16 - Guest Jean Balfour

Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm really excited this episode because I get to speak to phenomenal coach, entrepreneur, business person and my friend Jean Belfort. If you get a chance, do click through in the show notes. You'll see all of the books that Jean recommends her business where you can look at the coach training she does. And yeah, I encourage you to listen in and soak it up. It's a good one. Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarfe, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveller, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses. The executive coaching business is tough and I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are. I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, then this is the place for you. Hello and welcome to Jean Jean Balfour. We're very fortunate to have you today.

Jean.

If it's okay with you, I'm going to give you a bit of a CV check. So I feel like I'm an MC when I do this. I love it. So Jean is an executive and leadership coach, a friend of mine and the owner of Bailey Balfour which is an accredited ICF training company. Jean has has over 20 years experience coaching individuals and organizations globally and she is based in Singapore. She has a Masters of Science in Organizational Consulting. She is an ICF MCC level practitioner and I was reading your bio Jean. You have many wonderful assessment accreditations and and she also has a podcast which makes me slightly intimidated interviewing Jean today. But Jean's podcast is making sense of work with Jean Balfour and I encourage everyone to have a look at it. But we are very lucky to have her today, so. Hi Jean.

Hi Ellie. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here with you today.

Oh no, it's my pleasure. And normally we'd be having these conversations with a glass of wine at a nice bar in Singapore. So what I realized as I was preparing for this interview is that I don't know that much about your background before we met, which is very neglectful. And so what I would love to ask you first of all is a little bit about your corporate to coach story. So how you became a coach and where that all came from.

Sure. Well, I never set out to be anywhere near where I am today. I actually I grew up, I spent my childhood in New Zealand and I knew I wanted to be a teacher from when I was really young. I had this idea that I was going to be a teacher and so I went to Teachers College and in those days it wasn't a degree. I'm very old, went to Teachers College, taught a bit in, in Auckland and New Zealand and then moved to London when I was young and taught in London. And while I was doing that I started doing a bit of teacher training. So I was using computers in the classroom. This is a long time ago, it was pretty unusual and I got asked to teach teachers how to use computers in the classroom and found myself loving working with adults. There was just something different about working with my peers and in an educational capacity. And so I left teaching 5 year olds and through a long convoluted route which I won't bore you with, ended up working in talent and leadership and organization development roles in the public sector in the uk. And the last three of those years were in health care which I really, really loved. I really loved being in the healthcare setting and still if I can work in healthcare, if I get opportunities to do that. But while I was doing that I kept being promoted. I ended up in more and more senior roles, eventually on the executive team, but I was finding myself very distracted by opportunities to facilitate and also what we would now call coaching. We didn't call it coaching, but I would. Then I ended up with two jobs. I had my leadership role, I was running a team and then I would also be wandering around the organization having conversations with people about themselves as leaders or facilitating team events. And so I decided I had to go off and find a way to do that full time because that was what I wanted. Then I, I had an opportunity then to go and join a consultancy that mainly consulted into healthcare. So I went and joined them. But that was one of my absolute career lows actually because I had a big values clash with the leadership in that organization. So I loved the work. And it. The work helped me, helped prepare me for where I am now because I learned to consult. I learned to do all the things you have to learn to do, like write a proposal and negotiate with clients and manage your hours and understand billing and all of that stuff. But I couldn't stay there, unfortunately, because of that, values clash. And it's so important to me that I'm working aligned with my values. And I had one piece of work that I knew that if I left, I could take with me because I brought it into the organization that would give me enough money to pay the bills for the first year. And so I bravely went out on my own. And that was 2001, so that's a long time ago.

Wow. Okay. Well, there's a lot of things I didn't know that I didn't. Don't think I knew you were a teacher. It's interesting. I grew up with parents who were teachers, and I always said, I'm never going to be a teacher. Never, ever. You'll never get me in the classroom. And then as I progressively moved through these roles where I was really doing things that looked a lot like teaching, I've had to re examine that judgment. Okay, so how did you know you were ready to go out on your own? So you had the one client, which obviously was a financial sort of buffer, but how did you know that it was going to be okay? Or did you not know?

I didn't know, actually. I was. I was stuck in a. In a point where I had two options. I knew I loved the work. So still to this day, you know, I'm still. I mean, I'm still essentially a teacher. I'm a coach obviously as well. But the two are very intertwined for me. And in those days, so. So there were a number of options. I could go to a Big Four consulting or go to one of the big consulting firms, or I could go out on my own. I couldn't see any other options. And in those days, you needed a degree in psychology to go and do any consulting with the Big Four. And I did look at it. So I had. I felt like I had no choice. I had very good relationships with people in the sectors. In healthcare. I had. And so I kind of knew that there would be some good work. And certainly for the first year there was. And then I had to learn how to sell because I didn't have to sell that first year. It kind of came to me. So I guess I felt a bit forced into it. I'm really Glad that happened because, you know, it's been, it was definitely the right choice for me. And I don't think I'm, I'm, I guess now I would probably describe myself as an entrepreneur because I, you know, I run a business that's growing, but I'm not a natural entrepreneur. I've had to learn that and grow into it and that I was kind of forced and really glad I ended up there.

So were there, were there almost sounds like there were two phases. Then there was like the, the making a move, but with this client, right, that was, that was, was there to be this found bedrock, I guess, of your business? Did you, did you have another phase where you sort of had to go the next level or replace that client? How did that play out?

Well, that was really hard, actually, that next phase, because that involved going and finding new clients and getting new work and also becoming a professional in the field, really. So the first thing was that I was working in, predominantly in healthcare. And so I remember a great conversation, I think this is good learning for people, actually, with a really good friend of mine who said, I think you're beginning to struggle in your business a bit. Why haven't you come to talk to me? And I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, well, I've moved to a different organization, we've got work. Why haven't you come and spoken to me? I said, because you're my friend. She just laughed and said, yeah, I'm a friend. Friends are here to help. So I, first of all, I had to learn that I could go and ask people, I could go and be bold and tell people that I was available to work in the market and that the people that I'd known in my working life in those years in healthcare had all moved on to different organizations. So all I had to do really was reach out to them. But that felt really, really hard because I felt like I was asking for something. And I guess I didn't see it as I was offering something. It was like I saw myself as asking for work rather than offering an opportunity. But it didn't take long before that, then grew actually and became bigger. But there was one other thing that happened that was really fortuitous and that really supported me and that's that I got an opportunity to be an associate. I guess it was a type of associate contract for a big health charity in the uk and they, I then worked, did some work for them, running leadership programs, coaching doctors, doing a lot of work over about 10 years. And that actually Also really helped and took some of the pressure off having to go and find the work.

Yeah. And, and Jane, throughout this process, did you have a. It sounds like you had a practice that was part coaching, part training and facilitation. Has that always been the case, like throughout the years you've been coaching?

Yes. I mean it now isn't that because I, other than running the coaching academy, I'm only coaching in the rest of my practice. But yes, and I really encourage people to do this actually because I think it's really hard to build a coaching business purely coaching. And if you're doing other things like facilitation or team development or team coaching or running leadership programs, you, you get more exposure to leaders. You get more exposure to what's going on for them, what are the challenges that they're having, which I think then deepens your experience as a coach, deepens your ability to kind of sit with them one on one in the room. And it makes it easier to run a business if you've got that type of work, that sort of hybrid work.

Yeah. And I actually think it's, it's also a sales tool.

Right.

Which means that we have a much deeper, more complex understanding of the organizations we're selling to and that makes it. And we're often talking to the same people, so they're all quite reinforcing. Yeah. Fantastic. And so you've obviously undergone a second transition and the second transition being that you now run an incredible coach training business. And for everyone who's listening, I refer Jean's business to all coaches who are looking for an ICF accredited training program at, at two levels. So the sort of the more introductory ACC level and the advanced level, the PCC level and the, that I refer give me the best feedback. But obviously this was a big, like an entrepreneurial transition. Right. This is a totally different thing. Tell me how this came about.

Well, again, it was a bit accidental and a bit fortuitous. So I had a conversation long before we moved to Singapore with a friend in London who I really, really respect in the talent, leadership, hr. He's an HR director space. He's a really deep person. And he said to me one day, I think you should be training coaches. And I was a bit taken aback because it never occurred to me. But he was like, I think you should do it. I kind of forgot about it, moved to Singapore and then a couple of things happened. One was a friend rang me up and said, have you tried Zoom? This was seven years ago. And I said, what Zoom So I went and played with it and thought, huh, really like Zoom. Why don't I test running something in it? So we ran a eight hour, oh wow. Four two hour sessions of coaching skills training actually in Zoom. And I was, I was hooked because a lot of my clients were saying to me, we want to train people. We need it to be virtual because they're all across Asia Pacific. And all the tools we had then were really not very helpful. WebEx, it felt like it was chalk and talk. It wasn't interactive or experiential. And that's how I teach people, was experientially. So I, and then this voice came back to me after we'd had that great experience and I thought, why don't I just give it a go? And in the meantime, I had personally done some coach training that I'd been really disappointed in. I felt that it was badly designed. I felt that the coaches, the coach, the people training as coaches were left a bit abandoned in the course. And training as a coach is very vulnerable. You have to coach in front of other people. You have to be coached. And I felt, I wanted to create some coach training that felt very safe, where people could come and learn where and where we could do this thing where we could do it virtually across the region and people could attend outside of their work and make it convenient. So, yeah, so then it happened. And then in my spare time, I mean, I literally remember sitting on planes from Singapore to London working out how the competencies worked and how to fit it all together. And here we are, we have it.

Oh, incredible. And you know, I think that is the feedback that I do hear about it, which is that there's, there's this ability to get a global cohort because it's run virtually. And that diversity of experience and approach is hugely valuable. And so has this changed your view of who you are as a business person? Like, what's different?

Well, what is different is that I, and not just Gene, with me coaching and, and bringing in sort of projects, I guess I now have a wider team because we have a faculty, an amazing faculty training on the program. And I of course have a small core team because we're also marketing and doing that. So I'm much more of a leader and a manager than I ever anticipated I would be. I guess that's changed. The other thing is that the coaching, the coach training industry has a lot of marketing attached to it. And before I, all my work came from relationship. I, I did, I was good at networking and so I used Networking to build up my business, basically. Even when we came to Asia, I just got out there, did lots of networking and the business grew from there. But coach training, particularly running an online global program, requires me to learn to do marketing. And I've really had to learn to do that. And I'm really enjoying it, I'm really loving it. But it has required me to be a different person, to be more bold, to be out there in to people, to get used to being on camera, to be used to having the podcast and to be prepared to share my thought leadership, to share my thinking. So it's a whole different skill set which I've really grown to love. And I still think I can put in the category of I'm a teacher, if that makes sense. So I can still hold it in that same space.

Yeah. And so having it sounds like quite like a mindset shift and a skill set development when it comes to marketing, particularly if you think about the lessons you've learned. Which ones of those do you think are most applicable to people who are maybe in the early days of their coaching business? Because I'm going on a similar path and I'm like, God, I wish I knew this back then.

Well, the first thing I'd say is that your relationships are everything. Coaching is a trust based business and it's. It happens through. As you gain in your confidence as a coach, you also need to learn to gain in your confidence to build relationships with people who are your buyers or who know your buyers and to build those relationships. And I wish that somebody had told me at the beginning about that. I would have been more intentional about keeping databases of the people I knew. Yeah. And I was heavily impacted actually by Keith Ferrazi's book, Never Eat Alone, in which he talks about generosity in networking and how it's not an ask thing, it's about, it's an offering, it's a giving act. And so again, I wish I'd read that right at the beginning because I would have felt less nervous about networking. I would have known that it was about going out and offering people things. So I have always done a lot of free stuff as a way of people having exposure to me, experiencing me. And I don't have a problem with that. I know some coaches say, don't give away free stuff. I'm like, I think people need to know who you are to trust you with a coaching relationship. So.

Absolutely. So for you, I see the stuff I see you doing for free now are things like your podcast, lots of free webinars and masterclasses and a lot of content. What sort of things do you think coaches could do? Like when we, when we, you know, to give people a snippet of what they do well.

Coach. Yeah, just really not complicated. Be prepared to coach somebody. One of, one of the people who trained with us has built a very successful coaching business and she did that by coaching a lot of people for free at the beginning, but asking them to make a referral or asking them to do something in return. And that happened and it worked for her. She really worked with her existing network. And so you don't have to just coach for free and not expect anything in return, but you can ask for them to do you a favor, which the biggest favor is either writing a reference for you, which you can put on your site or on your LinkedIn profile, or indeed referring you to people they know. Connect. They just need to connect you with one person.

Yes.

Who's there.

So, yeah, in some ways I was just thinking that's a. That's a really effective. Probably more effective than discounting in some ways, like a heavy discount. Because you really don't have to get into that conversation and you don't set an expectation when it comes to people they might refer you to. So that's an interesting. An interesting one.

Yeah. I think discounting is hard to come back from.

Yes.

If you're discounting coaching, then it's as with that client, it's hard to shift your rates up. Yeah. It's easier with a new client.

It is.

But the other thing about this is, I talk about this all the time. You learn to coach by coaching. Yep. And so the more coaching you can do, even if you're not being paid or you're not being paid well for it, the better you become, the more confident you become, the more experience you get, the easier it is for a buyer to hire you.

Yeah.

Because you've got the depth of experience and. Yes. Coach, coach, coach.

Yes. And you know, if I join those dots, I think when you have that experience of having coach people and I include also the work you've done coaching in your role right before you come into a coaching business that allows you in a sales conversation to, to give examples and to talk about types of people and the chall worked on and that is a hugely credible thing when it comes to an organizational buyer. So. Yeah, I'm with you. I think this is an interesting segue. You know, how has your approach to pricing developed over the years in terms of your coaching services?

Well, I am not Somebody who finds it easy to do the pricing piece. I found it really hard. It's much easier to price something like the coaching program because it's other people running it. But when you're pricing coaching, you're pricing yourself on a, on a basis. So it's hard perhaps, rather than how, well, how it's changed is that first of all, I, I now mostly there's exceptions to this charge on a package and not an hourly rate. Because I believe, first of all that coaching is a relationship over a period of time and it's not just one off and one or two sess, but also because I think that when we're working with a client over a period of time, we're not just working with them in the room. There's the prep, there's the follow up, there's the relationship with the organization, there's all the things that you're doing, you're with them. So the hourly rate might look incredibly high, but actually we need to consider all that's included in that hourly rate. The whole, it's the whole package. It's our training, it's our supervision, it's our insurance, it's all those parts of what's happening that's coming into that fee, into that package. The other thing I've done is I'm not at all shy to talk to people now about other coaches, about finding out and I encourage people to tell other people what they're charging.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Because I think it's helpful for us to benchmark, to know where we are in the price range. And it doesn't mean that it matters that we might be charging less because we might see ourselves as not yet ready to go to that rate, but we know what the range is. The other thing that I've got much more bold about doing is I now ask clients, what's your usual price range for coaches? And I do that because I've had a couple of experiences where we've gone long way into the conversation and then they've come back to me and told me what they were prepared to pay. And if I'd known that at the beginning, I wouldn't have carried on the conversation because it was too low. And there are some sectors that are still not valuing coaching. So they're paying very low rates and I now just don't, if I get an inquiry from that sector unless I see that it's going to be different, I just don't even engage with them.

Yeah, that's such a good point. And I think it does take a little bit of experience to feel confident asking for either budget or your usual, your usual price bracket. But actually I haven't thought about asking as your price bracket. I think that's a really great tip and it's a little bit less confronting than saying, how much are you willing to spend on the coaching that I'm here to provide you? And people will be more open to sharing. And also when you ask specifically for a budget, they'll often say, oh, I don't really have a budget in mind. So that's such a great tip. Everyone should make a note of that.

If you haven't already. Well, it's new to me, actually. I've really only been doing it recently. It's hugely beneficial. Now, of course, the other thing that's helpful with that is that most organizations will pay more the more senior the person and depending on the coach experience, but you still get that range and you know, you, you can plug yourself into that range and that seniority and think, okay, I think I should pitch here.

Yeah. And yeah, which is an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we're bringing our whole selves to any engagement, but we do there is a capacity to charge more for different types of coaches. Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. And so what did you. When you were running purely a coaching business, which I appreciate it's not been for a while, what did you find most challenging about it?

Well, I think there's two things. One is that any consultancy and coaching as a form of consultancy often works in feast or famine. I don't know if you've experienced this.

I have very much experienced this. Yes, yes.

So how this goes, and I was warned about this, in fact, when I first set up my business. How this goes is you do a lot of work in business, developmental marketing, a lot of work comes in, you're too busy doing the work, so then you don't do any business development or marketing and then the work finishes and suddenly you're run out of work, you've got none. And then you have to go into it. And I wish I'd known about that at the beginning because those famine phases are terrifying because you think you're never going to be able to run the business. You haven't budgeted for them, because when you're in feast, you think, oh, this is going to be like this fore. So, yes, you just think it's all going to be well. And so for me, I think, I mean, I was always taught that you should put away 50% of everything that comes in just for everything, for taxes, for expenses and stuff. And then if you've got money left over from the 50%, then that's good. And also that then ties you over the famine periods where really there's not enough work coming in.

That's, that's a very simple version of what's quite complicated in profit first or something like that. But if you were to say, yeah, 50%, that relates a little bit to how do you decide how much to pay yourself out of that 50. Is it just that you take 50? Business takes 50.

I've always had a salary out of my business that was depending on circumstances. So in Singapore it's a higher percentage because I'm on an employment pass here. So I have a salary and then I would leave the rest in the businesses dividends and pay it when I knew the business was safe. And I learned that the hard way, if I'm honest, because I did pay myself too much out of the business at one point.

Me too.

And it was painful.

Yeah.

So I just say leave as much as you can in the business. When I started my business, I did a calculation on what was the lowest amount of money I could live on.

Yes.

In fact we did that when we came to Singapore as well. Setting up a new business here. Nearly always you earn more than that. But if you work out what's the lowest amount, then you've. And really we can cut a lot of things out. We can eat out less often, all those things.

Yeah.

Then it becomes easier to budget, I think.

Yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. I, I ran a workshop that's in the impact Coach collective on your corporate to coach Runway. Right. And so how to plan that. And I think that figuring out what is that bare basics budget must cover and then building a Runway of whatever you're comfortable with, whether it's three, six 12 months of that amount, then everything else is sort of, you know, that's when things are looking up and we can, we can grow it from there. And I do, I do like that idea of creating, creating consistency among the roller coaster. So something that. Yeah. Is buffered. And yes, I also had that difficult experience where I ended up with a tax debt that was very painful. But I never did that again.

We've all been there. I mean, I remember where I was sitting when I got a tax bill that was eye watering. And in fact my accountant had made a mistake in the, in the end, it wasn't so eye watering. It was still a lot. I Remember where I was sitting to this day? It was terrifying. And so learning about tax, learning about how much you put aside for that will save you some pain.

Yes, yes, learn from us, everyone, please. Yes. And I think the first thing is actually just being aware of what the requirements are and depending on your business structure. So if you're a company, what does that mean in terms of company taxes? What are your personal income taxes like that can be quite complex, so don't skip that step.

Well, the thing that I would say is always have a good accountant. I send love messages to my accountants and in fact I've just switched because I didn't have a love relationship here. But the accountant I've worked with in the UK I'm still working with just for my personal tax and I will never let him go because that relationship is so fundamentally, you just find one, find one through recommendation who people have worked with and pay them with grace and love because they save you a whole lot of hassle.

Yes, I totally agree.

That's.

I think that the first outsourced piece of work that you need to do is, is likely your financials when it comes to tax, particularly unless you are an accountant or something like that. You know, I, yeah, definitely recommend that. So have you ever turned down work in your business?

Yes.

Tell us about it.

Yes, yes, it's always. I mean, this is a bit of a theme for me. It's about either two things. One is a values clash. So if I think I don't have a values alignment with the organization or I meet the client and I think that we are not going to be a lot, there's going to be some perhaps dissonance in the work between me and them and maybe it's something about them being just so incredibly different to me or, you know, whatever that is. And then the other reason I have turned down work is because I experienced a difficult relationship with whoever was commissioning the coaching. Yeah. And this has been so. So I believe that coaching with the commissioner is also trust based and just occasionally it doesn't happen very often. Somebody in the organization, somebody in the talent team or the manager themselves will say, as a part of the contracting, we would like you to report back after every coaching session. And I don't believe that that is a good use. And also then I think I'm concerned that they're going to try to break the confidentiality of the coaching relationship through that. And I will work to negotiate a different reporting. I understand that we need to stay in good communication. I need to report back to them. And I would also encourage the client to do that. But if it feel like there's a micromanagement of the coaching arrangement, then I'm concerned about the whole coaching assignment. And I have turned them down. Not many that I have.

Yeah, so have I in very similar situations. And it does I think speak to what's going on systemically across the organization. Because if there is that layer of almost like a lack of trust, you can't partner with them, then you can imagine that it's going to be very difficult for your coachee to do what they need to do as well. And you want to set you're coaching out for success.

Well, they won't trust the coach if they think that that's going on. So then they won't do the work because they'll be frightened about being vulnerable. Understandably.

Yeah, that as well. So I'm hearing obviously Jane, I know so I know this about you, but you're obviously a very values driven person. So I'm imagining that there is a lot of meaning that you get from the work that you do both as a coach and in your coach training business. How do you balance being very purpose driven with wanting to have a strong financially successful business? How do you marry those two?

That's a great question. I've been on a big journey with it. I think I believe more and more that we all have a money story. And in fact I started to ask clients sometimes about their money story if they're a senior leader and they're coming into bonus round, for example. Yeah, I will be curious with them about their own money story because it will be playing out and how they're talking to people about their bonuses. And I had a, a lot of kind of lack stories about money and stories about it wasn't okay to run a business, it wasn't okay to make money, it wasn't okay to think about profit. I had lots of those stories stories. So I've really worked on those stories because I don't believe that's true. I believe if you're. I have to earn a living and I'm earning a living by now helping other people find out how they can earn a living and, and that is a good thing. We all need to earn a living. But I've had to really work on, on all the stories that I grew up with around what it was and wasn't okay to do with money, to make money, to have money. And I continue to work on those stories today and I encourage people going into coaching businesses to Be very intentional about looking at their money storing because it will impact everything from how much you charge to how you see your capability, your ability to earn a good living. All of those things will be affected by your own good or not so good stories about money.

Yeah, no, I love that. And that's something we talk a lot about in our community, even down to, because we do share a lot about things like this is what I charge. These are our pricing brackets. It's really interesting to see people's money stories play out and what to someone seems like a very reasonable amount of money. Someone else will say, how can you in good conscience charge that? And there's so much value laden stuff in there. And it's our stories and it's what we're exposed to in, in the media. And you know, one of the things that struck me recently is when we look at the media of rich women in particular, right, the movies we saw, the, the books we read growing up, there's no positive role models of women making money in a positive way. Like the one that comes to my mind is Goldie Horn in Is it Overboard or something like that with Kurt Russell. And she's just, you know, she has money and she's complete snob, she's awful to everyone. And I think that that messaging is, is very prominent. So often we have these beliefs and we don't even know where they came from. It's just in there.

I believe, because I've done a lot of work around women's leadership, I guess, and I believe that as women actually it's really important that we do earn money, earn good money, become role models for the younger women coming up, that it's good for them to earn money. We've never questioned men earning good money. Somehow we've questioned women earning good money. And therefore I think it's really important that we challenge those assumptions that, that we don't even know where they came from. Yeah. Like you say, they're in our films, they're in our stories, they're in a fairy tales, you know, Cinderella needed a prince. They're everywhere. And I don't believe we do. I believe as women we can earn our own living. We can earn a good living. That is a good thing to do.

Yeah, that's such a good analogy. And actually it makes me think about the wicked stepsisters, right? They were rich and so therefore they're portrayed as these horrible, horrible people. Whereas poor Cinderella is just a delight.

She's scrubbing the floor.

As long as you're scrubbing the floor and you look pretty, you know, there's a lot of that in there, which is very interesting.

So nothing wrong with scrubbing the floor by the way. We should all be scrubbing the floor but we should also be enabled to be wealthy actually.

Yeah. Is it okay if we outsource the scrubbing of the floor? That's my preference. So is there someone in the public eye that you wish you could coach?

Well, yes. I mean you sent this question to me before and I was really paused about it and I thought who would that be? And actually I'm not sure whether it's coach him or walk alongside him but living in Singapore, I've always been fascinated by legal Kuan Yew. It was Singapore's really most powerful, I guess Prime Minister because he, he was a really tough man. So he really led with a, you know, with a bit of an arm rod. But in all of that he talked about social well being and, and Singapore has good social well being and he, he was inspirational, unbelievably inspirational in that and I would have loved, obviously I can't now to have talks with him about that tension I think between the. We need to create the solid structure which had no bend in it in order to create the social cohesion which has happened. And I would just be fascinated to spend time with him to find out how he thought and. Yeah, and I wish he was here now because he would be. I, I think his level of depth and intelligence would be able to help us with some of the problems we are experiencing now.

Yeah. Yes. Oh, what a, what a great answer. And not one I would have thought of. So Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. And practical stuff. How have you hired help in your businesses? Like what's your journey been with hiring people?

Well, kind of two, two journeys. It's a bit different now because I'm running the coaching program so it's a smaller business, this is a small business really but from really early hired somebody as an administrator, as a sort of support person and when I did that first it was. It's usually a student who was needing a few hours extra work because I didn't need many hours but I needed somebody to be a bit of help and so I did that on a very low cost basis. As I said, I've always had a good accountant. And then as the years went on I sort of made that a deeper relationship having somebody who could be more operational running some of the operations and supporting that, bookings, invoicing, all of those kind of day to day things which I Can do. I'm not very good at. I make mistakes. So it's always better if somebody else does those anyway.

Yeah. And what is your favorite assessment tool to use in coaching? Do you have one? Do you have a few?

Well, I have two. One of which has become quite unpopular actually. And I would still, I still use it, and that's Myers Briggs mbti. And there's a lot of pushback about MBTI in modern day. One person in particular is really ranting about it and I still find it hugely powerful for people. So it has very good face validity. There is some good research behind it, despite what people say. And people find it helps them to make sense of some of the way they're approaching work and life and to give them choices. Because any personality at all, I believe is about choice. It's not about being stuck in a box boxes about the choices we make from that. So Myers Briggs and Hogan, of course. So for those of you who don't know, Hogan is an amazing leadership assessment tool, helping people to see both their strengths, their values, but also their dark side, as Hogan calls it, the potential places for derailing. And particularly as leaders get more senior, they need to know where those derailers are because they will be what trip them up in their career. And so I love Hogan. It's expensive, but I still convince people and even private clients now will often be willing to pay for Hogan because they find it so valuable.

I would say that I use Hogan much more than I don't these days that most people will use it. Yeah. And. And do you find that you're using some sort of psychometric in most engagements or is it.

It's not all engagements, it's most. I always put Hogan in and I also put stakeholder feedback into the proposal and a three way meeting because I've learned the hard way that without some of that data, things can get very difficult in the coaching because you're only working with what the client's bringing. But you've got an organizational brief if you like. So yeah, I'm using it more often than not.

Okay. What's your favorite business book or podcast or either of those?

Well, I think probably I've already mentioned the business book that would be Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrati is a really, a really good book. I'm not big on reading business books. I've got a couple of other books that I recommend to everybody, so. The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris.

Oh, I love the Happiness Trail.

I just give it to everybody. I mean, I don't care whether you've come to talk to me about your confidence. We've all got mindset problems. And the happiness Trap is about mindset problems. And sometimes at the end of a coaching assignment, I'll say to the client, you know, talk to me about what's happened. And he said, well, the best part was the happiness trap. I'm like, not the 12 hours of coaching we've had together. Also that, also that the happiness trap. So always recommend that to everybody I meet. And then the other one is the Way of Integrity by Martha Beck, and it's a beautiful book, which it sounds a bit heavy, but based on Dante's Inferno. So she's taken the idea of Dante's Inferno and talked about this journey that we go through to find our integrity. And for me, as somebody who helps people think about work, it's about, am I working? Am I doing work that sits with my integrity? Beautiful book. She also has a new book coming out about anxiety in January, which will be amazing because she's done some really interesting research on anxiety.

She is amazing and, and is in a lot of podcasts I'm listening to at the moment because of her unconventional family life, which is I encourage anyone to listen to and totally opened my eyes and I thought I would be judgy and I wasn't. So, you know, it was very, very interesting. I will link to all of those books in the show notes, but where I want to go finally is to talk a little bit about coach training and coach development, which is obviously very important to you. So to you, what makes a good investment in coach training?

Well, I've made some bad investments, actually. So I think I have a, I think I have a good clue on this when it depends what stage of the journey you're at. But if you're a new coach, if you're coming into wanting to develop as a coach, it's really important to find a coach training provider who have depth of experience in coach training and a track record in coach training. So there are some coach training providers. I don't want to kind of diss people here, but there are some where the faculty are only recently qualified coaches themselves. And I don't believe that you're going to get the depth of training that you get unless you go to a provider where the, the people teaching you are also seasoned coaches. So on our program, for example, our faculty are all pcc, icf, pcc, but they also have to have a deep organizational coaching background. So they need to have been an executive coach, basically for A long period.

Yes, I think that's, I think that's true. And I think I would probably say the same for, you know, training in developing your business, which is, I see a lot of, you know, and I do sound like I'm, I'm blowing my own trumpet here. Maybe I am. But a lot of people who are offering coaches business skills or training who have maybe been a coach for a year or two and clearly haven't done the work. So I think, I think that's an interesting filter that people can apply when they're looking for, you know, what's next in terms of their, their coach training journey. So tell us about your program in.

A bit more detail. So it's, as you said earlier, we have two levels. So level one is the, is the level that enables you to have all the training you to be an ACC level coach. And because of some experiences that I had, it's built heavily around experiential learning and helping you to feel really confident. So our goal is that by the end of that program, you know, you can coach well, you know, you can hold space for somebody, you know how to set up a coaching assignment, you know that you've seen people grow through the coaching that you've done. And so it's, it's run over about six months. It's all virtual and bite sized so you can fit it around your job. But our primary job is that you, is to help you to practice, practice, practice, coach, coach, coach and get all that experience. So that's our level one and then our level two program, also bite sized and fitting around work is more focused on the next level. So that's about helping you deepen your, your experience as a coach, deepen your ability to coach. But also we bring in a lot more theory, a lot more psychological theory, organizational theory to help you to kind of layer that over your coaching practice and experience. So, and you can do them, you can do level one and then go straight on to level two, or you can do level one and then wait and do it later on when you want to. Yeah, and our students are mainly people who are leaders or aspiring leaders who want to be more effective as leaders in organizations and probably coach one day. So your program was kind of a perfect example of that. They're in corporate usually and then they're thinking that one day they will be a coach. Yeah.

And so if someone has done, let's say, the equivalent of a level one program and they, you know, diving into setting up their own business, how would they decide whether Level two is for them.

Well, I think that now if you're going to set up your own business, you actually have to do level two. You have to be heading towards a PCC qualification because organizations are asking for that. So ACC is fine getting your feet, getting going, getting your coaching practice up. But if you want to start coaching either with some of the big coaching providers or if you want to go directly to multinational, for example, they are going to ask you probably for a pcc. So you really need to work towards your PCC and that means doing the level two.

Okay. Okay. That, that's a really, a really good tip. And do you have any advice?

Right.

So if based on, you know, all of your experiences, what would you tell someone who is making that leap from their corporate role.

Go to you? So what I wish, what I wish was that somebody like you was around to help me to make that transition. Actually Ali, and over the last few years somebody people have said to me, why don't you set up a program on how to set up a coaching business? And I said because that's not my expertise. So I'm so happy that you are here helping people to do that because it's and, and to go and join programs like yours, but especially yours of course, before you leave your corporate role because it gives you that opportunity to think about that transition. How can you transition from corporate to coach? It is a transition and it requires a lot of thought. It's, I think there's a bit of a myth in the industry that you can just leap out and suddenly clients will appear. It's not. You're gonna go out and build a business that's hard work like any entrepreneur. And I'm so grateful that you've moved into the this space because you have a huge amount of experience and knowledge to help people with that.

Thank you. That sounds like I planted that and I promise I didn't, I really didn't.

It's all true.

But, but that's such a good point is that I think we, we set up as coaches with that if I build it then they will come view and sadly that's not how it works. We have to be really deliberate about how we go out and do that. And I agree. The earlier you can start building that intentionality and all of the, the foundation, then the quicker your, your ramp up is, is going to be. I'm, I'm just conscious of, of that we're nearly out of time. But I wanted to just say Gene, thank you so much for coming and talk to us. This was one of the most practical, helpful and I think also very relatable interviews that, that we've done. And you know, I'm super grateful for your time, so thank you. And I encourage everyone go and have a look at the Bailey Balfour website, particularly if you're looking at that level one on level two training program. I can attest to it. I think it's brilliant. I've seen many of my people that I've recommended go through it and love it deeply. And it's a very nice, strong alumni network as well. So I encourage you all to get over there.

Thanks for what you're doing too. It's great.

Oh, you're most welcome. All right, thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Executive. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact, contact me or work with me further. All my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found@elliscarf.com have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.