June 10, 2025 • 52 mins
The coaching industry is being dismantled — not by recession, not by competition, but by AI and the rise of empty expertise. In this raw and urgent episode of Your Ultimate Life, Kellan Fluckiger sits down with Townsend Wardlaw, founder of The Coach Operating System, to expose the brutal truth most coaches are avoiding.
👉 If your identity is built on being “the expert,” you’re already obsolete.
This conversation pulls no punches: why trust is collapsing, how commoditization is killing your offers, and what you must do now to survive and thrive in the next era of coaching.
What you’ll learn:
– Why most coaches are being replaced by AI — and don’t even know it.
– How to stop selling knowledge and start facilitating transformation.
– The shift from credibility to authenticity and embodiment.
– The 3 things every coach must build to stay relevant.
This episode is a wake-up call. Don’t just listen. Adapt.
🔥 Take Action:
✔ Subscribe & review Your Ultimate Life Podcast at: https://www.yourultimatelifepodcast.com/983
✔ Connect with Townsend at https://www.thecoachsos.com
✔ Share this with a coach who needs the truth
#AI #coachingindustry #authenticity #yourultimatelife #kellanfluckiger #townsendwardlaw #coachingbusiness #entrepreneurship
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the show.
Tired of the hype about livinga dream?
It's time for truth.
This is the place for tools,power and real talk, so you can create
the life you dream and deserveyour ultimate life.
Subscribe, share, create.
(00:24):
You have infinite power.
Hey there.
And welcome to this episode ofyour ultimate life, the podcast I
created to help you realizethe truth of purpose, prosperity
and joy.
You can live your life thatway, and it's yours to create.
Today, I have a special guest,Townsend Wardlaw, with me here on
(00:45):
the show.
Welcome to the show, Townsend.
Nice to be back.
Yeah.
So, you know, you'd been herebefore and you were thinking about
something out loud the otherday that I had been thinking about.
In fact, it's causing me tolaunched something new in January
that I'm not talking about yet.
But I'd been thinking aboutthat and then I saw your post about
(01:08):
AI and about the elevatingstandards, about the elimination
of mundane work and anythingbelow 50% competence in practically
any field except changing youroil, maybe.
You know, those kind of things.
And it made me want to justhave that conversation for people,
(01:29):
maybe about coaching and maybeabout a lot of things where it's
sort of resetting what'spossible and what's available.
So I want to ask you aquestion that I've asked before,
but I want.
I don't know who's heard yourother episode, but I want you to
tell me.
And tell us, what are thedifferent channels that Townsend
(01:50):
uses to add good to the world?
Well, I'm on the.
I'm on the socials.
I've got a.
I've got a Facebook presence.
I use that to share knowledgewith coaches.
I use LinkedIn to shareknowledge with founders.
I have a substack, which Ilove doing longer form writing.
(02:14):
And whoever reads that, reads that.
That's fun.
That's a great place toexpress deeper ideas where people
have more than the attentionspan of a gnat.
As of a couple of years ago, Ilaunched a community and I've been
really big into privatedigital communities, getting people
off of Facebook into a privatedigital community.
(02:35):
I use Mighty Networks andthere's other technologies around
there, but I don't like theidea of really sharing the good stuff
in a feed where people arescrolling and twitting and doing
whatever they do.
So I've got a community ofcoaches called the Coaches operating
system, where I share my giftof turning coaching into income,
(02:57):
and sizable income at that.
It's spectacular.
And you just told me thatyou're busy writing a really important
work, which is the Book of Townsend.
Do you have a name yet?
The working title is the howof Being.
How of Being.
Yeah.
You know what's funny?
I've been asked to speak at aconference, not this month, but next
(03:19):
month.
And I.
The address or the subject ofthe talk is the how of the how.
And the reason is because,well, you know, people tell you what
to do and then they say, well,how do you do that?
And then they tell you how todo it and you still don't know how
to do it.
Because what they're reallyasking is 1, 2, 3, 4.
They're asking about that.
And so the how of the how isabout not the 1, 2, 3 of or 4 of
(03:43):
everything, but how to goabout creating the 1, 2, 3, 4.
The 1, 2, 3, 4 of creating thehow of the how.
Because it's.
Yeah, the process is the same,steps are different, depends on what
you do.
Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, I love that.
Well, that's amazing.
And I've read your post.
In fact, that's where I sawthe one and I've seen some others
that, that you have shared that.
(04:04):
I've enjoyed that.
That made me know that thisconversation was a good one to have.
So let's just start there.
Tell me what your musing was about.
AI and this is going to be thefirst episode where I've talked to
somebody about what it's doingand what it is and what it isn't.
(04:24):
If you can specifically tie itinto the coaching post if you want
to.
Yeah, I think.
Tell me about that.
Yeah.
So little context.
I launched this community acouple years ago purely as a.
As a labor of love, a give back.
I don't do this to create my income.
I have a very successful, veryspecific niche coaching practice.
(04:45):
And what I was seeing was agap in the world of coaching where
there's a lot of coaches, alot of entities creating new coaches,
certifying coaches, teachingcoaching methodology.
And the vast majority ofcoaches are unable to turn any knowledge
of coaching into income.
Not surprisingly, coachesdon't necessarily tend to be the
(05:06):
folks who come out of hardcoresales background or love, cold calling
or outreach or what have you.
So you've got this increasinginflux of folks who are passionate
about serving the world andultimately they're constipated, I
like to say, because theydon't know how to create clients,
they don't know how to sell coaching.
So the initial idea of thecommunity was simple.
(05:26):
I want to be the conduit bywhich coaches master the Business
of coaching.
We've grown.
We got to about 1600 membersover the past couple years.
It's been an incrediblecommunity, very vibrant and it truly
is a community in the sensethat there, there, there's more than
just towns in India.
There's lots of voices andthought leaders and people that are
sharing their knowledge.
It's been phenomenal.
(05:49):
About a month ago, my wifeLouisa, my amazing wife Luisa and
I were having a little bit ofa, not a, not a conflict, but let's
just say some friction in our,in our relationship and what we were
working through.
We went to bed and the nextmorning I woke to a very chipper,
happy Louisa wandering around.
(06:10):
I said, how are you doing today?
She goes, wonderful.
I said, anything about lastnight you want to revisit?
She goes, no.
I, I talked about it with ChatGPT and I got it all sorted and I,
my first thought was, that's amazing.
How, how beautiful.
Now this is the only time Ihad exposure to somebody using Chat
GBT for, for some inner workand some help.
(06:33):
But this was my wife, right?
We have very deep conversations.
We both operated a very highdegree of conscience.
We both have spent hundreds ofthousands of dollars on coaching.
And what got her throughsomething was, you know, the thing
that lives on her phone and,and in that instant, all this other
information and little, littlebreadcrumbs that I've been picking
up kind of alchemized orcatalyzed, and I thought, oh, I'm
(06:58):
on the wrong mission here.
Like, this isn't going to work.
Meaning coaching as we know itis done.
The profession of coaching aswe know it is done and over it will
never be the same.
Now, it might take some monthsor years for that to be fully realized,
but I've been party two andhad a first row seat to disruption
(07:19):
of industries since the late 1990s.
So the telecom industry, right?
We used to sell long distance,Kellen, like people used to pay for
long distance.
I remember CIOs sitting down,we would talk about call centers
and customer care and theysaid, our customers will never send
us emails.
They only want to talk to uson the phone.
Right?
I mean, you think about thisstuff and I thought, it's done, it's
(07:41):
over.
And the thought occurred to me.
The mission of the Coachesoperating system, which up till now
has been to assist coaches onthe path to mastering the business
of coaching.
Well, I might as well say themission of my community is to assist
wagon wheel builders inmastering the wagon wheel business.
No matter how much you masterit, the amount of revenue that will
(08:02):
be available for the industryis, is, is going to decrease to a
very, very small number thatwill, will make its way to humans.
And I didn't know what wasgoing to happen next, but I said,
oh, we got to do something different.
I could, I could kind of godown that road, but I'll pause there
and say it was instantaneous.
And I see AI in lots ofdifferent domains and I, and I see
(08:22):
how it's going to affect, youknow, high tech sales.
So coaching is just going tobe another area.
Turns out AI is a, is a reallyeffective coach.
And there's studies that arestarting to come out that people
actually prefer being coachedby AI and having AI therapist.
So this fist on your table,you know, coaches will always have
a place.
Yeah, you'll always have a place.
(08:43):
You just won't make any money.
So this isn't aboutevaporation of coaching.
Coaching will always be around.
It is the value that peoplewill be able to create as you know,
a professional coach.
So that's a fascinating observation.
And after we had our initialemail exchange or text or whatever,
I was thinking about the muchbroader application of that, as you
(09:06):
mentioned, about many thingsand I just, as I, I think I said
before we started, you know,at the 50 level of confidence at
least, or competence,everything is going to disappear
except mowing your lawn andyou know, changing your oil and trimming
your trees because AI isn'tgoing to do that ever.
(09:26):
Well, till we get robots, I'd say.
Your numbers, I say yournumber's low.
I'd say 90 competence.
Well, you're not in the top10% of something.
Yeah, and maybe it is, butwe're not going to spend any time
conversing about that.
At a minimum 50% and maybe itwill be 90.
So that can be looked at as ahorrifying thing or it can be looked
(09:48):
at as a liberating thing.
What would you say to somebodywho you, you tell that to and gobsmacked,
their jaw hits the floor andthey say, what do I do?
This is like the post 2008crash when as the economy recovered,
half the jobs that existedbefore went away because of the Internet
(10:14):
and automation and other kindsof things.
So.
So now what?
Yeah, I'd say how, howfascinating and beautiful.
Right.
And this isn't new.
The phenomenon of somethingcome along.
Some technology coming alongthat displaces an entire industry
or profession is not new.
And something always comesafter it.
(10:35):
There's always something elsein my life.
One of the things that's been,I'd say most rewarding is putting
myself out of a job beforethat job disintegrated.
I've gotten very comfortablewith tearing down everything in my
life and creating from the next.
(10:55):
Now the misperception peoplehave is that, well, I'm starting
from scratch.
Well, yes, you would be if you believe.
Right.
And a lot of people do thatyour value is in the competency and
knowledge you have in something.
Well, this is where AI changedthe entire paradigm because fundamentally,
knowledge, information,competency, expertise, that itself
(11:19):
is commoditized.
There is not one domain thatgiven, I don't know, a couple days
or a week or, or a little chipin my head, I can't be as competent
from a knowledge standpoint asthe top experts in the world.
Now what do you do with that?
That's a whole nother question.
But really to me this is anupending of where is value created?
(11:39):
Right.
The Internet was the firstlike oh, information is free.
Yeah.
Well now expertise is free.
I've already built GPTs thatcoach coaches better than I do.
If, if the coaches are justasking the question, I'm answering
the question.
Does as good a job as I do, I,I, I, I meet every couple weeks with
a group of coaches in our 100kaccelerator and they ask questions
(12:02):
and I show them.
This week I just asked it realtime the question and it gave an
answer because it's beentrained by the hundreds of hours
of me coaching.
It gives the better answerthan I do.
And if you want to watch avideo of me talking about it, click
on the little references.
Pretty soon you'll be able tosay do that in Mandarin.
Pretty soon you better saymake me a video of that of towns
(12:22):
and speaking Mandarin andit'll do it.
You know it's funny becauseone of the things that I.
Two examples in music in thelate, in the 80s, early early 80s,
there was an invention thatbecame commercialized is gifted before
that but synthesizers and whensynthesizers came into being, music
(12:43):
stores freaked out, musiciansfreaked out, Hollywood orchestras
freaked out.
It's going to put all themusicians in the world out of business.
And in fact I had a job for awhile going around to music stores
teach their salesmen, had aprogram and sell their synthesizers
because I saw them come and Isaid I know where this is going.
So I, I owned a recordingstudio and I bought a bunch of them
and became the studio inPhoenix where you're at, where people
(13:07):
came to do one man things likedid lots and lots of whole albums.
And here we are decades laterand nobody went out of business.
And musicians still haveorchestras and, you know, the whole
thing is different andsynthesizers have a whole place and
genre and et cetera, et cetera.
So that struck me, you know,and people have had a heart attack
(13:29):
about the whole thing as kindof a different version of that same
story.
One of the greatest books Iever read came out late 90s, I think
it was called the Experience Economy.
And it was a very academicbook, Harvard Business for you Press.
And it took a very academicscientific look at economies, how
(13:55):
economies thrive.
So at one point in time, theUnited States of America was a raw
materials economy, Right.
We produced iron ore andcopper and we still produce those
things.
But that was this major sourceof gdp.
The next evolution of that was manufacturing.
(14:15):
Right.
I grew up in New Haven,Connecticut, which was a really big
manufacturing city.
Olin Firearms, WinchesterFire, all sorts of things.
When I was growing up in the80s, there was all this noise about,
oh my God, we're becoming aservices economy.
Right.
There was literally that.
Yeah.
Conversation.
Yeah.
There was upheaval that wewere losing our manufacturing base
(14:38):
because it was starting to go offshore.
Well, turns out by the timepeople started noticing it, less
than 50% of the GDP was even manufacturing.
We'd already become a service economy.
So the book really went intodepth of what comes after services
and what are the gradients of services.
And what it suggested was thenext phase beyond services are experiences.
(14:59):
And it even took differentlevels of experiences.
And it's all about how do youcreate resistance to the forces of
commoditization whichultimately drives the price down
to almost nothing.
Right.
McDonald's is a commodity.
It competes on price and speed.
And those things.
I remember Rainforest Cafecame out and it was this whole thing.
People would stand in linebecause you're going to be in a rainforest.
(15:19):
Well, if you look at what'shappening today and just, just in
the.
In the food and entertainmentworld, it's all about who can create
the most rich and unique experiences.
Now what the book talked aboutand only started to touch on what
was the highest level ofexperience that could be conveyed,
that had the greatestresistance to commoditization, price,
(15:42):
competition, et cetera, wastransformation, which is where coaching
comes in.
And if you think aboutcoaching as a profession, there is
a continuum from coaching,where people think it's information
and transference of knowledgeall the way to true transformation.
And all that's happening is we're.
(16:03):
We're kind of catching up, ifyou will, with the Reality that the
only element of value thatpeople will continue to pay another
human for is real transformation.
Now we can talk about whatthat is or how that works, but fundamentally,
people will never stop payingfor transformation.
I've got some ideas of how AIcan't create transformation the way
(16:23):
a human does.
But still coming back to theprofession of coaching or any profession,
by that matter, for thatmatter, right.
If, if you're simply givinginformation or helping people or
doing stuff or right.
If you're a.
If you're a part of thesolution, part of the desired result,
your.
Your value is going to bepushed down to marginal.
If you are tied to thetransformation of the human with
(16:47):
the money in their account, you'll.
You'll be fine.
So what do you think?
I.
I agree.
So I'm not even going tochallenge any of those things because
they're along the lines of myown thinking and it's why I'm planning
my next thing for next year,because of this thing I've been thinking
about for a few months and that.
(17:12):
So then What?
So if 90%, I don't know howmany coaches there are in North America
or in the country or whatever,hundreds of thousands or something,
if 90% of them are going tohave to find something else to do
or going to struggle and havetwo jobs where coaching, instead
of becoming a fulfillmentexercise, that it satisfies their
need to give back to a burden.
(17:34):
It's an albatross.
So you spend a lot of hoursand make minimum wage.
What are they going to need to do?
Yeah, it's a good question.
Well, first thing is they'regoing to have to get extraordinarily
good at coaching.
Right.
Which is a bit of the paradox.
A lot of people think they'rea good coach.
What I would say is how muchcoaching have you done?
(17:55):
At the end of the day, youwant to get extraordinary anything
you do, a lot of it.
I'm an extraordinary coach.
It's not scientific or fascinating.
I coach 1200-1500 hours a yearand I've been doing that for more
than a decade.
Okay.
I've got some experience here.
Well, how do I do that?
Well, you have to be able to enroll.
You have to be able to createclientele at any price to get good
(18:17):
at that.
You can't, you can't practicecoaching, you know, by yourself.
You can practice coaching withchat, gbt.
I've created some thingsaround that, but it's not the same.
So the table stakes, if youwill, are going to be the degree
to which you are anextraordinary coach.
That's number one.
Number two, fundamentally, thething that I don't believe AI will
(18:38):
ever be able to replicate areauthentic human experiences.
At the end of the day,transformation is an individual's
application of informationinto action that gets them from their
current state to their desired future.
And not just like a temporarytweak or a short term change, but
like a fundamental transformation.
(19:01):
You can get there withinformation, you can get there with
advice, but for some leaps,and it turns out the big ones, sitting
across from someone who canlook you in the eye and say, yeah,
I almost died, or I did die,well, that's going to be really hard
(19:21):
to replicate authentic human experience.
And not the pretty shit either.
No, no, never.
Like 99.9 not.
And as you know, since youread the book you talked about earlier
and people have seen thisbefore, the story arc, it talks about
(19:42):
the developmental story matrixwhere you look at the events in your
life and that sort of thing.
And the ones that go in thereare almost always the messy ones.
And we have a choice whetherthey ruin us or refine us.
And they might ruin us for ayear or ten or a decade or two, and
then they might refine us.
And that moment of choicearound refinement, the moment of
(20:04):
choice that a client mightmake around refinement, can't be
powered by reading the wordson a screen.
It has to be powered by theauthenticity and support of the true
exchange of power that wecan't even quantify.
(20:24):
Yeah, you know, that's theplace where this goes.
So if you say, well, all youcoaches are going to have to get
your crap together and figureout how to become extraordinary coaches
and they look at you eithersomewhere between I already am or
I thought I was and obviouslyI'm not, so I suck.
And now what?
Like, there's either going tobe a mass exodus or there's going
(20:49):
to be a need and the couragethat it takes to make, like one of
the clients that you mighthave, or I might have to make a massive
shift in transformation, thecourage that that takes is going
to be replicated in each oneof those people who have to say,
(21:09):
I can't do that.
Really, I can pretend all Iwant, but I can't do it.
And they're going to have todemonstrate in the very courage that
they have been imagining toevoke in people they have been trying
to serve.
Yeah, yeah.
It's to me, a bit of a paradoxbecause I don't believe that the
(21:30):
path to be an extraordinaryCoach or making the cut, where it's
going to go.
I don't think it's all that complicated.
And at the same time, peoplehave a tremendous difficulty with
it.
And it involves stepping intodiscomfort all across the spectrum,
both in terms of how youenroll and also how you serve.
(21:54):
The vast majority of coaches,I believe, show up to look good to
people.
Please.
To be liked, to get paid, toget a renewal.
Right.
All these, you know, thingsthat make sense.
But what takes courage is inthe moment to speak something to
a client that has a 50, 50shot of fundamentally.
(22:19):
Fundamentally creating themotivation for them to step into
transformation.
Or them telling you to go fyourself and never talking to you
again, ask for their money back.
It's a 50, 50 shot.
I couldn't agree more.
You remember that clip of themovie where the guy, the coach, is
talking to the kids on a highschool football team and he tells
the guy to carry him back andhe goes the whole length of the field?
(22:42):
Remember that?
Like that?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's the kind of thing thatpeople just don't have the courage
to do.
Yeah.
One of the most frequentthings that I coach on in the community
are the questions that people ask.
Right.
Fundamentally, I think if theycan ask better questions, they'll
find better answers, find whatthey want.
And a lot of times when we'recoaching on the questions, what I.
(23:04):
What I hone in on are the.
The degree of.
The degree to which theirquestions sound like this.
How do I fill my upcomingretreat with fun and ease?
And first of all, I go, well, timeout.
Do you want fun and ease?
You want to fill your retreat?
And what the hell does fun andease have to do with it?
(23:26):
So we seek comfort, right?
We seek comfort, assurancethat everything's going to be okay.
It's a very human desire,avoidance of pain.
And what I say to folks is, ifyou want to be in the business of
coaching, well, the firstthing you need to get clear with
is where are you avoiding painin your own life or you're not being
real about where you're out of integrity?
(23:50):
And if you don't clear thatout, you got not much to coach on.
Once you do, you got a lot tocoach on.
You could see it everywhere inothers, right?
I coach founders.
I was a founder.
I built a business, crashedthe business, went bankrupt, killed
the marriage, cheated on mywife, dated my.
The whole thing.
I got it so I can sit acrossfrom somebody.
(24:12):
And by the way, I've cleanedall that up.
I've gotten back in integritywith My ex wife with my kids, all
sorts of things.
I could sit across from afounder and they're going, blah,
blah, blah.
I say, how long have you beencheating on your wife?
I'll look him in the eye andjust ask him that.
Yeah.
Because I know you do.
(24:32):
You do.
I'll tell you that.
It's a story.
It was a guy.
I had a guy for client, helphim with his business.
And he'd been a client forabout two years.
And one day he came and askedme if I could help his son.
And I knew he had kids and I.
But I.
I don't know.
What does he need help with?
Well, he's a heroin addict.
And I said, okay, how bad doeshe want to quit?
(24:56):
Like, how bad does he want todo this?
Well, he was in between hisjunior and senior year of college.
He had had a scholarship, andthen he had a girlfriend and had
a kid, and some demons hadcome up for him and he'd lost the
show and it'd been a couple of years.
And he said, well, he's reallymotivated now because he's about
(25:16):
ready to lose all the rest of stuff.
And of course, I didn't knowthat was his dad's perspective.
And I told him, okay.
Well, happened to be local.
Most of my clients are not,but this one was.
So I said, okay, we'll bringhim over so he can come over on a
Saturday morning.
And he and his dad came in tosit down and I kicked the dad out
and sat down with the kid andI said, okay, you know, and I asked
(25:37):
him some questions and didthat kind of stuff.
And then he said he reallywanted to do this.
And I say, okay, so give me everything.
And he'd used the morningbefore, and it was heroin, and it
was not trivial, you know,give me everything.
Give me all your cards, yourmoney, your cash.
He did all that.
And I said, now give me yoursecret stash.
And he looked at me and I.
(25:58):
Said, dude, yeah, I know.
And I told him the story.
Yeah, just a little piece.
And he's like, okay.
And he gave it to me and Isaid, now, how bad do you want to
do this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AI ain't going to do that.
And it won't know to do that.
It won't know to do that.
At least not the versions thatwe're seeing projected for you.
(26:20):
You could program it with thatscript and to look at.
But.
But sitting across fromsomebody who had the stash, and that's
not replicable.
Yeah, not repeatable.
So let's talk about thatcourage that someone has to have.
And I meet them.
You do.
You just described to me thenumber of people that are there who
(26:41):
think they're coaches or whoare trying to be coaches but are
not in integrity with theirown words, their own teachings and
their own efforts to coach.
What do they.
If some coach listens to thisand starts asking themselves, is
it me?
You know, in the mirror, whatdo you.
What do you think?
The first, second, third,like, tell me you have the opportunity,
(27:05):
somebody's going to listen tothis and say, is that me?
What would you tell them to do?
And when you say, is that me?
Do you mean am I one of theseones out of integrity?
Am I one of these ones that'sbeen pretending, hoping to do good,
entering conversations,wondering about enrollments, did
a service, all of the stuffthat you said.
Yeah, got it.
All that if, if you're askingthe question, the answer is yes,
(27:27):
it's you, because it's all of us.
We're all full of.
I'm full of.
I just haven't foundeverywhere I'm full of yet.
That's, that's, that's, that'smy approach.
So start where you are, whichis where am I lying?
Where am I not telling the truth?
Where am I concealing?
You won't take long.
You'll have an idea that isthe seed of your practice.
(27:51):
And I mean that quite literally.
The thing about coaching, Iwork with coaches on their offers,
on their, on their way.
What do they think their nicheshould be, and all sorts of crap.
Here's my simple, simple ruleabout that.
You are only qualified toserve one person, and that is some
earlier version of yourself.
That's it.
People try to find their niche.
Forget your niche.
(28:13):
Map your journey.
Follow Kellen's story arc.
That's you.
Stop fucking around with it.
That's you.
So pick a time in your lifewhere you were full of crap and you
got through it and starttalking about it.
Share about it, write about it.
Not to look good, not like,look at me, but like, really, really
(28:34):
write about what a mess you made.
People will come out of thewoodwork and say, I thought I was
the only one.
Literally, it's, it's not complicated.
Just literally look at yourlife and.
Say, it isn't complicated, butit's hard because people have.
People are buried in theinfection of the WIT fungus W I T
(28:56):
o T, which is what I thinkothers think.
I love that expression of yours.
Listen, it may be this or that.
It doesn't matter.
You want it or not?
No.
Nobody needs to follow thispath to be an extraordinary coach.
There will always be coaches.
Your friends will always letyou coach.
Your family will let you coach.
You'll be able to coach for free.
You'll find people that loveyour coaching and you'll find some
other way to make income.
(29:16):
It'll be fine.
Don't worry about it.
But let's get real.
Either you want this so badlythat you're committed to it, or you
don't, and it doesn't matter.
The world's going to need lotsof Uber drivers and grubhub drivers
and, you know, Amazon prime drivers.
We need lots of those.
So don't worry about it.
It'll be fine.
We'll have a UBI at some points.
You can get your UBIUniversal, Bacon Sigma and coach.
(29:39):
Your thing.
The conversation we had lasttime, and I don't know if it was
on the camera or not, butyou're talking about, you know, your
life story, what have you.
As I.
As I shared before we got onreading your book, which I recommend
you should hold it up and showit to people, was great assistance
in my education and my gettingthe message.
The only thing people careabout is how'd you get here?
(30:01):
Right?
Like you say, as part of thatexercise, I've been.
I've been speaking, I've beentelling my story, like, you know,
in.
In into a transcriber, andthen I have chat gbg go through it.
I say, chat GPT.
Where am I leaving out?
What am I probably hiding thatyou get, like, ChatGPT is great for
that.
So as I'm going through allthis, I was narrating the story of
(30:23):
my business going down, myfirst marriage going down, and the
infidelity that caused it.
And I've told this story for decades.
I've been so vulnerable andtransparent about.
I cheated on my wife.
And this whole process, Isaid, what am I not being honest
about?
I've told this story.
I'll tell anybody about it.
I'm not ashamed of it.
Well, what I saw, Kellen, Iwas ashamed of.
And what I saw was.
Wait a minute.
(30:43):
Infidelity didn't start withthis woman that you had intercourse
with started 10 years earlier.
And I.
And I found the incident whereit started, and it was.
And it was innocent.
And I went down the rabbithole of what?
What haven't I told?
Well, I told this story.
I haven't told the whole storyof, you know, two years into my marriage
or a year I'm on A businesstrip, and I'm out to dinner someplace,
(31:06):
and I go out to a bar and I'mlike, dancing with some woman.
Okay, that's not cheating, butthat's outside the integrity.
I stepped out of integrity inthat moment.
And then I basically wentthrough every little detail, all
these unpleasant, embarrassingthings to get real for me.
And then I had Chat GPT helpme write an article about it, put
(31:26):
it on substack.
That is my highest performingsubstack article ever.
It has outperformed all myother 40 or 50 articles on there
combined because it's real andit's raw and it's in the shit.
So this isn't complicated.
Look where your life has beena mess.
Get real about it.
Talk about it, script it,whatever, write about it, share about
(31:49):
it.
Not to tell a lesson or to put.
And if you've had thisproblem, call me, we'll talk.
No, not as a pitch.
Just share it.
For you, not for them.
And what I promise is they'll come.
You know, you're the firstperson that has said something in
different words that.
And I love it because Ihaven't heard anybody say it before.
(32:12):
I say the greatest moment in acoach's journey is the minute they
discover they are their own avatar.
And you said that.
And you said early version yourself.
And that's how I say it.
I say, the minute you figureout you're your own Avatar, you're
1,000 steps, you know how totalk to them, you know what they're
hurting, you know exactlywhat's going on because you're your
(32:35):
own avatar.
So when you said that, thatjust tickled because I thought, yeah,
I.
You know, I love that becauseI've been.
No, nobody ever listens.
Nobody ever listens.
You could tell the coach,like, you could be coming out of
coaching school with certificate.
You tell them that, andthey'll go, okay, and then they'll
go create their niche.
I want to serve, you know,French princes and people with, yeah,
whatever, dude.
(32:57):
I.
I love it.
And so I endorse that completely.
Not that it matters that I door don't or that you think it or
not, but what you need tothink about, you that are listening,
that might be coaching orthinking about it, is you're talking
to a couple of people thathave been doing this for a couple
of minutes.
And the pain of the discoveryhas taken thousands of hours or hundreds
(33:24):
of thousands of dollars oryears or whatever.
And if you choose for a momentto pay attention, you can save some
piece of that.
If you choose to have thecourage to be vulnerable because
it's not complicated, likeTownsend said, but it isn't easy.
What are you most ashamed of?
Right.
Look in the mirror.
(33:44):
Don't ask, am I being inauthentic?
Yes, you are.
Trust me.
Trust yourself.
Just ask, what am I mostembarrassed about?
What am I most ashamed of?
When I think about it, I cringe.
What do I want nobody to know,even myself?
I push it out of my mind.
That's, that's, that's,that's, that's the juice right there.
(34:06):
It's everything.
That's the only thing you'requalified to coach on.
So one of the things thatpeople ask, going down that road
a little bit further, becausethis is all in service of the conversation,
that 90% of coaches won't beable to make money because they're
not willing to do this work.
The 10% that areextraordinary, that are able to create
(34:28):
the kind of experiences wetalked about earlier.
What has to.
How bad does somebody have towant this in order to be that vulnerable?
I think they have to bewilling to die for it.
(34:49):
And I mean that metaphoricallyand physically, right?
At the end of the day, you cantrade a million things for integrity,
right?
There's some, some shoppingmall out there where, where everything's
for sale.
Safety, security, love,kindness, money, sex.
All you got to trade is your integrity.
(35:12):
And by integrity, I don't meanlike, are you a good person?
I mean, are you saying whatactually is true, what you think,
what happened?
So this isn't all thatsurprising, right?
You want to be in the top of anything.
Look at the medical profession.
It used to be being a doctorwas a great profession.
You know, most doctors whospend a decade in medical school
(35:33):
have hundreds of thousands,sometimes a million dollars in debt
make less than a hundredthousand dollars, most of them dentists,
same thing.
Chiropractors.
This is kind of how it works, right?
I wanted to be a professionalbike racer growing up, right?
In high school, I started training.
(35:53):
There was nobody who trainedharder than I was.
I had the right equipment, Ihad the right coaches diet.
I worked my ass off.
And when it came right down toit, and I mean this quite literally,
I was not willing to die inthat moment to do what was necessary
to win.
And I'm not embarrassed of it.
(36:14):
Like, I kind of think that's crazy.
Like what I've seen people doin competitive sports, what they
put like, like, I'll die, Idon't care.
I'll, I'll die instead of quit.
I'M not saying it's a good,healthy mentality.
I'm not saying it's the right one.
I'm just saying in any domainwhere money is reserved for the elite,
(36:37):
right, like, you don't need tobe in the top 10 of Uber drivers.
You will need, and this iswhat AI is catalyzing, you will need
to be in the top five or even1% of attorneys.
You will need to be in the top1 or 5% of accountants, CPAs, whatever.
You will need to be in the top1 to 5.
Nobody else will make money.
(36:59):
That's just the way it is.
By the way, it's been likethat in auto racing for ever.
Top 1% of drivers make money,everybody else starves.
That's how it is inprofessional sports.
All these kids with theircoaches and soccer.
It's like, you think yourkid's going to be in the NBA?
I don't think so.
I don't care what camps yousend them to.
Top 1%.
And they have to be willing todie for it.
(37:19):
This is just moved into thatcategory, that's all.
I love that because if youtalk up, talk to people or about
people like, you know, KobeBryant, who died a little while ago
in that crash, if you knowwhen they've now made public about
his training regimes and aboutthings he was willing to do, like,
what else do you need to say?
That, yeah, the guy was apsychopath, right?
(37:40):
And brilliant and incredible,and in that world, that's the only
way you get there.
He wasn't just in the NBA, hewas in the top of the NBA.
You could say, well, that'snot fair, or I don't care.
This is about economics andforces of our ecosystem.
So I'm going to dive into thisdie thing because when you said that,
(38:02):
the energy was a little bitlike, you have to be willing to die
for it.
And I want to go therestraight up.
I love it.
Because if you say you wantto, the mission that I have with
the 300 million, when I sayradical excellence, or I say a heart
(38:24):
to serve, or I say fierce lifeownership and use those modifiers,
we use that kind of crap inmarketing all the time to sound,
you know, invite, invitepeople to stuff.
And I wonder, when I askpeople this, what is it in your life
(38:44):
that means enough to you thatyou would do anything for it?
You would, you would.
I have people.
I want this.
Okay, cool.
What are you doing now?
Da da da, da, da.
Okay, well, what do I need to do?
Well, let's start with this,this, and this and this.
And I asked first, what wouldyou be willing to all do?
Anything.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
How about this, this, this,and this?
(39:04):
Oh, man, I didn't know youmeant that.
You know that conversationright out of the box, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Do you ever see the movie the Kingsman?
No.
Funny movie.
It's sort of like this Britishspy, whatever.
Doesn't really matter.
The point is he's gettingtrained to be a spy in this elite
little group called kinsmen.
And they have to go throughall these tests, very physical, and
(39:25):
this or that, drowning, whatever.
The last test is, they've beenraising this puppy and they go, kill
the puppy.
Like, you want in.
You got to kill the dog.
And it's a test, and I won'tgive a spoiler alert.
But as an idea, right.
I don't suggest people go out,kill puppies, or I don't suggest
people go and die, but as anidea, what won't you do?
(39:48):
How bad do you want this?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
AI is catalyzing that, and itis that truth in everything.
When you think about attainingthe pinnacle of personal development.
Yeah.
When you, you.
We talked about integritybefore the call a bit.
(40:09):
And if you say, you know, Ihave integrity, are there lines you
won't cross and things youwon't do, meaning I.
I just won't do it.
Kill me.
I don't.
I don't care.
Yeah.
I won't.
I won't.
I won't do that.
Yeah.
And that's a question.
And that might seem strange tothink about or even talk about when
(40:30):
we're talking about what AI does.
But if you.
If you think about creating anextraordinary experience for someone,
why do you think, you know,they have hot coals and they have
these other extreme things inevents from decades.
It's just to test thatfeeling, to prove to yourself what
(40:51):
you're willing to do.
Yeah.
To me, it's very simple.
And it comes down to meaningor fulfillment or whatever word meaning,
fulfillment, purpose, whatever.
Right.
Most people's lives haveprecious little of any of that.
They have a job they tolerate,they have a spouse they tolerate.
(41:13):
They have kids that tolerate.
They're kind of going throughthe motions.
So if you think of a continuumfrom meaningless to absolute meaning,
well, what's the test ofsomething that has ultimate meaning?
Well, I'd rather die than livewithout it.
So this is just that appliedto the domain we call what we do
(41:37):
to earn our money.
That's all it is.
And for better or Worse, AI isjust, let's say, giving us a hand.
It has just said to probablybillions of people, yeah, you don't
need to do that.
That's really not necessary.
We pay you to do that, butit's really not necessary.
So you're free.
(41:59):
Like, literally, you're free.
The stuff you're.
You're doing, if you're, ifyou're sitting in front of a computer
all day, moving stuff aroundand talking to people and, and doing
stuff, you're free.
There are agents, AI agentsthat do that today.
I've heard of, and fromsomebody I trust.
There's already technologythat will replace 90% of all inbound
(42:20):
technology sales.
You're free, because if AI canreplace it, chances are you weren't
deriving much meaning from inthe first place.
You didn't really want to be there.
So I'm going to take you, takethat word right there, you're free,
and then ask you a questionthat I just want you to think about
for a second and pontificate.
(42:42):
How terrifying is that statement?
Absolutely terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying.
I don't know the number, butit's in the hundreds of folks where
I've received a call, peopleon my network, people that I've coded,
yeah, I got laid off today.
And I have the same responseto every single one of.
I always say the same thing.
Congratulations, you're free.
(43:06):
And I know they're terrified.
On the other side of fear, Right?
What was it, the Will Smithvideo, if you haven't seen it, on
the Other side of Fears.
Everything you want.
And everybody's sitting theregoing, but I'm scared.
Yes, I know.
So then the question for themeaning of your ultimate life podcast
is acknowledging the fear.
(43:26):
You can argue with the truthat 70, 90, 92%.
I don't care.
You can argue with laid off,not laid off, or whatever, but when
you are free, then what doesyour life mean?
What are you going to make itmean at that moment?
(43:48):
Because it is in that placethat you have the opportunity to
come face to face with thequestion of who am I?
Yeah, I love that.
What I say is freedom onlyoccurs and is only possible in truth.
Right?
You only are free to make achoice when you are speaking the
(44:11):
truth about what is.
When you're in denial, whatis, or unconscious of what is.
Whatever action you're takingis not actual choice.
It's not freedom.
It's a prison.
Right?
And let's just play it theother way.
You don't need to be in thetop 1%.
So part of freedom for mewould be an ask or 5% or 7 or whatever
would be in saying, iscoaching somebody something.
(44:33):
I'm willing to die if I can'tmake money with it.
Am I willing to die trying toearn my income?
The answer is heck no.
Fabulous.
That doesn't mean you give up coaching.
You're now free to pursuecoaching as you choose and figure
out how to make money.
That's going to be important.
Right.
You have clear eyes.
(44:53):
You can see everything.
You now have all the powerbecause you got open eyes.
You see what's happening.
It's in the denial of what isthat we're imprisoned.
What a wake up call.
Because we so often identifywith who we are is how we make money.
And what you just said isyou're free.
Yeah, you got to make somemoney over here somewhere, whatever.
(45:14):
And that's really what it is.
You gotta eat.
And there's a million ways togo figure out what to do to eat.
It's got nothing to do withthe truth of your gifts, the truth
of your being, how you give tothe world.
Like you describe, when I askyou how you had good to the world,
you describe several opportunities.
But I know if we had moretime, there are lots of other ways
that don't have anything to dowith making money that are just as
(45:38):
meaningful and fulfilling.
And incidentally, there's afew of them that I have organized
to get paid for.
Yeah.
And what I would say is theyshow up, I don't have to worry too
much about them.
Right.
And I mean this literally.
The, the, the day I was freewith coaching was the day I said,
yeah, I'll do this even if Ican't make money with it.
(45:58):
Like if I get locked inprison, I'll be coaching in there.
If I'm on the street, I'll becoaching there and the rest will
sort itself out.
And that would probably suck.
It doesn't matter.
I'm not going to stop doing this.
Right.
I show up to serve.
I am committed to coaching.
And what I believe, my truthis whoever is in front of me there
(46:21):
for me to coach.
Now let's walk through that.
I don't have a large circle of friends.
So one of the things that Isacrifice for what I am committed
to, where I derive my worthand enrichment and value is I have
(46:42):
friends.
And if they're not cool with,I'm also coach and I'll ship it.
We ain't friends.
I don't have chit chat friends.
I don't go out for beers.
I don't, you know, play on theUltimate Football League or whatever.
It's called fantasy.
I don't do that.
So it's a choice.
I choose this.
And that moves all these otherthings out of the way, and it's not
a problem.
And people have opinions about it.
(47:04):
Okay.
I love that people ask me whatI do for fun.
And I, I, I have a backgroundthat isn't the one that's up right
now, but the background that Ihave up sometimes is this one.
And people ask me what I do,and the answer is that, yeah, that's
(47:24):
all I'm doing.
First breath to last all day,every day.
I'm done.
I'm doing that this year.
Yeah.
And incidentally, yeah, Ihelped some people write books and
I make some money and it'sfine, but that's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I love that I spendtime with my wife, which mostly comprises
of us just doing an activitytogether, me holding space and listening
(47:47):
to her.
I eat, I sleep, I go to thebathroom, and I coach.
There's not much else.
I love it.
And thank you for saying thatbecause it's so true of me, of my
life also.
So here's the invitation.
So we're going to wrap uphere, but I want to ask if I.
(48:08):
What didn't I ask you?
What didn't you address?
That dives into the truth,because the way we've talked about
it, it could feel scary orbleak to somebody if they choose
to have that lens.
The truth is you can createyour own life, which is what the
other background said a minute ago.
And you're doing that whetheryou mean to or want to or not.
(48:31):
Are you doing it intentionallyor not?
But what else.
What is the truth that we canleave here as an encourager in the
context of the things thatwe've talked about?
That's a great question.
(48:51):
The answer that comes to mindis, is we've got fear.
Wrong.
We've got, we've got the ideaof fear and discomfort backwards,
and we don't have time todelve into why or how it doesn't
really matter.
(49:12):
Fear, uncertainty, discomfort,all those things, what if they were
simply indicators of what weshould step into and move towards?
And what if you.
There's the old Seinfeldepisode of Opposite George where
one day he decides to just dothe opposite of everything that occurs
(49:33):
to him.
And, and it goes incredibly well.
I, I think that's.
Somehow I've stumbled intolife like that.
I just looked at whateverybody was doing and said, well,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the opposite.
Worked out pretty well.
Now that doesn't mean it wasfun or entertaining or enjoyable
or comfortable.
I just got this idea veryearly on and it was really subconscious
(49:57):
that everybody else is movingaway from this.
I think I'll move beforetowards it now.
I'm not talking about, youknow, let me go pet the lion, but
for the vast majority of otherthings in this world, at the state
we are in, in humanity,there's very little that's going
to kill you or even harm youreally badly.
So I would say the truth is weneed to look at our relationship
(50:20):
with fear and the idea thatthat's something we must move away
from versus what if it'ssomething we can be with?
What would that create for us?
Fabulous.
Thank you for sharing that.
And I want I just again findmyself agreeing.
(50:41):
Fear and discomfort issomething perhaps as an indicator
you should move toward.
Because the truth is, verylittle is going to really hurt you
or kill you.
It's the story about what itmight do or feel like.
And you're afraid of feelingthat feeling.
And that has nothing to dowith anything except a story.
Townsend, thanks for showingup today for me with me.
Thank you, brother.
(51:01):
Great to see you again.
It's great to see you.
This has been an interestingepisode, folks.
I want you to go back andlisten to this and take home the
idea that something you'reafraid of might be an invitation
to grow.
It might be an invitation todiscover opportunity.
It might be an indication forsomething you really will value.
(51:23):
After you get past the broken glass.
You gotta crawl over for a minute.
Maybe because that we talk allthe time about creating your own
life and you need to do thosedifficult things and lean into them
if you want to create yourultimate life.
Never hold back and you'llnever ask why.
(51:48):
Open your heart right here,right now.
Your opportunity for massivegrowth is right in front of you.
Every episode gives youpractical tips and practices that
will change everything.
If you want to know more, goto kellenfluekermedia.com if you
(52:10):
want more free tools, go hereYourUltimate Life CA subscribe Share.
Welcome to the show.
Tired of the hype about livinga dream?
It's time for truth.
This is the place for tools,power and real talk, so you can create
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Subscribe, share, create.
(00:24):
You have infinite power.
Hey there.
And welcome to this episode ofyour ultimate life, the podcast I
created to help you realizethe truth of purpose, prosperity
and joy.
You can live your life thatway, and it's yours to create.
Today, I have a special guest,Townsend Wardlaw, with me here on
(00:45):
the show.
Welcome to the show, Townsend.
Nice to be back.
Yeah.
So, you know, you'd been herebefore and you were thinking about
something out loud the otherday that I had been thinking about.
In fact, it's causing me tolaunched something new in January
that I'm not talking about yet.
But I'd been thinking aboutthat and then I saw your post about
(01:08):
AI and about the elevatingstandards, about the elimination
of mundane work and anythingbelow 50% competence in practically
any field except changing youroil, maybe.
You know, those kind of things.
And it made me want to justhave that conversation for people,
(01:29):
maybe about coaching and maybeabout a lot of things where it's
sort of resetting what'spossible and what's available.
So I want to ask you aquestion that I've asked before,
but I want.
I don't know who's heard yourother episode, but I want you to
tell me.
And tell us, what are thedifferent channels that Townsend
(01:50):
uses to add good to the world?
Well, I'm on the.
I'm on the socials.
I've got a.
I've got a Facebook presence.
I use that to share knowledgewith coaches.
I use LinkedIn to shareknowledge with founders.
I have a substack, which Ilove doing longer form writing.
(02:14):
And whoever reads that, reads that.
That's fun.
That's a great place toexpress deeper ideas where people
have more than the attentionspan of a gnat.
As of a couple of years ago, Ilaunched a community and I've been
really big into privatedigital communities, getting people
off of Facebook into a privatedigital community.
(02:35):
I use Mighty Networks andthere's other technologies around
there, but I don't like theidea of really sharing the good stuff
in a feed where people arescrolling and twitting and doing
whatever they do.
So I've got a community ofcoaches called the Coaches operating
system, where I share my giftof turning coaching into income,
(02:57):
and sizable income at that.
It's spectacular.
And you just told me thatyou're busy writing a really important
work, which is the Book of Townsend.
Do you have a name yet?
The working title is the howof Being.
How of Being.
Yeah.
You know what's funny?
I've been asked to speak at aconference, not this month, but next
(03:19):
month.
And I.
The address or the subject ofthe talk is the how of the how.
And the reason is because,well, you know, people tell you what
to do and then they say, well,how do you do that?
And then they tell you how todo it and you still don't know how
to do it.
Because what they're reallyasking is 1, 2, 3, 4.
They're asking about that.
And so the how of the how isabout not the 1, 2, 3 of or 4 of
(03:43):
everything, but how to goabout creating the 1, 2, 3, 4.
The 1, 2, 3, 4 of creating thehow of the how.
Because it's.
Yeah, the process is the same,steps are different, depends on what
you do.
Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, I love that.
Well, that's amazing.
And I've read your post.
In fact, that's where I sawthe one and I've seen some others
that, that you have shared that.
(04:04):
I've enjoyed that.
That made me know that thisconversation was a good one to have.
So let's just start there.
Tell me what your musing was about.
AI and this is going to be thefirst episode where I've talked to
somebody about what it's doingand what it is and what it isn't.
(04:24):
If you can specifically tie itinto the coaching post if you want
to.
Yeah, I think.
Tell me about that.
Yeah.
So little context.
I launched this community acouple years ago purely as a.
As a labor of love, a give back.
I don't do this to create my income.
I have a very successful, veryspecific niche coaching practice.
(04:45):
And what I was seeing was agap in the world of coaching where
there's a lot of coaches, alot of entities creating new coaches,
certifying coaches, teachingcoaching methodology.
And the vast majority ofcoaches are unable to turn any knowledge
of coaching into income.
Not surprisingly, coachesdon't necessarily tend to be the
(05:06):
folks who come out of hardcoresales background or love, cold calling
or outreach or what have you.
So you've got this increasinginflux of folks who are passionate
about serving the world andultimately they're constipated, I
like to say, because theydon't know how to create clients,
they don't know how to sell coaching.
So the initial idea of thecommunity was simple.
(05:26):
I want to be the conduit bywhich coaches master the Business
of coaching.
We've grown.
We got to about 1600 membersover the past couple years.
It's been an incrediblecommunity, very vibrant and it truly
is a community in the sensethat there, there, there's more than
just towns in India.
There's lots of voices andthought leaders and people that are
sharing their knowledge.
It's been phenomenal.
(05:49):
About a month ago, my wifeLouisa, my amazing wife Luisa and
I were having a little bit ofa, not a, not a conflict, but let's
just say some friction in our,in our relationship and what we were
working through.
We went to bed and the nextmorning I woke to a very chipper,
happy Louisa wandering around.
(06:10):
I said, how are you doing today?
She goes, wonderful.
I said, anything about lastnight you want to revisit?
She goes, no.
I, I talked about it with ChatGPT and I got it all sorted and I,
my first thought was, that's amazing.
How, how beautiful.
Now this is the only time Ihad exposure to somebody using Chat
GBT for, for some inner workand some help.
(06:33):
But this was my wife, right?
We have very deep conversations.
We both operated a very highdegree of conscience.
We both have spent hundreds ofthousands of dollars on coaching.
And what got her throughsomething was, you know, the thing
that lives on her phone and,and in that instant, all this other
information and little, littlebreadcrumbs that I've been picking
up kind of alchemized orcatalyzed, and I thought, oh, I'm
(06:58):
on the wrong mission here.
Like, this isn't going to work.
Meaning coaching as we know itis done.
The profession of coaching aswe know it is done and over it will
never be the same.
Now, it might take some monthsor years for that to be fully realized,
but I've been party two andhad a first row seat to disruption
(07:19):
of industries since the late 1990s.
So the telecom industry, right?
We used to sell long distance,Kellen, like people used to pay for
long distance.
I remember CIOs sitting down,we would talk about call centers
and customer care and theysaid, our customers will never send
us emails.
They only want to talk to uson the phone.
Right?
I mean, you think about thisstuff and I thought, it's done, it's
(07:41):
over.
And the thought occurred to me.
The mission of the Coachesoperating system, which up till now
has been to assist coaches onthe path to mastering the business
of coaching.
Well, I might as well say themission of my community is to assist
wagon wheel builders inmastering the wagon wheel business.
No matter how much you masterit, the amount of revenue that will
(08:02):
be available for the industryis, is, is going to decrease to a
very, very small number thatwill, will make its way to humans.
And I didn't know what wasgoing to happen next, but I said,
oh, we got to do something different.
I could, I could kind of godown that road, but I'll pause there
and say it was instantaneous.
And I see AI in lots ofdifferent domains and I, and I see
(08:22):
how it's going to affect, youknow, high tech sales.
So coaching is just going tobe another area.
Turns out AI is a, is a reallyeffective coach.
And there's studies that arestarting to come out that people
actually prefer being coachedby AI and having AI therapist.
So this fist on your table,you know, coaches will always have
a place.
Yeah, you'll always have a place.
(08:43):
You just won't make any money.
So this isn't aboutevaporation of coaching.
Coaching will always be around.
It is the value that peoplewill be able to create as you know,
a professional coach.
So that's a fascinating observation.
And after we had our initialemail exchange or text or whatever,
I was thinking about the muchbroader application of that, as you
(09:06):
mentioned, about many thingsand I just, as I, I think I said
before we started, you know,at the 50 level of confidence at
least, or competence,everything is going to disappear
except mowing your lawn andyou know, changing your oil and trimming
your trees because AI isn'tgoing to do that ever.
(09:26):
Well, till we get robots, I'd say.
Your numbers, I say yournumber's low.
I'd say 90 competence.
Well, you're not in the top10% of something.
Yeah, and maybe it is, butwe're not going to spend any time
conversing about that.
At a minimum 50% and maybe itwill be 90.
So that can be looked at as ahorrifying thing or it can be looked
(09:48):
at as a liberating thing.
What would you say to somebodywho you, you tell that to and gobsmacked,
their jaw hits the floor andthey say, what do I do?
This is like the post 2008crash when as the economy recovered,
half the jobs that existedbefore went away because of the Internet
(10:14):
and automation and other kindsof things.
So.
So now what?
Yeah, I'd say how, howfascinating and beautiful.
Right.
And this isn't new.
The phenomenon of somethingcome along.
Some technology coming alongthat displaces an entire industry
or profession is not new.
And something always comesafter it.
(10:35):
There's always something elsein my life.
One of the things that's been,I'd say most rewarding is putting
myself out of a job beforethat job disintegrated.
I've gotten very comfortablewith tearing down everything in my
life and creating from the next.
(10:55):
Now the misperception peoplehave is that, well, I'm starting
from scratch.
Well, yes, you would be if you believe.
Right.
And a lot of people do thatyour value is in the competency and
knowledge you have in something.
Well, this is where AI changedthe entire paradigm because fundamentally,
knowledge, information,competency, expertise, that itself
(11:19):
is commoditized.
There is not one domain thatgiven, I don't know, a couple days
or a week or, or a little chipin my head, I can't be as competent
from a knowledge standpoint asthe top experts in the world.
Now what do you do with that?
That's a whole nother question.
But really to me this is anupending of where is value created?
(11:39):
Right.
The Internet was the firstlike oh, information is free.
Yeah.
Well now expertise is free.
I've already built GPTs thatcoach coaches better than I do.
If, if the coaches are justasking the question, I'm answering
the question.
Does as good a job as I do, I,I, I, I meet every couple weeks with
a group of coaches in our 100kaccelerator and they ask questions
(12:02):
and I show them.
This week I just asked it realtime the question and it gave an
answer because it's beentrained by the hundreds of hours
of me coaching.
It gives the better answerthan I do.
And if you want to watch avideo of me talking about it, click
on the little references.
Pretty soon you'll be able tosay do that in Mandarin.
Pretty soon you better saymake me a video of that of towns
(12:22):
and speaking Mandarin andit'll do it.
You know it's funny becauseone of the things that I.
Two examples in music in thelate, in the 80s, early early 80s,
there was an invention thatbecame commercialized is gifted before
that but synthesizers and whensynthesizers came into being, music
(12:43):
stores freaked out, musiciansfreaked out, Hollywood orchestras
freaked out.
It's going to put all themusicians in the world out of business.
And in fact I had a job for awhile going around to music stores
teach their salesmen, had aprogram and sell their synthesizers
because I saw them come and Isaid I know where this is going.
So I, I owned a recordingstudio and I bought a bunch of them
and became the studio inPhoenix where you're at, where people
(13:07):
came to do one man things likedid lots and lots of whole albums.
And here we are decades laterand nobody went out of business.
And musicians still haveorchestras and, you know, the whole
thing is different andsynthesizers have a whole place and
genre and et cetera, et cetera.
So that struck me, you know,and people have had a heart attack
(13:29):
about the whole thing as kindof a different version of that same
story.
One of the greatest books Iever read came out late 90s, I think
it was called the Experience Economy.
And it was a very academicbook, Harvard Business for you Press.
And it took a very academicscientific look at economies, how
(13:55):
economies thrive.
So at one point in time, theUnited States of America was a raw
materials economy, Right.
We produced iron ore andcopper and we still produce those
things.
But that was this major sourceof gdp.
The next evolution of that was manufacturing.
(14:15):
Right.
I grew up in New Haven,Connecticut, which was a really big
manufacturing city.
Olin Firearms, WinchesterFire, all sorts of things.
When I was growing up in the80s, there was all this noise about,
oh my God, we're becoming aservices economy.
Right.
There was literally that.
Yeah.
Conversation.
Yeah.
There was upheaval that wewere losing our manufacturing base
(14:38):
because it was starting to go offshore.
Well, turns out by the timepeople started noticing it, less
than 50% of the GDP was even manufacturing.
We'd already become a service economy.
So the book really went intodepth of what comes after services
and what are the gradients of services.
And what it suggested was thenext phase beyond services are experiences.
(14:59):
And it even took differentlevels of experiences.
And it's all about how do youcreate resistance to the forces of
commoditization whichultimately drives the price down
to almost nothing.
Right.
McDonald's is a commodity.
It competes on price and speed.
And those things.
I remember Rainforest Cafecame out and it was this whole thing.
People would stand in linebecause you're going to be in a rainforest.
(15:19):
Well, if you look at what'shappening today and just, just in
the.
In the food and entertainmentworld, it's all about who can create
the most rich and unique experiences.
Now what the book talked aboutand only started to touch on what
was the highest level ofexperience that could be conveyed,
that had the greatestresistance to commoditization, price,
(15:42):
competition, et cetera, wastransformation, which is where coaching
comes in.
And if you think aboutcoaching as a profession, there is
a continuum from coaching,where people think it's information
and transference of knowledgeall the way to true transformation.
And all that's happening is we're.
(16:03):
We're kind of catching up, ifyou will, with the Reality that the
only element of value thatpeople will continue to pay another
human for is real transformation.
Now we can talk about whatthat is or how that works, but fundamentally,
people will never stop payingfor transformation.
I've got some ideas of how AIcan't create transformation the way
(16:23):
a human does.
But still coming back to theprofession of coaching or any profession,
by that matter, for thatmatter, right.
If, if you're simply givinginformation or helping people or
doing stuff or right.
If you're a.
If you're a part of thesolution, part of the desired result,
your.
Your value is going to bepushed down to marginal.
If you are tied to thetransformation of the human with
(16:47):
the money in their account, you'll.
You'll be fine.
So what do you think?
I.
I agree.
So I'm not even going tochallenge any of those things because
they're along the lines of myown thinking and it's why I'm planning
my next thing for next year,because of this thing I've been thinking
about for a few months and that.
(17:12):
So then What?
So if 90%, I don't know howmany coaches there are in North America
or in the country or whatever,hundreds of thousands or something,
if 90% of them are going tohave to find something else to do
or going to struggle and havetwo jobs where coaching, instead
of becoming a fulfillmentexercise, that it satisfies their
need to give back to a burden.
(17:34):
It's an albatross.
So you spend a lot of hoursand make minimum wage.
What are they going to need to do?
Yeah, it's a good question.
Well, first thing is they'regoing to have to get extraordinarily
good at coaching.
Right.
Which is a bit of the paradox.
A lot of people think they'rea good coach.
What I would say is how muchcoaching have you done?
(17:55):
At the end of the day, youwant to get extraordinary anything
you do, a lot of it.
I'm an extraordinary coach.
It's not scientific or fascinating.
I coach 1200-1500 hours a yearand I've been doing that for more
than a decade.
Okay.
I've got some experience here.
Well, how do I do that?
Well, you have to be able to enroll.
You have to be able to createclientele at any price to get good
(18:17):
at that.
You can't, you can't practicecoaching, you know, by yourself.
You can practice coaching withchat, gbt.
I've created some thingsaround that, but it's not the same.
So the table stakes, if youwill, are going to be the degree
to which you are anextraordinary coach.
That's number one.
Number two, fundamentally, thething that I don't believe AI will
(18:38):
ever be able to replicate areauthentic human experiences.
At the end of the day,transformation is an individual's
application of informationinto action that gets them from their
current state to their desired future.
And not just like a temporarytweak or a short term change, but
like a fundamental transformation.
(19:01):
You can get there withinformation, you can get there with
advice, but for some leaps,and it turns out the big ones, sitting
across from someone who canlook you in the eye and say, yeah,
I almost died, or I did die,well, that's going to be really hard
(19:21):
to replicate authentic human experience.
And not the pretty shit either.
No, no, never.
Like 99.9 not.
And as you know, since youread the book you talked about earlier
and people have seen thisbefore, the story arc, it talks about
(19:42):
the developmental story matrixwhere you look at the events in your
life and that sort of thing.
And the ones that go in thereare almost always the messy ones.
And we have a choice whetherthey ruin us or refine us.
And they might ruin us for ayear or ten or a decade or two, and
then they might refine us.
And that moment of choicearound refinement, the moment of
(20:04):
choice that a client mightmake around refinement, can't be
powered by reading the wordson a screen.
It has to be powered by theauthenticity and support of the true
exchange of power that wecan't even quantify.
(20:24):
Yeah, you know, that's theplace where this goes.
So if you say, well, all youcoaches are going to have to get
your crap together and figureout how to become extraordinary coaches
and they look at you eithersomewhere between I already am or
I thought I was and obviouslyI'm not, so I suck.
And now what?
Like, there's either going tobe a mass exodus or there's going
(20:49):
to be a need and the couragethat it takes to make, like one of
the clients that you mighthave, or I might have to make a massive
shift in transformation, thecourage that that takes is going
to be replicated in each oneof those people who have to say,
(21:09):
I can't do that.
Really, I can pretend all Iwant, but I can't do it.
And they're going to have todemonstrate in the very courage that
they have been imagining toevoke in people they have been trying
to serve.
Yeah, yeah.
It's to me, a bit of a paradoxbecause I don't believe that the
(21:30):
path to be an extraordinaryCoach or making the cut, where it's
going to go.
I don't think it's all that complicated.
And at the same time, peoplehave a tremendous difficulty with
it.
And it involves stepping intodiscomfort all across the spectrum,
both in terms of how youenroll and also how you serve.
(21:54):
The vast majority of coaches,I believe, show up to look good to
people.
Please.
To be liked, to get paid, toget a renewal.
Right.
All these, you know, thingsthat make sense.
But what takes courage is inthe moment to speak something to
a client that has a 50, 50shot of fundamentally.
(22:19):
Fundamentally creating themotivation for them to step into
transformation.
Or them telling you to go fyourself and never talking to you
again, ask for their money back.
It's a 50, 50 shot.
I couldn't agree more.
You remember that clip of themovie where the guy, the coach, is
talking to the kids on a highschool football team and he tells
the guy to carry him back andhe goes the whole length of the field?
(22:42):
Remember that?
Like that?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's the kind of thing thatpeople just don't have the courage
to do.
Yeah.
One of the most frequentthings that I coach on in the community
are the questions that people ask.
Right.
Fundamentally, I think if theycan ask better questions, they'll
find better answers, find whatthey want.
And a lot of times when we'recoaching on the questions, what I.
(23:04):
What I hone in on are the.
The degree of.
The degree to which theirquestions sound like this.
How do I fill my upcomingretreat with fun and ease?
And first of all, I go, well, timeout.
Do you want fun and ease?
You want to fill your retreat?
And what the hell does fun andease have to do with it?
(23:26):
So we seek comfort, right?
We seek comfort, assurancethat everything's going to be okay.
It's a very human desire,avoidance of pain.
And what I say to folks is, ifyou want to be in the business of
coaching, well, the firstthing you need to get clear with
is where are you avoiding painin your own life or you're not being
real about where you're out of integrity?
(23:50):
And if you don't clear thatout, you got not much to coach on.
Once you do, you got a lot tocoach on.
You could see it everywhere inothers, right?
I coach founders.
I was a founder.
I built a business, crashedthe business, went bankrupt, killed
the marriage, cheated on mywife, dated my.
The whole thing.
I got it so I can sit acrossfrom somebody.
(24:12):
And by the way, I've cleanedall that up.
I've gotten back in integritywith My ex wife with my kids, all
sorts of things.
I could sit across from afounder and they're going, blah,
blah, blah.
I say, how long have you beencheating on your wife?
I'll look him in the eye andjust ask him that.
Yeah.
Because I know you do.
(24:32):
You do.
I'll tell you that.
It's a story.
It was a guy.
I had a guy for client, helphim with his business.
And he'd been a client forabout two years.
And one day he came and askedme if I could help his son.
And I knew he had kids and I.
But I.
I don't know.
What does he need help with?
Well, he's a heroin addict.
And I said, okay, how bad doeshe want to quit?
(24:56):
Like, how bad does he want todo this?
Well, he was in between hisjunior and senior year of college.
He had had a scholarship, andthen he had a girlfriend and had
a kid, and some demons hadcome up for him and he'd lost the
show and it'd been a couple of years.
And he said, well, he's reallymotivated now because he's about
(25:16):
ready to lose all the rest of stuff.
And of course, I didn't knowthat was his dad's perspective.
And I told him, okay.
Well, happened to be local.
Most of my clients are not,but this one was.
So I said, okay, we'll bringhim over so he can come over on a
Saturday morning.
And he and his dad came in tosit down and I kicked the dad out
and sat down with the kid andI said, okay, you know, and I asked
(25:37):
him some questions and didthat kind of stuff.
And then he said he reallywanted to do this.
And I say, okay, so give me everything.
And he'd used the morningbefore, and it was heroin, and it
was not trivial, you know,give me everything.
Give me all your cards, yourmoney, your cash.
He did all that.
And I said, now give me yoursecret stash.
And he looked at me and I.
(25:58):
Said, dude, yeah, I know.
And I told him the story.
Yeah, just a little piece.
And he's like, okay.
And he gave it to me and Isaid, now, how bad do you want to
do this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AI ain't going to do that.
And it won't know to do that.
It won't know to do that.
At least not the versions thatwe're seeing projected for you.
(26:20):
You could program it with thatscript and to look at.
But.
But sitting across fromsomebody who had the stash, and that's
not replicable.
Yeah, not repeatable.
So let's talk about thatcourage that someone has to have.
And I meet them.
You do.
You just described to me thenumber of people that are there who
(26:41):
think they're coaches or whoare trying to be coaches but are
not in integrity with theirown words, their own teachings and
their own efforts to coach.
What do they.
If some coach listens to thisand starts asking themselves, is
it me?
You know, in the mirror, whatdo you.
What do you think?
The first, second, third,like, tell me you have the opportunity,
(27:05):
somebody's going to listen tothis and say, is that me?
What would you tell them to do?
And when you say, is that me?
Do you mean am I one of theseones out of integrity?
Am I one of these ones that'sbeen pretending, hoping to do good,
entering conversations,wondering about enrollments, did
a service, all of the stuffthat you said.
Yeah, got it.
All that if, if you're askingthe question, the answer is yes,
(27:27):
it's you, because it's all of us.
We're all full of.
I'm full of.
I just haven't foundeverywhere I'm full of yet.
That's, that's, that's, that'smy approach.
So start where you are, whichis where am I lying?
Where am I not telling the truth?
Where am I concealing?
You won't take long.
You'll have an idea that isthe seed of your practice.
(27:51):
And I mean that quite literally.
The thing about coaching, Iwork with coaches on their offers,
on their, on their way.
What do they think their nicheshould be, and all sorts of crap.
Here's my simple, simple ruleabout that.
You are only qualified toserve one person, and that is some
earlier version of yourself.
That's it.
People try to find their niche.
Forget your niche.
(28:13):
Map your journey.
Follow Kellen's story arc.
That's you.
Stop fucking around with it.
That's you.
So pick a time in your lifewhere you were full of crap and you
got through it and starttalking about it.
Share about it, write about it.
Not to look good, not like,look at me, but like, really, really
(28:34):
write about what a mess you made.
People will come out of thewoodwork and say, I thought I was
the only one.
Literally, it's, it's not complicated.
Just literally look at yourlife and.
Say, it isn't complicated, butit's hard because people have.
People are buried in theinfection of the WIT fungus W I T
(28:56):
o T, which is what I thinkothers think.
I love that expression of yours.
Listen, it may be this or that.
It doesn't matter.
You want it or not?
No.
Nobody needs to follow thispath to be an extraordinary coach.
There will always be coaches.
Your friends will always letyou coach.
Your family will let you coach.
You'll be able to coach for free.
You'll find people that loveyour coaching and you'll find some
other way to make income.
(29:16):
It'll be fine.
Don't worry about it.
But let's get real.
Either you want this so badlythat you're committed to it, or you
don't, and it doesn't matter.
The world's going to need lotsof Uber drivers and grubhub drivers
and, you know, Amazon prime drivers.
We need lots of those.
So don't worry about it.
It'll be fine.
We'll have a UBI at some points.
You can get your UBIUniversal, Bacon Sigma and coach.
(29:39):
Your thing.
The conversation we had lasttime, and I don't know if it was
on the camera or not, butyou're talking about, you know, your
life story, what have you.
As I.
As I shared before we got onreading your book, which I recommend
you should hold it up and showit to people, was great assistance
in my education and my gettingthe message.
The only thing people careabout is how'd you get here?
(30:01):
Right?
Like you say, as part of thatexercise, I've been.
I've been speaking, I've beentelling my story, like, you know,
in.
In into a transcriber, andthen I have chat gbg go through it.
I say, chat GPT.
Where am I leaving out?
What am I probably hiding thatyou get, like, ChatGPT is great for
that.
So as I'm going through allthis, I was narrating the story of
(30:23):
my business going down, myfirst marriage going down, and the
infidelity that caused it.
And I've told this story for decades.
I've been so vulnerable andtransparent about.
I cheated on my wife.
And this whole process, Isaid, what am I not being honest
about?
I've told this story.
I'll tell anybody about it.
I'm not ashamed of it.
Well, what I saw, Kellen, Iwas ashamed of.
And what I saw was.
Wait a minute.
(30:43):
Infidelity didn't start withthis woman that you had intercourse
with started 10 years earlier.
And I.
And I found the incident whereit started, and it was.
And it was innocent.
And I went down the rabbithole of what?
What haven't I told?
Well, I told this story.
I haven't told the whole storyof, you know, two years into my marriage
or a year I'm on A businesstrip, and I'm out to dinner someplace,
(31:06):
and I go out to a bar and I'mlike, dancing with some woman.
Okay, that's not cheating, butthat's outside the integrity.
I stepped out of integrity inthat moment.
And then I basically wentthrough every little detail, all
these unpleasant, embarrassingthings to get real for me.
And then I had Chat GPT helpme write an article about it, put
(31:26):
it on substack.
That is my highest performingsubstack article ever.
It has outperformed all myother 40 or 50 articles on there
combined because it's real andit's raw and it's in the shit.
So this isn't complicated.
Look where your life has beena mess.
Get real about it.
Talk about it, script it,whatever, write about it, share about
(31:49):
it.
Not to tell a lesson or to put.
And if you've had thisproblem, call me, we'll talk.
No, not as a pitch.
Just share it.
For you, not for them.
And what I promise is they'll come.
You know, you're the firstperson that has said something in
different words that.
And I love it because Ihaven't heard anybody say it before.
(32:12):
I say the greatest moment in acoach's journey is the minute they
discover they are their own avatar.
And you said that.
And you said early version yourself.
And that's how I say it.
I say, the minute you figureout you're your own Avatar, you're
1,000 steps, you know how totalk to them, you know what they're
hurting, you know exactlywhat's going on because you're your
(32:35):
own avatar.
So when you said that, thatjust tickled because I thought, yeah,
I.
You know, I love that becauseI've been.
No, nobody ever listens.
Nobody ever listens.
You could tell the coach,like, you could be coming out of
coaching school with certificate.
You tell them that, andthey'll go, okay, and then they'll
go create their niche.
I want to serve, you know,French princes and people with, yeah,
whatever, dude.
(32:57):
I.
I love it.
And so I endorse that completely.
Not that it matters that I door don't or that you think it or
not, but what you need tothink about, you that are listening,
that might be coaching orthinking about it, is you're talking
to a couple of people thathave been doing this for a couple
of minutes.
And the pain of the discoveryhas taken thousands of hours or hundreds
(33:24):
of thousands of dollars oryears or whatever.
And if you choose for a momentto pay attention, you can save some
piece of that.
If you choose to have thecourage to be vulnerable because
it's not complicated, likeTownsend said, but it isn't easy.
What are you most ashamed of?
Right.
Look in the mirror.
(33:44):
Don't ask, am I being inauthentic?
Yes, you are.
Trust me.
Trust yourself.
Just ask, what am I mostembarrassed about?
What am I most ashamed of?
When I think about it, I cringe.
What do I want nobody to know,even myself?
I push it out of my mind.
That's, that's, that's,that's, that's the juice right there.
(34:06):
It's everything.
That's the only thing you'requalified to coach on.
So one of the things thatpeople ask, going down that road
a little bit further, becausethis is all in service of the conversation,
that 90% of coaches won't beable to make money because they're
not willing to do this work.
The 10% that areextraordinary, that are able to create
(34:28):
the kind of experiences wetalked about earlier.
What has to.
How bad does somebody have towant this in order to be that vulnerable?
I think they have to bewilling to die for it.
(34:49):
And I mean that metaphoricallyand physically, right?
At the end of the day, you cantrade a million things for integrity,
right?
There's some, some shoppingmall out there where, where everything's
for sale.
Safety, security, love,kindness, money, sex.
All you got to trade is your integrity.
(35:12):
And by integrity, I don't meanlike, are you a good person?
I mean, are you saying whatactually is true, what you think,
what happened?
So this isn't all thatsurprising, right?
You want to be in the top of anything.
Look at the medical profession.
It used to be being a doctorwas a great profession.
You know, most doctors whospend a decade in medical school
(35:33):
have hundreds of thousands,sometimes a million dollars in debt
make less than a hundredthousand dollars, most of them dentists,
same thing.
Chiropractors.
This is kind of how it works, right?
I wanted to be a professionalbike racer growing up, right?
In high school, I started training.
(35:53):
There was nobody who trainedharder than I was.
I had the right equipment, Ihad the right coaches diet.
I worked my ass off.
And when it came right down toit, and I mean this quite literally,
I was not willing to die inthat moment to do what was necessary
to win.
And I'm not embarrassed of it.
(36:14):
Like, I kind of think that's crazy.
Like what I've seen people doin competitive sports, what they
put like, like, I'll die, Idon't care.
I'll, I'll die instead of quit.
I'M not saying it's a good,healthy mentality.
I'm not saying it's the right one.
I'm just saying in any domainwhere money is reserved for the elite,
(36:37):
right, like, you don't need tobe in the top 10 of Uber drivers.
You will need, and this iswhat AI is catalyzing, you will need
to be in the top five or even1% of attorneys.
You will need to be in the top1 or 5% of accountants, CPAs, whatever.
You will need to be in the top1 to 5.
Nobody else will make money.
(36:59):
That's just the way it is.
By the way, it's been likethat in auto racing for ever.
Top 1% of drivers make money,everybody else starves.
That's how it is inprofessional sports.
All these kids with theircoaches and soccer.
It's like, you think yourkid's going to be in the NBA?
I don't think so.
I don't care what camps yousend them to.
Top 1%.
And they have to be willing todie for it.
(37:19):
This is just moved into thatcategory, that's all.
I love that because if youtalk up, talk to people or about
people like, you know, KobeBryant, who died a little while ago
in that crash, if you knowwhen they've now made public about
his training regimes and aboutthings he was willing to do, like,
what else do you need to say?
That, yeah, the guy was apsychopath, right?
(37:40):
And brilliant and incredible,and in that world, that's the only
way you get there.
He wasn't just in the NBA, hewas in the top of the NBA.
You could say, well, that'snot fair, or I don't care.
This is about economics andforces of our ecosystem.
So I'm going to dive into thisdie thing because when you said that,
(38:02):
the energy was a little bitlike, you have to be willing to die
for it.
And I want to go therestraight up.
I love it.
Because if you say you wantto, the mission that I have with
the 300 million, when I sayradical excellence, or I say a heart
(38:24):
to serve, or I say fierce lifeownership and use those modifiers,
we use that kind of crap inmarketing all the time to sound,
you know, invite, invitepeople to stuff.
And I wonder, when I askpeople this, what is it in your life
(38:44):
that means enough to you thatyou would do anything for it?
You would, you would.
I have people.
I want this.
Okay, cool.
What are you doing now?
Da da da, da, da.
Okay, well, what do I need to do?
Well, let's start with this,this, and this and this.
And I asked first, what wouldyou be willing to all do?
Anything.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
How about this, this, this,and this?
(39:04):
Oh, man, I didn't know youmeant that.
You know that conversationright out of the box, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Do you ever see the movie the Kingsman?
No.
Funny movie.
It's sort of like this Britishspy, whatever.
Doesn't really matter.
The point is he's gettingtrained to be a spy in this elite
little group called kinsmen.
And they have to go throughall these tests, very physical, and
(39:25):
this or that, drowning, whatever.
The last test is, they've beenraising this puppy and they go, kill
the puppy.
Like, you want in.
You got to kill the dog.
And it's a test, and I won'tgive a spoiler alert.
But as an idea, right.
I don't suggest people go out,kill puppies, or I don't suggest
people go and die, but as anidea, what won't you do?
(39:48):
How bad do you want this?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
AI is catalyzing that, and itis that truth in everything.
When you think about attainingthe pinnacle of personal development.
Yeah.
When you, you.
We talked about integritybefore the call a bit.
(40:09):
And if you say, you know, Ihave integrity, are there lines you
won't cross and things youwon't do, meaning I.
I just won't do it.
Kill me.
I don't.
I don't care.
Yeah.
I won't.
I won't.
I won't do that.
Yeah.
And that's a question.
And that might seem strange tothink about or even talk about when
(40:30):
we're talking about what AI does.
But if you.
If you think about creating anextraordinary experience for someone,
why do you think, you know,they have hot coals and they have
these other extreme things inevents from decades.
It's just to test thatfeeling, to prove to yourself what
(40:51):
you're willing to do.
Yeah.
To me, it's very simple.
And it comes down to meaningor fulfillment or whatever word meaning,
fulfillment, purpose, whatever.
Right.
Most people's lives haveprecious little of any of that.
They have a job they tolerate,they have a spouse they tolerate.
(41:13):
They have kids that tolerate.
They're kind of going throughthe motions.
So if you think of a continuumfrom meaningless to absolute meaning,
well, what's the test ofsomething that has ultimate meaning?
Well, I'd rather die than livewithout it.
So this is just that appliedto the domain we call what we do
(41:37):
to earn our money.
That's all it is.
And for better or Worse, AI isjust, let's say, giving us a hand.
It has just said to probablybillions of people, yeah, you don't
need to do that.
That's really not necessary.
We pay you to do that, butit's really not necessary.
So you're free.
(41:59):
Like, literally, you're free.
The stuff you're.
You're doing, if you're, ifyou're sitting in front of a computer
all day, moving stuff aroundand talking to people and, and doing
stuff, you're free.
There are agents, AI agentsthat do that today.
I've heard of, and fromsomebody I trust.
There's already technologythat will replace 90% of all inbound
(42:20):
technology sales.
You're free, because if AI canreplace it, chances are you weren't
deriving much meaning from inthe first place.
You didn't really want to be there.
So I'm going to take you, takethat word right there, you're free,
and then ask you a questionthat I just want you to think about
for a second and pontificate.
(42:42):
How terrifying is that statement?
Absolutely terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying.
I don't know the number, butit's in the hundreds of folks where
I've received a call, peopleon my network, people that I've coded,
yeah, I got laid off today.
And I have the same responseto every single one of.
I always say the same thing.
Congratulations, you're free.
(43:06):
And I know they're terrified.
On the other side of fear, Right?
What was it, the Will Smithvideo, if you haven't seen it, on
the Other side of Fears.
Everything you want.
And everybody's sitting theregoing, but I'm scared.
Yes, I know.
So then the question for themeaning of your ultimate life podcast
is acknowledging the fear.
(43:26):
You can argue with the truthat 70, 90, 92%.
I don't care.
You can argue with laid off,not laid off, or whatever, but when
you are free, then what doesyour life mean?
What are you going to make itmean at that moment?
(43:48):
Because it is in that placethat you have the opportunity to
come face to face with thequestion of who am I?
Yeah, I love that.
What I say is freedom onlyoccurs and is only possible in truth.
Right?
You only are free to make achoice when you are speaking the
(44:11):
truth about what is.
When you're in denial, whatis, or unconscious of what is.
Whatever action you're takingis not actual choice.
It's not freedom.
It's a prison.
Right?
And let's just play it theother way.
You don't need to be in thetop 1%.
So part of freedom for mewould be an ask or 5% or 7 or whatever
would be in saying, iscoaching somebody something.
(44:33):
I'm willing to die if I can'tmake money with it.
Am I willing to die trying toearn my income?
The answer is heck no.
Fabulous.
That doesn't mean you give up coaching.
You're now free to pursuecoaching as you choose and figure
out how to make money.
That's going to be important.
Right.
You have clear eyes.
(44:53):
You can see everything.
You now have all the powerbecause you got open eyes.
You see what's happening.
It's in the denial of what isthat we're imprisoned.
What a wake up call.
Because we so often identifywith who we are is how we make money.
And what you just said isyou're free.
Yeah, you got to make somemoney over here somewhere, whatever.
(45:14):
And that's really what it is.
You gotta eat.
And there's a million ways togo figure out what to do to eat.
It's got nothing to do withthe truth of your gifts, the truth
of your being, how you give tothe world.
Like you describe, when I askyou how you had good to the world,
you describe several opportunities.
But I know if we had moretime, there are lots of other ways
that don't have anything to dowith making money that are just as
(45:38):
meaningful and fulfilling.
And incidentally, there's afew of them that I have organized
to get paid for.
Yeah.
And what I would say is theyshow up, I don't have to worry too
much about them.
Right.
And I mean this literally.
The, the, the day I was freewith coaching was the day I said,
yeah, I'll do this even if Ican't make money with it.
(45:58):
Like if I get locked inprison, I'll be coaching in there.
If I'm on the street, I'll becoaching there and the rest will
sort itself out.
And that would probably suck.
It doesn't matter.
I'm not going to stop doing this.
Right.
I show up to serve.
I am committed to coaching.
And what I believe, my truthis whoever is in front of me there
(46:21):
for me to coach.
Now let's walk through that.
I don't have a large circle of friends.
So one of the things that Isacrifice for what I am committed
to, where I derive my worthand enrichment and value is I have
(46:42):
friends.
And if they're not cool with,I'm also coach and I'll ship it.
We ain't friends.
I don't have chit chat friends.
I don't go out for beers.
I don't, you know, play on theUltimate Football League or whatever.
It's called fantasy.
I don't do that.
So it's a choice.
I choose this.
And that moves all these otherthings out of the way, and it's not
a problem.
And people have opinions about it.
(47:04):
Okay.
I love that people ask me whatI do for fun.
And I, I, I have a backgroundthat isn't the one that's up right
now, but the background that Ihave up sometimes is this one.
And people ask me what I do,and the answer is that, yeah, that's
(47:24):
all I'm doing.
First breath to last all day,every day.
I'm done.
I'm doing that this year.
Yeah.
And incidentally, yeah, Ihelped some people write books and
I make some money and it'sfine, but that's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I love that I spendtime with my wife, which mostly comprises
of us just doing an activitytogether, me holding space and listening
(47:47):
to her.
I eat, I sleep, I go to thebathroom, and I coach.
There's not much else.
I love it.
And thank you for saying thatbecause it's so true of me, of my
life also.
So here's the invitation.
So we're going to wrap uphere, but I want to ask if I.
(48:08):
What didn't I ask you?
What didn't you address?
That dives into the truth,because the way we've talked about
it, it could feel scary orbleak to somebody if they choose
to have that lens.
The truth is you can createyour own life, which is what the
other background said a minute ago.
And you're doing that whetheryou mean to or want to or not.
(48:31):
Are you doing it intentionallyor not?
But what else.
What is the truth that we canleave here as an encourager in the
context of the things thatwe've talked about?
That's a great question.
(48:51):
The answer that comes to mindis, is we've got fear.
Wrong.
We've got, we've got the ideaof fear and discomfort backwards,
and we don't have time todelve into why or how it doesn't
really matter.
(49:12):
Fear, uncertainty, discomfort,all those things, what if they were
simply indicators of what weshould step into and move towards?
And what if you.
There's the old Seinfeldepisode of Opposite George where
one day he decides to just dothe opposite of everything that occurs
(49:33):
to him.
And, and it goes incredibly well.
I, I think that's.
Somehow I've stumbled intolife like that.
I just looked at whateverybody was doing and said, well,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the opposite.
Worked out pretty well.
Now that doesn't mean it wasfun or entertaining or enjoyable
or comfortable.
I just got this idea veryearly on and it was really subconscious
(49:57):
that everybody else is movingaway from this.
I think I'll move beforetowards it now.
I'm not talking about, youknow, let me go pet the lion, but
for the vast majority of otherthings in this world, at the state
we are in, in humanity,there's very little that's going
to kill you or even harm youreally badly.
So I would say the truth is weneed to look at our relationship
(50:20):
with fear and the idea thatthat's something we must move away
from versus what if it'ssomething we can be with?
What would that create for us?
Fabulous.
Thank you for sharing that.
And I want I just again findmyself agreeing.
(50:41):
Fear and discomfort issomething perhaps as an indicator
you should move toward.
Because the truth is, verylittle is going to really hurt you
or kill you.
It's the story about what itmight do or feel like.
And you're afraid of feelingthat feeling.
And that has nothing to dowith anything except a story.
Townsend, thanks for showingup today for me with me.
Thank you, brother.
(51:01):
Great to see you again.
It's great to see you.
This has been an interestingepisode, folks.
I want you to go back andlisten to this and take home the
idea that something you'reafraid of might be an invitation
to grow.
It might be an invitation todiscover opportunity.
It might be an indication forsomething you really will value.
(51:23):
After you get past the broken glass.
You gotta crawl over for a minute.
Maybe because that we talk allthe time about creating your own
life and you need to do thosedifficult things and lean into them
if you want to create yourultimate life.
Never hold back and you'llnever ask why.
(51:48):
Open your heart right here,right now.
Your opportunity for massivegrowth is right in front of you.
Every episode gives youpractical tips and practices that
will change everything.
If you want to know more, goto kellenfluekermedia.com if you
(52:10):
want more free tools, go hereYourUltimate Life CA subscribe Share.
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