August 7, 2025 • 54 mins
What happens when a computer programmer realized he was living below his potential?
Meet John, creator of Coach Accountable. His platform emerged from his own coaching experiences on both sides of the relationship and has fundamentally shifted the coaching dynamic from inspiring conversations to deep, informed life-changing partnerships.
Whether you're a coach or someone benefiting from or interested in coaching, this conversation brings to light the powerful difference between information and integration.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, John, thank you for joining me, kind of on a
whim to join me on the podcast.
I'm really excited to continuea conversation that you and I
started a couple weeks ago.
And just a little backstoryJohn is the creator of Coach
Accountable and I looked backI've been using Coach
Accountable since 2019 and it'sbeen an amazing journey, and so
(00:30):
I'm really excited to talk tothe creator of that and
introduce you to John.
So welcome John.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thank you, Carla.
It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, so I want to dive kind of right into.
I recall something and I thinkit may have been one of your
blogs, I can't really remember,but I feel like it was something
about your story of how youlike a catalyst to even getting
into this world of creatingCoach Accountable.
(01:00):
So would you kind of take usback to what started all of this
for you and how long ago wasthat?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, sure.
So it was 2004 when I got myfirst taste of coaching that is
not just some guy with a whistletelling you to do more pushups.
I thought coaching equalssports and I'm not much of a
sports guy, right?
So when I did atransformational program with
Limerick Education and gotacquainted, like oh my God,
(01:28):
there's this whole world ofpeople who are standing for and
guiding people to be their bestversion right, it's distinct
from therapy like hey, I'munwell, I could use some help.
It's a I'm well and I'minterested in being even more
awesome.
And there's this whole world ofcoaches who are like, yeah,
cool, come with me this way,let's do this.
(01:49):
And so I immediately fell inlove.
I got so much out of thatprogram and I'm like this is
amazing.
Right, this is the coolestthing I've ever experienced in
terms of living my own lifepowerfully, because I was kind
of living small.
I had a master's degree incomputer science and I took a
tech support job for $30,000 andI crushed it salary Right, and
I was good, but like I might'vebeen not kind of living up to my
(02:13):
potential.
So I get acquainted withcoaching in 2004.
Love it, and it's one of thethings of coaching that I got
out of it was like, oh, live upto your potential.
Maybe I am kind of aiming lowand maybe someday there will be
for me to be an entrepreneur.
Right, take that leap.
(02:34):
Because my daddy was anentrepreneur, my brothers are
entrepreneurs.
I thought someday maybe I'll bean entrepreneur.
And, of course, in many goodtransformational programs you
get acquainted with the notionsomeday never comes right.
And so I was like, oh, yeah, Igot to actually create it.
Do it, take that leap, takethat step, be living more
intentionally into my authentic,true potential.
(02:55):
The world that we all here inthis world are kind of
acquainted with is powerful.
This was all new to me.
So I eventually, after twoyears, quit my day job and take
the entrepreneurial path.
And me and a couple of friendsare just sort of like quitting
our day jobs and we don't knowwhat the hell we're doing.
(03:15):
And I did my time, shall we say,in the entrepreneurial
foothills of not really knowingthe heck we're doing, flying by
the skin of our teeth, knockingout the rent, barely doing like
web development and design jobsfor hire, and after doing that
for a little while maybe a yearor two it's like huh, wouldn't
it be neat if we could transcendjust doing contract work for
(03:38):
hire and make a product,something that you know allows
us to sort of have a businessthat scales beyond us being, you
know, professionals for hire,something that allows us to have
a business that scales beyondus being professionals for hire.
Could we do that?
And at the obvious intersectionof that drive and desire and
the kind of web work we weredoing and our foundation of,
yeah, coaching andtransformational coaching and
mojo and living your potentialand possibility lied there's no
(04:01):
good app for coaches.
Coaching is so cool, butthere's no good app.
Maybe we could make the goodapp for it.
And so it's like 2008 and we'relike let's take a stab at
making a coaching app.
And so, in the margins of doingjobs for hire and contracted
things, we're working on thisthing and it looks really cool.
And in summer of 2009, we'reready to show it off to the
(04:24):
world and we're like this reallycool.
And in summer of 2009, we'reready to show it off to the
world and we're like this iscool, ta-da.
And again, if there are anyentrepreneurs in the room, you
might know like maybe it's notterribly surprising that my next
thing is like crickets.
Nobody knows, nobody cares.
In fact, we use it ourselves inthe very program done by
Landmark, the self-expressionleadership program, as coaches.
(04:45):
We volunteered to be coaches inthat program, having done it
ourselves, and we're like, hey,we made this thing, maybe we can
try it.
And so we try it with realpeople and we realize kind of
heartbrokenly our baby is ugly.
Coach accountable 1.0 isactually not that great to use.
It looks cool, it had a certainsizzle right, but it wasn't
(05:05):
actually good.
So we kind of shelved it andlet it just sort of be for a
while and like, okay, maybewe're not quite good enough yet
to transcend doing contract work.
We kind of retreat back to thatposition, so we let it stay
dormant for a little while.
A couple of years go by.
It's 2012 now.
I have parted ways with mypartners and and still, my
buddies they live in town gavethem the ownership interest in
(05:28):
the design and web developmentagency that we did and they gave
me, shall we say, fullownership of the corpse of Coach
Accountable.
And out of the woodwork come nofewer than four parties in 2004
or 12 to say like, hey, man,what's going on with this thing?
Are you doing anything with it.
Do you want to sell it?
Because coachinganimalcom isstill up on the interwebs.
(05:48):
We took off the sign up pagebecause it's not really going
anywhere, but there seems to besome interest in it.
So here we are.
Here I am, like, sole owner ofit, and four years have passed.
Right, like I'm four years lessnaive, a little more seasoned,
experienced Smartphonerevolutions now happened.
(06:11):
Apps are cool, data in thecloud is less of an esoteric
concept and it got me thinkingall right, maybe the time is
right to do Coach Accountableagain and try to dust it off and
do a version 2.0.
And this time, carla, I gotsmart.
I actually used it as I builtit, I recruited some friends to
be like guinea pigs.
Right time, carla, I got smart.
I actually used it as I builtit.
I recruited some friends to belike guinea pigs.
Right, like, hey, I'm trying todo this thing.
Can I coach you and put youthrough the system and do some
(06:34):
things?
And in doing that, I was ableto file off the rough edges and
actually make it good this time.
I don't mind saying that was astep up from version one, and I
launched it while my wife and Iwere on a year-long world tour.
We were traveling abroad andgoing slow, living place to
place.
So we were about a month intothat world tour where we sold
all our stuff at home anddropped off Ozzy the Kitty at my
(06:56):
in-laws and from my kitchentable in Cusco, peru.
Coach Cannibal 2.0.
Let's give it another try.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Love it, I love it.
Oh my gosh, there's so muchhere.
Okay, so I did Landmark also,and this is the point that I
thought you and I connected onor that I had read something.
I think you had postedsomething about Landmark.
So I'm like, oh my, oh my gosh,landmark changed my life too,
um, in a huge way, in a reallyhuge way.
(07:29):
I don't think I would be doingthe work I do today if it
weren't for that program.
I wouldn't have the marriage Ihave today, if it weren't for
that program.
I mean that we yeah, I wentthrough the whole curriculum.
My husband did a lot ofvolunteering, so for people who,
if you're listening and you'relike what the the heck is?
This Landmark education is acurriculum for living your life,
(07:49):
which is so awesome.
It gives you tools for livinglife and that's what I became so
passionate about is havingtools makes all the difference.
Like I was prior to that, justkind of living at the mercy of
my circumstances and thinkingthis is as good as it gets and I
have no power.
And what it taught me is thatwe actually have so much power
(08:12):
to shape and influence thequality of our lives, and so I
love that.
We connect on that.
I met my husband.
He was a coach in theself-expression and leadership
program and that's where I methim and leadership program and
that's where I met him.
And so we were able to start amarriage like with you know,
kind of a blank canvas, andreally create and we still use
(08:33):
the tools.
I mean we've been married 25years and using the tools, so
amazing.
So I love that.
And then you had a coachingexperience that led you to
really launching like, wow, whatif you know?
What if we could take this to awhole nother level.
Amazing, and I love the first.
You know, the baby, the babyversion, that didn't quite.
(08:56):
I think we can all relate tothat, so much I.
It brought up so many memoriesfor me and it also reminded me
that sometimes we think we havesomething and it doesn't quite
go as expected and it can be sodisappointing, but often that,
like like you said, you let itsit and then look what has
happened since then.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so do you want to?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
give people a snapshot of, like what that tool
is today and what that lookslike for you.
Like as a because it I I guessthat this is kind of you've
blended this into your life, um,and created a lifestyle
business.
I'm guessing that I don't knowthat, so correct me if I'm wrong
(09:42):
, almost a term of art.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
It's almost a term of derision in Silicon Valley
circles.
Right, for the folks who don't,who aren't.
No Lifestyle business is whatinvestors say like oh cool,
you're not serious.
You don't want to take abajillion dollars of funding and
grow big or go home and get theunicorn IPO valuation and make
your whole life being about thesomeday payday unicorn moonshot.
(10:04):
Yeah, I have no time for you.
So that's lifestyle business.
But the positive side oflifestyle business, which, carla
, I do think I resemble yeah,man, I can do this full time and
I don't have to be a slave toit.
It's low stress, I can justkind of be the master of my own
destiny and I'm plentyprosperous.
Doing it Like this may be adead end if I want a yacht or
(10:27):
something stupid like that, butI don't want a yacht, I don't
care, I'm good.
So, like a job in a businessthat you can probably grow
organically, rather than havingyour pay masters, your investors
, breathing down your neck sothey get theirs.
No interest whatsoever.
So yeah, that's how that is Tounpack how Coach Cabell is and
(10:47):
what it is.
I mean, I think my cue here isto put on my salesman hat and
give the pitch for it.
Let me do a different angle.
No, don't do that Because coachto coach right, game recognizes
game.
My journey of making thisplatform is so informed by my
own.
Yeah, a little bit by being acoach.
Absolutely, I can talk andstand shoulder to shoulder with
(11:08):
coaches about like here's what Isee can help to make you show
up more powerfully and have yourclients get better.
But if I'm honest, the juice ofit is, I think the real juice
of it is look, man, I've been onthe receiving end of coaching
side.
I know very well what it's liketo have an awesome coaching
conversation where you feelclear, headed and inspired and
(11:31):
motivated.
It's like a brain massage,right, the good coaches are
super reliable for that.
And then life comes up, right,you forget.
So here's the sort ofapocryphal tale.
That's not even apocryphal, ittotally happened week after week
.
I was in the self-expressionleader program and I don't know
(11:51):
for the folks at home.
You do a community project, yougo to classroom, you make an
action plan, carve in copy, ripoff a copy, give it to your
coach and I would take my copy.
I don't know what you call it,but I'd take my copy, fold it up
in my notebook and probablyforget about it.
So when I got on my weeklycoaching call.
Like two, three days later,coach is like so, john, it was
(12:14):
good, good, I'm glad you're well, how are you doing in your
action plan?
And I'd be like, oh, what did Isay I was doing again, and he'd
write it to me what an actionplan.
Right, like quite an actionplan.
It wasn't there for me, itwasn't present for me, and so
the impetus, the first feature Ibuilt of Coach Campbell back in
(12:36):
the 1.0 days and it's stillcore to the 2.0 days and beyond
action items, make it so thatyou put it in existence and some
time the reminders willactually fly at you and you're
poking your face like a littletext message, like, hey, don't
forget to do this.
A little email this is due inone day and a nice way for both
(12:56):
coach and client to see, yeah,what's done and what's not, so
that you can skip the weatherreport and skip any sort of,
like you know, excuse making andfeeling a little dodgy and like
, feel a little bad because theaverage bear.
I found I thought this was apersonal character failing on my
part, but then I was coach andI'm like, oh no, no, this is not
(13:18):
unique to me.
I coined the phrase thatdescribes what I would consider
a large slice of the pie, if nota majority.
A motivated mirror mortal,someone who shows up to coaching
like, yeah, coaching, this iscool.
I believe in this.
I'm up to something.
I want to grow, I want toexpand.
(13:39):
Hey, coach, help me, I want todo it.
So they're motivated right, it'searnest, they're showing up to
the program.
You know what it's like to workwith those people, carla.
They're great, like their heartis in it.
But then the mere mortal partkicks in, because we all know,
in all aspects of life there arethe metaphorical A students of
it, people who are countable.
(14:00):
They're going to write it down,they're going to put it in
existence, they're going tofollow through because, hey,
they said they would, and whywould I not?
My wife is an A student in life.
She's awesome, she's amazing.
Right, I am an A student insome areas, but coaching, no, I
was like rubbish at that.
So the idea of Coach Accountableis help those motivated mere
(14:20):
mortals, people who aregenuinely enrolled in what you
have to offer and really do wantto bring their earnest
intention to help manage thesoft skills of actually bringing
it to their life.
When coach isn't there, somesimple existence tools to keep
it alive and keep it going sothat they can actually do the
work and fit it in and besupported in that, even when
(14:43):
coach isn't there, and that, Ifind, makes all the difference.
Now I'm talking both as coachand client.
Dude, it's so much better ifthe coaching process is not two
steps forward and one step back,but instead three steps forward
.
We make a plan, it getsexecuted, boom, let's continue.
Ooh, that's satisfying foreveryone involved.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
That's so good.
It's a game changer for me andit's funny because I came at it
from a little different angle.
I think I have told you this,I'm not sure, but I did Landmark
and then I felt a real callingto start writing, and writing
had a huge impact in my life,helped me sort through so many
(15:29):
things, understand myself better, be able to manage my own
thinking and so that I couldstart taking aligned actions and
be accountable and haveintegrity, which is something I
learned about in Landmark.
Right, I thought I had all theintegrity in the world and
realized I really didn't.
But like, writing really helpedme and so I found coaching
(15:53):
through writing.
I started creating a businesscalled sanity journals to teach
people how to use writing as atool to navigate their life, and
I ended up finding a coachingcompany that coached with a
journal and I ended up goingthrough that program and the
coaching was great.
But I fell in love with the ideaof coupling coaching, which was
(16:15):
so powerful, with a journal andtaking that journaling piece
that had had such a coach.
My training was to use thewriting to help people see their
(16:35):
blind spots and the thoughtprocesses that are debilitating
them or getting in the way orthe thought processes that are
helping them.
But a lot of this kind of runsunder the surface and we
ourselves can't see it.
And so the journal became thisincredible reflection tool to
really help people move beyondthese barriers that, like all
(16:57):
their intentions are right butthey're just feel like they're
spinning their wheels and it'sthe stuff that was causing that
that the journal helped me tosee, and so that's really why I
came to Coach Accountable wasbecause you had a journal that
you could journal.
You know your clients couldjournal with you, and then you
had all these other pieces to itthat, of course, added to the
(17:20):
coaching relationship too.
But I'm curious, what does thejournal part mean to you inside
of Coach Accountable?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
and site a coach accountable Interesting.
So I'm almost a littleembarrassed to say, because I
was just about to say look, theymust love that You're being
like a spotter onto theirthought process and it's great
that you get them to do thatsort of brain dump and get their
thoughts out, which helpsorganize and clarify them, of
course.
But you add something more,don't you?
By being able to read them as asecond disinterested party
(17:52):
who's not too close.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yes, yes, it is so powerful, john, and we're doing
that.
You know I'm responding totheir journals in between our
sessions and so when we get tothat next call, I have so much
like, I have so much to workwith and we've already started
to dig a little deep, so we justgo deeper.
There's no catching up, right?
Yeah, it's powerful.
(18:15):
So, just asking questions, I'llhighlight a piece of their
journal and just say, hey, likeyou know, go a little bit deeper
here, say a little bit moreabout this, or or pull something
out that is just like gold thatthey may not realize.
Like, oh my gosh, look what youjust said here.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Like this is powerful .
Yeah Right, Okay, cool.
So that's what I figured.
And in the early design ofCoach Campbell that's not what I
figured and I'll explain thatto me.
The journaling feature is sobasic, right, it's very simple,
Like either coach or client canwrite a journal entry, you know,
(18:53):
put a little tag, a label atthe top, and just write and hit
save and maybe email it to yourcoach, or maybe coach emails it
to you, vice versa, whoever'swriting it, and it's just a
record, Like as features go.
It's so bread and butter, plainJane.
But I think you've.
It's so bread and butter, plainJane.
But I think you've kind ofunderscored the magic of it
(19:19):
which is, look, it encouragesyou to do it or it's a clearing,
for it's a place to say, hey,there's a journaling section,
you should use it and just in afriendly way, you can kind of
assign them to or just likechallenge to or invite them to
at whatever cadence, because youget to say you're going to
build up a repository of theseentries and unless you mark them
private, which is fine, you can.
(19:40):
But if we're working togetherand I'm sure you enroll your
coach, your clients, and I'mhere to be your spotter, I'm
here to offer those insights ofwhat I see.
So you make it into a ritualthat is easy for them to do and
automatically kind of shareswith you.
And to your point again, it'ssuch a basic feature but to your
point, it seeds theconversations that you have with
(20:02):
them.
It has you be like yeah, I'm inyour world, I've been paying
attention.
Thanks for taking that time.
We can now play with that, whichthe final thing is, it's so
much better and juicier than thecoach who says at the top of
their session okay, what do youwant to talk about?
The subtext being I got nothing.
(20:25):
I either haven't been payingattention or I have nothing to
pay attention to, because wedon't have that kind of practice
and you know we're just goingto make it up as we go.
No, you come in.
I bet your clients love it.
You come in hot.
You come in aware.
You come in with a clearpicture of what's going on for
(20:45):
them and what you see.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
To add, yes, I mean there's always so many options,
directions we can go right.
So there's definitely.
It just gives me so much towork with as a coach, so
powerful.
So how do you see others usingthe journaling feature?
And I'm kind of curious, like,what's this platform, I mean for
(21:10):
listeners?
I don't know that it like, doyou have anybody that's not a
coach using it?
Like, I'd love to hear, like,what's the most interesting use
of this platform?
Like, is it all coaches?
Because I feel like it wouldn'thave to be.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
So let me top off both of those questions with a
mere statement of fact called Ikind of don't know, unless
people, unless I have lovelyconversations like this with you
, I everyone's kind of operatingin self-service fashion and I
get whiffs of it from like again, yeah, just chatting about this
and that, or or questions likehey, can it be good for this,
(21:50):
but otherwise it's a veryself-serve app.
So my awareness of what's goingon, quote unquote, in this
house that I've set up forpeople to set their own shop is
very limited.
So when you ask me, how dopeople use journaling, it's kind
of like I don't know man Notexactly sure.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
It really is an abstract tool.
That's's general purpose.
It's a clearing for whateveryou do with it.
I know to make sure that I havethe features, do the various
modalities make it easy to emailback and forth, share back and
forth and all kinds of stuffwith worksheets a little more
complicated, with cool thingsthat you can do, but what people
do with it?
Oh, I keep being surprised nowand then when I do get certain
whiffs of this and that you askif there's anyone but coaches.
(22:36):
Yes, I haven't paid attentionin a while, but there's a lot of
real estate offices using CoachAccountable for training and
managing the performance oftheir agents.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Not terribly coaching For teams, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Not terribly coaching , but I've learned, I've become
acquainted with the word humanbeing who's kind of like here,
helping to guide or shepherd orcontribute to another human
(23:17):
being looking to be better.
Oh, there's a lot of modalitiesthat run out of that and the
purists will say that's notcoaching, it doesn't belong here
.
Okay, that's cool, you know,coach Cannibal is the title and
again that anything that rhymeswith one person looking to help
the expansion of the potentialof another, come on in, there
are tools that will suit for you.
(23:37):
That's where all thenon-coaches kind of come.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I always I mean, I always see so many opportunities
that I mean, if you're engagingwith your clients and you want
to do that in an intimate,personal, connected kind of way,
I mean it's such an incredibletool for that.
So if you're listening and thatsounds interesting, you should
take a peek at what he's doing.
And I have to toot your hornfor a moment, because I've been
(24:03):
with your app or tool for a longtime now and the customer
service is so good.
I just I I can't really sayenough about that, but like you
are always there, it's not likeI don't have access to you, you
are.
You make yourself veryaccessible to us as users.
(24:24):
Um, your, my questions arealways answered quickly.
I mean, it's just been amazing.
So thank you, john, becausethat makes my life so much
better.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
That's cool.
Yeah, it's my pleasure.
I mean to show up like I builtthe whole thing, so it's really
fun to interact with actualpeople who are using the.
You know, and benefiting fromthis thing, that I've spent all
this heads down time coding andbuilding and debugging and
perfecting and polishing, soit's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
It's good time.
I mean the impact that thistool like you don't even, you'll
never know.
The impact in the ripple impactof the all the people that are
using this tool and helpingothers Like I don't know.
That's cool, that's so great.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I confess it, it's a pretty sweet gig because when I
do get whiffs of what people aredoing, like when I get on calls
, this or otherwise, you know,and more impromptu like it's
like really, oh, that's cool.
It's just like I get thoselittle glimpses into what I've
created.
So, yeah, it's fun.
Honestly, philosophically,though, like there's nothing
(25:26):
altruistic about it, I don'tknow.
I really just want to elevatecoaching, because my taste of
coaching from the get-go wasLandmark and if I were to place
it on the gamut for anyoneunacquainted, landmark I'd say
has a very Yang energy called.
Hey, that's great.
When are you going to do thatby when Someday never comes?
(25:47):
Honor your word.
What happened there when youdidn't follow through with the
thing you said?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
you would do A little ruthless.
Yeah Right, it can have thatvibe right To the uninitiated
yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And here's the thing, my whiff again, my ingress,
point to the whole coachingworld.
I'm not formally trained.
It's participating in theseprograms, in both coach and
client.
So my vantage point of the restof the industry is, you know,
you kind of see some of the bigtowering edifices like the ICF
and its you know definitions ofcompetence and a couple others,
(26:19):
and I find that so much of thecoaching world outside of where,
I, shall we say, came of age asa big fan of coaching and sort
of practitioner in softer ways,is much more Yang or, excuse me,
much more Yin, and Yin's greatand Yin has a thing, has a place
and balance, of course, butthere's such a well.
(26:44):
I think you can see it from theICF's word we are not here to
be bosses of anyone.
We're not here to babysit them.
We're here to lead an inquiry.
We're not here to be bosses ofanyone.
We're not here to babysit them.
We're here to lead an inquiry.
We're not even here to giveadvice.
The questions and knowledgewill come from within.
Okay, cool, but what getswaylaid by that philosophy and
desire to be pure coaching, asdefined in that way, is any sort
(27:08):
of accountability, is any sortof well?
How are you going to apply thisto your life?
I'm not saying it's fully notthere.
People could point to variousparts of the thing but there's a
degree of emphasis that is farless from what I thought as I
naively gave my first touch ofcoaching.
So when I go out into the worldI'm like, wait, what do you
mean?
You don't track anything andwhatever happens happens and
(27:30):
it's not our place to hold theline and sort of lovingly and
with their buy-in and consent,demand that they rise up and
honor their word.
What do you mean?
That's not appropriate.
What be?
(27:53):
I've created Coach Accountableto be a place where no, it's
great to create things that willcall for the actual applying of
those feel-good insights sothat they live as more than just
.
That was a lovely conversationand then my life didn't change.
I yearn for the kind of well,really fast results, honestly,
that I took for granted.
It's like, oh, that's howeffective and fast coaching can
(28:15):
be.
Cool, when are you going to getthat sorted?
Why don't you call them rightnow and get that cleaned up and
or create something that you'vebeen saying I want to do for six
years?
That kind of vibe.
I know it's not for everyone.
But boy, it just excites me aswhat is truly possible for
coaching, and Coach Accountableis a love letter to that style
(28:35):
of coaching.
That's sort of like it's rightin the name, right, coach
Accountable?
Let's be accountable for that.
These conversations don't justfeel good because, again, they
do.
They're amazing.
They're great when your coachis worth their salt, they're
going to be in a good place.
But what happens after?
Oh man, if everyone's reallytruly getting their money's
worth and their value and cansay like, oh my God, I got so
(28:57):
much out of working with Carlothose four weeks because she had
me journal and I knew she waswatching and the conversations
that we had outside of my doingthe work and showing up, oh,
it's easier to be able to say toa new person this is how I roll
, this is how we do it.
Do you want this?
It's easier, for that was apretty great, you know, one
(29:18):
month or three months session orwhatever.
Do you want to continue?
I, I'm just so bullish oncoaches thriving because if
they're thriving for the rightreasons and not a slick you know
, marketing budget, that meansreally good differences are
being made with actual people.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
That's cool.
Oh my gosh, that just makes meso excited.
Um, I buy into the samephilosophy that you do um around
coaching.
I was.
I was trained in a in acoaching um certification.
That was very different andvery much about deep
(29:56):
conversation and integration ofthat conversation into your life
, because that's when it makes adifference.
I was just responding tosomething this morning, but it's
like so often with clients theythey think they need, you know,
additional tools, additionalskills, additional knowledge,
(30:17):
additional training, and what Isee over and over again is they
really just need integration.
You know, it's like I had aconversation with someone who
was like I, wanting tocommunicate better and thinking
that I need to take, I need togo to improv and I need to take
some communication classes andmaybe I need to do toast masters
(30:37):
.
And I'm like well, wait a minute.
Like yes, those things aregreat and you might want to do
those things.
However, when you go to thisevent, what if you?
Just because he would getawkward or have, you know,
social anxiety?
And I said, what if you justleaned into curiosity?
And so the next week hepracticed that, completely
(30:57):
changed all of his conversationsin that room.
And I think, as humans, wethink that, like you said,
someday we're going to be betterat that.
Someday when this or this orthis, then I'll really have that
mastered.
No, it's not really that it's.
there's a thousand moments todaythat you can go, you know, step
(31:18):
into that moment in a differentway, with a different approach,
and change your results rightnow.
You know, and then practicethat over time and build that
muscle.
Like that's the work I want todo with people.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Can I tell you, what you just said reminds me of what
I think is one of those sort oflike again, kind of cheeky,
magical thing that a coach cando, a human who cares, and
that's what I think.
It's kind of like you.
You almost like I dare you togo to that party, I dare you to
lean into curiosity and see whathappens, right, like as kids,
(31:53):
right, but I dare you to likejump off that thing.
That's kind of hot.
Yeah, I dare you right.
So we all have it that likedaring someone to do something
bold has a sort of likemischievous angle to it but as a
grown-up coach who's like tostand for that.
You know your client to be lesssocially awkward to go and light
up the room and find that hecan do that today, not after six
(32:15):
weeks of attending Ghostmasters.
Like you challenged him in aloving way.
You throw down the gauntletjust a little bit.
What if you just lean intobeing curious?
I suspect he had some follow-upquestions.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Actually, I mean, I don't even know that he did.
I think he got it and he cameback like one week and then the
next week.
Basically, I mean, when we didtalk about it, I guess we did
talk about, you know, getting intheir world.
Take the focus off of yourselfand get into their world, you
know, and that takes thepressure.
(32:49):
Yeah, yes, yes, this is what Iwas saying to my client.
Right?
Because when we have socialanxiety, we're worried about
ourselves.
Right?
Because when we have socialanxiety, we're worried about
ourselves, right?
And so if we get curious aboutthe person we're talking to, it
takes all that pressure off andit's genuine and authentic in
the moment, and that's whenamazing things happen in
(33:11):
conversation.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And that's where the magic of a coach is, because you
told them that you fleshed out.
Here's what that looks like.
You know, you, it might've been.
You might've had a little bitof like the.
Well, let me unpack it for youso that you're you're convinced,
you're sold, that it's worth atry.
Yeah, and I promised you, one ofthe big things that I believe
in the moment had him screw hisscourge to the sticking place
(33:34):
and actually follow through, wasthat he gets the joy of being
able to turn back to you, carla,and say I did it, that was cool
, because if he'd read it in abook he'd be like that's a cool
idea, and maybe he'd havethought to himself I'll do that.
But of course, promises we maketo ourselves super easy to
break.
But if you wanted to kind ofhonor that, you took the time to
(33:57):
suggest it and and again, kindof paint the picture of what it
looks like so that he could comeback and say, like you know
what, coach, that worked, man weare so this is where coaches, I
think, have a tremendous edgein, shall we say, leveraging the
people pleasing instinct of us,of other people.
We want to look good.
Right, we want to.
(34:17):
We don't want to be like achump.
Coach, I'm going to do X andthen you're going to have an
awkward conversation.
Hopefully, if coach is the typewho's like you know, did you do
it?
How'd it go?
Oh, I didn't.
It could be a little awkward.
Instead, we love coach, I'mgoing to do X and then you go do
X and it was a, and you can'twait to talk to Carla next week
and tell her how it went.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yes, totally.
I mean just having that call onmy calendar can keep me
accountable and get me getthings done right when you know
you've got that coming up.
But then all the other elementstied to it, I think you're
right it does.
It's very impactful and, likeyou, I've been on both sides.
I've been the coachee and I'vebeen the coach and it's it's
(35:03):
powerful.
It's powerful to be.
You know, I think one of thethings that helps my clients the
most is staying in aconversation like this.
Right, like we don't often haveplaces where we're having
conversation about life andshowing up fully and what that
even looks like and what thatcould mean and what's possible,
(35:23):
right, a lot of people don'thave places in their life where
they're having thoseconversations on a regular basis
.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
It's a reminder to do it and, most importantly, it's
a reminder oh you can right,yeah, you can transcend just
inertially getting by and takesort of bold actions and again
that sort of coach, that caring,wise and coach, or even you
(35:52):
don't have to be terribly wise,not that you are not, but you
can just be as a spotter Again.
You can have in the gym, likethe gym metaphor if someone's
like benching 300 pounds, youcan have someone that's not
quite as beefy just be able tospot and make sure that the bar
doesn't like choke them on their, their, you know, just land on
their chest and like trap themas a coach.
(36:15):
It's so funny, it's.
I've heard coaches wonder who amI to coach this powerful person
?
Right, the answer because youcould get imposter syndrome.
Like, oh, they're up to biggerthings than I am.
Who am I to coach them?
You could get an impostersyndrome real quick if you don't
realize a key again, part ofthe magic and mojo of a coach
(36:41):
You're not them.
You bring an externalperspective.
You bring caring plus I'm notin it so I can see more clearly
or help you see otherperspectives which will add
power to anyone, even if they'reup here with whatever station
in life and whatever blah, blah,blah, looking good, you can
make a huge difference forsomeone just by caring and being
(37:02):
a person about it.
That has a new vantage point,and so you can challenge someone
to do something, even somethingthat would make you scared,
like, well, look, you're at thispoint, you should try X and
I'll be listening for that.
You did it and we can celebrateto next week if you did, or
complete whatever we need tocomplete if you've lost your
nerve and get you back on thehorse.
(37:23):
Tons of metaphors, right yeah,that's the fun of a coach man.
These conversations that you sayit reminds you to get bigger,
to play a little bigger, to dosomething.
Not a six-month plan ofToastmasters and improv classes.
Nah, tonight I love it what yousaid, those, those
opportunities every day to justpractice, what would be so true
(37:45):
we think we're stuck, and Ithink that's one of the things I
learned in in Landmark.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
but, um, you know that you, you stuck is sort of a
something that created afabrication of your mind, right,
and there's, there's I believeyou're never really stuck, you
know, and there's thisconversation that there's so
many alternative pathways totake.
But back to your last note oflike just this conversation and
(38:13):
exciting and what it can do inyour life.
I'm curious to kind of turn itback to you, like anything you
want to share with what you'reup to next inside of Coach,
accountable, or anything thatyou're excited about, a project,
or take that anywhere you wantto go.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Sure, well, I tell you what I mean.
Just some like inside the webguy entrepreneurs studio, the
web guy entrepreneur's studio,we can riff.
I have had for a while now aseries of essays that are called
the Coach Cannibal Perspectiveand I put them on the web.
They're there, they're justhanging out, carla.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
There's like 37 of them, but I want to be I want to
see them All right well, it'sjust there.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
I haven't told anyone in official capacity, but if
you just typeperspectivecoachaccountablecom
in your browser, you'll seestuff like this.
Because I'm realizing, thanksfor indulging me.
I'm like, all right, I'll justshare.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, this is exciting.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I have a lot of perspectives on coaching from
being an Uber fan who's gotten aton from it, but without being,
shall we say, I'm not tied toany particular school of thought
.
I didn't invest a whole ton tolike.
This is my, you know, schoolingand this is what I believe to
be the right way, and I wentthis high up the mountain with
this accrediting levels.
(39:34):
So anything that contradictsthat will break my brain a
little.
I have to defend it becauseotherwise it undermines the
effort.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
This is why I love you and what you do.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Contrary to all that, which I think is a lot of
people who are, again, deeplyenmeshed in the coaching world,
and certainly most people whohave, shall we say, thought
about it deeply for 20 years.
I'm a guy who's thought aboutit deeply for 20 years without
that sort of thing.
I'm just some guy who's gottensome really great things from
(40:11):
being coached, who's had someexperiences amazing and not
amazing and I'm in theperspective that I've got that
I'll be, you know, again one ofthese days I'll slap on a click
here to subscribe button andyou'll figure out some platform.
I don't even like to.
I'm a tech guy.
I hate like trying to whittlethrough like platforms to figure
(40:31):
out which is the best one.
Oh my God, do I sympathize forany?
All coaches who are trying tofigure it out that eventually
find your way to coachaccountable.
There's a lot out there andthere's a lot of.
So I feel your pain.
I can't even be bothered to doit for this, but I will
eventually.
But the point is I'll put asubscribe thing and then I'll be
like okay, let me do this,cause I do have like a list of
about a hundred essays that arestill to be written that are
(40:53):
just like, oh yeah, that's agood one to flesh out as an idea
.
And the idea is think of me asyour would-be client who has
seen it all and is wanting tojust whisper into your ear this
is what I wish you would know togive us a great experience.
This is what it's like to be onthe receiving end, and this
would make a big difference tohave this wonderful thing that
(41:15):
you do coaching actually workfor us.
Versus again, what I in the, inmy story of coaching, the
villain is feel good insightsthat go nowhere.
That's my villain.
So I'm, I'm, I'm taking this.
So the perspective is out thereand waiting to be launched.
It's just ready to go lockedand loaded and I I realized for
(41:35):
myself I don't want to do this.
If it's just me.
I've been solo for a while.
I've had team in the past andtraining, for what a fanatic I
am about being awesome withpeople.
Thanks, carla, by the way,earlier for the shout out about
customer support.
I really am precious about.
We'd be great with people.
So training has a lot ofactivation energy to it, but I
(42:02):
put out a hiring thing and I'vegot someone starting a new CA
staffer on Monday.
So I'm excited to welcome Noahto the fold, I'm excited to have
him in my dojo and learningwhat I am calling not the John
Larson way, but creating it asthe coach accountable way, and
(42:22):
then I'm going to have somespace and the feeling of I have
backup.
So maybe now's the time toactually launch the Coach Gumbel
perspective, and the idea isthis can be useful food for
thought to be great as a coachin novel ways, more than we'll
just coach better and do evenbetter for what the, shall we
say, the recording will show,which is again what a lot of
definitions of certification allare to do.
(42:43):
Well, how did you show up onthe call?
Okay, that's because there's nomachinations for measuring
everything else, ie what happenswhen you're not there and do
they do the work?
Do they actually integrate it?
What are the kind of results?
So my definition for what makesan awesome coach goes way
beyond how you actually show upin the call, and that's not to
(43:04):
diminish the call, but I'msaying that the experience of
being coached can be more thanthe conversations.
So the perspective I see to itbe worth a read anyway, whether
you use Coach Calum or not, ah,we're good, I don't care, it's
all good.
But if it can be a usefulresource and food for thought
and some, I don't know, stir thepot somewhat, counter melody
(43:28):
perspectives on how the usualmelody of what it is to be a
quote unquote competent coach,are something that makes it a
little more richer, a littlemore dynamic, a little more than
just the conversations andhelps coaches to distinguish
themselves and be that muchbetter.
Well, mission accomplished.
I want client coaching, clientsto have a bang on experience
where it's truly impactful andmeaningful.
This might be an expression ofmy thumbing my nose at having,
(43:52):
you know, done six months worthof weekly calls for a thousand
bucks a pop, where I have verylittle to show for it.
Nothing was written down.
It really started with a.
So what do you want to talkabout today?
It was lovely, there were greatconversations, but, man, if
someone can charge that kind ofscratch and get away with just
(44:13):
conversations, I think there's alot of room for some pretty
darn good coaches to absolutelydunk on that experience and get
people more.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I love this so much.
John, please get this booktogether.
I want it.
I've been to your.
What's that?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
It's not a book.
I mean maybe someday, but it'sjust, it's not a book.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
What is it?
What's it going to be?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
It's a series of essays that I'll probably you
know just essays, two or three aweek and again there's 40,
there's, there's 30, I believethere's 37 in the till and
they're kind of fun again.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Perspective on how to be an amazing coach well, I I'd
like them all in one package,because they sound amazing and
I've attended.
I don't know what you call them.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Webinars.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, webinars, where we as users come together and
you have taught us things andgiven us perspectives that are
so different than anything elseyou find in coaching.
That's why I love what you do,that's why I love your work,
because it's unique, it'sdifferent.
You come from a completelydifferent angle, so I can't wait
for that.
(45:21):
So, if I can be of any support,if you need any readers and
want some input, I'm in yourcorner.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Wow, Awesome, Carla, that's super encouraging because
, wow, yeah, you're a fan,You've been a long time and if
you're saying that like, yeah,the novelty of that perspective,
as I do, sort of from a I don'tknow black horse kind of angle,
sort of outside of the industry, like know, I largely said
everything I had to say in thatseries and yeah, there's about a
(46:01):
dozen.
I think there's about 20 ofthem that you can see at
coachcom slash webinars, I guessif anyone's interested with fun
things like how to run abusiness, how to give your
clients more.
I have another one in me.
Actually it's funny youmentioned that because, like
there was a, there was in theCoachGunner users group.
Someone said, hey, how y'alluse an AI, and CA's customer
(46:26):
number one, john Kenworthy,chimed in with a lot of good
insight and it got my gearsturning.
I didn't want to really put inmy two cents, you know, in the,
in the, in that, in that venue,cause I don't know, I've kind of
got an ax to grind, but itreminded me and I just took the
next day, like I took an hour onmy porch with my laptop and
just wrote an outline foranother webinar which I suspect
I'll be producing and puttingout sometime in July, maybe
(46:47):
August again, when Noah's up tospeed.
It's titled Remaining aRelevant Coach in the Era of AI,
which seems to be on top ofpeople's minds.
I don't know if you know this,carla, but there's some concerns
.
I am deeply sympathetic andhave a couple ideas of how to
(47:09):
remain relevant Because,speaking of again coaching
experiences where I'm a bitnonplussed or a little bit like
underwhelmed, I had a coachwhere I paid 500 a session and
he'd give me here's thetranscript and here's the
summary.
And here was what was insidiousabout this.
It was kind of raw from chat,gtp or whatever else and you
(47:32):
read the summary and it feelsokay, that was about what it was
talked about.
But guess what?
The conversation was way morepowerful than that and the
hallucinations were subtle andinsidious enough that if you
didn't take your own notes ofmeticulous quality, either
mentally or otherwise, you wouldbelieve that the AI summary
(47:53):
that was given to you was oh, Iguess that's what we did.
Yeah, and I'm a little pissedoff, honestly on behalf of
coaching clients.
Coaches, please don't give AIproduct as here you go.
Maybe use it for a mnemonic tohelp you augment your brain,
that's okay, but at the end ofthe day, I would have really
(48:13):
preferred if the guy hadactually taken a beat to write
up here's what I think wasimportant and actually hit the
high notes of where the worldshifted with a nice little
insight, because those happenedin those calls.
He was a great coach.
But the product at the end likeI'm going to use AI and give my
clients more and I felt like Igot way less.
I felt like I got.
I don't care, I can't bebothered.
(48:34):
Here's what a machine thoughtof our conversation.
It's almost offensive.
Wow, oh my gosh, I have so muchto say about this?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Maybe we need to have another conversation about AI.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
That would be fun.
Another time with AI-focusedfun, it would be fun?
Speaker 1 (48:49):
It would be fun.
There's so much there and Ithink that, yeah, people have to
be discerning.
People are, you know, even myclients will send me like, hey,
I asked AI about this and lookat what, what I got, and while
there is some good stuff inthere, there is some stuff to be
watching for for sure.
And it kind of sent them on apath of like, oh, you need to
(49:12):
fix this and this and this andthis about yourself and I, I
just and this about yourself andI just that's not my approach
and it was concerning a littleconcerning to me for sure yeah,
that we would be going to getadvice on our life from AI and
then making decisions based onthat too.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
So, yeah, so much to be so much good and then things
to be mindful of there too, and,um, wow, yeah, I'm holding
myself back from going deeperthere I as well, carla, but like
, yeah, I pointed out a couplethings earlier, like there's
certain magic things that ahuman coach does, called like I
(49:57):
dare you and I'll be listeningfor how it went and you can like
I'm rooting for you.
Like there's, there's a coupleof things that so, yeah, we'll
not, we'll not run this ax ordig into it too much today, but
yeah, but I can't wait for youressays.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I really can't wait, and I'm actually looking forward
to that webinar.
So, as we close, I would justlove to know what does
differently mean to you.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
What does differently mean to you?
I mean, gosh, you kind of setme up for a spike volley on this
one, because basicallyno-transcript.
(50:43):
I am probably one of the fewpeople who have thought about it
as deeply as I have for thelast 12, 13 years of evolving
this platform.
Who's not already kind ofenmeshed in one of the schools
of thought, the definitions ofpurity?
And instead I come from purelypragmatic, what actually helps
me to show up.
I'm not the only one who has ahard time remembering just to
fit it in life.
I'm not the only one who getscharged and energized by
(51:05):
recognizing like oh, there's thetrend line, I can see how
things are changing, and versuslike, oh, I'm pretty sure it's
going well, what's up, coach.
I'm not the only one who reallyhungers coaching to be more
than the conversations, becausethe conversations can only do so
much if you're left to your owndevices.
So I'm a I'm some outsider dudedoing my thing, man, and I
(51:26):
think that's fairly differently.
And when it comes to how I seekto contribute to this whole
endeavor cause, man, I got a lotof good stuff from it and I
want to pay it forward.
I feel I owe nothing less.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, that's amazing.
I enjoyed this conversation somuch.
I really see you doingdifferently and that's what
inspired me to ask you on thepodcast, because I feel like you
really do that in everythingyou do, John.
All my interactions with you,they're different.
Just the way you communicate isdifferent and it's really
refreshing and I just thank youfor all you're doing to make
(52:05):
this platform amazing andsupport us as users and really
make coaching, just taking it upnotches.
I feel like that's what you doyou elevate the game and I'm all
in.
So I just thank you.
Thank you for sharing yourheart and yourself and you're
just getting in your mind.
(52:26):
Today was so much fun.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Right on, I feel completely gotten.
Thank you, carla.
It's my absolute pleasure toshow up, and here's to the climb
man.
I really am honored andappreciate you having me on
today.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Amazing.
Hey, John, thank you for joining me, kind of on a
whim to join me on the podcast.
I'm really excited to continuea conversation that you and I
started a couple weeks ago.
And just a little backstoryJohn is the creator of Coach
Accountable and I looked backI've been using Coach
Accountable since 2019 and it'sbeen an amazing journey, and so
(00:30):
I'm really excited to talk tothe creator of that and
introduce you to John.
So welcome John.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thank you, Carla.
It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, so I want to dive kind of right into.
I recall something and I thinkit may have been one of your
blogs, I can't really remember,but I feel like it was something
about your story of how youlike a catalyst to even getting
into this world of creatingCoach Accountable.
(01:00):
So would you kind of take usback to what started all of this
for you and how long ago wasthat?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, sure.
So it was 2004 when I got myfirst taste of coaching that is
not just some guy with a whistletelling you to do more pushups.
I thought coaching equalssports and I'm not much of a
sports guy, right?
So when I did atransformational program with
Limerick Education and gotacquainted, like oh my God,
(01:28):
there's this whole world ofpeople who are standing for and
guiding people to be their bestversion right, it's distinct
from therapy like hey, I'munwell, I could use some help.
It's a I'm well and I'minterested in being even more
awesome.
And there's this whole world ofcoaches who are like, yeah,
cool, come with me this way,let's do this.
(01:49):
And so I immediately fell inlove.
I got so much out of thatprogram and I'm like this is
amazing.
Right, this is the coolestthing I've ever experienced in
terms of living my own lifepowerfully, because I was kind
of living small.
I had a master's degree incomputer science and I took a
tech support job for $30,000 andI crushed it salary Right, and
I was good, but like I might'vebeen not kind of living up to my
(02:13):
potential.
So I get acquainted withcoaching in 2004.
Love it, and it's one of thethings of coaching that I got
out of it was like, oh, live upto your potential.
Maybe I am kind of aiming lowand maybe someday there will be
for me to be an entrepreneur.
Right, take that leap.
(02:34):
Because my daddy was anentrepreneur, my brothers are
entrepreneurs.
I thought someday maybe I'll bean entrepreneur.
And, of course, in many goodtransformational programs you
get acquainted with the notionsomeday never comes right.
And so I was like, oh, yeah, Igot to actually create it.
Do it, take that leap, takethat step, be living more
intentionally into my authentic,true potential.
(02:55):
The world that we all here inthis world are kind of
acquainted with is powerful.
This was all new to me.
So I eventually, after twoyears, quit my day job and take
the entrepreneurial path.
And me and a couple of friendsare just sort of like quitting
our day jobs and we don't knowwhat the hell we're doing.
(03:15):
And I did my time, shall we say,in the entrepreneurial
foothills of not really knowingthe heck we're doing, flying by
the skin of our teeth, knockingout the rent, barely doing like
web development and design jobsfor hire, and after doing that
for a little while maybe a yearor two it's like huh, wouldn't
it be neat if we could transcendjust doing contract work for
(03:38):
hire and make a product,something that you know allows
us to sort of have a businessthat scales beyond us being, you
know, professionals for hire,something that allows us to have
a business that scales beyondus being professionals for hire.
Could we do that?
And at the obvious intersectionof that drive and desire and
the kind of web work we weredoing and our foundation of,
yeah, coaching andtransformational coaching and
mojo and living your potentialand possibility lied there's no
(04:01):
good app for coaches.
Coaching is so cool, butthere's no good app.
Maybe we could make the goodapp for it.
And so it's like 2008 and we'relike let's take a stab at
making a coaching app.
And so, in the margins of doingjobs for hire and contracted
things, we're working on thisthing and it looks really cool.
And in summer of 2009, we'reready to show it off to the
(04:24):
world and we're like this reallycool.
And in summer of 2009, we'reready to show it off to the
world and we're like this iscool, ta-da.
And again, if there are anyentrepreneurs in the room, you
might know like maybe it's notterribly surprising that my next
thing is like crickets.
Nobody knows, nobody cares.
In fact, we use it ourselves inthe very program done by
Landmark, the self-expressionleadership program, as coaches.
(04:45):
We volunteered to be coaches inthat program, having done it
ourselves, and we're like, hey,we made this thing, maybe we can
try it.
And so we try it with realpeople and we realize kind of
heartbrokenly our baby is ugly.
Coach accountable 1.0 isactually not that great to use.
It looks cool, it had a certainsizzle right, but it wasn't
(05:05):
actually good.
So we kind of shelved it andlet it just sort of be for a
while and like, okay, maybewe're not quite good enough yet
to transcend doing contract work.
We kind of retreat back to thatposition, so we let it stay
dormant for a little while.
A couple of years go by.
It's 2012 now.
I have parted ways with mypartners and and still, my
buddies they live in town gavethem the ownership interest in
(05:28):
the design and web developmentagency that we did and they gave
me, shall we say, fullownership of the corpse of Coach
Accountable.
And out of the woodwork come nofewer than four parties in 2004
or 12 to say like, hey, man,what's going on with this thing?
Are you doing anything with it.
Do you want to sell it?
Because coachinganimalcom isstill up on the interwebs.
(05:48):
We took off the sign up pagebecause it's not really going
anywhere, but there seems to besome interest in it.
So here we are.
Here I am, like, sole owner ofit, and four years have passed.
Right, like I'm four years lessnaive, a little more seasoned,
experienced Smartphonerevolutions now happened.
(06:11):
Apps are cool, data in thecloud is less of an esoteric
concept and it got me thinkingall right, maybe the time is
right to do Coach Accountableagain and try to dust it off and
do a version 2.0.
And this time, carla, I gotsmart.
I actually used it as I builtit, I recruited some friends to
be like guinea pigs.
Right time, carla, I got smart.
I actually used it as I builtit.
I recruited some friends to belike guinea pigs.
Right, like, hey, I'm trying todo this thing.
Can I coach you and put youthrough the system and do some
(06:34):
things?
And in doing that, I was ableto file off the rough edges and
actually make it good this time.
I don't mind saying that was astep up from version one, and I
launched it while my wife and Iwere on a year-long world tour.
We were traveling abroad andgoing slow, living place to
place.
So we were about a month intothat world tour where we sold
all our stuff at home anddropped off Ozzy the Kitty at my
(06:56):
in-laws and from my kitchentable in Cusco, peru.
Coach Cannibal 2.0.
Let's give it another try.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Love it, I love it.
Oh my gosh, there's so muchhere.
Okay, so I did Landmark also,and this is the point that I
thought you and I connected onor that I had read something.
I think you had postedsomething about Landmark.
So I'm like, oh my, oh my gosh,landmark changed my life too,
um, in a huge way, in a reallyhuge way.
(07:29):
I don't think I would be doingthe work I do today if it
weren't for that program.
I wouldn't have the marriage Ihave today, if it weren't for
that program.
I mean that we yeah, I wentthrough the whole curriculum.
My husband did a lot ofvolunteering, so for people who,
if you're listening and you'relike what the the heck is?
This Landmark education is acurriculum for living your life,
(07:49):
which is so awesome.
It gives you tools for livinglife and that's what I became so
passionate about is havingtools makes all the difference.
Like I was prior to that, justkind of living at the mercy of
my circumstances and thinkingthis is as good as it gets and I
have no power.
And what it taught me is thatwe actually have so much power
(08:12):
to shape and influence thequality of our lives, and so I
love that.
We connect on that.
I met my husband.
He was a coach in theself-expression and leadership
program and that's where I methim and leadership program and
that's where I met him.
And so we were able to start amarriage like with you know,
kind of a blank canvas, andreally create and we still use
(08:33):
the tools.
I mean we've been married 25years and using the tools, so
amazing.
So I love that.
And then you had a coachingexperience that led you to
really launching like, wow, whatif you know?
What if we could take this to awhole nother level.
Amazing, and I love the first.
You know, the baby, the babyversion, that didn't quite.
(08:56):
I think we can all relate tothat, so much I.
It brought up so many memoriesfor me and it also reminded me
that sometimes we think we havesomething and it doesn't quite
go as expected and it can be sodisappointing, but often that,
like like you said, you let itsit and then look what has
happened since then.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so do you want to?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
give people a snapshot of, like what that tool
is today and what that lookslike for you.
Like as a because it I I guessthat this is kind of you've
blended this into your life, um,and created a lifestyle
business.
I'm guessing that I don't knowthat, so correct me if I'm wrong
(09:42):
, almost a term of art.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
It's almost a term of derision in Silicon Valley
circles.
Right, for the folks who don't,who aren't.
No Lifestyle business is whatinvestors say like oh cool,
you're not serious.
You don't want to take abajillion dollars of funding and
grow big or go home and get theunicorn IPO valuation and make
your whole life being about thesomeday payday unicorn moonshot.
(10:04):
Yeah, I have no time for you.
So that's lifestyle business.
But the positive side oflifestyle business, which, carla
, I do think I resemble yeah,man, I can do this full time and
I don't have to be a slave toit.
It's low stress, I can justkind of be the master of my own
destiny and I'm plentyprosperous.
Doing it Like this may be adead end if I want a yacht or
(10:27):
something stupid like that, butI don't want a yacht, I don't
care, I'm good.
So, like a job in a businessthat you can probably grow
organically, rather than havingyour pay masters, your investors
, breathing down your neck sothey get theirs.
No interest whatsoever.
So yeah, that's how that is Tounpack how Coach Cabell is and
(10:47):
what it is.
I mean, I think my cue here isto put on my salesman hat and
give the pitch for it.
Let me do a different angle.
No, don't do that Because coachto coach right, game recognizes
game.
My journey of making thisplatform is so informed by my
own.
Yeah, a little bit by being acoach.
Absolutely, I can talk andstand shoulder to shoulder with
(11:08):
coaches about like here's what Isee can help to make you show
up more powerfully and have yourclients get better.
But if I'm honest, the juice ofit is, I think the real juice
of it is look, man, I've been onthe receiving end of coaching
side.
I know very well what it's liketo have an awesome coaching
conversation where you feelclear, headed and inspired and
(11:31):
motivated.
It's like a brain massage,right, the good coaches are
super reliable for that.
And then life comes up, right,you forget.
So here's the sort ofapocryphal tale.
That's not even apocryphal, ittotally happened week after week
.
I was in the self-expressionleader program and I don't know
(11:51):
for the folks at home.
You do a community project, yougo to classroom, you make an
action plan, carve in copy, ripoff a copy, give it to your
coach and I would take my copy.
I don't know what you call it,but I'd take my copy, fold it up
in my notebook and probablyforget about it.
So when I got on my weeklycoaching call.
Like two, three days later,coach is like so, john, it was
(12:14):
good, good, I'm glad you're well, how are you doing in your
action plan?
And I'd be like, oh, what did Isay I was doing again, and he'd
write it to me what an actionplan.
Right, like quite an actionplan.
It wasn't there for me, itwasn't present for me, and so
the impetus, the first feature Ibuilt of Coach Campbell back in
(12:36):
the 1.0 days and it's stillcore to the 2.0 days and beyond
action items, make it so thatyou put it in existence and some
time the reminders willactually fly at you and you're
poking your face like a littletext message, like, hey, don't
forget to do this.
A little email this is due inone day and a nice way for both
(12:56):
coach and client to see, yeah,what's done and what's not, so
that you can skip the weatherreport and skip any sort of,
like you know, excuse making andfeeling a little dodgy and like
, feel a little bad because theaverage bear.
I found I thought this was apersonal character failing on my
part, but then I was coach andI'm like, oh no, no, this is not
(13:18):
unique to me.
I coined the phrase thatdescribes what I would consider
a large slice of the pie, if nota majority.
A motivated mirror mortal,someone who shows up to coaching
like, yeah, coaching, this iscool.
I believe in this.
I'm up to something.
I want to grow, I want toexpand.
(13:39):
Hey, coach, help me, I want todo it.
So they're motivated right, it'searnest, they're showing up to
the program.
You know what it's like to workwith those people, carla.
They're great, like their heartis in it.
But then the mere mortal partkicks in, because we all know,
in all aspects of life there arethe metaphorical A students of
it, people who are countable.
(14:00):
They're going to write it down,they're going to put it in
existence, they're going tofollow through because, hey,
they said they would, and whywould I not?
My wife is an A student in life.
She's awesome, she's amazing.
Right, I am an A student insome areas, but coaching, no, I
was like rubbish at that.
So the idea of Coach Accountableis help those motivated mere
(14:20):
mortals, people who aregenuinely enrolled in what you
have to offer and really do wantto bring their earnest
intention to help manage thesoft skills of actually bringing
it to their life.
When coach isn't there, somesimple existence tools to keep
it alive and keep it going sothat they can actually do the
work and fit it in and besupported in that, even when
(14:43):
coach isn't there, and that, Ifind, makes all the difference.
Now I'm talking both as coachand client.
Dude, it's so much better ifthe coaching process is not two
steps forward and one step back,but instead three steps forward
.
We make a plan, it getsexecuted, boom, let's continue.
Ooh, that's satisfying foreveryone involved.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
That's so good.
It's a game changer for me andit's funny because I came at it
from a little different angle.
I think I have told you this,I'm not sure, but I did Landmark
and then I felt a real callingto start writing, and writing
had a huge impact in my life,helped me sort through so many
(15:29):
things, understand myself better, be able to manage my own
thinking and so that I couldstart taking aligned actions and
be accountable and haveintegrity, which is something I
learned about in Landmark.
Right, I thought I had all theintegrity in the world and
realized I really didn't.
But like, writing really helpedme and so I found coaching
(15:53):
through writing.
I started creating a businesscalled sanity journals to teach
people how to use writing as atool to navigate their life, and
I ended up finding a coachingcompany that coached with a
journal and I ended up goingthrough that program and the
coaching was great.
But I fell in love with the ideaof coupling coaching, which was
(16:15):
so powerful, with a journal andtaking that journaling piece
that had had such a coach.
My training was to use thewriting to help people see their
(16:35):
blind spots and the thoughtprocesses that are debilitating
them or getting in the way orthe thought processes that are
helping them.
But a lot of this kind of runsunder the surface and we
ourselves can't see it.
And so the journal became thisincredible reflection tool to
really help people move beyondthese barriers that, like all
(16:57):
their intentions are right butthey're just feel like they're
spinning their wheels and it'sthe stuff that was causing that
that the journal helped me tosee, and so that's really why I
came to Coach Accountable wasbecause you had a journal that
you could journal.
You know your clients couldjournal with you, and then you
had all these other pieces to itthat, of course, added to the
(17:20):
coaching relationship too.
But I'm curious, what does thejournal part mean to you inside
of Coach Accountable?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
and site a coach accountable Interesting.
So I'm almost a littleembarrassed to say, because I
was just about to say look, theymust love that You're being
like a spotter onto theirthought process and it's great
that you get them to do thatsort of brain dump and get their
thoughts out, which helpsorganize and clarify them, of
course.
But you add something more,don't you?
By being able to read them as asecond disinterested party
(17:52):
who's not too close.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yes, yes, it is so powerful, john, and we're doing
that.
You know I'm responding totheir journals in between our
sessions and so when we get tothat next call, I have so much
like, I have so much to workwith and we've already started
to dig a little deep, so we justgo deeper.
There's no catching up, right?
Yeah, it's powerful.
(18:15):
So, just asking questions, I'llhighlight a piece of their
journal and just say, hey, likeyou know, go a little bit deeper
here, say a little bit moreabout this, or or pull something
out that is just like gold thatthey may not realize.
Like, oh my gosh, look what youjust said here.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Like this is powerful .
Yeah Right, Okay, cool.
So that's what I figured.
And in the early design ofCoach Campbell that's not what I
figured and I'll explain thatto me.
The journaling feature is sobasic, right, it's very simple,
Like either coach or client canwrite a journal entry, you know,
(18:53):
put a little tag, a label atthe top, and just write and hit
save and maybe email it to yourcoach, or maybe coach emails it
to you, vice versa, whoever'swriting it, and it's just a
record, Like as features go.
It's so bread and butter, plainJane.
But I think you've.
It's so bread and butter, plainJane.
But I think you've kind ofunderscored the magic of it
(19:19):
which is, look, it encouragesyou to do it or it's a clearing,
for it's a place to say, hey,there's a journaling section,
you should use it and just in afriendly way, you can kind of
assign them to or just likechallenge to or invite them to
at whatever cadence, because youget to say you're going to
build up a repository of theseentries and unless you mark them
private, which is fine, you can.
(19:40):
But if we're working togetherand I'm sure you enroll your
coach, your clients, and I'mhere to be your spotter, I'm
here to offer those insights ofwhat I see.
So you make it into a ritualthat is easy for them to do and
automatically kind of shareswith you.
And to your point again, it'ssuch a basic feature but to your
point, it seeds theconversations that you have with
(20:02):
them.
It has you be like yeah, I'm inyour world, I've been paying
attention.
Thanks for taking that time.
We can now play with that, whichthe final thing is, it's so
much better and juicier than thecoach who says at the top of
their session okay, what do youwant to talk about?
The subtext being I got nothing.
(20:25):
I either haven't been payingattention or I have nothing to
pay attention to, because wedon't have that kind of practice
and you know we're just goingto make it up as we go.
No, you come in.
I bet your clients love it.
You come in hot.
You come in aware.
You come in with a clearpicture of what's going on for
(20:45):
them and what you see.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
To add, yes, I mean there's always so many options,
directions we can go right.
So there's definitely.
It just gives me so much towork with as a coach, so
powerful.
So how do you see others usingthe journaling feature?
And I'm kind of curious, like,what's this platform, I mean for
(21:10):
listeners?
I don't know that it like, doyou have anybody that's not a
coach using it?
Like, I'd love to hear, like,what's the most interesting use
of this platform?
Like, is it all coaches?
Because I feel like it wouldn'thave to be.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
So let me top off both of those questions with a
mere statement of fact called Ikind of don't know, unless
people, unless I have lovelyconversations like this with you
, I everyone's kind of operatingin self-service fashion and I
get whiffs of it from like again, yeah, just chatting about this
and that, or or questions likehey, can it be good for this,
(21:50):
but otherwise it's a veryself-serve app.
So my awareness of what's goingon, quote unquote, in this
house that I've set up forpeople to set their own shop is
very limited.
So when you ask me, how dopeople use journaling, it's kind
of like I don't know man Notexactly sure.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
It really is an abstract tool.
That's's general purpose.
It's a clearing for whateveryou do with it.
I know to make sure that I havethe features, do the various
modalities make it easy to emailback and forth, share back and
forth and all kinds of stuffwith worksheets a little more
complicated, with cool thingsthat you can do, but what people
do with it?
Oh, I keep being surprised nowand then when I do get certain
whiffs of this and that you askif there's anyone but coaches.
(22:36):
Yes, I haven't paid attentionin a while, but there's a lot of
real estate offices using CoachAccountable for training and
managing the performance oftheir agents.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Not terribly coaching For teams, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Not terribly coaching , but I've learned, I've become
acquainted with the word humanbeing who's kind of like here,
helping to guide or shepherd orcontribute to another human
(23:17):
being looking to be better.
Oh, there's a lot of modalitiesthat run out of that and the
purists will say that's notcoaching, it doesn't belong here
.
Okay, that's cool, you know,coach Cannibal is the title and
again that anything that rhymeswith one person looking to help
the expansion of the potentialof another, come on in, there
are tools that will suit for you.
(23:37):
That's where all thenon-coaches kind of come.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I always I mean, I always see so many opportunities
that I mean, if you're engagingwith your clients and you want
to do that in an intimate,personal, connected kind of way,
I mean it's such an incredibletool for that.
So if you're listening and thatsounds interesting, you should
take a peek at what he's doing.
And I have to toot your hornfor a moment, because I've been
(24:03):
with your app or tool for a longtime now and the customer
service is so good.
I just I I can't really sayenough about that, but like you
are always there, it's not likeI don't have access to you, you
are.
You make yourself veryaccessible to us as users.
(24:24):
Um, your, my questions arealways answered quickly.
I mean, it's just been amazing.
So thank you, john, becausethat makes my life so much
better.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
That's cool.
Yeah, it's my pleasure.
I mean to show up like I builtthe whole thing, so it's really
fun to interact with actualpeople who are using the.
You know, and benefiting fromthis thing, that I've spent all
this heads down time coding andbuilding and debugging and
perfecting and polishing, soit's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
It's good time.
I mean the impact that thistool like you don't even, you'll
never know.
The impact in the ripple impactof the all the people that are
using this tool and helpingothers Like I don't know.
That's cool, that's so great.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I confess it, it's a pretty sweet gig because when I
do get whiffs of what people aredoing, like when I get on calls
, this or otherwise, you know,and more impromptu like it's
like really, oh, that's cool.
It's just like I get thoselittle glimpses into what I've
created.
So, yeah, it's fun.
Honestly, philosophically,though, like there's nothing
(25:26):
altruistic about it, I don'tknow.
I really just want to elevatecoaching, because my taste of
coaching from the get-go wasLandmark and if I were to place
it on the gamut for anyoneunacquainted, landmark I'd say
has a very Yang energy called.
Hey, that's great.
When are you going to do thatby when Someday never comes?
(25:47):
Honor your word.
What happened there when youdidn't follow through with the
thing you said?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
you would do A little ruthless.
Yeah Right, it can have thatvibe right To the uninitiated
yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And here's the thing, my whiff again, my ingress,
point to the whole coachingworld.
I'm not formally trained.
It's participating in theseprograms, in both coach and
client.
So my vantage point of the restof the industry is, you know,
you kind of see some of the bigtowering edifices like the ICF
and its you know definitions ofcompetence and a couple others,
(26:19):
and I find that so much of thecoaching world outside of where,
I, shall we say, came of age asa big fan of coaching and sort
of practitioner in softer ways,is much more Yang or, excuse me,
much more Yin, and Yin's greatand Yin has a thing, has a place
and balance, of course, butthere's such a well.
(26:44):
I think you can see it from theICF's word we are not here to
be bosses of anyone.
We're not here to babysit them.
We're here to lead an inquiry.
We're not here to be bosses ofanyone.
We're not here to babysit them.
We're here to lead an inquiry.
We're not even here to giveadvice.
The questions and knowledgewill come from within.
Okay, cool, but what getswaylaid by that philosophy and
desire to be pure coaching, asdefined in that way, is any sort
(27:08):
of accountability, is any sortof well?
How are you going to apply thisto your life?
I'm not saying it's fully notthere.
People could point to variousparts of the thing but there's a
degree of emphasis that is farless from what I thought as I
naively gave my first touch ofcoaching.
So when I go out into the worldI'm like, wait, what do you
mean?
You don't track anything andwhatever happens happens and
(27:30):
it's not our place to hold theline and sort of lovingly and
with their buy-in and consent,demand that they rise up and
honor their word.
What do you mean?
That's not appropriate.
What be?
(27:53):
I've created Coach Accountableto be a place where no, it's
great to create things that willcall for the actual applying of
those feel-good insights sothat they live as more than just
.
That was a lovely conversationand then my life didn't change.
I yearn for the kind of well,really fast results, honestly,
that I took for granted.
It's like, oh, that's howeffective and fast coaching can
(28:15):
be.
Cool, when are you going to getthat sorted?
Why don't you call them rightnow and get that cleaned up and
or create something that you'vebeen saying I want to do for six
years?
That kind of vibe.
I know it's not for everyone.
But boy, it just excites me aswhat is truly possible for
coaching, and Coach Accountableis a love letter to that style
(28:35):
of coaching.
That's sort of like it's rightin the name, right, coach
Accountable?
Let's be accountable for that.
These conversations don't justfeel good because, again, they
do.
They're amazing.
They're great when your coachis worth their salt, they're
going to be in a good place.
But what happens after?
Oh man, if everyone's reallytruly getting their money's
worth and their value and cansay like, oh my God, I got so
(28:57):
much out of working with Carlothose four weeks because she had
me journal and I knew she waswatching and the conversations
that we had outside of my doingthe work and showing up, oh,
it's easier to be able to say toa new person this is how I roll
, this is how we do it.
Do you want this?
It's easier, for that was apretty great, you know, one
(29:18):
month or three months session orwhatever.
Do you want to continue?
I, I'm just so bullish oncoaches thriving because if
they're thriving for the rightreasons and not a slick you know
, marketing budget, that meansreally good differences are
being made with actual people.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
That's cool.
Oh my gosh, that just makes meso excited.
Um, I buy into the samephilosophy that you do um around
coaching.
I was.
I was trained in a in acoaching um certification.
That was very different andvery much about deep
(29:56):
conversation and integration ofthat conversation into your life
, because that's when it makes adifference.
I was just responding tosomething this morning, but it's
like so often with clients theythey think they need, you know,
additional tools, additionalskills, additional knowledge,
(30:17):
additional training, and what Isee over and over again is they
really just need integration.
You know, it's like I had aconversation with someone who
was like I, wanting tocommunicate better and thinking
that I need to take, I need togo to improv and I need to take
some communication classes andmaybe I need to do toast masters
(30:37):
.
And I'm like well, wait a minute.
Like yes, those things aregreat and you might want to do
those things.
However, when you go to thisevent, what if you?
Just because he would getawkward or have, you know,
social anxiety?
And I said, what if you justleaned into curiosity?
And so the next week hepracticed that, completely
(30:57):
changed all of his conversationsin that room.
And I think, as humans, wethink that, like you said,
someday we're going to be betterat that.
Someday when this or this orthis, then I'll really have that
mastered.
No, it's not really that it's.
there's a thousand moments todaythat you can go, you know, step
(31:18):
into that moment in a differentway, with a different approach,
and change your results rightnow.
You know, and then practicethat over time and build that
muscle.
Like that's the work I want todo with people.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Can I tell you, what you just said reminds me of what
I think is one of those sort oflike again, kind of cheeky,
magical thing that a coach cando, a human who cares, and
that's what I think.
It's kind of like you.
You almost like I dare you togo to that party, I dare you to
lean into curiosity and see whathappens, right, like as kids,
(31:53):
right, but I dare you to likejump off that thing.
That's kind of hot.
Yeah, I dare you right.
So we all have it that likedaring someone to do something
bold has a sort of likemischievous angle to it but as a
grown-up coach who's like tostand for that.
You know your client to be lesssocially awkward to go and light
up the room and find that hecan do that today, not after six
(32:15):
weeks of attending Ghostmasters.
Like you challenged him in aloving way.
You throw down the gauntletjust a little bit.
What if you just lean intobeing curious?
I suspect he had some follow-upquestions.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Actually, I mean, I don't even know that he did.
I think he got it and he cameback like one week and then the
next week.
Basically, I mean, when we didtalk about it, I guess we did
talk about, you know, getting intheir world.
Take the focus off of yourselfand get into their world, you
know, and that takes thepressure.
(32:49):
Yeah, yes, yes, this is what Iwas saying to my client.
Right?
Because when we have socialanxiety, we're worried about
ourselves.
Right?
Because when we have socialanxiety, we're worried about
ourselves, right?
And so if we get curious aboutthe person we're talking to, it
takes all that pressure off andit's genuine and authentic in
the moment, and that's whenamazing things happen in
(33:11):
conversation.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And that's where the magic of a coach is, because you
told them that you fleshed out.
Here's what that looks like.
You know, you, it might've been.
You might've had a little bitof like the.
Well, let me unpack it for youso that you're you're convinced,
you're sold, that it's worth atry.
Yeah, and I promised you, one ofthe big things that I believe
in the moment had him screw hisscourge to the sticking place
(33:34):
and actually follow through, wasthat he gets the joy of being
able to turn back to you, carla,and say I did it, that was cool
, because if he'd read it in abook he'd be like that's a cool
idea, and maybe he'd havethought to himself I'll do that.
But of course, promises we maketo ourselves super easy to
break.
But if you wanted to kind ofhonor that, you took the time to
(33:57):
suggest it and and again, kindof paint the picture of what it
looks like so that he could comeback and say, like you know
what, coach, that worked, man weare so this is where coaches, I
think, have a tremendous edgein, shall we say, leveraging the
people pleasing instinct of us,of other people.
We want to look good.
Right, we want to.
(34:17):
We don't want to be like achump.
Coach, I'm going to do X andthen you're going to have an
awkward conversation.
Hopefully, if coach is the typewho's like you know, did you do
it?
How'd it go?
Oh, I didn't.
It could be a little awkward.
Instead, we love coach, I'mgoing to do X and then you go do
X and it was a, and you can'twait to talk to Carla next week
and tell her how it went.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yes, totally.
I mean just having that call onmy calendar can keep me
accountable and get me getthings done right when you know
you've got that coming up.
But then all the other elementstied to it, I think you're
right it does.
It's very impactful and, likeyou, I've been on both sides.
I've been the coachee and I'vebeen the coach and it's it's
(35:03):
powerful.
It's powerful to be.
You know, I think one of thethings that helps my clients the
most is staying in aconversation like this.
Right, like we don't often haveplaces where we're having
conversation about life andshowing up fully and what that
even looks like and what thatcould mean and what's possible,
(35:23):
right, a lot of people don'thave places in their life where
they're having thoseconversations on a regular basis
.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
It's a reminder to do it and, most importantly, it's
a reminder oh you can right,yeah, you can transcend just
inertially getting by and takesort of bold actions and again
that sort of coach, that caring,wise and coach, or even you
(35:52):
don't have to be terribly wise,not that you are not, but you
can just be as a spotter Again.
You can have in the gym, likethe gym metaphor if someone's
like benching 300 pounds, youcan have someone that's not
quite as beefy just be able tospot and make sure that the bar
doesn't like choke them on their, their, you know, just land on
their chest and like trap themas a coach.
(36:15):
It's so funny, it's.
I've heard coaches wonder who amI to coach this powerful person
?
Right, the answer because youcould get imposter syndrome.
Like, oh, they're up to biggerthings than I am.
Who am I to coach them?
You could get an impostersyndrome real quick if you don't
realize a key again, part ofthe magic and mojo of a coach
(36:41):
You're not them.
You bring an externalperspective.
You bring caring plus I'm notin it so I can see more clearly
or help you see otherperspectives which will add
power to anyone, even if they'reup here with whatever station
in life and whatever blah, blah,blah, looking good, you can
make a huge difference forsomeone just by caring and being
(37:02):
a person about it.
That has a new vantage point,and so you can challenge someone
to do something, even somethingthat would make you scared,
like, well, look, you're at thispoint, you should try X and
I'll be listening for that.
You did it and we can celebrateto next week if you did, or
complete whatever we need tocomplete if you've lost your
nerve and get you back on thehorse.
(37:23):
Tons of metaphors, right yeah,that's the fun of a coach man.
These conversations that you sayit reminds you to get bigger,
to play a little bigger, to dosomething.
Not a six-month plan ofToastmasters and improv classes.
Nah, tonight I love it what yousaid, those, those
opportunities every day to justpractice, what would be so true
(37:45):
we think we're stuck, and Ithink that's one of the things I
learned in in Landmark.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
but, um, you know that you, you stuck is sort of a
something that created afabrication of your mind, right,
and there's, there's I believeyou're never really stuck, you
know, and there's thisconversation that there's so
many alternative pathways totake.
But back to your last note oflike just this conversation and
(38:13):
exciting and what it can do inyour life.
I'm curious to kind of turn itback to you, like anything you
want to share with what you'reup to next inside of Coach,
accountable, or anything thatyou're excited about, a project,
or take that anywhere you wantto go.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Sure, well, I tell you what I mean.
Just some like inside the webguy entrepreneurs studio, the
web guy entrepreneur's studio,we can riff.
I have had for a while now aseries of essays that are called
the Coach Cannibal Perspectiveand I put them on the web.
They're there, they're justhanging out, carla.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
There's like 37 of them, but I want to be I want to
see them All right well, it'sjust there.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
I haven't told anyone in official capacity, but if
you just typeperspectivecoachaccountablecom
in your browser, you'll seestuff like this.
Because I'm realizing, thanksfor indulging me.
I'm like, all right, I'll justshare.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, this is exciting.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I have a lot of perspectives on coaching from
being an Uber fan who's gotten aton from it, but without being,
shall we say, I'm not tied toany particular school of thought
.
I didn't invest a whole ton tolike.
This is my, you know, schoolingand this is what I believe to
be the right way, and I wentthis high up the mountain with
this accrediting levels.
(39:34):
So anything that contradictsthat will break my brain a
little.
I have to defend it becauseotherwise it undermines the
effort.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
This is why I love you and what you do.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Contrary to all that, which I think is a lot of
people who are, again, deeplyenmeshed in the coaching world,
and certainly most people whohave, shall we say, thought
about it deeply for 20 years.
I'm a guy who's thought aboutit deeply for 20 years without
that sort of thing.
I'm just some guy who's gottensome really great things from
(40:11):
being coached, who's had someexperiences amazing and not
amazing and I'm in theperspective that I've got that
I'll be, you know, again one ofthese days I'll slap on a click
here to subscribe button andyou'll figure out some platform.
I don't even like to.
I'm a tech guy.
I hate like trying to whittlethrough like platforms to figure
(40:31):
out which is the best one.
Oh my God, do I sympathize forany?
All coaches who are trying tofigure it out that eventually
find your way to coachaccountable.
There's a lot out there andthere's a lot of.
So I feel your pain.
I can't even be bothered to doit for this, but I will
eventually.
But the point is I'll put asubscribe thing and then I'll be
like okay, let me do this,cause I do have like a list of
about a hundred essays that arestill to be written that are
(40:53):
just like, oh yeah, that's agood one to flesh out as an idea
.
And the idea is think of me asyour would-be client who has
seen it all and is wanting tojust whisper into your ear this
is what I wish you would know togive us a great experience.
This is what it's like to be onthe receiving end, and this
would make a big difference tohave this wonderful thing that
(41:15):
you do coaching actually workfor us.
Versus again, what I in the, inmy story of coaching, the
villain is feel good insightsthat go nowhere.
That's my villain.
So I'm, I'm, I'm taking this.
So the perspective is out thereand waiting to be launched.
It's just ready to go lockedand loaded and I I realized for
(41:35):
myself I don't want to do this.
If it's just me.
I've been solo for a while.
I've had team in the past andtraining, for what a fanatic I
am about being awesome withpeople.
Thanks, carla, by the way,earlier for the shout out about
customer support.
I really am precious about.
We'd be great with people.
So training has a lot ofactivation energy to it, but I
(42:02):
put out a hiring thing and I'vegot someone starting a new CA
staffer on Monday.
So I'm excited to welcome Noahto the fold, I'm excited to have
him in my dojo and learningwhat I am calling not the John
Larson way, but creating it asthe coach accountable way, and
(42:22):
then I'm going to have somespace and the feeling of I have
backup.
So maybe now's the time toactually launch the Coach Gumbel
perspective, and the idea isthis can be useful food for
thought to be great as a coachin novel ways, more than we'll
just coach better and do evenbetter for what the, shall we
say, the recording will show,which is again what a lot of
definitions of certification allare to do.
(42:43):
Well, how did you show up onthe call?
Okay, that's because there's nomachinations for measuring
everything else, ie what happenswhen you're not there and do
they do the work?
Do they actually integrate it?
What are the kind of results?
So my definition for what makesan awesome coach goes way
beyond how you actually show upin the call, and that's not to
(43:04):
diminish the call, but I'msaying that the experience of
being coached can be more thanthe conversations.
So the perspective I see to itbe worth a read anyway, whether
you use Coach Calum or not, ah,we're good, I don't care, it's
all good.
But if it can be a usefulresource and food for thought
and some, I don't know, stir thepot somewhat, counter melody
(43:28):
perspectives on how the usualmelody of what it is to be a
quote unquote competent coach,are something that makes it a
little more richer, a littlemore dynamic, a little more than
just the conversations andhelps coaches to distinguish
themselves and be that muchbetter.
Well, mission accomplished.
I want client coaching, clientsto have a bang on experience
where it's truly impactful andmeaningful.
This might be an expression ofmy thumbing my nose at having,
(43:52):
you know, done six months worthof weekly calls for a thousand
bucks a pop, where I have verylittle to show for it.
Nothing was written down.
It really started with a.
So what do you want to talkabout today?
It was lovely, there were greatconversations, but, man, if
someone can charge that kind ofscratch and get away with just
(44:13):
conversations, I think there's alot of room for some pretty
darn good coaches to absolutelydunk on that experience and get
people more.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I love this so much.
John, please get this booktogether.
I want it.
I've been to your.
What's that?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
It's not a book.
I mean maybe someday, but it'sjust, it's not a book.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
What is it?
What's it going to be?
Speaker 2 (44:35):
It's a series of essays that I'll probably you
know just essays, two or three aweek and again there's 40,
there's, there's 30, I believethere's 37 in the till and
they're kind of fun again.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Perspective on how to be an amazing coach well, I I'd
like them all in one package,because they sound amazing and
I've attended.
I don't know what you call them.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Webinars.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, webinars, where we as users come together and
you have taught us things andgiven us perspectives that are
so different than anything elseyou find in coaching.
That's why I love what you do,that's why I love your work,
because it's unique, it'sdifferent.
You come from a completelydifferent angle, so I can't wait
for that.
(45:21):
So, if I can be of any support,if you need any readers and
want some input, I'm in yourcorner.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Wow, Awesome, Carla, that's super encouraging because
, wow, yeah, you're a fan,You've been a long time and if
you're saying that like, yeah,the novelty of that perspective,
as I do, sort of from a I don'tknow black horse kind of angle,
sort of outside of the industry, like know, I largely said
everything I had to say in thatseries and yeah, there's about a
(46:01):
dozen.
I think there's about 20 ofthem that you can see at
coachcom slash webinars, I guessif anyone's interested with fun
things like how to run abusiness, how to give your
clients more.
I have another one in me.
Actually it's funny youmentioned that because, like
there was a, there was in theCoachGunner users group.
Someone said, hey, how y'alluse an AI, and CA's customer
(46:26):
number one, john Kenworthy,chimed in with a lot of good
insight and it got my gearsturning.
I didn't want to really put inmy two cents, you know, in the,
in the, in that, in that venue,cause I don't know, I've kind of
got an ax to grind, but itreminded me and I just took the
next day, like I took an hour onmy porch with my laptop and
just wrote an outline foranother webinar which I suspect
I'll be producing and puttingout sometime in July, maybe
(46:47):
August again, when Noah's up tospeed.
It's titled Remaining aRelevant Coach in the Era of AI,
which seems to be on top ofpeople's minds.
I don't know if you know this,carla, but there's some concerns
.
I am deeply sympathetic andhave a couple ideas of how to
(47:09):
remain relevant Because,speaking of again coaching
experiences where I'm a bitnonplussed or a little bit like
underwhelmed, I had a coachwhere I paid 500 a session and
he'd give me here's thetranscript and here's the
summary.
And here was what was insidiousabout this.
It was kind of raw from chat,gtp or whatever else and you
(47:32):
read the summary and it feelsokay, that was about what it was
talked about.
But guess what?
The conversation was way morepowerful than that and the
hallucinations were subtle andinsidious enough that if you
didn't take your own notes ofmeticulous quality, either
mentally or otherwise, you wouldbelieve that the AI summary
(47:53):
that was given to you was oh, Iguess that's what we did.
Yeah, and I'm a little pissedoff, honestly on behalf of
coaching clients.
Coaches, please don't give AIproduct as here you go.
Maybe use it for a mnemonic tohelp you augment your brain,
that's okay, but at the end ofthe day, I would have really
(48:13):
preferred if the guy hadactually taken a beat to write
up here's what I think wasimportant and actually hit the
high notes of where the worldshifted with a nice little
insight, because those happenedin those calls.
He was a great coach.
But the product at the end likeI'm going to use AI and give my
clients more and I felt like Igot way less.
I felt like I got.
I don't care, I can't bebothered.
(48:34):
Here's what a machine thoughtof our conversation.
It's almost offensive.
Wow, oh my gosh, I have so muchto say about this?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Maybe we need to have another conversation about AI.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
That would be fun.
Another time with AI-focusedfun, it would be fun?
Speaker 1 (48:49):
It would be fun.
There's so much there and Ithink that, yeah, people have to
be discerning.
People are, you know, even myclients will send me like, hey,
I asked AI about this and lookat what, what I got, and while
there is some good stuff inthere, there is some stuff to be
watching for for sure.
And it kind of sent them on apath of like, oh, you need to
(49:12):
fix this and this and this andthis about yourself and I, I
just and this about yourself andI just that's not my approach
and it was concerning a littleconcerning to me for sure yeah,
that we would be going to getadvice on our life from AI and
then making decisions based onthat too.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
So, yeah, so much to be so much good and then things
to be mindful of there too, and,um, wow, yeah, I'm holding
myself back from going deeperthere I as well, carla, but like
, yeah, I pointed out a couplethings earlier, like there's
certain magic things that ahuman coach does, called like I
(49:57):
dare you and I'll be listeningfor how it went and you can like
I'm rooting for you.
Like there's, there's a coupleof things that so, yeah, we'll
not, we'll not run this ax ordig into it too much today, but
yeah, but I can't wait for youressays.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I really can't wait, and I'm actually looking forward
to that webinar.
So, as we close, I would justlove to know what does
differently mean to you.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
What does differently mean to you?
I mean, gosh, you kind of setme up for a spike volley on this
one, because basicallyno-transcript.
(50:43):
I am probably one of the fewpeople who have thought about it
as deeply as I have for thelast 12, 13 years of evolving
this platform.
Who's not already kind ofenmeshed in one of the schools
of thought, the definitions ofpurity?
And instead I come from purelypragmatic, what actually helps
me to show up.
I'm not the only one who has ahard time remembering just to
fit it in life.
I'm not the only one who getscharged and energized by
(51:05):
recognizing like oh, there's thetrend line, I can see how
things are changing, and versuslike, oh, I'm pretty sure it's
going well, what's up, coach.
I'm not the only one who reallyhungers coaching to be more
than the conversations, becausethe conversations can only do so
much if you're left to your owndevices.
So I'm a I'm some outsider dudedoing my thing, man, and I
(51:26):
think that's fairly differently.
And when it comes to how I seekto contribute to this whole
endeavor cause, man, I got a lotof good stuff from it and I
want to pay it forward.
I feel I owe nothing less.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, that's amazing.
I enjoyed this conversation somuch.
I really see you doingdifferently and that's what
inspired me to ask you on thepodcast, because I feel like you
really do that in everythingyou do, John.
All my interactions with you,they're different.
Just the way you communicate isdifferent and it's really
refreshing and I just thank youfor all you're doing to make
(52:05):
this platform amazing andsupport us as users and really
make coaching, just taking it upnotches.
I feel like that's what you doyou elevate the game and I'm all
in.
So I just thank you.
Thank you for sharing yourheart and yourself and you're
just getting in your mind.
(52:26):
Today was so much fun.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Right on, I feel completely gotten.
Thank you, carla.
It's my absolute pleasure toshow up, and here's to the climb
man.
I really am honored andappreciate you having me on
today.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Amazing.
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