Coaching as a Practice

So Joe, you know, we've been talking a lot about this work, and there's also just a big piece that we just haven't touched, which is you train coaches and facilitators, and we've never talked about that in a direct way in the podcast, and I'd love to get into that.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah, awesome. Well, let's get into it this week on The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, and this is Joe Hudson.

Hey, Brett.

All right. So, so let's get into this. What, what makes you, first of all, let's say like, what, what makes you qualified to train coaches and facilitators and what makes you do it?

Oh, great. I, shit, qualified. That is an excellent question. On the qualified part, I don't really believe generally in qualifications. I, I've had people who have been extremely qualified with multiple degrees in— as my, as my coaches or therapists in my life. And some of them are just amazing and some of them are horrible. And the qualification, as far as like standards go, is the same. And so I don't really— I don't really believe in that kind of qualifications, you know, like I think the same way with entrepreneurs. I think at one point it was like 75% of them had all dropped out of college at some point. So the successful ones. So I'm not— qualification is a weird word for me. The only thing that makes me qualified then is that people ask Tara and I to teach them how to coach. So they see what I do and they think, oh, that's something that if I see that, that person must be able to teach it. And therefore they come to me and they ask to be taught. And so that's the only thing that qualifies me, is that there's a demand and I coach in a way that people like or want to learn from.

Yeah. So what made you transition from your own coaching and facilitation to teaching it?

Yeah. I mean, part of it was the demand, and part of it is a vision that I hold. Right. So if I look at the mission behind everything I do, It's how do I create a more undefended, heart-opened, empowered world? To me, that's what I'm interested in. That's my little Lego set that I want to build. That seems cool to me. And so the question is how to best do that. And one of the ways that I find it's really great to do that is work with leaders of companies where there's influence over tens of thousands of people. And one of the ways is to create a system that allows for lots of people to be able to find their wisdom and to be able to pass it on. And then not only just pass on their wisdom, but it also means like a wisdom passing on tradition that is more about helping people find their wisdom than it is about giving them wisdom.. Right. So it's really important to me that, that I'm a part of a system. If I'm going to create a system or be a part of a system, it's one that allows people to find their wisdom, not something that says this is the wisdom. And now that you have it, you can X, Y, or Z. Yeah.

And there's an interesting piece there, which is that when— what I've seen from people coming and doing this work and from my own experience, is that the more we do the work in ourselves, the more we have the capacity to be with others because we're not trying to give them our wisdom or change them or make them be a certain way. We're actually just on our own journey of exploration, which is a way better way to be with somebody as a coach or a facilitator.

Yeah, I mean, in, in, I would say in, in what we're doing, that's absolutely the case. And even to the point where, like, some people come to me and they see what I do coaching-wise. They feel like it's magic, and they just want to learn how to do what I do. And one of the things that I'll say is, like, that's not— that's— you're not going to learn that here. What you're going to learn here is self-discovery. And that self-discovery, that understanding of yourself, that's what's going to be the foundation of any kind of coaching practice that you have. And eventually, that expression of coaching is going to be yours. It's not going to be mine. I'm the only person who's going to coach the way I do. You're the only person who's going to coach the way you do. And we might learn some skills or learn from each other or learn little things, but the real thing is the presence. It's the transmission, if you will. It's like, how are you with the person? And and what is— what are your projections onto them and your projections onto yourself? And so that, to me, is really the foundation. There's other schools of coaching that are nothing like that, right? There's other schools of coaching which is like, here's the skill set, go out and do it. And it's all about creating accountability, and it's all about having just a very clear set of techniques. That is not at all what we're doing. And nobody should come and learn coaching from us if that's what they want. It's not what we're here for.

Yeah, it's interesting. So what you just described that you're teaching coaches and facilitators is very similar to what we're teaching all the students in our programs. So what is different about what you teach coaches and facilitators, if anything, from that core way of being.

Yeah, there's a couple things. Like, so if some of our programs, you know, we want the interpersonal dynamics to show up so that you can learn from those interpersonal dynamics. Um, in the coaching, all the foundation of everything is how do you get back to unconditional love? So that, that's like the, the foundation is what's your presence and what do you need to do to get back to unconditional love? With yourself and with the person that, or the people that you're with. That's like the critical piece. And then how do you use that coaching or facilitation as a road to self-discovery? So for instance, if I have an authority issue, I guarantee you that when I facilitate and I get in front, I'm going to have people, certain authority things, being in certain authority roles is going to twist me. Having people question my authority is going to twist me. Somebody trying to take over the authority in the room is going to twist me. All of which is completely and perfectly natural, and all of which is some way that I get to learn about myself, some way that I get to see what twists me and what I need to love and what's left for me to understand in myself. So, in that way, it's very, very much the same. The difference is that we are doing all of that with the, with the like, oh, and you're here to reflect for somebody else. And it's weird because even if you look at our opening, our opening course, right, the Connection Course is a communications course. And it's like I've had coaches take it and go, oh my gosh, I'm so much a better coach because I took that course. And you learn about yourself. And so to me, I think in a weird way, everything that we do is, you know, a lot of people say some of our work is like meditation through interpersonal work. It's like there's a connection piece to it. Everything we do, we learn. We use that interpersonal as one of the forms of learning. So it's hard to say the difference, except for there are some skills that we teach. But we do that not first, not second, but way down the line do we get to the skills.

Yeah, yeah. And I noticed that's also been in sort of the way that the work is marketed too. You haven't been marketing this ever as here's a coaching training program or even that we have a coaching and training program to the public. This episode is the first time we're actually talking about that.

Yes, that's right.

And so what are the reasons for that?

I'm not really, I think part of it is I'm not, you know, if somebody really wants to be a coach, coach is like one of those things that it's like, it's one of those rockstar careers. It's like, I want to be a rockstar. And there's a lot of reasons that'll draw you into being a rockstar that will blow your world up. You know, like I just want all the attention and then you get all the attention. It's like, whoa, what the hell am I? You know, and then I got to take drugs to feel blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, there's— it's the same thing. It's something that a lot of people want for some reason, uh, but they don't know what it actually is and they don't know like what will blow them up in it. And, and so I'm a little bit tentative to say, oh, if you want to be a coach, I want to help you. It's, uh, more of finding those people or having the people find us that it's like that's their calling. They can't, like, they just have to do that thing. They're moving into that direction, and they can't, which is more of the way that it worked for me, far more the way that it worked for Tara. So I think that's one of the reasons, so that this is just something that generally people find. It's why you have to do our courses, know our work, even to think about a coaching program. So that's part of it. And then, like, more specifically, I'll give you some examples. Some folks, they really want to be a coach because they want to, like, save people, right? Like, they had a role in their family of being the savior. Their job was to emotionally take care of an alcoholic parent, in my case. And so, like, and now I'm going to make a career out of doing that. Well, that's incredibly dangerous for yourself, first of all, because you're not focusing on your wants and your needs. And it's also incredibly dangerous for the other person, because if you're saving people, if you actually coach from that place, you're making people into victims, right? You're— if you're like, oh, I'm, I'm here to save you, it means you can't save yourself. And so, and I would say, a lot of folks come to coaching for that reason. Another reason that people come to coaching is because It's like intimacy, except for it doesn't have the risk. You know, like, like there's this deep intimacy that happens when you coach someone, when I coach someone, but there's not the risk that you have, like, say, with your marriage. And so there's a way for people to get a surrogate of intimacy and feel that connection, but they don't actually have the risk. That's also quite dangerous for a number of reasons, both for the person doing it Another great example that brings people into coaching is because they want to be seen as the person who knows shit. Right? And then that's dangerous because then you're teaching people—

They want to be giving the wisdom.

Yeah. You're teaching people to give the wisdom. So there's a number of things that bring people into coaching. These are 3 of them that will hurt others, will hurt, that will end up hurting you if you're coaching. And so I really want to be very specific about who we train. And so that means we know them, that we've experienced them, we've seen how they show up in the work. We know their capacity to be vulnerable and their capacity to have intimacy. Those are all really important things to us because if I have only a certain amount of time that I get to work in the world and I want to create things that work. Right? Like, I say to companies all the time, I won't come into your company unless I know I can be successful. Because I know there's 100 places I can be successful and where I can make, have an impact. So that's where I'm gonna go. And it's the same with coaching people. I really want to work with people who are deeply committed to their self-awareness over being a coach.

Yeah. So, so what are some of the kind of foundational ingredients here? Like, I'm imagining you sort of being like a sushi chef and people want to come learn how to make sushi with you. And you're like, okay, like, let's see how you make the rice. Let's see how you make the dashi.

Right.

Like, what are, what are the foundational things that you're looking for? Or that can be built for somebody who wants to be a coach and also maybe wants to become aware of the aspects of themselves that would be dangerous in coaching if they weren't aware? How does that, how does that work?

So I think the most important ingredient is commitment to self-awareness, commitment to, um, learning to be unconditional, unconditionally loving. It's our first thing that that's, that's your primary commitment over being a coach, over helping people, over having a name, over being on a podcast. Like that's, The number one commitment. Second ingredient is recognizing your presence means more than your skills. How do I listen? How am I with you? How open is my heart? Like, that is the foundation of the technique, so to speak, is the view mindset. And so that's really critical. Next really critical piece is listening to yourself, learning to pay attention to the internal call in the moment, listen to the thing that feels wrong or right in the moment, to, to say the thing that wants to be said even if it's scary in the moment. It's like being able to hear yourself and follow that even if your mind is telling you You shouldn't say that because it's like a very rare coaching session where there's some point where I'm just like, holy shit, am I about to say that? And then I say it. And usually those are some of the best things to say. And then there's some technique, you know, there's a little bit of technique, but without all that other stuff, the technique can just be dangerous. Um, and there's plenty of other places people can learn the technique. Um, so that's another ingredient is just like how you hold the knife to go with the sushi metaphor. And then I would say that the final ingredient is— it's a hard thing to describe, but it's either to understand that there's nothing special about you or it is to own your narcissism. It's two different ways to explain the same thing, but it is the especially when you go into facilitation, especially when you go into teaching, it's so necessary for you not to put yourself above anybody. It's so necessary. And it's so necessary to realize that you want to be special and that you want to be heard and you want people to say thank you. And that is like a natural, beautiful part of the process. And not to be in your head saying, I don't understand why all these people come to me to get be coaching. Like, I don't know why that is. It's like, yeah, I know why that is. I understand the power that I hold here. I can be in that and I can still recognize that I am not special, that essentially I'm not better than anybody. Essentially, I still have my own lessons to be learning. And that combination is really, really, really, really critical. For great coaching. And so one of the first parts of if anybody wants to coach with us, the first program is all about just being like the presence. The first year is like all about presence. It's a dedication to just how do you show up? How do you listen?

Holding the knife. Yeah. So what would you say are the steps for, let's say you found somebody with kind of foundations in place. They've owned their narcissism. They are in it for their self-awareness. They're steeped in this particular approach, in this particular work, in a way. And what kind of steps would you take somebody through in a coaching and facilitation training?

Yeah, so the first thing is it's really, I think, often in that order that I just described. So I think the gate is, are you here for your self-development or are you here to coach? And if it's you're here to coach, it's not a fit. Obviously, I probably haven't identified that right every time, but that's kind of the gate. And then the first thing is really how is their presence? How well do they listen? How well do they recognize? And then this would be the first thing to teach is just the way that they show up. Determines more about how the person across from them is going to show up, how the world shows up, than anything else. And so how do you just stay focused on that? So, and back to the sushi metaphor, it's like, I think there's some famous story about someone like, you know, spending 10 years just making the rice perfect. You know what I mean? Some, it's like, that is the first step. And then we start working on all the other stuff. And after So something like, when they start seeing that they're not special and all the other pieces are in place, then we might talk about how to facilitate and how to maybe even start creating exercises and how to facilitate rooms. Because it gets exponentially harder when you're in a room with a whole bunch of folks and you have an agenda, which you need as a facilitator. So when you do the facilitation, you need to do all that other stuff and be able to be there present, owning all that stuff. And you need to be able to say, okay, this is what we're doing. Okay, I'm the authority in the room. Okay, here's the exercise. It's like, as you know from your recent experience, like, I see the smile on your face. It's no easy feat to pull that all off, you know? So, um, and to do it well, to do it in a way that really is empowering for everybody. In the, in the group.

Yeah, I particularly appreciate it when we're doing something like the reunion where there's a dynamic where there's a number of groups and like myself and other, other coaches in AOA and facilitators are facilitating those groups and you're facilitating us in a process while we're facilitating the groups. And then when something goes kind of sideways in one of the groups, we come back through and then like somehow you're holding— you and Tara are holding all of that. And there's this like beautiful, just like multi-layered learning that's happening. And, you know, we, we often say things like, oh, this dumpster fire is not going to stoke itself because like we're working through our own, like, okay, how's this exercise going to work in this group? How's this dynamic going to work out with this person? And there's a— I noticed one thing that occurs when there's, when there's a brand and there's an organization is that there's like a standard and whether it's a standard that's set by you or it's a standard that's set by individual coaches and facilitators, like those of us who are doing the work here, that we're like wanting to make sure that things go well for the brand and, you know, that we don't do something wrong. And like, what is— what is— how does that work for you when you're— when you're training coaches and facilitators that are working in the modality that you created? And also sometimes completely out of sight from you. How do you track what's going on in the community?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I love it when shit goes haywire. So I don't love it when someone breaks a principle. Like if one of our folks started yelling at somebody or come back, get back to unconditional love. That's one thing. But if a dumpster fire starts, that's fucking great. Like I'd be very happy if 5 people went out to facilitate something and they're just like, that went horribly wrong. I would be like, great. Maybe not great for the students. That would make me sad, but I know I will have much better facilitators on the other end of that. Things go horribly wrong when you facilitate from time to time. And I think for me, this dumpster fire is not going to stoke itself. Really reminds me that I'm not here to make it work. I'm here to be present with what the hell is happening. And I'm here to not look for a result as much as look for how am I going to be in this moment with these people. And it reminds me of that. And the more I'm reminded of that, the more I let go of the results, the better the results typically are. Because I'm not fighting people. I'm not forcing. I'm following the river. And I think that's what allows me to do— I know that's what allows me to do stuff that feels remarkable inside of companies is because I'm just— I'm at the foundational level. How am I listening? How am I being with these people? What am I hearing? What's going on? What are the patterns I'm seeing?

I mean, it feels like that is the teaching of the entire body of work here through whatever role someone is in, whether they're a CEO in a course learning like, what are they, what are they learning? How to be present with the moment with whatever's happening in the team and with the company.

Yeah. And listen to their truth and react to it. That's right.

Yeah. So those moments are some of the most beautiful in, in a dynamic when something goes haywire and something blows up. And that's like, it can be the most—

I remember the, the, like, the classic story of this is we had 3 groups running at the same time. 2 of them were super functional. One of them was going completely south. We had a plan, okay, what are we going to do? And we're like, 2 groups are ready for our next step and one group is not. So crap. We sat down, what are we going to do? And we just said, okay, we're going to just witness group dynamic. And we took the dysfunctional group dynamic and we put them last and we put the functional group dynamic first. So that group sat in the middle, everybody sat around and watched them process. And I remember the look on the dysfunctional group's face, like, is this a fucking joke? Was the first look. And then the second, and then the second look, you remember you were there. And then the second look was like, oh shit, this is possible. This is fucking— this is possible. And by the time it became their turn, it was just like their dysfunction was over. They just boom, they just felt— they said, oh, we can do that. And they just fell into that. That only came— that beautiful moment only came because shit went south. And so the most beautiful moments I've ever had facilitating are when things have gone south. The most beautiful. Yeah.

Which is another thing. You know, coming back to in, within a coaching session as well, if you're coaching to a, to a technique or a particular skill, then you don't have the space for that to happen. Or when it does happen, you don't know what to do. You don't know how to be with yourself or be with the situation. Unless if you do, then that's where magic happens.

If someone argues with me in a coaching session, I'm like, oh, cool. Someone like cries, cool. So, you know, whatever, there's no result that I'm looking for. I'm just like, What's happening? How can I be with you? Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that's the thing. Yeah.

So what do you see as your commitment to somebody that you're training?

This is a good one. I think I get a little— I think I get a little— like, it gets a little gray area for me here. My commitment whenever I work with anybody directly, whether I'm coaching— and I say this to all the executives that I coach, which is If I coach you, I don't stop coaching you as long as you do the work. You run out of money, I still coach you. You get fired, I still coach you. As long as you're committed, as long as you continue to be committed to discovering yourself and doing the inner work, I'm with you. I feel the exact same way about anybody who starts into the coaching program. As long as they're doing the work, I will continue working with them if I've committed to them, right? That doesn't mean anybody's in the program, but if I'm like really committed to teaching somebody and they're like part of the ecosystem, then that's my commitment to them. The other side of my commitment to them is that I am not here to please them. Like, I'm here to point out what they're missing and then let that resonate or not resonate as it sees fit. I am here to follow what I see they need. Like, so when I mean that, for instance, like somebody recently came to us and was like, I want to start facilitating, like, groundbreakers. I'm making it up a little bit, but I wanna start, like, creating and programming my own groundbreakers. And this person was, I don't know, like, 2 years in the program or something like that. Like, hadn't done any coaching or hadn't done any facilitating training yet. And my response was like, what's the hurry? What, what is it that you're after? What, what's the thing that you are trying to undo or do by Like, what's the— and then, and then pointing out some of the pitfalls and some of the things that I saw in this person, you know, like, oh, I noticed that, like, in your company that you started, you got this thing where a whole bunch of people were dependent on you and then you were resentful. How, if at all, is that pattern repeating here? It's not to be like, oh, you're my— my commitment is not you're my customer and my job is to keep you happy in a coaching program. If anything, my job is to piss you off in a coaching program. Like, I'm here to be a mirror because that's the most effective way that you get to see yourself clearly. To do it with love and to do it with gentleness and not be an asshole about it. But it is to do that. It is to point out when people are missing stuff and not assume that I know, but letting them see what resonates and feels and what they're ready to tackle. So it's, you know, so again, it's not like a, here's a ladder, you're going to do this and then you're going to do this. And once you perfect this, it's very much working because the way that the human system works is that it's like one coach has like almost everything figured out except for they're still trying to save people. And another coach has almost everything figured out except for they keep on not saying the risky thing. And one coach has everything figured out, but keeps on trying to show value. It's so much more based on our personality than it is based on some sort of like steps and levels and process, like specific progress. So that's my commitment.

Yeah. And I guess a lot of that brings up the question of like, who holds that role for you? Because if you have an organization or like some kind of school where there's somebody, somebody at the top who's holding the teacher role and they're pointing things out in other people. And that's the, that's the job. That's what, what's happening here. That's what people are coming for. And like, who points back to you for your blind spots? I, one of the things that I, I'll just sidebar for a second. One of the things that I love about working with you is just seeing how, like, there's so many times where like, I see you hit your edge and then you move through it. And that makes me feel safe being, being a coachee or a trainee with you. And also like who, who holds that role for you?

Well, uh, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people hold that role for me and some exciting new people coming online. So I definitely, I have a coach that I work with and then I have Tara obviously doesn't let me get away with shit. My girls are Both of my teenage daughters definitely will point out any time that they see and very, very readily point out if I'm missing something that they see. I have a very good relationship with the people who come into the office where they'll tell me what I'm missing consistently. Like, I like a group of people who do that. And what's starting to happen is, as we've been working, you and I have been working together now for whatever it is, 5, 7 years, something. And more and more that's starting to happen too. What's more and more starting to happen is the people that I've been working with in a long time who are in the coaching program are also like, if something feels wonky, they point it out and say, hey, this feels wonky, what's going on? And we work it through together. So to me, all of that stuff is important. And I have a couple of other mentors that I'll call up occasionally and ask. But to me, the most important thing and the platform that I want to grow is all about just a community of practice of people in which everybody is actually a true partner, which means everybody's— not everybody, everybody on the platform or like the council of coaches, if you will, they're all bringing their form of coaching, they're all bringing their form of wisdom into classes, they're bringing their classes into the world, as you just recently did. They're all tending towards the business, caring for the business. And it's done in a partnership. Because if my mission is— our mission, I would say, is to open-hearted, unconditional, loving empowerment. Like creating a world that's like that. It's partnership. Is that— it's not employee relation, you know, it's not boss and employee, it's partnership. And so I really want to create that in that scene, you know, in that coaching world. So all that stuff is part of it. And I'm also just— and, and like you, like I said, one of the main things to have anybody come in, part of it is are they committed to their own self-awareness? And so if I am doing something and I feel a lot of constriction, I feel the emotional bomb go off, I feel that I'm triggered, I do my work. That's my commitment to me, which is the same commitment I hold for everybody that I work with directly, which is like, we do our work. And so I, and I'm, I'm lucky enough on the path at the point in a path where like getting triggered, I can't be— I can't go— it doesn't go unnoticed. It's not like, oh, I got triggered, I'm just going to ignore that. It's like, no, I got triggered. That's work. Maybe not today, maybe in a month, but it's work and it's going to be addressed. Obviously still have blind spots and I count on a ton of people to point those out to me.

Yeah. And I love hearing about the vision. One, a couple of things that I didn't hear about the vision is that like the vision is to train coaches and then send them out into the wild. There's like a community of practice kind of building component to the vision. Can you speak more to that?

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure some of the folks that we're gonna like, that are gonna train are gonna go out and do their own thing. I think that's great. Um, but, uh, what I, my, my, my hope and we'll see if this is like possible, but my hope is more of like a contained open source environment. So you are doing this work, you're putting a tremendous amount of time into your self-awareness. You also come with this action sports background and this relationship to fear. You created this teaching about fear where people like went out into the desert and jumped off cliffs together. I couldn't have done that. That couldn't have come from me. That could only come from you. Mark, who many people probably know, he's just, he has so much understanding of his physical body, right? Potentially one day Mark does like how to enjoy being healthy, like a physical, like, wow, he could do that. I could not do that. He could do that. Like his style is going to be different. His style is different than mine. Janine and her martial arts, like, there's so many things that I can't bring to the table. And so the question is like, how do we create a platform where everybody in due time, when they're ready, if they've done their work, can show up and be on this platform called Art of Accomplishment or whatever the platform becomes and support each other both in a and then their own self-discovery and business as a spiritual practice and put their expression out into the world and do it in such a way so that everybody financially benefits, everybody's in financial abundance. Like, that's the vision. And when I'm done, when I'm like, okay, I'm out of here or dead or whatever the hell happens, that it just continues going. Maybe it doesn't go even with anything that I ever taught. Maybe the podcast is gone and the Connection Course is gone. Great. But there's this community that constantly changes and evolves and supports one another and feels grateful. Like, to me, the most important thing and the reason I would not do this is if we can't find a way to do it where everybody's grateful. Oh, I'm so grateful to be on the platform. I'm so grateful to contribute to the platform. I'm so grateful for the people I get to work with. Like, I want— that's the way that the, like, the business side of this thing works. And that's the way I want this platform to work is just that gratitude and digging in when people get triggered. Yeah, that's the vision.

I love that.

Yeah, let's hope we can do it. I think it's a good experiment.

I mean, yeah, it's going to be— it's going to be something. It's going to be fun, whatever it is. This dumpster fire won't stoke itself. Totally.

It all could go go horribly wrong. That's right.

I mean, things have never gone horribly wrong before with like groups of people doing a lot of self-development together. Business.

Never, never. That's never happened before. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think the interesting thing about it is, you know, you, you're constantly learning and I'm constantly learning. So, you know, in the beginning I thought teaching was like explaining everything to everybody all at once and it's and it's not. It's learn one thing, stay focused on that one thing, then learn the next thing. Similarly, it's just like actually having like a, like taking your time and having a process of seeing who wants to do what and following that and then having a place for different folks to go. It's like some folks are going to really want to just start their own thing and it's like, great, go start your own thing. And Some folks are really going to want to just do it so that they learn and they never actually really even want to coach, right? But they somehow are— they're pulled to this and then they just use it to be a better CEO. We've had that happen. And some folks are going to want to be a part of the platform. And it's really important to be able to create roads for that expression out in the world, but also to make sure that we're very clear about who can be a part of it and who cannot be. Right? Like any platform, what I notice is quality is really, really important. And so it's really important not to be exclusive, but to like this platform, it wants a tremendous amount of diversity, but it doesn't want diversity of like, well, half of the people don't really care about their own personal work. Everybody on the platform really needs to care about that. And so that's been the hard part of learning it is to say no to people is really a heartbreaker for me. Never thought that would be such a heartbreaker, but it's a real heartbreaker for me to see somebody who wants it, but it's just like, yeah, that's not what we're building here. That's hard. It's really hard. Or to say, I see that you've been this very successful CEO and you want to coach other CEOs. And I I know there's a ton of people who will give you that job and you'll make a lot of money, but we just think you need to listen for a year.

Yeah. And then the heartbreak of just having limited spaces available.

Oh God. Yeah. We had to say no to so many people this year and it just sucked. It was definitely like, Tara and I totally mourned that process. There's people that we really wanted to have on it. And then, yeah. And so the pla— hopefully if we continue to take our time and do this right, the platform will become bigger and bigger and be able to accommodate more and more people.

Yeah. So to close, I have to ask the questions that are going to come in as a result of releasing this conversation.

Great.

If somebody wants to be trained as a coach or facilitator—

yeah—

by The Art of Accomplishment, by you and Tara—

yeah, yeah—

what, what is your advice to them?

What do our courses have to say? Do our courses and participate full on. Like, be in it to win it. Show up, be vulnerable, do the work, dig in. Show that the number one thing you're interested in is understanding yourself. Show that you are relentless in that pursuit. Gentle, yes, but relentless. That's the thing. That is the number one piece. If you watch some of my rapid-fire coaching sessions, you're like, ooh, I want to be able to do that. That it, like, we're not the place for you.

Or check into what that impulse is. Yeah, I had that impulse as I still sometimes get that impulse when I watch your coaching. I'm like, I want to be able to do that. And like, what is the—

fair—

tracing that back to like, what is the desire there? Like, what is it that I want to be able to do?

Like, yeah, fair, fair, right?

I want that level of self-awareness. I want the level of emotional fluidity. I want to be able to feel what's going on in a room. Yeah, I want that.

Yes, that's fair. I think if there's some recognition underneath— yeah, I'm not suggesting by any chance, any, any, any way to like sublimate a want, but just like be in it for the self-awareness and, and, and be self-aware in that want. That's a great way to put it. Yeah. Thanks for that correction.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Joe.

Yeah. Pleasure.

Pleasure.

Thank you.

And thank you everybody for listening. Uh, if you like this episode, please send it to a friend, share it around, find us on X, send us some questions, let us know what you would love to hear us talk about, and we'll do it.

All right, take care. Thank you.