Hello and welcome to the coaching mixer with Aaron and Elena. I'm like, hi. Yeah. Hello. I was briefly maybe next time I'll use my like customer service phone voice. For some reason, I found myself tempted to Wait, do it. Can you do it now? Oh, okay. Hello and welcome to the coaching. That's not customer service. That's like my NPR voice. What came out of me just then? No, with NPR, you have to get really close to the True and Yeah. and and like take some really intense pauses to let the audience really have the words wash over them.
Oh my goodness. Yes. Hello everyone who's listening. We uh get real on this podcast. We are silly. We make cocktails and talk coaching. What are you drinking today, Erin? Okay, this was a stretch for me. I am Normally I have a cocktail maker and he's away again, which is very rude, but I know I made So, our ingredient for this week was whiskey. Yep. And I made a Sagittarius whiskey sour. What? And it's a recipe. Um, I can pro I can remember what's in it, but you have to like go to her website to find it. Um, it's this website called Witchcraft Cocktails. Maybe I'm saying that wrong. I have her book and it's such a good book, but it's like very magical. It's like magically infused. Yeah, witchcrafts.com and uh her books are great. her recipes are really fun, but then she also talks about like the different um magical essences behind different herbs and how to mix them and you know make your cocktail magical. That sounds amazing. So, you're going to be channeling some stuff for this episode hopefully. And I am a Sagittarius, so it's party time. I was going to ask and I my only hesitancy was I have no sense of what that means. I've looked up the signs so many times and for some reason it just like leaves my brain even though I'm the prototypical cancer. That's my sign and I'm like like feel a lot shell mode like 100% cancer. I love it. Wait, so I feel like with astrology though there's there's like lots of pop culture astrology stuff that's like pretty meaningless. But then for like the deeper things, if you understand a few things and if they resonate with you and who you are, then it can be really useful even as like an archetype for deeper integration of who you are. We need to have an episode about this at some point. I think that would be really interesting because I I recently, not recently, but I have a friend who's really into tarot and she read my tarot a while ago and I was like geeking out about how interesting like how fruitful of a like sounding board that was. And I think there's a lot of interesting stuff between that and coaching that we could explore. Sign me up. I'm into it. What are you drinking? Yours looks fancy. It's very much not fancy. I am my [ __ ] my own cocktail maker. I don't have a cocktail maker. Um and we don't really have like cocktail things. It is. But it's actually delicious. It's whiskey and apple cider cuz I wanted to go for fall vibes even though as Erin and I were just talking about before we hit record, it's like 808s today suddenly after feeling like fall for a week. Yeah. Um, so yes, it's um whiskey, apple cider, sparkling, uh, water, and a splash of lemon juice. Nice. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I don't remember all the herbs that I put in this, but I know it's got rosemary. Um, it has an egg white in it, which is the first time. Like, it's a like a sour. That means it's make it super fancy, but I mean, I my I'm I'm solo parenting and I was like, it's just going in the shaker. Shaky shake. Do the do the energy work over it and then cheers. So there was energy work that you did over it. Oh yeah. Okay. We're going to be posting recipes in the show notes. Yeah. And I'll post a link to this website because her book is great. Her recipes are great and she's like a really fun witch. That sounds amazing. All right. So today is a very exciting episode. We are talking about some of the listener request questions that we've gotten. We'll see. Maybe we'll only do one because we tend to ramble. Maybe we'll do five. I don't know. We'll see. But, um, it's very exciting to get questions and to be able to answer them. We appreciate people like reaching out to us, telling us what you think, asking us questions. Um, the fact that you want to hear our cocktail adult responses, you know, I was I was saying like today I was like, I don't we don't have all the answers, but we have whiskey opinions today. Yes, that's well said. Yeah. I'm like, do you really want my opinion? Okay, why not? I'm like just kind of blown away that people are listening to this to be honest. Not that I'm, you know, Yeah. Anyway, I had an I will tell you I had an alumni client um reach out to me and say that she loves the podcast and she's like I want to do a tuneup with you like I think it's time I'm just like things that you're saying are resonating with me and I was like yeah there's something to in this world of you know we talked about AI last time in this world of like feeling so disconnected or feeling like everything that someone creates is always directly tied tied to a marketing piece, which we have to do. That's part of the deal. But to be able to do do something that's like fun and creative and like hanging out and have that be a a way of creating safety and trust with someone, it was like that was like that's very cool. Yay. Yeah. Like on a human level, it's awesome. And then on a business level, for anyone who owns a business, like maybe you can just let yourself do what seems fun for a little bit. And it doesn't have to be everything does not have to be fully strategic because this, as we talked about before, this podcast was not strategic. In fact, parts of us were like, is this a good idea? It's okay. Is this okay? Sorry if you don't like alcohol. People who don't like alcohol, we respect that, too. We do mocktails. We've done caffeine. do more of mocktails in the future. Mhm. Yes. Yes. All right. You want to jump in? The first question we got that kicked this whole Okay. Sure. Okay. So, um, a listener wrote, I love that we get to say that. A listener wrote, "There's a popular idea in the coaching industry that coaches can or should be able to coach on anything, including things they haven't mastered themselves. that they can coach people on how to make 1 million without having made 1 million. That they can coach people on weight loss without having lost weight themselves. Real talk, what do we think about this? I'm obsessed with this question. It's such a well-formed, thoughtful question. And I'm like I'm like, "Oh, I want to know what this person thinks of it. I kind of wish they had told us what they thought." Maybe they will reach back out and yes, is a coach. But I would love to know what that person thinks about this. I don't know. What do you think? What's your what's your current flexible stance on it? Or maybe it's not flexible. No, it's it's flexible. Um there might be inflexible parts, but so I feel like this is probably going to be a long episode, right? As with anything, I feel like there are a lot of different angles to look at this from. Um so like the first thing that comes to mind is um sorry, I'm just rereading it. Yeah, I'll take a sip of my drink while you I think. Yes. Enjoy. Enjoy. Um,
so I think as coaches we have to connect with ourselves around what it means to have integrity as a coach. Um, I don't think anyone else can like generally I don't think other people can like impose their idea of what it looks like to have integrity as a coach. I think if if one has come to a decision around who they feel comfortable coaching and why that feels good to them and like aligned with the work they want to be doing in the world like cosign awesome personally I don't feel with some caveats um I don't feel drawn to make an entire like business around work that I personally have not done that just like doesn't feel good to me. Um, and I think part of how I want to like part of how I learn whether these tools work or not is by using them myself. Yep. So, I think like general in terms of like if I were to niche down into an area, I don't know that I would be compelled to like niche down into an area that I haven't quote unquote mastered, whatever that means to me. Um, that said, I've worked as a general life coach, excuse me, for years. And I've coached million-dollar, multi-million dollar business owners. I haven't made that. Um, and I've coached I've worked as a contract coach for a company that coaches farmers. I'm not a farmer. I have like a black thumb. I don't I don't know what the opposite of a green thumb is, but like um and and I found that actually not having an expertise in that area, as long as I'm very clear that I'm doing mindset coaching and not like practical strategy coaching. Um, I found that not having that expertise sometimes actually makes it easier for me to empower the client to rely on their own expertise and to not come in with like any preconceived notions about what is right and what is wrong for them. So, that's like a very long- winded and convoluted answer, but I think I don't think so. I think that's good. I think that's really I think that's really fair and it's really kind. I I agree with you. Um, you know, I have I have a client who, you know, I'm not sharing anything I can't share because she's been on my podcast and we've talked about it publicly. um she thanked me in her master in her thesis or her PhD, one of one of her PhDs and I was like wow the only thing I could read in your PhD was my name that's the only thing I understood. Um, so I think that like to to your point, if we know what we are coaching on, if it's mindset, like I can help someone get a project done and it totally doesn't matter if that project is a keynote that I have no idea on the topic, if it's a PhD and I've did not go to university. Um, like if I'm clear and honest about my expertise in being able to help people get things done, to, you know, remove or move through their own static, to walk through challenges, to have someone in their corner that, as you said, like maybe isn't part of their industry and doesn't share some of the unhelpful mindset, the fixed mindset things that every other person writing their PhD was like, this is going to take you seven years and this person didn't want it to take seven years so I didn't share that and I was like why couldn't you get it done by January like what it was like just having that possibility because I wasn't shackled to that industry's attitude and mindset about it yeah where I where I struggle is with the people who
first of all aren't being honest you said, you said lack of integrity, which was very fair. I'm going to say like people who are just straight up lying. Yeah. You know, I think unfortunately there's a lot of people who claim to have made millions who have not done that and they're going to show you their way that they've made millions, but they actually haven't done it or they've, you know, there's just a lot of shady [ __ ] unfortunately. Yeah. there are and I mean in the executive coaching world there are plenty of people coaching executives who've never had an executive role and it doesn't mean that they're less effective. It just means they're going to be coming at something with a theory more than a lived experience. Mhm. If you're a CEO who wants a coach, who's had experience as a CEO, that's hard to find because those people are going to just be CEOs and then they're going to retire. They're not interested in coaching. So, I think I don't think necessarily you have to have the experience if you're clear on it. If it's actually in line with your vision and you know why you are doing it. It's not just like I think if I coach business people I'm going to make lots of money so let me just call myself a business coach which unfortunately a lot of people in the space I am in that's what they do. Yeah. I think that's right on that like I don't see any problem with so like personally like my personal stuff aside I don't see any problem with coaches coaching on anything as long as they're upfront about their experience if they're spinning their experience hiding their experience or lying about their experience like yeah that I have a problem with and I think like even in myself that's a little bit of a barometer like if I earlier this year when like I was in kind of a sbatical mode and like not really creating very much and a lot of my work prior to that had been about like unhinged explosive creativity and like suddenly that and I'm not saying this is true for everyone like I think probably I could have actually continued to do that content because I know I've done it and I know how to coach on it but like that just it didn't feel right to me. I didn't feel called to coach on that. And I noticed in myself like wanting to sort of spin how I was talking about this moment of pause that I was taking. So that and and that was a sign to me like, oh wait, you're you need to like step back a little bit here. Maybe this isn't what you're called to coach on or to like market around at least at this moment. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think you have the presence of mind and the type of mindset to know what felt right and had integrity for you. I think sometimes what I noticed trips people up is they think like, oh, if I'm a weight loss coach, I have to have lost all the weight. I mean, I don't necessarily know that that's true. I sometimes wonder if that's just like a an effect of the patriarchy saying like we have to be perfect people before we can help someone else with their mindset. I'm I mean I know so many people in other professions. I know doctors who smoke. I know um you know when I I I burnt out as a yoga teacher because I was not doing any of the beautiful things I was sharing with other people. Mhm. It didn't mean that I wasn't transmitting something to those people. It didn't mean that I wasn't a positive force in their life and on their journey. But there was some like shame, I feel like, within myself and from other people who are like, "Oh, well, if you, you know, you're in this yoga bubble energetically, you should just be like totally fine and and physically and emotionally." And I'm like, "That's not true." I think sometimes having some experience of how hard the journey is can make you more compassionate to your clients. Yeah. And maybe it's topic specific like maybe it's, you know, I don't need someone who's run a a billion dollar company to teach me how to grow my business by 10%. Mh. if it's a mindset issue and even if it's a strategic issue because that's going to be two different worlds, right? Yeah. I'm trying to think like what do you think? Are there any
Okay. I'm like I'm like what would be what would be a thing like would I go to a coach for parenting coaching who didn't have a child? M I can't see myself doing that personally as a as a client. Um only because I'd be like, "No, you really don't know how hard it is." Like like I think they would be like, "Well, you should never have to raise your voice at a kid." And I'm like, "I don't know any parents that have never yelled at their kids."
Yeah. Do you think it would be unethical or wrong or bad for a non-parent to decide they're called to coach on parenting? Not at all. I mean, I know plenty of therapists who have kids who are clients who have um patients with kids and they don't have kids. Like, I think it's more like would it be helpful? Like I don't need my massage therapist to have a neck problem to understand how to fix my neck because there is some kind of methodology to that. Yeah. But I might need someone I might feel as a client that I need someone who gets some of the parenting trap and the female conditioning that I've gone through, the women's conditioning that I've gone through. if I had an issue with my kids. I've been coached by people who have no kids on my kids and it's been totally great,
but I don't know if I was like looking for that if that would be the person I would gravitate towards personally. Yeah. Yeah. Which is totally fair and I think all the more reason we need to be very upfront about our experiences. Yeah. They could sell me on it. They could be like because I don't have kids like I can coach a doctor. I've never been a doctor. I've worked in a I have like a little experience with patient load and clinic politics. Like I can understand that on the periphery. But if you need a charting coach, then you need to go to the charting coach doctor coach person for strategy. I think I came up with one I think that I would feel weird about. Yeah, tell me if and it's interesting. It's less about the the concrete result. Like I would go to someone for business coaching to hit a certain milestone if they seemed like a good fit and their methodology seemed sound and they like maybe hadn't reached the business milestone. But if I were to go to someone for I don't know like working
less than having more fun while working and they were like miserable in their business and not doing the work themselves around to me that see that's like deeper harder richer work in some weird way than like hitting the milestone. So that I don't I don't know that I would feel good about that. And like if someone were having it if someone were struggling with that and hadn't like weren't actively working on it or like ch making changes in their life to address it and they were like this is my business. I'm the like have a blast while you're doing business coach while they're like losing hairline of stress. Thank you. Yeah. Um, I would I would be like, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I think it's Oh, I This is interesting because I'm just like, okay, so what's the difference? Like, why could a coach or therapist potentially be a great like parenting coach or therapist even if they didn't have the experience of having a kid? But why could someone who's like have a blast while growing your business? DM. I wish I had. Seriously, I'm like, "Oh, I should have talked to you before I do all my branding." I mean, I don't know that that's I don't even know if I believe that's possible because it's not always a blast. Right. Right. Right. I do think you can work less. Um Yeah. I think some of it is like how much of their lived experience is informing the tools because I think when I when I think about like someone that's in a more regulated profession like a therapist, I'm like they are filtering through tools and and studies and techniques that have years of evidence in their own practice or in the larger therapeutic world. Coaching is still like the wild wild west. Yeah. There's not a lot of collaboration unfortunately. There's not a lot of sharing. Um, and I would just want to be like, is this person teaching me a method that they're not even personally using to have a better life? It would be hard for me to trust that. Yeah, that's like the Like I could see I had actually I was thinking about like I've been coached by people who are not parents that really helped me with my kids and probably didn't have a lot of the preconceived notions that other parents have
but I don't know yeah for like a business like if someone just started their business yesterday like what tools and methodology are you teaching and what experience do you have with that either with your clients or with yourself. Yeah. Because I don't want to be someone's guinea pig that I'm paying to help me. Unless it's a very explicit Yeah. relationship test driving something and it's a big program and you tell me that which I've done and it's great. But yeah, I think there's something about in that example that does feel like it goes a little bit to the being upfront about things. Like I would assume that someone does not build a successful business around like enjoying your business while being I mean maybe they'd be open about how much they hate their business and if so like that's fine. They're probably just not for me. But if instead they are marketing themselves as like look at how much I'm enjoying like the the beautiful Instagram filtered like this is my coffee sort of thing. Um it's my five cocktail
that I I think that kind of goes to like can I trust this person? Will they how will they show up for our relationship? will they like push me toward things that I don't necessarily that aren't I don't know don't feel right or like aren't tested or I don't know. Yeah. And that's that honestly that can be tricky territory with people who have so much experience with the thing. Um, I mean that can be hard because sometimes those people don't see I will just speak from my own experience when I was so I started my coaching business and my niche for the first couple of years was relationship coaching. Mhm. I was in a relationship. I was in a marriage. I had really figured out some pretty disastrous um just issues with myself about relationships and I had this I had had like that was back then my old my old husband no I I have an amazing partner who was like very patient as I was figuring out a lot of my stuff and was really able to be present with me but I couldn't like meet him on a lot of that because I just had so many weird dysfunctional relationships in the past. I was always like in a position of like picking fixer uppers. And then suddenly I had this person and I'm like, "Oh, I'm the mess in this relationship. I'm the problem. That was me." And it really like rocked me. And the first year of our marriage, it was like so hard. And mindset work really helped me, coaching really helped me. And I like figured out some things, felt very passionate about supporting other people with that. Wrote a book about it. And then as I was kind of coming to a place of equinimity, let's call it, I then started kind of resenting all of the relationship coaching I was doing. Like I can still talk about people in the relationships. I could be really present with people. I still do some of that work. But when it was like eight hours a day of hearing about people fighting, I just wasn't as present as I wanted to be. Like I literally was like, "Go read page d of the book. Try the exercise." And I I was like, "Okay, at this point, I feel like the book is my gift to the world." Yeah. And I I'm like was much more interested in my clients who had businesses. And I was making money in my business. So I'm like I felt like, oh, I have integrity now to talk about how to build a business that wasn't built on let me help you build a business. Wasn't a business coaching business for business coaches. that whole TM new title business coaching business for business coaches but like that was like a big thing in that period of time the only coaches in that space still is yeah um which like yes coaches need business coaches amazing no shade but maybe a little bit of shade we had a little bit of shade little shade I'm going to be honest only if it's only if it's not with integrity Right. Right. Yeah. Some of them have no integrity. Some of them are amazing. Totally amazing. But at that point, as I was like kind of switching into really only working with entrepreneurs,
I was like, this is a problem I'm interested in, and this is also a problem that I can never have an ego about. I can never be like just go read this page of the book. I hope I didn't ever say that to someone, but I definitely just kind of like felt the aftermath of it's just me talking about people in their arguments over and over again. And I just kind of like got into the mindset like I see how therapists get burnt out. I see how people who in a hyper focused niche can get really burnt out. When I'm coaching somebody on business, I never know what's going to work, what's not going to work. It's like total humility at all times, which I think is very good for Sagittarius me. Yeah. I mean, I think I've had a I've I mean, I'm kind of going through a sort of similar experience. It's not that like I love coaching creatives on anything, but a lot of the content that I was creating like a year plus ago was around um treating yourself better when you're creating like as the means, especially for perfectionists or people who are hard on themselves to create more and like enjoy themselves when they're doing it. And I love doing that work. And I do think there came a point for me where like talking about it all the time. I was like kind of bored of my own voice around it because I felt like I said a lot of what I needed to say and I'd done the a lot of the work for myself around that. I'm not saying like I fully transcended, you know, sometimes I'm self-critical and stuff like that, but I I think for for me and maybe it sounds like for you as well, probably a lot of like engaged pe creative people, um we got to be like stimulated by the work that we're doing. And so if it starts feeling wrote, it's hard to engage with that. I don't know. Like yeah, my mind is actually glitching right now because I'm like, oh, this is the case for not needing to have the experience of your class. I know. I was just I was like, wait, what does that mean for our answer to this question? I mean, I do I think essentially my answer to this question having had this conversation is like no, I don't think coaches have to have mastered the tools is but like be real about it. Don't be sneaky or shady or hide your experience. And if you feel the need to, that's a reality check for you to like take a look at what's going on. Is that patriarchal conditioning being like you have to have 100% on the job description in order to do the job or is it some like inner voice telling you there's some like you're not you don't feel comfortable doing this? Um, but yeah, I think maybe I do I think I do think the difference though or what we've identified there is for people if you're going to coach on something that you haven't mastered and you're going to make that more than like a one-off thing or more than like a one client thing if you're a general coach. But if you're going to niche into something that you haven't mastered, you should probably be grappling with that thing actively because I think a lot of the tools that help people are products of the act of trial and error and grappling with something and ruminating on it and exploring how to make the process easier. Yeah. I mean, you you just said that so beautifully and it reminds me of our one of our one of our mentors, Bev. She's a really good friend of mine and I remember her saying to me on several occasions and she said it to lots of people, but she's like, "You can only go as deep with your clients as you've been with yourself." M so it may not have to be the same experience but you have to be like grappling with whatever your thing is. Um having integrity means not just like like what I kind of felt like at some point. Just go read a page 85 of the [ __ ] book. Yeah. That'll tell you the exact process for how to have a challenging conversation. Mhm. rather than doing that, you know, it could have been like, okay, well, what am I grappling with that's hard? Even if it's not this particular situation anymore, it's sort of like having to plug in your humanity on like whatever level you're at because you I do actually think you can transcend self- judgment. You know, I my big when when I was doing master coach training, my daily work was this self-worth meditation that I did every day and I felt so stupid doing it. I recorded myself doing it. I listened to it every day and that was the first year that I made money and all these kind of magical things happened in my personal life. It was a very tough year for a lot of other reasons, but I just remember at one point the narrative that had been running in the background about how I was messing everything up all the time or how like I was always a mess and d it just like wasn't there. And it doesn't mean that there's not sometimes a narrative that's not as pleasant, but it's like that is no longer something that stops me. Mhm. And I like for a while I could use that with the relationship folks until I transitioned into the land I'm in now where I am always nervous before my coaching calls because I'm like who knows what is going on. that knows what they're going to bring me that's going to be big and deep and hard or or maybe I'm going to get to be strategic and talk about content like it's always a mystery and I'm like that's what that is what I need in my business and it doesn't totally matter what the topic is but for me to actually deliver anything to someone it has to be kind of that reciprocal work. Yeah. Mhm. Okay. So, now I'm curious as you're maybe shifting, do you have any inklings of what that might be? Oh my god. I like five a day and then sometimes none for weeks. Love it. um my recent thing which I don't know if I'll do anything with this but I found I'm deeply fascinated by collaborations and I feel like we don't talk about collaborations enough in the world and I think that collaborations are kind of like the key to many many things in the world. Um, coming from a theater background, it took me longer than it should have to realize that I think a key to my creativity and my ability to like produce stuff in the world is community and collaborations. And I know a lot of people learn that through other avenues and stuff, but I think a lot of coaching is very much about um how to become like fully self-reliant and basic not not all coaching but some like bad coaching in my opinion but um but I do think a lot of the like it's like hyper individualism in a way which there's value in aspects of that and I think there's something magical about like this podcast for example has actually opened my eyes to a Like I've been thinking about doing a podcast on and off for a couple years and haven't pulled the trigger and like in one semi-tipsy conversation, we had this random idea and then we kind of supported each other in making it happen and it's felt pretty easy so far. were like very early days of course and who knows what it will evolve into or if it it'll evolve like I don't know who knows but um so that's something that and there's a lot of interesting territory there in terms of like how to be in relationship with other people how to be in relationship when you're building something when a relationship is like complete that's really fascinating to me so I don't know if that'll lead to anything but that's something I'm fascinated by that I feel could be useful. I love that. I mean, unfortunately, coaching seems to be like a very lone wolf situation. Like even, you know, I'm doing I don't know if you have heard of the whole Jan Winhall course that's happening. She collaborates with somebody new every week to produce something. She's always bringing people in. She's teaching other people's methodologies within her course. Like things she loves, she's weeding them in. she's bringing them in and I'm like, "Yeah, I feel like there are other industries that are close to ours that have really mastered that art and coaches are really siloed. It's very like a lone wolf, sadly, a lone wolf situation." Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, we could probably spend a long time exploring why that is. I think maybe part of it feels like you're in competition with other coaches or I don't know, but I think there is something magical that happens when you bring multiple minds together on many, many different levels. Totally. Yeah. I mean, we have people asking if they can come on our show, just so you know. I did not know that. That would be fun. We could add we can we can start a party line. Oh my god, I love it. Oh my gosh.
