014, I would say.
AKS: 11:23 I hear so often coaches saying that they hate selling, “I don’t like selling.” And I was talking to another colleague who knows you and actually named you as one of the generous mentors that she had lunch with when she first got going on Elaine de la Cruz, she’s got a sales background. So I am interested to hear that you have and I have and just wondering how we can share some of that love for selling as opposed to the fear of selling. So when you say I do enjoy selling? Tell us a bit more about that. What is it that’s nice for you about the selling process?
GC: 11:55 Oh, that’s a great question. I think if I was to go back to my previous life in my previous career, I would probably have asked that quite different to now actually. And I think that’s significant in my response to you, because I think what it always used to be about was almost like spin like a game. It’s like you are playing a game of sports, the trial and error that the cut and thrust, the rejection, the failure, if you win the game 3-2, to use that my cheesy sport analogy, if it gives you an incredible sense of satisfaction and achievement. And I think that people that are good at sales have that sort of slightly diehard determined attitude. I still have that in me. But I do honestly think that even in my previous life, the very best high performing salespeople were always the quiet people who lived in the shadows. They were always the quiet people who asked the most excellent questions. They were not the ones that were the fast talkers, the ones that kept to a patter. They are not great salespeople, they are actually the worst average performing salespeople, and they always have been actually. So if you drew a Venn diagram of professional coaching and professional sales, you end up with a huge overlap in the middle, which is curious, non-judgmental. When I say non-judgmental, I mean, you are not trying to seeking to manipulate, you are genuinely trying to understand what somebody needs and why. And perhaps even be daring enough to hunt for the unsaid when you are selling as well in the same way that you would do when you coach. And I have found that since I have become a coach, since many years later, since I have become an experienced coach, my selling has become incredibly more effective as a result. And I sometimes I look back 15 years ago, with my head in my hands, I don’t just don’t know how I used to sell in my previous life. And I would like to reassure... sometimes I feel quite strongly about, honestly, because there’s a lot of unhelpful thinking, beliefs and assumptions that a lot of people have about selling because I think they have a mental image of the worst salesperson they have ever dealt with. And, whether that’s a dodgy car dealer or a recruitment consultant, or an estate agent, all these horrible images that people conjure up in their minds, they often think, “I just don’t want to look like that person.” And the shortcut is slightly, but I do believe that people think that when they are selling, the image of the person they are selling to of them is of that worst person they have ever had that experience with. And I think quite genuinely now, I do authentically believe and I think this is an authentic belief rather than a spin belief, if I am helping somebody I am seeking to help somebody but if you believe as I do, that my company provides services to help teams and companies perform better, then the sales process is a joyful one because it’s the start of the process of helping me understand how I can help them perform better. So if you replace the word selling or flogging stuff, which is the market that people have with you are simply seeking to help them. Helping versus selling. I know that’s a simple reframing thing. But if you have got to believe it, of course. And I think so there’s something around that which I think is quite important.
AKS: 15:08 Absolutely. Spending timing. I was literally half an hour ago walking my dog around the field picturing the Venn diagram in my head of what the overlap is having had this conversation about selling and coaching. And I think there’s even more in the shared spot in the middle around and understanding body language when somebody’s loving something and find something helpful as a conversation. Understanding motivation, understanding values, understanding how to provide the right solution, because you have heard the problems really beautifully. The Venn diagram overlap is giant. I think, perhaps the only difference on the sales side is that you have got something in mind that you are trying to also bring to the conversation, which is a coach you would be trained not to do. But I think the best sales outcome comes when you are willing to release that anyway for, “Our solution isn’t the right one for you, but I have got a mate who could.” And then if you think with abundance around those lands, you are not flogging anything anymore. You are genuinely in a win-win conversation, which can only go to places because the people that you say we can’t help, will always come back for another conversation about something else if it’s been helpful.
GC: 16:19 Correct. And I think you have just put a light on, there is a quite an advanced but simple piece of the Venn diagram where coaches and great salespeople overlap, which is are you prepared to authentically offer, the talk yourself out of business on occasions in the... That cliche of lose the battle win the war. Well, are you prepared to lose the battle in front of you, in attempt to that respect and authenticity, you will pay dividends with somebody a bit later on? But even before you get to that stage, though, I do think that, if you are in perhaps sales and coaching mode together. I still sometimes revert to even when I am coaching senior execs, when I am helping them to improve their influence. So whether it’s influencing another human being internally, or whether you are selling things, the crux of it is a desperately simple model that I always follow called “find out, show how”. So bad salespeople will always go to the “show how” first, because they are taught, right? So as coaches, we should be able to write down 5 to 10 of the most amazing questions that the person in front of us never heard before, we should be able to do that. And be fully to fit enough to ask those questions in response, rather than planning them. Once you have had enough, you just have to then say, “Well, I have got something to give you. I am going to show how what I have can directly and authentically help you with what you have told me and I am going to show you how every justification of what I am offering you has a link to what you have told me, because I have listened, I have listened so well.” That quite frankly will help somebody feel understood. If they feel understood, they will probably progress with you. If you offer them something which is not aligned to what they have told you, they need, you quite frankly, you look like the dodgy flogger, but there is a desperate simplicity to effective influencing and selling which is find out first. Show them how what you have will help them with what they told you. I sometimes even say to people that I coach, very senior leaders, I am like that, you go to a restaurant and you have a fantastic server. Great service will always recap what they have heard before moving away from the table. And that actually is a demonstration that you have listened well. It takes guts to do that. And to do that in a professional sales environment takes guts, it’s okay to say if I miss anything, is there anything else that I have missed that’s important? Because until you have completed that circle of find out properly, you are incapable of sharing how properly. And just as it is so simple, but it is amazing how many people do get that a little bit wrong?
AKS: 18:59 Yes, absolutely. And we all know that being listened to and having it summarize makes us feel valued and heard and respected and it’s a virtuous circle. So let me go back to this word products and offers because I found in my business... I was initially just building everything brand new, every time I had a conversation so I did listen really well then I constructed something brand new every time. And I am constantly treading the step over to creating some offers some things bespoke but some offers which will fit to solve lots of problems, which then becomes scalable. Looking at your website and listening to talk. It feels as if you have got some forms of offers as well in your businesses, is that right? Do you constructing things that clients can look at and understand what they are before they meet you?
GC: 19:49 Yeah, a tip I would offer and I think something probably my greatest personal strength over the years is I am highly responsive and I am very willing to I tweak things that I am doing in the pursuit of making them even better, or, even more effective for a client or even more effective for ourselves. And so that kind of evolution not revolution, I think is a... If you see life like one big experiment, which is how I often start my chemistry meeting, “Jesus, like, we are just going to be creating a series of experiments, they are not tasks and actions, you are gonna leave here, and probably car crash with them.” But you got to see it like an experiment. And anyway, that’s a side conversation. But that said, I think you do need to have that sort of courage of your conviction of what you are... In restaurants, I think they call it a cheerleader product. What’s your cheerleader on the menu? Is it the fish and chips? Is it the burger and chips? And I think there is something to be said about backing, what your cheerleader offering and product and service is? And then innovate from there. I think there is a slight danger, there’s a balance to be struck somewhere. Because yes, you continuously evolve and experiment to make it better. But you don’t want to continuously chuck the baby out with the bathwater, either. So you sort of have to start somewhere. And I think the final thing I would say with that is that, no, of course, even just the last three years, just with a pandemic, I think that’s a great skill to, I think as coaches, it should be good to listen to one person, but we also should be good at observing what’s going on around us as well, environmental thing, shall we say. And I think I probably observed quite a lot of new needs that had emerged from our existing clients, during the pandemic around, people lacking in connection, how to manage and lead in environments virtually, for example, and all this kind of thing. And so we did a whole series of quite quick innovations around those things who, quite frankly, give people’s answers to the problems they were facing. But I would still say they were innovations on top of our solid cheerleader product, rather than, new products and services.
AKS: 22:02 Rather than back to the whiteboard again, start from the beginning. Yes, yes, I think that’s exactly that reflects our experience as well, were having something to hang your hat on that when people read about it. They recognize themselves in what you are saying, I think is a great start. So we have a product lab to leadership, which is very obvious. If you are a scientist is going to help me step out of the lab into leadership. It doesn’t need reinvention every time and that’s been really helpful for people understanding how this is where they fit, but doesn’t mean that that’s what we do with everyone, for everyone, all of the time. I do think it helps you fit in. So you have a niche sector, don’t you? Or do you still stay in the media sector? Was that your cheerleader sector as it were?
GC: 22:48 Oh, yeah. Quite honestly, I think if you would have asked me that question four-ish years ago, three-ish years ago, I think, rough numbers, but I think about 80% of our company income would have come from the media tech and entertainment industry, which is a probably a direct reflection of not just me, but also the whole team’s network. However, if you ask me now, it’s literally swung completely. So we are now 80% multisector, 20% media. And we are. Furthermore, we have really grown internationally, sometimes as a result of working with satellite offices, from the head offices in London, but also a massive driver of our current businesses is working with on-video with companies. Like I did a project back in June for an organization in Auckland, it was delivered virtually, I have to work from 9pm till 2am, a couple of times a week, which was tough. I had to eat some jelly babies to get me through that one. But actually, that’s really opened up our primaries. So all things considered, whilst it’s been a very tough three years for everybody, for lots of reasons. And myself personally, as you professionally speaking, I think it’s really helped us really open up many, many new doors to new sectors and new clients and new territory.
AKS: 24:05 So the niche conversation, which I have a lot with new coaches, it feels as if you have taken the path, which is the one I say is worth stepping on to if you don’t know where you are going, which is find the niche that super familiar to you. So yours was media-tech, the creative scene, and start somewhere. So now you are all over all the sectors. But that’s where you began your journey. Do you think that represents what you are describing there?
GC: 24:33 Yeah, that’s a good. Thank you for just sort of gently calling me out on that, just because that’s where we are right now. Actually, where we began was very much me selling to my inner circle of network that I had as a legacy from my career in the media industry. So that was probably... And I often like to think of it like if you compare it to the metaphor of climbing a mountain, and the mountain might have five stages on it, multiple footholds on it. Stage one, to your point, I absolutely do think that it’s helpful to have a very clear product that answers a very present problem in an organization if you are selling to organizations, and it does make complete sense that you have some credibility and known network in that immediate space. So I do feel like that. You can’t move to stage two at the mountain, I feel until you have perhaps cracked the first phase. So, I don’t know, to use my cheesy analogy of a mountain, I might be on stage 5 years in. But I have had to kind of slowly evolve through many stages to kind of get to the place where you are working globally, in multi-sector in FTSE listed businesses. It didn’t accidentally happen like that. It was a big journey.
AKS: 25:48 Didn’t wake up there. Yes, absolutely. So let me take you back. You mentioned stakeholders, “You said perhaps we will come back later to talk about our network and the way we can be helped by our network and stakeholders.” What was that on your mind when you were saying that? What do you think is helpful for people to think about?
GC: 26:03 I don’t mean to, perhaps get anybody to get anybody to suck eggs here. But in perhaps sales, you will often end up labeling an opportunity or a conversation that we are having with a temperature gauge. So you will often say, “It’s really cold, or it’s really hot, or it’s warm, somewhere in the middle.” And I just think it really simple terms, if you are contacting somebody that you have no previous heritage or conversational relationship with, that is cold. And that is a is a high risk, low reward kind of pathway, in fact, as a... So the other end of the spectrum is when they aren’t very... that person very well, you have got an established relationship, a clearly, you would want to be spending your initial efforts in some of those people to not just sell to directly but something I learned is there’s a side tactic, which I think is very beneficial, which is actually sometimes to ask for people’s help, and support and advice, because I think people are really willing, often to help people. So you might not be selling directly to your inner circle of hottest existing stakeholders, but ask for their help. Who do they know that would be worth speaking to? Just ask that question, to say, “Do you know two or three people that you wouldn’t mind introducing me to so if you really...” I did that a lot in the early days, and people are willing to help. And if they really know you, and really respect you, they will, of course introduce you to one or two people. Again, that person you are then being referred on to you is still in a warm, hot bucket. So you are standing a high, much higher chance of having a meaningful progression to turning that into business. I think that I do see a lot of people spending far too much of their time and energy on social media or blogs or LinkedIn, but you are fishing in a pond where it’s cold. And you there’s a lot of disproportionately ineffective energy, I think people spend in that place, were probably should search a little bit harder, a little bit sharper with the network that they know.
AKS: 28:09 Yes. Even I think there’s an additional twist to that. We are talking about LinkedIn, some colleagues recently, and they said, “Does LinkedIn work for you?” And my response is, “It really does work for us, but through warm contact.” So I think we put out content which we know our advocates like and share, and then they tell people to contact us. So I still don’t go for cold contacts on LinkedIn. Because well, maybe, perhaps once in our 10-year history, we have had someone who was bang on for what we were talking about. But it’s usually I keep our company present in the minds of people who care about us, and then it works. So it’s still the same warm context.
GC: 28:49 I completely agree with that. I love LinkedIn, I like looking on LinkedIn, what’s going on myself as a consumer. But we use it a lot... But really for a sort of PR benefit, which is to your point, we like to just remind people, it’s like, “Hey, we are doing good work over here. It’s just we just like to remind people.” But I think there’s a very indirect link to then the sales process that we have, it’s like, “I don’t post on LinkedIn and then hope that I will sell something. I just don’t think that, that kind of works in that way.” The other thing I would like to say just at this point, that is all about sharing tips. And I would love to pass on a piece of wisdom and insight actually from a good friend of mine. Spencer Gallagher wrote a book called Agencynomics, so it’s about marketing agency. So even if you would like working in marketing agencies, the book is awesome because it’s all about how to kind of grow a small business actually. He said to me very cleverly about, I think it was roughly 2016, he said to me, “Your problem is you are selling too much, because you are good at it. And you are not...” He said all of the... He came up with a model called 10-30-30-30. And I would like to share this because it kind of really did rocked my world at the time. And it did make me change my approach to trying to win new clients, which is 10% of business will be lucky, you can’t predict it. The other 30% should be sales and marketing. So literally you selling or you marketing, but the other two 30% really sort of rocked me, which is that 30% should be thought leadership. And the other 30% should be partnerships and referrals. So if I just explore quickly the thought leadership piece, I mean, within that you have probably gotten the blogs and all that kind of thing. But I took the opportunity to launch a thought leadership club for our best clients. At that time called, “The Naked Coaching Club,” which is fee free, we don’t seek to charge ticket prices for it, never have, and I doubt we ever will. But we get people to come together often is peer learning, which is why we call it Naked Coaching Club, got to come in prepared to bare your soul a bit. Or we kind of share knowledge and new things with them. Now, that has been a tremendous booster over the years for our very best clients to give them something back to nurture those great relationships. And quite frankly, to then re-engage in some new opportunities in sales conversation. We still do it; we probably should do more of it. And the other one is partnerships and referrals. So I have a couple lives still, if I go back to the 2014, 2015 era, I had eight different agreements with kind of relatable organizations in my space. So I had an agreement with a recruitment consultant, a sort of.. a pure play business consultancy, that didn’t coach and more or less what I said to them is, “Look, I noticed that they were also inside clients doing their work at the same time I was in a client doing my work.” And I said, “Why don’t you tell me which other clients you are in, that I am not in, and you refer me in. And I will do the same for you. And I will just give you a cut of the revenue.” And I mean, one year, it’s a lovely story that I helped one of my partners get into about four clients. And I think from memory we generated him and his business about 80,000 pounds in one year. And he gave me some business worth 80,000 pounds and 500 pounds. And he said that on that basis I owed him some money for the 500. So I said, “Let’s just go and get a cheap lunch somewhere, we can pat ourselves on the back, we have to show the business.” But that is much more effective. I think, spending money on Google keywords, Facebook ads, whatever it might be. I think that’s risky. And I think that partnership piece, it’s just being a bit more creative and wily and resourceful about your inner network. And so partnerships really did help me in the early days of me.
AKS: 33:02 And it serves so many other needs as well. The need to belong, need for consultation, for sharing all the things that people who say they are lonely as freelancers would also need. So that who’s playing in the same playing field that I want to be honest, such an easy start of where to go looking. But I also think that’s helped by having a niche in the beginning. So say you are in the science sector, who else is in the science sector, I think it’s so useful. I had a moment of what the devil should we do, a few years ago. I think we just finished a great big project. And I did that thing where you look at and think, “Oops, I have been really busy coaching. And it’s not enough in the pipeline.” And we just exhibited at one very specialist exhibition. And it really focused my mind so much on who else wants to be there. Who else is in the mid tech sector. And suddenly I knew who to speak to and where to go. And I was really energized by that. I would definitely recommend that to coaches sitting at the desk thinking I am really jaded and stuck and I don’t know where to go, just decide where to exhibit and play there hard. They are really milk it for everything.
GC: 34:08 Yeah, and I know that it’s all well and good talking about our or my successes in the last 10 years. But actually, I have tried lots of things that have crashed and burned as well. And I think and that’s why I have just returned to that mindset of everything is an experiment. One of three things happen when you try and experiment, you either hit the jackpot, it fails, or you find something in the middle where you can evolve from it. So there’s a two out of three chance that an experiment will kind of go somewhere, but you have got to be brave enough to just try these things. So in theory, your exhibition could have bombed but you wouldn’t, you weren’t to know that. But you have got to be brave enough to try these things and to give it a go, I think.
AKS: 34:47 Yeah, there’s a level of risk really, it was an affordable exhibition with a lovely group of mates who were on the team. So we had, the worst that could happen for us is that we spent a little bit of cash and had a really nice lunch in Birmingham. There’s nothing bad that could happen. I think that binary success or failure is not something that resonates with me so much. I think it’s rare that you have a total bomb go off. It’s very rare that isn’t it?
GC: 35:12 Yeah, but also just a very, very micro, desperately simple technique within the thought leadership piece, which is part of excellent key account management, which is a dry phrase for selling to your best customers. But I have historically... And some of my team at doing this regularly, as well as just sometimes send of really relevant, highly beneficial pieces, like a news article you might find, or a new book you might find, just something like a little kind of mental snack, shall we say, a little article, or a little video or anything. Send onto your best client and say I thought of you when, “Here is the article here. I am sending you this article, because I know that you are really challenged with a lack of connection in your workplace with employees.” I am just making that up. “So this article is about how to reconnect people in the workplace. So I thought you would really benefit from that, I hope you well, speak to you soon.” At no point, are you saying I am contacting you to sell you stuff, of course, it’s implied that you kind of would like a conversation. But the very fact that you are helping them with quite an incisive, helpful, directly relevant and beneficial piece of thought leadership keeps you in their mind. So when they are ready to say, “Oh, I have got a new coaching program to talk about, or I have got a new team that aren’t getting on very well, I need your help to come in and maybe...” It’s you, they come to you first, because you are the one who’s always looking to help them. And I used to do that a lot more. I have perhaps become a bit not complacent. But things have moved on a little bit trusted in our business now. But I used to do that a lot. I used to very, very hot on that. And you know what, takes very little time, very little time. And it’s highly effective. So again, I would encourage that.
AKS: 36:57 Yes, it’s nice to revisit these and polish those up. I was just thinking the same, oh I used to do that, as well. But I think I do do it now, but not in such a planned way. But I have had some questions recently from coaches who are a bit stuck saying, “How terrifying it is on a Monday morning to sit and think I actually haven’t got anything to do this morning. I don’t know what to do.” So thinking of some projects like that, to finding some great bits, to send to great people, is a nice piece of ritual, a bit of a something to put in the diary to get going. So, I have got so many things I would like to ask you about, but I am aware of time. So I think I would love a few happy to take you right back to the very beginning. So two things really, one is any top tips you have got that you think we might not have covered for people just starting out? And the other if we have time is actually how did you get that first piece of NHS work? So how did you step out of a job and actually start some work? So people who are genuinely I have got nothing going on.
GC: 37:58 I will probably pick up just on your thread of how you finish the last conversation really, which is that feeling of waking up on a Monday morning with. Where do I start? Blank piece of paper, that is an unhelpful belief and assumption right there, isn’t it just right there. So I am gonna say something a bit tough, actually, which is that, I am humble enough to say that I went through some professional learning with a lady called Claire Breeze, who was a client, but it’s [Unclear 38:26] amazing. Her whole approach is that look a bit harder inside of you, rather than reading a yet another book, look a bit harder inside you before going external for help. And, when I was going to jump ahead to some insight I was given when I was 17 year old, I do my A-levels. I was a lazy student in the summer holidays, and my best friend’s dad sort of lounging around on his sofas, and he came back from work. He said, “Boys, if you don’t have a job, your job is to get a job. I want you to spend 40 hours this week looking for a job. That is your job.” I can still remember it as clear as a bell. And I actually think that you are starting out, I think that somehow you need to sort of look a bit inward to self-coach and park that procrastination, that kind of foggy feeling that you don’t know where to start and actually look at it like if I was being paid several 100 pounds today to work as a freelance for a company and I had to pull my socks up and give everything I have, leave nothing on the table. What would I do? What would I achieve? I won’t go too much into my own time management techniques, just because... That’s not what this is about. But I am very clear every single day on one thing that I have to absolutely do for myself, will do for the business. I don’t list out 25 things, I don’t keep it to do lists but I am super-super clear. Firstly, on a Monday morning, what my five hour are> Each of the five days of the working week. I don’t project manage it. I don’t say Tuesday I am gonna do this or, I am literally very clear on one thing, just the primary thing I have to absolutely work to a world class level up or to my level. And I am not prepared to sacrifice those high standards. And I do think that basic discipline will always trump sporadic motivation. It sounds so cliche to say that if you were to hear those words of my dad’s late father, your job is to get a job. If you don’t have a job, it’s like, well, it has to start with a granite discipline of like, what is the one thing I am doing today? And just absolutely seek to smash it beyond what you think you are capable of, those moments add up, that five a week, 20 and a working mum, 60 in a working quarter. If you are applying yourself to the best you can be in those micro amounts, suddenly, sorry to sort of ramble on about on that, I do actually think if I didn’t apply myself in that way with that rigor back in the early days, because I also had the self-doubt. I am not good enough. I am a fraud. I had all those whispers in my head like everybody else does. And I had the blank piece of paper procrastination, but the antidote to that is to stare it in the face and do the opposite really.
AKS: 41:14 Yeah, absolutely. And do it, do something because it’s really doing something because I hear a lot of coaches saying, “I hate marketing. I hate putting myself out there. I hate, I hate.” And I am split, I was actually really pleased to hear you say on another podcast, I think you were talking to Kim Morgan, a real sort of tough talk around, well, you cracked how to be a coach. And now you are going to have to crack, how to market yourself as a coach? If you genuinely do not want to do that, and hate that whole process, you should probably get a job, job because you can’t get clients without getting clients, right? I have got a real tough line on that. If you make some miserable, you might not want to do that you might want to do something different.
GC: 41:52 That’s 100%. Also, the hard work in any for any high performing team or high performing an individual is that the hard work will always happen in the shadows when no one sees you doing it. So if you are Gordon Ramsay with a Michelin star restaurant, it’s the person who cleans the fridge, that all contributes. And just to use a personal analogy, it was raining really hard this morning, I didn’t want to walk my dog, 20 past 8 this morning for working in the torrential rain. But that’s my duty as a dog owner, you can’t just say, “I am not going to...” And I kind of feel like, “Yes, I am sorry, dog, I can’t take you off. You just sleep, I am going to...” I don’t love it. In that moment. I hated it. I did not want to do it. But you just have to do it. And I know that I sound like somebody’s father right now. But it’s a bit like actually, that kind of sometimes sort of suspending that perceived choice that you have and thinking like, operate like your back is against the wall, because it is then sort of micro amounts and digestible incremental amounts. I do believe that is the magic formula to one day, coming up for air and saying, “I am feeling like I have made some progress. I am feeling like I have got the green shoots of something here to work from.”
AKS: 43:07 Yes, there’s a pipeline with things in it. So I am gonna have to come back to the NHS question I asked you, how did you get from day zero to have got into the NHS lead team? Was that a friend that introduced you in there? Or how did you just get your first thing?
GC: 43:23 Well, I think in that sort of late spring summer, when I had just found a business, and I literally did have a blank piece of paper. So all that procrastination that we have been talking about, I have definitely had it then. I drink a lot of coffee in coffee shops, with people. And as I said earlier in the podcast, it’s Dale was saying, “Could you help me introduce me to?” So I think that it popped out of one of those many conversations. And I think from memory, it was a lady that used to coach me many years prior in my career ITV and I was picking her brains, because how did you make it and co-chair and get all that kind of thing. And she said, “I could introduce you to contacting in my network, I can’t do this job. I think he would be brilliant.” She’s looking to essentially take teach the executive team how to influence the GP community better, rather than being..and so basically selling, in a crude sense, and she said, “I can’t do it, I think you can. I will introduce you. Are you happy to do that?” And I remember feeling quite scared which was ludicrous because I would have spent my career doing that and but that’s how it came about. I don’t think she rang me up and said, “Hey, I have got an intro for you.” It was because I went sort of politely searching for it.
AKS: 44:45 You making me think of Paulina Teenies song, “I am out and about. So I am in with a shout. You have to be out and about, to be in with a shout and then things...”
GC: 44:54 Well, funnily enough, I am not a fan of cheesy motivational quotes as a coach. I try my hardest not to use them as a coach if I am honest, but there was one thing which sort of sums up what this all takes. And it’s actually from Michael Jordan and the famous basketball player. So it’s even more cringy when people quote very famous. But I am gonna go through it. He’s got this quote. He said, “I missed 100% of the shots, I never took.” I think it’s one of those quotes, actually, I am gonna hear that again, three times in my head. “I missed 100% of the shots, I never took.” somebody out there trying, somebody, your competitor is trying to take that shot. And they might just make it. They might just make it if they try it. But if you are not making that micro effort, that brave attempt that courageous call or, somebody else is, so try and take 100 shots and one of them will go in, I am sure.
AKS: 45:55 Huge thank you to Gary Cole, one of those people who comes up in conversations all the time with coaches who rave about his generosity and kindness in business, a great conversation sharing that if we genuinely seek to understand what someone needs, we are thinking of selling as a helpful process, not a tricky one. And working out how the skills of coaching are actually incredibly similar to the skills of selling. So where’s the block? Thank you, Gary Cole. Always a privilege to spend time mulling over these things with you.
My huge thanks to producer Steve Folland and to Lauren hills at HQ. And Listening Life is a business dedicated to helping coaches who are tired of trying to grow their business into something that makes them happy and brings in the money. Podcast, events, mentoring and courses. Find us on Instagram at a Listening Life and through the website listening-life.co.uk.
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