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41. Optimize Yourself With a Business Coach with Alexandra Phillips
9 Plays3 months ago
Alexandra Phillips is a highly-accomplished executive leadership coach and member of the Forbes Coaches Council. "You don't need a coach to transform your business," Alexandra says right off the bat. "But, as a coach, I accelerate that transformation."
She helps high-performing teams and individuals clarify their goals, create actionable plans, and engage in the purpose-driven work that feeds your soul and fills your pocketbook.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Strategies to elevate your leadership (even without a team) and drive impactful change.
- The value of personalized coaching in accelerating personal and professional growth.
- Techniques for 'optimizing yourself' and overcoming energy blocks.
- How to give yourself permission to make new choices and prioritize yourself.
- Why coaching is an emotional and financial investment in yourself.
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
LINKS:
- Connect with Nicole
- Connect with Mallory
- Connect with Alexandra: www.copperowlgroup.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandraphillipscoach/
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Transcript
Introduction to Unbound Turnarounds
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice.
Podcast Goals and Season Focus
00:00:11
Speaker
We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound. Our mission is simple, make business feel better. And that starts with honest conversations about the ups, downs, and turnarounds of entrepreneurship.
00:00:26
Speaker
So whether you're just starting out or you've been your own boss for years, tune in for stories, insights, and strategies that actually make work work for life.
00:00:39
Speaker
All right, welcome back to Unbound Turnarounds. And just to remind everyone, this season, we are talking all about different kinds of support and systems that small business owners can use to run their businesses.
Guest Introduction: Alexandra Phillips
00:00:51
Speaker
So we're really excited for today's guest because she is getting into business coaching.
00:00:56
Speaker
So Mal, let's welcome her in and tell us who we have. Yeah. So today we have Alexandra Phillips with us. Alexandra has over 15 years of experience as an executive coach, senior trainer, and lead facilitator. After receiving her executive leadership coaching certification from NYU in 2014, she started her executive coaching company and has been providing coaching and consulting ever since.
00:01:22
Speaker
As a business coach, a central focus of her work is to enhance her client's understandings of their EQ and their ability to positively impact their working environment. Alexandra is a frequent contributing author at Forbes, the conference board, and monster.com, and has facilitated countless off-sites including the conference board's Women Leadership Conference.
00:01:43
Speaker
Alexandra's graduated cum laude from Brown University and has a magna cum laude degree in acting from the Actors Studio Drama School, which is cool. She's a graduate of the Stern School of Business, Strategic Steps for Growth, WBE program, and is an ACC accredited coach through the International Coaching Federation, and she's a certified disc practitioner.
00:02:07
Speaker
Alexandra is also currently pursuing her Executive Master of Arts in Change Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Columbia University Teachers College.
Why Coaching Matters
00:02:17
Speaker
You are one busy lady. She lives her experiences through the lens of ADD, is a wife, a mother to two sons, and she is a witch. So Alexandra, we are so honored to have you today. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. This is so much fun.
00:02:35
Speaker
So I'm curious about many, many things in your bio, but I want to start out by just saying, you know, as we kind of figure out how women can lean on business coaches for support, why do you think that
00:02:52
Speaker
small business owners should consider hiring a coach. And we'll talk about what kinds of coaches and how to find one. But at a core level, what's the takeaway? Why is this a benefit? Awesome. Well, I think that the key point of coaching is really, really important is that you really don't need it. So the most important piece about coaching is you absolutely do not need to hire a coach ever. You will absolutely get to the
00:03:21
Speaker
transformational change on your own. You will come to those conclusions. It will happen. The reason why you hire somebody like me is I help you do it faster. That's the only reason. So the luxury service is just in time management. That is it.
00:03:41
Speaker
I didn't expect you to go there. I'm so, I love that you're so honest and I wasn't expecting that. So that's a great start. I love that too. Cause it's kind of saying it's reminding us, you know, we have the answers within, but just having that sounding board and that person is really can accelerate it. And I think that is beneficial, a huge benefit actually.
Delegation Challenges for Entrepreneurs
00:04:00
Speaker
Now, okay, people buy in, let's say, but hiring coach is a big investment, right? It is a big financial investment. Most importantly, it's a time investment and you're investing a lot of emotional capital because it's not going to be an easy fix because usually the challenges that are holding us back are challenges that we have encountered before and we're hanging on to them for good reason, right?
00:04:28
Speaker
We want the things that are holding us back. And so if you're getting ready to let go of the things that are holding you back, there are a whole bunch of pieces that come along with that. There's going to be a little bit of a grieving process. There's going to be a little bit of a shift. You got to let go of who you were to become who you're going to be. It's not going to be easy. So hiring a coach, it's not only a financial investment, which is a thing. Absolutely. It's not inexpensive. But you also have to dedicate the time to it.
00:04:58
Speaker
Ideally, you want to dedicate the time in between sessions to allowing the learning to take hold. And then most importantly, you're also allocating a lot of emotional resources in the time that you're invested in coaching for those shifts and changes.
00:05:15
Speaker
So when you say, I love what you said about challenges usually being things that we have encountered before and that we're holding on to for a reason, can you give us some examples of common themes like that that you've seen with clients?
Leadership and Personal Efficiency
00:05:29
Speaker
I'm guessing there are several.
00:05:31
Speaker
The biggest one that comes for pretty much everybody is a challenge of knowing how and when to delegate. Usually you can do it better and faster. True story. You can probably take care of the challenge or the action in front of you faster than teaching someone how to do it.
00:05:49
Speaker
And so then it becomes a challenge of do I invest the learning time at the outset to take this away, this challenge potentially on a way down the road. But more importantly, then I also have to release my attachment to the outcome of the thing I'm delegating. And that can also be a big challenge because now I have to trust in someone else.
00:06:16
Speaker
And if I have a decent amount of success, especially as a small business owner, I probably haven't had to do that. Yes. Okay. So do you find that as a coach, you're able to be
00:06:29
Speaker
a bit of a mirror for people to understand why they are holding on to those challenges that they have over and over and over and over again. Because I feel like sometimes I could be like, here's the things I run into, but I may not be able to see here's why I keep running into them and why I'm actually choosing them.
00:06:48
Speaker
Absolutely. So all of our professional bad habits we are choosing. Anything that's in our way, we're making a choice around. Now, yes, there are circumstantial moments that happen that are outside of our circle of influence that contribute to challenges. Absolutely. You can't always know the market. You can't always know shifts. But those are outside of the internal challenges that will be there no matter what, right?
00:07:16
Speaker
If I'm having a challenge delegating, I might be at max capacity in having the challenge of am I really going to be a bigger business than I thought I was? And there's a little bit of a narrative around that too. What if you're encountering a significant amount of success? And what if you have friends, relatives, colleagues who had traditionally been in a similar space and now you have to reconcile
00:07:43
Speaker
a shift in your self narrative. Their narrative is you. It's not always just, I need more clients and I need more contracts. Sometimes, and that's always lovely, it's always love to have resources. I'm a big fan of women making money. I'm a big fan of women making a lot of money and releasing some of the challenges that we have around being financially
00:08:07
Speaker
abundant. Absolutely. But I also find that there can be challenges around dropping into that space of abundance as well.
Intuition and Energy in Business Leadership
00:08:17
Speaker
I mean, that is a unique challenge for women business owners. And we've talked about that in different episodes. So it's refreshing to know you're helping guide people through that and come away with takeaways and some more understanding on that topic.
00:08:35
Speaker
Now, I know that intuitive leadership is one of your main coaching styles, if you even call it a style. But can you talk to us about what that even is and what that means? Sure. So for a long time, I have been able to access pieces of intuition
00:08:53
Speaker
I'm an empath. I can connect with a spiritual side that I really have kept quiet for quite a bit of time, mostly in terms of or mostly in service of what I assumed was everybody else's narrative, right? So I'm like, great, I'm going to keep this piece to myself. But the truth of the matter is, is that this is a modality that I engage with. It's been something the same way. I'll say like, you know, you might know somebody who's particularly useful with language.
00:09:21
Speaker
They might speak lots of languages. I showed up on the planet rather fluent in energy, and I've always been able to read energy.
00:09:32
Speaker
why not use the things that I have at my disposal to help my clients move down the road faster? So yes, like behind me, I have a moon calendar only because it serves 100% of the time. If I'm not paying attention to the cycles that are coming my way and I'm trying to engage in a growth cycle when we're really in a release cycle, I'm working against the universe.
00:09:58
Speaker
It's not to say I can't get it done. It's just why not choose the times of the month when it's going to be most valuable, right? And if we acknowledge that tides are a scientific piece, right? We acknowledge that the moon pulls on our tides and it affects like how we fish or how we consume things or any number of things. We might also want to recognize that the natural cycles of the Earth and the universe influence
Efficiency through Self-Understanding
00:10:24
Speaker
How we engage in business as well and I only do it because it like I said I have success 100% of the time when I pay attention to things in front of me
00:10:37
Speaker
So quick follow-up question on when we even say leadership as a word, you probably have some clients who are literally just, it's just them in the business, right? And what can leadership look like for someone that doesn't have a team or doesn't have employees and doesn't even maybe have contractors?
00:10:58
Speaker
They're just maybe, let's say, a graphic designer on their own, totally solo. Like, what does leadership mean in that situation? You know, one of the things that's been very valuable to me is understanding how I can be the most efficient version of myself or Alexandra.
00:11:17
Speaker
which is to say that that's going to be different than the cold. That's going to be different than Mallory as somebody who has a rather late diagnosis of ADD, which thank goodness. But what I have learned is how to put in safeguards for myself and optimize my own efficiencies so that before I had a team, I could lead myself, right?
Strategic Planning and Goal Setting
00:11:44
Speaker
I need to be able to set a schedule for the day. I need to know when I'm working as a working parent. I also need to build in transition times because I know they're super important for me, especially if as many people go back to work after their kids are asleep. I can't go from bedtime routine straight into crafting proposals. I need to build in a little transition time. It might be I need a cookie. It might be I need some sort of like
00:12:15
Speaker
time to bring myself back into it, but then I'm happy to do another 90 to 120 minutes worth of work. It makes perfect sense to me, but knowing how to optimize how I want to be led and to lead myself there has been extraordinarily valuable. It seems like it may even be something where if we can just pivot our mindset from
00:12:38
Speaker
things happening to you to not only in my leading myself, like I am setting the direction of the way my life looks, the way this business looks. And sometimes we can get really caught in like, I built this thing and now I'm stuck in here versus, you know what, I actually have some agency here over what this looks like. And like you said, how your days run, like you're allowed to put in transitions, you're allowed to,
00:13:04
Speaker
change the way your business looks and that that feels to me like another piece of leadership even if you're on your own to just say okay like what direction are we even going in? Absolutely and the important part as you you know kind of to go back to the first question you were asking is why is coaching valuable is beginning to create the strategic plan for yourself so that you're not just a
00:13:28
Speaker
operating in, you know, deliverables for that day. Some people might get fancy enough to operate in like week long deliverables. But what is your strategic plan for yourself? So I've totally drunk the Kool-Aid of what I do and I create my five year plan and my three year plan and I do a one year plan every year. But then I'm also really invested in quarterly markers. Because every 12 weeks or so I feel I could get enough Intel to make a new decision.
00:14:00
Speaker
But if I'm going to implement something new, like if all of a sudden I'm going to do cold outreach, which I have to be straight with you, I don't do a lot of because I don't like it.
00:14:10
Speaker
I said it and then I was like, ugh, no, I'm not doing it. I don't mind doing a lukewarm outreach, but I don't mind doing these things. Let's say I'm going to do an initiative where I'm like, okay, look, I want to do some biz dev and I'm going to do this for a certain amount of time. If I do it for week one and I don't see a return, I haven't really given myself any information to see a return. But if I give myself a solid 12 weeks, then I can begin to map what has been and might be valuable or repeatable in the future.
00:14:40
Speaker
And it gives you some permission because you have that data set then to be like, you know what? I'm allowed to change the plan. I made the plan. I can change the plan. Cause I think we also get into, we made the plan. Now we have to stick to the plan. You're like, you're the one who made it. Like what? Or is it just me? I do. You have to be able to switch, but you want to give yourself enough time to decide whether or not you're switching for an emotional reaction.
00:15:10
Speaker
or a response. So a reaction is something came up to me and I don't like it and I'm going to react. But a response is I thought this one through, you know what, as Alexandra, I don't like cold outreach, so I'm not going to do it because I can't get my heart and soul behind it. Now, if we talk in 10 days and I'm like, because usually when I say I don't do something is when I'm just on the precipice of doing it, so don't hold me to this.
00:15:36
Speaker
What I'll say is that if all of a sudden in, you know, another cycle or another quarter, I decide that that is going to be a valuable endeavor, I give myself permission to make new choices. If I stuck with the choices I made when I was like 17 or 18, I'd be running in a theater camp in Vermont, which would be awesome.
00:16:00
Speaker
but that's not what I want to do any longer. Yeah. I like this conversation so far though, because what we're saying is a coach can help you set these strategies and these goals, the different intervals of times, right?
00:16:13
Speaker
But it goes back to what you're saying about then creating these small tactics to succeed in those goals. And those are more at the daily level. Like how do I want to feel during the day? How am I going to operate during the day so I can be successful in these goals? And I think that is where the coach can step in and help you see that and realize and identify
00:16:33
Speaker
Or if the answers are within, just give you the space that's dedicated to figuring that out because so much of that is just taking time to listen and talk it through with someone, right? Absolutely. And what I'll say to people when they're engaging in one-on-one coaching is your coaching session is basically a date with yourself. Here's my time with me that I will not dedicate in my schedule if I'm not paying for it.
00:17:00
Speaker
which, for better or for worse, is usually how it goes down. If I've given a significant amount of resources to someone else, I will hold myself accountable to it. But if I put it in my schedule, I have a much larger chance of booking over that time and also not being able to guide myself to the solutions I know that are valuable for me.
00:17:27
Speaker
Love
Exploring Purpose in Business
00:17:28
Speaker
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00:17:57
Speaker
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00:18:05
Speaker
So what other coaching methods or themes do you talk about with your clients? Cause I know you've also talked about purpose-driven work. Is that something that you talk about still with a lot of your clients or are there other ones? I do. I find that, you know, purpose is such a challenging one and it's actually come up quite a bit because I feel as though my client base goes in waves, but right now my private clients tend to be in a rather accomplished space and they're looking at legacy.
00:18:35
Speaker
Right, so they're looking at, okay, where do I land now with this? And how can I place my purpose here in the world? And sometimes it's like we're looking for purpose and it's under the seat cushions. It's like, oh, there was my purpose. I've been looking for it for so long. Thank goodness I found it. But I find that purpose is not something that you were looking for and can't find. I find that purpose is a series of actions we're taking
00:19:05
Speaker
And then my purpose is how other people experience the world when I'm walking a truthful narrative. So when we think about purpose, and it's really, it's not self-serving. So that's an unkind way of saying it. But if I'm thinking about purpose as for just me, I think I've missed the point.
00:19:26
Speaker
But my purpose is to help others find their purpose-driven path, to take the actions that are in service of other energy around them. Because we're not here, in my opinion, I'm not here to live a solo existence and just take care of the two people I made and the person I go to bed with. That's not it. My job on this planet is to make
00:19:53
Speaker
the existence better for every energy I encounter on some level. I happen to have the facility around teaching and guiding. I happen to have a connectivity to spirit side. And so those are the modalities I use to help anybody who comes my way. There's not to say I find people frustrating, I do, and those people I lovingly keep away from me.
00:20:16
Speaker
Actually, your energy cannot be here. You're only human after all, right? Yes, and real clear boundaries. But it's important, I think, to make everybody you encounter their existence a little bit softer because sometimes it's a challenge out there.
00:20:36
Speaker
So when you're talking about purpose driven living there, I think there's a spectrum in how people run businesses and the kinds of businesses they run. Sometimes
Balancing Passion and Pragmatism
00:20:48
Speaker
they're very like mission specific. Sometimes they're really tactical. Like I know this skill and so I do this thing, but maybe it's not their, you know, life's passion, right?
00:21:03
Speaker
what are your thoughts on how and if people need to be merging those things more or is sometimes it okay if it's just work and it's not your heart and soul, right? So how do we balance that? Because sometimes it's really easy to be like, I should be a thousand percent emotional about this.
00:21:26
Speaker
And at the same time, the other part of your brain is going, it's a logo. Calm down. You know, like this is not like we're not scientists solving, you know, diseases like we're making a logo, you know, I'm changing some colors. Like let's be realistic about that. How do you weave in kind of that purpose when you're also like, yeah, I'm also just doing a job, you know,
00:21:49
Speaker
I think it comes through not just in the United States, where I feel like it can be a little prevalent, because absolutely, and we bleed north, obviously. But what I think that it is, is we've been given this storybook idea that you have to have your best day ever every day.
00:22:07
Speaker
And it's like how why I don't know if it's Instagram, I don't know if it's LinkedIn, how it happened, but I don't need to have my best day ever every day. Also, I would have nothing to balance that best day ever with if I didn't have other existences. And some days you get up and you make lunch and you do admin and you write proposals and it's not that much fun.
00:22:32
Speaker
And that's okay, which means that when you get up and you get to go do a podcast or you get to go lead an off-site or you're writing a new initiative and then you're like, oh, that was awesome. In contrast to other days. Yes.
Task Management and Delegation
00:22:46
Speaker
No, I think that's so important because a lot of the time it can feel like people only share, like you said, social especially. LinkedIn, I feel like the most common phrase on LinkedIn is I couldn't be more excited about.
00:23:00
Speaker
insert anything. And it can leave people doing the day to day grind being like, am I doing this wrong? Like I am trying to have a purpose driven life or to, you know, take control over my own schedule and make my own business work. But like, should I be that excited all the time? No. And the other thing is, is some tasks are just not that much fun.
00:23:25
Speaker
And they might not be aligned for you, but they could be aligned for Mallory or they could be aligned for someone else. Like for me and my neurodivergency, if I have to choose colors for a font or for a proposal or anything, I will lose three days.
00:23:48
Speaker
I will sit there picking a color blue and whether or not I like latte or latte italicized for seven hours. And you couldn't be more excited about it. I couldn't be more excited about my new font.
00:24:04
Speaker
But I could be really excited about the transformational change leadership initiative I got to deliver, or I could be really excited for other people's posts, things like that. But for me, I am not going to be able to do that task in a way that maximizes my skills. That's what I delegate out. Yes.
00:24:30
Speaker
Well, and so that comes full circle to be like, this is also another thing that a coach can do, right? Is say, let's talk about the things that let you up. Let's talk about, well, A, please tell everyone they don't have to have their best day ever every day that needs to be tattooed on our foreheads. But you can then say, you know what, so we've talked about like, what
00:24:52
Speaker
you want to be doing more of and the things that are efficient for you and that add energy instead of take it away. And so then let's talk about everything else that we maybe need to delegate or just stop doing or how do we make it a little bit easier, right? So some of it I think of when I think of coaching, it's like just helping someone organize their brain
00:25:19
Speaker
to be like, there's a bunch of stuff in here. And I just feel like people usually say like, I'm in a mood. And you're like, yeah, but it's probably because there's like 12 things in here that you need some help figuring out.
00:25:36
Speaker
Absolutely, and it used to be that the challenge and wonderful part of school, like for elementary school, high school, any of this, even college sometimes, is that they give you the parameters and require you to do the things that you don't feel like doing.
00:25:52
Speaker
So you're like, oh, I'm a math and science kid. I don't love music and art as well, but I still have to go to those classes or vice versa. But all of a sudden we live in this world where we get to make all the choices and then it becomes really challenging to choose a non-preferred task. Yes. Okay.
00:26:13
Speaker
Taking that idea, if challenges arise, we can't just be like, I don't want to deal with that, or I'm going to delegate because you're the business owner. Sometimes you have to deal with challenges. So how do you work with clients? And how can coaches work with clients to help them with those perceived challenges? What would that work look like together? Everybody has stuff they don't like doing, right?
00:26:36
Speaker
People who have ADD or ADHD or any manifestation of it have an extraordinarily challenging time doing anything we do not like.
00:26:46
Speaker
to a much larger degree than possibly the average bear. So what I will share is that I have had to come up with tips and tricks and things that optimize me. I do find that several of them work for others kind of universally. For example, if you notice that something is going on a to-do list more than two days in a row, there's an emotional block.
00:27:14
Speaker
It doesn't have to be like, oh, I have to go to therapy over this. But it could be a couple of things. One of the biggest ones I find is that we put something on a to-do list where we don't actually have enough information to take action on it. And so we think we can leave it on our to-do list, and then we just feel badly about it. So first off, I'll be like, OK, here's my list. Do I actually have enough information to take action? If I don't, do I need resources? Do I need to purchase resources? Is there somebody who can help me resource this?
00:27:44
Speaker
Do I need to read a book on this? Hopefully not, because that's too big of a task. But what is it that I need to do so I can move this from day one to day two to day three? Cool. It could be something as small as, like, I have two children. My youngest is about to end elementary school on Friday. Cool.
00:28:07
Speaker
I lost the moving up tickets that we're supposed to have. I've hid them for myself somewhere in the house. You only get four. I've been through every box in this house. I've found every tooth that was ever lost. I found every hair clipping of every child from the time. I had no idea where they are. But I feel a lot of egoic attachment to having to write to the school and say, I lost these things, right?
Addressing Emotional Resistance
00:28:34
Speaker
So I had to put on my big girl pants. I had to write to the teacher this morning and say, like, hey, I have lost them. Cool, right? And she was like, cool, right? If you find them great, if you don't write. But that could easily have torpedoed several hours in my day because I'm not paying attention to the emotional ramifications of the task.
00:28:59
Speaker
Did you offer to trade her all of the children's teeth that you found for new tickets? You're like, here's what happened. I lost them. But what I did find was hair and teeth, and I'm willing to trade them for new tickets. New tickets, yes.
00:29:15
Speaker
And it was also a moment, too, of teaching because my kids had to watch me be in that space last night. And I was in a state. And I was like, hey, listen, guys, mama's in a state. So you want to stay clear for a minute? Because I did something that I'm embarrassed about and I had to take ownership for.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yes, that's a great point. Oh, that's so good. Because they're seeing you as real and human. I know it sucks. Don't get me wrong. And it does. But what if they went through their whole life and thought mom was perfect, then they became adults and was like, they're like, I just lost. I don't understand. My mom was perfect. That's going to cause issues, right? So it's just being real. But the important part is that could have absolutely in another version of me,
00:30:01
Speaker
made my work day really unpleasant for several days. And now I do know that if there's something I desperately don't want to do, if I could try to get it done before 10 a.m., my whole day will be better off. If I have to call a dentist, if I have to call a doctor, if I have to write a proposal I don't want to write, if I have to navigate my finances, if I have to reconcile a P&L, do it before 10 a.m.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yes, 100%. What is a little brain trigger that you would give clients? Because I love that idea of anything that you put on your to-do list twice, or in my case, boomerang an email back.
Organizing Digital Spaces and Ideas
00:30:46
Speaker
I have some emails, and I don't want to frighten you, that I have boomeranged back for a year and a half.
00:30:54
Speaker
because it's my own task, right? And I'm just like, I'm gonna wanna do it, I am gonna wanna do it, and I don't wanna forget about it. But so what is a way that in the moment, a client could be like, I need to stop and identify the energy block. How do we remember to do that? If I have a should attached to anything, it needs to be gone. So if I should read somebody's newsletter,
00:31:21
Speaker
It's getting, and please feel free to trash mine. But, you know, like if I am attached to it in a should level, it has to go in the trash right away. If I feel as though somebody has sent me something interesting and I haven't dealt with it in two weeks, gotta go. Because nobody cares. It's fine. I mean, please care. But like those small tasks, no one wants to be muddied in your day.
00:31:51
Speaker
So, and part of it was reading that Marie Kondo book. It really helped and I try to, and I'm not in a great space with it right now, but better than I have been, is I try to have my digital hygiene be as on point as anything else.
00:32:08
Speaker
So like I love cleaning, it's the good part of 80 days, but I try to keep my personal email, the one related to like kids and stuff like that under a hundred. And I try to keep business ideally under three in any given quarter. So if it's in, if it's longer than a quarter, I have to really consider whether or not I need it or not. Well, and this is a great, so I have a follow up question now that you said that because digital cleanliness, huge deal.
00:32:36
Speaker
If I go over one page on my email, I lose my mind. That's just not sustainable for me. So one page, lots of folders. If it's in my inbox, it needs to be dealt with, and that's why it lives there.
00:32:53
Speaker
But the things that end up staying on the list are all of the ideas. And so this feels like something a lot of business owners... Can you give me an example? Yeah. So one of my businesses is a website, but I also have ideas for a physical product that could go with it.
00:33:09
Speaker
But that's a completely different space, right? So it's an idea that just sits in my brain stem for a while, and I don't want to lose it. So what do you tell clients to organize some of these things that you're like,
00:33:25
Speaker
this would be really fun, but also it's not for today. So how do I deal with those pieces to, to keep them around, but not really like in my face? Well, it depends on if it, it, so I find that all things that are in my inbox are like, it's like having an app open on your phone that's draining your battery power. So my question is, is the,
00:33:54
Speaker
ancillary battery power worth the potential task. And if it's not right now, if you need it from me, I give you permission to put it away until it becomes enough of an itch that you want it.
00:34:09
Speaker
So if I hear product, I hear awesomeness, but I also hear a whole bunch of shoulds. I hear, I should have product. I should have a tangible piece that people have as a takeaway. I should have something that I can have a different monetary stream with. I should, I should, I should. And then I try not to should on myself or others. So if website is rocking it,
00:34:33
Speaker
And you're like, wow, I'm taking things in a great direction. Only when website becomes on autopilot can I add something else in. If it's not there yet, we got to pause.
Choosing the Right Coach
00:34:46
Speaker
And that's where I feel like a coach can again, provide the clarity because this is usually not a conversation that you're having with your friends, your spouse, your, you know, kids. And it really helps to have one person who gets what business ownership is like, right? Like a lot of your clients probably don't have that kind of network.
00:35:13
Speaker
to be like, oh, I can actually have an actual person who understands what this life is like and gets me when I say like, I keep boomeranging myself these project ideas for two years because they just sound cool. And you're like, yes, also, here's what that means, right? That feels like the very valuable piece to me. It's like distilling everything that's in your client's brain and helping them
00:35:41
Speaker
take the really important pieces forward. That is, and that is the part of the intuitive coaching that I find helpful is that I do have a, not unique because other people can do it too, but unique to Alexander ability to zero in on what's not being said. And so then my question might be, you know, what's the value in, because there is always value in, what might be the value in not doing the thing that's on your plate?
00:36:09
Speaker
Or, if we're willing to say, I don't think the value in not doing the thing holds any longer, then it's about, okay, well then let's make a plan for bite-sized pieces so that you can engage in this change.
00:36:27
Speaker
How do people find coaches? And what should they look for and consider? I find that when I'm helping people hire at like an executive level, if I'm helping a company do a hiring, I have a few things that I think are very important. One, will the person do what they say they're going to do? If they can't, will they let me know in enough time to make a different choice? And do I want to have some sort of beverage with this person in the morning or the evening on my own time?
00:36:57
Speaker
For 30 minutes, do I want to have one white wine spritzer with them? Or do I want to have one coffee before the day starts? I don't need to be best friends with the person. You don't need to be best friends with your coach. But is she going to do what she says she's going to do? Will she lead you to transformational change? Will she put up the roadblocks and say, like, are you do you want this one or not?
00:37:19
Speaker
Cool. Will she do it in a timely manner? And you ideally don't mind hanging out with her for the 50 minutes, twice a month, for six months or so. Because if it doesn't work, it's not going to be of value and you won't take action.
00:37:36
Speaker
So it is a personal choice. When I am helping people, I'll say, like, listen, there are a thousand coaches out there. If you want to work with me, it's because I'm going to hold your feet to the fire to do what you say you're going to do. I'll do it in a kind way. We might laugh a bit as we do it. That's pretty much me, right?
00:37:58
Speaker
If that's not your coach, if you want somebody who's gonna come in with an agenda and say, tick these things off, those coaches exist and go find that human.
00:38:09
Speaker
And then you alluded to twice a month for six months. So is this like an ongoing thing? What is typical that you see with people? I won't, not that I won't, but in general, because you don't want to have any hard and fast rules, but in general, it's not worth it to me to spend your money on me for less than six months because you won't see, you might have a little transactional change, but you won't have transformational change.
Becoming a Successful Coaching Client
00:38:37
Speaker
So it's time over matter. Yes, the sessions are valuable, but you need to have the science behind it is that you usually need at least, you know, that amount of time before you can make any significant changes and see a return on the investment of that change.
00:38:56
Speaker
Six months and about every other week. About every other week. I tend to work with my clients on average for 12 to 18 months total. But I can certainly get it done in six months. But after that, I tend to be an expensive touch base call. So we have to have something real to work on. Now, I do have a handful of clients who have had something real to work on for a couple of years.
00:39:20
Speaker
They happen, but I have one in particular. She's a rare bird, but she absolutely is continuing change. Let's say you hire a coach for the first time. How do you get to dream client status? Not just in the sense of, oh, my coach really likes me.
00:39:42
Speaker
I'm going to give my coach the data that she needs, the structure she needs, I'm going to follow up the way she needs. What does that look like to say, am I actually willing to put in the work to have a coach and how can I do that really well?
Future Challenges and Opportunities
00:39:57
Speaker
I think it's making sure that the timing is right for you, most importantly. For example, I've certainly worked with coach plenty of times. Right now would not be a great time for me to engage coaching services because I'm in a master's program. I don't have any extra bandwidth right now.
00:40:15
Speaker
Now to know that and also when I work for my clients, it's not so freeform. We create a development plan. We have metrics or success. We do all those pieces. It tends to be a little bit more bespoke than like a curriculum, but knowing that you have the time in between sessions to devote to change is a great time to take on coaching. Now, the only caveat to that being the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second best time is today.
00:40:45
Speaker
So careful about putting too many blocks in your path. Like I have encountered plenty of clients who are like, I just need to get everything perfect before I begin. And I'm like, right. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. Don't wait for that. Okay. Now I have to get this, this question in because you in your bio share that you're a witch. How does that tie into either the lessons or practices from that? How does that tie into your coaching in a business sense?
00:41:14
Speaker
I will share that most of the CEOs that I work with now want to incorporate this intuitive witchcraft into their own practice. So when we used to find that these things kind of existed in a mutually exclusive place, what I have found is that they do not at all.
00:41:36
Speaker
For me, I'm an equal opportunity employer in terms of modalities and deities and resources. I will work with Lakshmi and I'll work with Mary Magdalene and I'll happily work with Athena and then Chinese Five Element Theory.
00:41:57
Speaker
Only because these are amazing things, just because I land on the planet on this existence in this very specific way, doesn't mean that there's not all this ancestral knowledge available to us to tap into when we want to. And in terms of the which pieces I work with the energy that comes to me,
00:42:21
Speaker
The truth of the matter is, yes, when I prep for it, I can navigate energy that has passed. I might even have access to some things you feel like you're not saying, which is not to say I'll read without being given permission. But hey, your energy is telling me about these experiences. Do you want to dig into it or not? OK. So I feel like because you have this
00:42:47
Speaker
I don't know. I don't want to say unusually unique cause we're all unique, but you do have a unique view of this coaching space. Is there any single question that you would say, you know what, no matter who you are, what you're doing, how long you've been in business, what your goals are, what your purpose is. If I could give you one question as a listener to be pondering this week, what would you tell people?
00:43:16
Speaker
I usually like to look a year out and I say to myself, if today is June 18th, 2025, have I taken on the challenges that allow my June 18th, 2024 self to be excited? And challenges and opportunities are two sides of the same coin.
00:43:45
Speaker
And am I excited about engaging with those challenges and opportunities? That's great. I've always thought the other way, like I'm here, where do I want to be in a year from now? But I really like that take on it. Here I am a year from now, what challenges do I need to put in front of this person today to get to there? So just a little tweak on that. Well, the only piece that I feel like is really important with that one piece is that I don't think of time as linear.
00:44:14
Speaker
I am 47, I am 15, and I am hopefully a really lovely 88-year-old grandmother all at once. And when I land in that space, I hope that I will have made the choices that I'm excited about at 47 and at 15, because I find that time exists in a more fluid way than I think we traditionally think about it. And we hold that all in us at all times.
00:44:42
Speaker
Oh, lots to think about. I cannot thank you enough for sharing just this insightfulness, your wisdom, and just this calming way and presence and energy that you have about you to deliver all of this insightful information. So thank you again for sharing with all of us. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. It's so great to connect with you here. All right. Well, that wraps us up for this week, you guys. So take care, and we will see you here next week.
00:45:11
Speaker
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