Using AI For Better Coaching, with Robert Murray

In today's episode of the Meaningful Revolution podcast, I talk with our guest about coaching uai. Both subjects I am very passionate about. Now what makes this conversation so great is even though I've known this person since 2014 or 15 in a coaching relationship as were peers with the same methodology of coaching certified High performance coaching, we really delve into his story of becoming a coach, which I didn't realize was so traumatic and fraught, but turned into something really great. And just going through and talking about how AI will impact the field of coaching, some of our favorite tools and implications of where things are going in the future as well with talking about some risks associated with AI tools. So with that I'd love to introduce you to my good friend Robert Murray. And Robert is a certified High performance coach and original master faculty exchange facilitator, as well as a pioneer in the integration of AI for coaches. So he's co founded the group Coach Magic Tree Bark Group that helps coaches connect to a mission that matters in a community that they love. He recognizes coaches as frontline responders to base stress, polarization and division. And Robert champions the use of innovative AI tools to empower coaches to go beyond content creation and offer transformative results for their clients and find less stress in their business. Yeah, this conversation is great. I'm so grateful to have Rob on. And as you're listening to this, whether you are a coach or you're someone in a relationship based business, these tools can be used more broadly. And so we're talking about particular coaching things. But if you do anything where you record on Zoom or YouTube or any type of video recording, these tools can be very helpful in these contexts too, or in situations where you're interviewing people or want to do some feedback work. So I think one of the more powerful insights of this episode to listen for is how you can effectively analyze conversations. You've had to become a better coach about a clinician, a better doctor, a bedside manner or other things as a way to expand what we might find helpful here. So with that, enjoy this episode with Robert. Hey Rob, welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast. I'm really excited to be talking about coaching and AI with you today.

Nice. Yes. I love geeking out on this stuff, so it's going to be fun. Awesome.

Yeah, me too. For the audience, if you didn't know Rob and I or Robert and I go back as we're both certified high performance coaches and we probably met almost, I don't know, six, seven years ago now, I think at one of those.

14 I don't know what year you certified, but I went to every live event since 14. Okay.

So I think I certified in 15. I thought it was 14. And yeah, I have. We've been doing it for a while, so it's all kind of one giant session. But yeah, I'm curious just to jump right in, Robert, could you explain how you got into coaching to begin with before we get into the AI side of coaching?

Yeah, sure. And I don't know if this is true for every coach. I will say it's true for a lot of the coaches that I've talked to. It's like they always have some trial by fire, some kind of a challenge, something that really forced them into coaching or made them aware of it. And that certainly was the case for me. The way I got into coaching is I started a business with a group of my friends when I was 15 years old. And it was a great run. And we built it from at that point a complete startup to a thousand employees, $200 million branches everywhere in the. In the world. We had offices in Europe and sourcing offices in China and lots of locations all around the country. And then after about 28 or 29 years of that, I very unexpectedly. And I won't go into the details of this because that's a whole other podcast, but. But I very unexpectedly got pushed out of the organization with nothing. So, like, suddenly my world was turned upside down. I lost my set of friends, I lost my identity, I lost my. My mental picture was this is just something that was our company and that I would be part of for my entire life. And I had literally no job search skills. Like. Like again, I started when I was 15 years old. I was still going cool when I started working in the company. So what happened was I went to a job search meetup. Actually, I shouldn't say I went to it. I formed one. So I started going to job search meetups. And then it's like too long a drive for me where they are. I'm just going to start my own. So I started one nearby. And strangely enough, that was during the 2008, 9, 10 economic crisis. And the thing that was interesting is here I was for almost two years feeling sad and depressed and almost like zombie walking. It was just. It was not a good mental situation. And there were times in which I really just wanted to curl up in a bed in. In a ball in the middle of my bed and not come out and not see anybody, not talk to anybody. Cause I felt that bad about myself. And When I started that job search meetup, I surprisingly found that helping other people was deeply healing for me. And it was actually the thing that started lifting me out of my funk and out of my depression because I realized as I was helping people, first of all, I now see depression as being the selfish thing. Like, you think, oh, poor, you're sad and depressed and it's. Yeah, but you're also choosing to be depressed. And it is a. It's actually a selfish act to. To have that particular thing going on. When I. When I started realizing how helpful helping other people was, I'm like, huh, there's something to this personal development thing. I think I'm going to start diving in and learning about personal development and learning about growth. And so that led me to. And I have no idea what it was even at this point, but it led me to finding Brendan Burchard probably through some Facebook advertisement or an email or something that I got. I literally can't remember. And so I signed up for his Experts Academy. And then I realized this. Oh, I don't actually need Experts Academy. I need High Performance Academy at the time. And so I went to High Performance Academy and I'm like, oh my gosh, I love this world of personal development. This is life changing. Who knew that all of this was out there? And that led me to eventually signing up after going to High Performance Academy a couple of times and then also all the other ones that you probably went to Experts Academy, Creative speaker training and on it led me to decide that I was going to certify as a high performance coach. So that was the journey to become a coach. Wow.

I had no idea that you had entrepreneurship in your bones. You started so early and like, it had such a dramatic and probably traumatic ending. Like, that's amazing. Have you. Has the work and personal valent, just on a curiosity question here, changed how you felt about that whole experience now.

And how did that change 10 years later? So, yeah. So to answer your question, as you could tell, like, there were times I'm not a huge fan of talking about traumas when you're still in the midst of them that I find it's not helpful that it brings people down. And I'm. It's like really out of me now. It's no longer. It's a memory. It's something that I'm aware of, but it's no longer a trauma. And strangely enough, the thing that broke me free from it was another certified high performance coach who guided me through an exercise. And yet the exercise that she guided me through was not necessarily the high performance coaching framework. She took me through more of a metaphorical journey. I won't go into all the details, but it was really powerful where I went back into my, into the past and felt into the pain. And I guess this is the big takeaway from it is I was willing to at that point and literally it was 10 years later. This was like I got pushed out in 2019 and I think this breakthrough, I guess it was eight years that happened in 2017 and I was ugly crying. It was the first time where it was like the kind of crying where you're like, you're, you're catching your breath in between the tears. And it was like five minutes, probably more like three minutes of just this intense pain and it was gone. And I remember thinking, literally I was, we were at an event together in Cleveland and I was driving back Pennsylvania and I remember thinking is, wait, I could have gone through three to five minutes of intense suffering, which was just emotional pain at that point, and not had to deal with 10 years of like trauma and then suffering and resentment and all the stuff that was going. I would have taken that deal 10 years ago. Like, what the heck. So yeah, it was actually through coaching. And I've had a couple of experiences like that since. Since, which is also probably the topic of another but just somatic experiences or deep journeys. She called her work interworld travel. And it was like, it's like really powerful. I am, I'm a huge fan now of combining the heady coaching, the logical coaching, which the certified high performance framework is really beautifully well rounded for like the holistic view of all the things you need to do. But it's also intellectual, it's in your head a little bit. And I'm also a huge fan of feeling into the somatic experience. I've had a couple of breathwork experiences recently. I've had that inner world travel I've had combining the good and the bad, the light and the dark experiences. And now I'm a huge fan and to the point where my current version of myself, instead of running away from pain, us like, okay, bring it on. I'll take three minutes so that I don't have to go through the like fours of like, it's okay, I can.

Deal with it right now. It must feel good to feel like you have this superpower now to take on those big things and the confidence that comes with that. Just be like, yeah, it's a three to five minute, like intense. You're in it. You can let it go. It's processed out and you go about, um, just the. The power in being able to release all that is. That's amazing, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fun. I'm a huge fan. I'm not myself yet a, like a breath work practitioner, but I will take people there. In fact, you and I were just talking about it early on. Like early in my coaching career, I'd get on, say, a strategy session with somebody and they'd suddenly become deeply emotional. I'm like, what did I just do? Now when a client gets on, even if I'm just meeting them for the first time and they start crying or they have a fairly intense emotion, it's. Yes, okay, I'm finally having the desired impact because I'm taking them to a place that's important for them.

Yeah, I love that. And yeah, we were talking about. Yeah, that's the good. That's right before the good stuff is usually those big emotional relationships reactions.

So.

Which maybe segues nicely into our conversation on coaching and AI. Because one of the questions I've been thinking about in the last year, using AI mostly in my business, like, I actually, you know, we were in a AI coaching collective group together, Robert and I, with a couple other coaches talking about these tools. And one of the things we always talk about there is how we have knowledge strengths and knowledge gaps. And so I have not been really utilizing this in the actual coaching stuff as much, but in the managing of my business and podcast and all that. One of those questions that I've had to get to, the question is, how do we keep that thumbprint of humanity in the craft of coaching and the craft of creating things with these tools instead of just leaving it up to cold, dry machines?

Right.

Have you thought about that question? Or how do you think about. Because you just talked about this very beautiful emotion, human emotion in the coaching. And do you have tools that. Actual technical tools that are helping you in that, or is it the coaching is coaching and there's stuff around the session that you're using?

Yeah, no, actually, I love this question so much, I have given a lot of thought to it on a couple of different levels. One, one of the things that I share very often with other coaches is AI is not going to replace coaches, but AI coaches who embrace it are going to replace coaches who refuse to embrace it because it makes your business so much easier. So then that leads to the question of what are the human elements? What are the things that humans are still going to be better, at least for now for. For clients. And so what are the human skills that we need to double down on? That's the question I've been considering. And so obviously empathy and deep listening skills. There's just something that's really important when a human hears you and is receiving it. And you could almost tell in their energy or the body language that, like, they're with you on that journey. And having that sense of human connection is really important. And even if a machine, which, by the way, AI is quite good at this already, even if machine gave you the same words or the same answers that a human coach would do in the absence of empathetic listening, it doesn't land the same way. It doesn't have the same impact. So that's one of the skills, obviously, in the skill that I was describing where I had that deep emotional release. I was literally, first of all, I felt safe with her because I knew her for three to four years. At that point. We were sharing an Airbnb together. And we were sitting in this, like, the set and setting is very important. We were sitting in this beautiful room, sun, sunlight coming in with, like, stained glass and windows, and she was holding my hand. Like, all of those things were essential to the transformation. The other things that I think are really important from a human, like, the things we have to double down on is just human intuition. The machines aren't good at. As you're on a coaching call and I'm sure you experience this too, the question running through my mind is, what does this person need right now? And as I'm following that thread is it feels like we need to pick up on this. Like, she said something. So, like, I was in a session just two days ago, and a woman was talking about her challenging relationship with her mother, and she said that she had gotten an image of a mental image of her mom handing, like, a baby version of herself to her, like, giving herself back to herself. And she just went on, and she was describing a bunch of things with her dad and a bunch of things with her mom. And she said that. And I'm like, wait, you said something really important there or that. And it made this beautiful, deep connection between us. Because she's like, oh, I didn't realize I had said something so significant. And I'm like, yeah, as soon as you can become, like, you can love and accept the little version of you without condition, when you think that love and acceptance is always conditional from your parents and everything, like, that's a huge breakthrough. And she's, oh, wow. Like, I never thought of that. So human intuition, second, the second thing, and then also discernment. AI is unbelievably good. It's astonishingly accurate in its answers and as you probably know, it makes stuff up completely just dumb, random things. And it will give you information and it sounds just as authoritative and just as knowing as any of the other output that it gives you. But it's complete garbage and you need human discernment right now to determine, okay, I have this answer, but in my own experience, is that real? Is that true? Does this make sense? I think human discernment is another area. So I really don't think that AI is going to completely replace coaching anytime soon. However, if you don't double down on those skills. If you're just a junior varsity coach, watch out because AI is a great coach, a great consultant, a great thinking partner on a lot of things. And like, you can't be average in the coaching world. And honestly, starting now, like you, you can't just be a starting out coach and not develop your skills without running the risk of being replaced.

Absolutely. I've been telling people for the last year and a half that like these tools allow you to punch above your weight. So it'll take a beginner and you can do like intermediate or advanced coding or pick a field. Right. If you're really good, it's going to make you a weapon like just super quick and agile and effective in the marketplace. So the ability for these types of things to enhance and to like crowd a space with less skilled people where you could then differentiate yourself as an expert is fantastic. There's one thing I think we just scraped on to add to the three things, three skills that you were talking about. So outside of empathy, outside of listening skills, that human intuition and discernment, you talked about how the experience with that coach, it was the right environment. And I think that's another area people forget. And I didn't think about it until you mentioned that in passing and then, oh no. Our ability as people to create the beautiful space that healing or vulnerability or honesty can happen. It might be different. I mean, in a lot of ways. I just had a conversation with a psychologist who deals in eating disorders and has an AI coach just like the entry level because, and she said it's interesting because the relationship of therapist and client in that particular situation, the client might not want to fully tell the truth about eating habits as to not disappoint the person. So the app is a neutral person where they can check in about eating habits. How are you feeling about eating and stuff, and it allows for a more productive conversation and therapy, which is a really cool use case. But the. Where was I going with this? I went off on a tangent. My, My apologies.

Yeah, no, I, I think the thread. If, if, if I picked up on it, the thread that you were following is creating the environment. And what I was getting out of it was use the right tool for the right scenario.

Yeah. Yes. So a tool could be the beautiful sunset on the mountaintop at the meditation retreat that allows you to access that, and there's. There's no way for AI to replicate that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, I wholeheartedly agree. Like, that's one of the things that I'm realizing is there's so many AI tools out there. The new human skill. This is like what we're going to have to get good at is knowing which tool to use for which situation and then knowing how to use that tool in the right way. Just a tool set. Like, you can hammer a nail with a wrench. You can put a nail in with a wrench, but, like, you should use a hammer. It's going to work better.

Oh, absolutely. And I also. I'd love your thoughts on this, but I feel like, because we're still at the very beginning of what this is going to ultimately end up being in society, this is the time where there's 500 things created every day. And it's been like that for the last year and a half. It's going to probably increase in scale. That's not an actual number, folks, but the point tracks where the acceleration of new things being created every day is accelerating. And eventually we'll have a consolidation in five years of what really is helpful, what's just like a fun toy or a fun thing to do. And yeah, that. That skill of what's important or what's really going to help me with what I'm going after those. A lot. We talk about this in coaching a lot. Like, what's the intention behind what we're trying to do? And then picking the right thing to support us going forward is, like you said, essential.

Yeah. What's interesting, too. Cause one of the things. And I sent an email on this topic, but I call it the Costco rule, just because I find it a helpful mental thought. I don't know about you, but I love Costco. And every time I'd go to Costco, I'd always come home and I'd have spent $200. At least. least a hundred, but usually more like $200. And I'm like, this needs to be stop. So I made a rule for myself that I can only go to Costco if when I'm picking the thing off, up off the shelf, I envision myself taking it home, unwrapping it, and using it within the next three or four days. If it's not going to get used, it doesn't come home. And I think that's a useful way to think about AI tools. You can get tools that can write songs and create poems and be a business development and update your LinkedIn profile. There's a million things, right? Are you really going to use it or is it just for fun? And if it's just for fun, then okay, great, schedule it for your recreational Netflix time, I call it. But if you're going to actually use it, have the, have a very clear intention of what the tool is going to get used for and then apply the Costco rule. Am I going to use this right away? Within three days? Great, I'll learn it. If I'm not going to be using it right away, then maybe I'll just pass. Because as you said, you could spend hours geeking out on a particular tool only to find out that something better comes out the following week. And now you wasted all that time.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Yeah.

No, yeah. I also, and I'd love your thought on this, if you're afraid of AI, I think there is some value in just getting in the game and seeing what it it's all about. So if you find something interesting that'll help you learn the tool that's tied to just a personal self interest thing. I think there's a balance between getting around and getting exposed to these types of things and tools and then dedicating your life to chasing the next shiny thing, which will drive you poor and crazy because the sheer volume of updates, new things you didn't even realize, could be a thing. Like it adds up real quick.

Yeah, yeah. There's no question about it. So yeah, I can't tell you already just for myself how many $20 a month subscriptions I have. But that's gonna have to stop at some point, right?

Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. And I'm with you. And I've slowly been like, okay, we need to. If one tool can do both things and one thing, not as great, but it's all just one tool. Like, as someone that grew up in tech, like that's why I love Kajabi, I was sick of paying for email marketing and a webpage thing. And I funneled this. Whatever. You know, to have the one tool where it's all consolidated one is just good for sanity. To wrap your mind around it, even if it doesn't do it as great as another thing, you still have that functionality unless you really use it and mean it, need it. Tongue twisters. But I think this leads into the next best question here. And as you've been using AI tools in your coaching practice, what are like your top five tools that you love right now that are really helping you in your craft or accelerate the business?

Yeah, and this may end up being a boring, ish answer. So I use the big three. So the big three. And it's funny because I'm talking to a lot of people and they've only heard of the big one, which is chatgpt. Okay, you gotta say chatgpt on any list. It was the granddaddy. It's almost earned the right of like when people say AI, they mean chatgpt, like wave Kleenex, can you hand me a Kleenex? And it's no, I want a tissue, but it's a popsicle or something else, but you still call it a kleenex. So obviously ChatGPT, it can do a lot of things well. But I think it's also really useful for people to understand what the other two big large language models are. The other two that are huge are Claude, which is Claude AI, which is my current favorite. Actually, I prefer that over ChatGPT. And here's the reason. So just March 4th, a few days ago, depending on when this, this podcast is released, it could be as long as a month ago. But like recently they generated, they came out with version 3.0 and they have three models of it. But there's a couple of things that changed. One is the input amount. And this is very significant. This was clause advantage. The amount of data that you can put into it as context as learning is dramatically larger than ChatGPT or Google Gemini, so you can ask it very complex questions. So as an example, I take transcripts of coaching calls or transcripts of events I'm running for the AI collective or for group coach magic. And often those transcripts, if it's a two hour call, could be 70 to 100 pages long of material. Claude has no problem with that. It'll absorb that and then that makes a whole bunch of other things possible because it can remember the whole conversation. Whereas with ChatGPT, you might have to split it into a couple of files Gemini, you might have to split it into a Couple of files. The other thing is when you look at the benchmarks, Claude Opus, the most advanced model is a, a little bit ahead, you know, in terms of context, reasoning abilities, math abilities, coding abilities, like by, by many benchmarks. It's slightly ahead of ChatGPT. Claude is probably my favorite AI tool right now. And then be this, the second or the third of the big three is Google Gemini and that has, it's had fits and starts. It's, it's been an also ran. Google was late to the game, but you can't count Google out. It's Google after all. And, and the thing that it excels at is current research. I find it so useful for doing things like comparing one software program to another. If I'm evaluating AI tools, I could say, please give me all the tools that do this particular function and it will tell me all the function. I'm like, that's fabulous. Please give me the ratings and reviews of each. And then if I have questions and it'll say, please give me the links, please tell me what the pricing is, all of the things, and then when you get into it, what are the uses for it? And oh by the way, do you have a YouTube video that can give me a tutorial on how to use this tool? And oh wait, it's Google. Google is tied to YouTube, so it'll link right to the YouTube. And then I get an hour long video on how to use this and there's a ton of time to watch an hour long video. Hey Gemini, can you summarize the contents of this hour long video and put it in playback playbook format and tell me the 10 steps that I need to use so that I can do it without having to watch this hour video and it'll do that. So I love Gemini for doing research. And then ChatGPT I typically use for what everybody uses AI for, which strangely I don't know if this is true for you. You pick up your phone, you have a smartphone right now. You pick up your phone. Oh wait, you can do voice calls with this. Wow, that's really cool. I like, I do that, like most of the time I'm using it for something other than calling people. The thing everyone uses ChatGPT for is writing and copywriting and creating content. And it's actually quite good for that. And so that's the original use, but strangely my use of AI, one of the least used functions is generating content and writing, using it for all the other stuff.

Right on.

Yeah. I think I only gave you three. You asked for five.

But yeah, well, I, there's a good question here in that. Let me see if you agree with this statement. My gut is saying that the, the big three, as you call them, which I, I agree they are probably the big three, at least for the next short while. We'll probably depend month to month, you'll see one shift to begin a little bit ahead of functionality. They're all going to be neck and neck trying to parody features and echo getting ahead. So do you agree with that? And then two, do you think, how do you think each of these will specialize in the future? Or do you have a guess or prediction on that?

Yeah, yeah, that's a great one. I wish I could get Google product advice on this topic, but so yes, I totally agree. If you had asked me three weeks ago, I probably would have said Google Gemini is my favorite and now Claude has replaced it pretty easily. I think right now people are left to their own devices to figure out what their. That each tool is best at. Whereas for instance, ChatGPT is great at generating images, like very bright and vivid images. Claude can't generate images at all. Google Gemini is trying, but they're dull and not that good yet. But eventually it'll be really good. I would love it if each one of the companies would give their best use cases and talk about what makes them different rather than what makes them better. There's a whole concept called category design, where, which is you create a category and it's. It's the best tool. A really solid example of category design is meta came out with virtual reality headsets five years ago. Right. And they called them virtual reality headsets that you could tie it to your computer and you can do all these different things. And then Apple comes out with the Vision Pro and they call it spatial computing. What is the Vision Pro? It's a virtual reality headset, like the Meta Quest. But no, it's a spatial computing device which suddenly puts it in a category that distinguishes itself from the competition. I would love it if the. Right now I and I just told a couple of coaches like I'm doing ABC testing on the big three to figure out which tool to use for what. I wish they would just tell us like this device is for these five things. This tool is for this five things. And each one to create their own category. I think that's what will make each one successful because if they're all out trying, which is what they're doing right now, they're just trying to outdo themselves, then it's okay, now I'm confused. Which of the $20 subscriptions should I keep and which of the $20 subscriptions should I cancel versus me right now where I'm paying $20 to all three of them?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, the advice I've been giving people is pick the one that you're most comfortable with and then wait and see how things develop. Because chatgpta, if it gets access to the Internet in a way that's comparable to Gemini, that'll be super interesting in my opinion on the category thing, Just a funny aside, there was a time when I was the number one folk punk rock band. Ozark rock band, because I was the only. Me and my buddy were the only people doing that. And that was. We would tell people that at bars and stuff because it was fun, because we had defined the category so narrowly that we were the only ones.

But I love that. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you actually create and now people know what to call you and what to come you for.

Yeah. So, yeah, it was like folk punk rock band.

Um, punk rock punk band. I'm gonna have to go some of the stuff. So that sounds fun and it's okay.

Anyways, okay, yeah. Back to the big three. I just. For my things that I've used Gemini for, like, market research, if you're trying to explore a market. And like you said, it's really good for comparing things online. So give me all the courses that talk about X, give me the price points and the amount of the average rating. And it's amazing trying to do that in ChatGPT. It's. Yeah, this is old data and it would get. It would provide stuff that was no longer available, like the URLs were dead and stuff. So it's. Do you trust it or not?

Yeah. Pretty cool.

So outside the big three, what are two other tools that you found very helpful or useful in coaching?

So the two others that I use a lot are SaneBox, because I got overwhelmed by email. And SaneBox is an AI way of filtering out and organizing your emails and putting the things that you don't need to read into a separate folder so that you can focus on the few emails that you do need to read. So that's one that I would recommend. I'm debating between two others, so maybe I'll just give you both of the two others. The other one that I use a lot is Otter AI, which is really just very single purpose. It's a transcription service. It's starting to incorporate AI summaries and AI analysis. But every tool Canva like Evernote Notion, there's a million others that, like every company, in order to remain relevant, will be adding AI tools into its feature set. Just I don't know what year it was, but in the 1930s, cars started adding air conditioning to distinguish themselves. If you wanted the really good car, you had the car with air conditioning. Now, if you don't, if, if you buy a car and it doesn't come with air conditioning, what is this? And I'm pretty sure that AI is going to be the same way. If it does not have, if any software product in particular doesn't have an AI element built into it, people are going to be like, what the heck? So otter, I use enough because. And the way I use that is if I'm not on a zoom call or a call where my note taker can cut in, I'll use OTTER to record the call so that again, I have the transcript for analysis. I also use it in live settings where, like, I'm running an event for somebody or running an event period, and I need to have a clear transcription of the what happened at the event. I'll use it for that and then take it for quite a few other things. So those are the five. The other one that I'm really enjoying right now, and even this under threat by various other competitors is a tool called Searchie, which, which takes the video. So it's based around video content. And for us in Group Coach Magic, we have a full course, 60 or 70 hours worth of training material on how to move from a one to one coaching model to a group coaching model. And it's very complete and hardly any watch, you know. So, like it's a $5,000 program that, like, nobody's going to watch 50 or 60 hours of training programs. They just want their questions answered. So what we did is we took the 50 or 60 hours and we took 300 hours of our support sessions and our Q and A sessions and all the sessions. So we now have 360 hours of video content in third sheet. And what it does is it creates a large language model just with our content sandboxed in. And like, it doesn't go out or content doesn't get fed into the general knowledge base and people can get answers as though they were asking us questions. And the cool thing about it is it links right to the spot in our training where you could watch the training video. So people will do that. They're like, hey, how do I make people feel safe in a group coaching session? And it'll Give the answer in text. But it'll also say this particular module has a full lesson on this. This particular support session, we talked a little bit more about it. So it'll actually give three or four videos as references to it which that has enabled us to. Now instead of having a 15000 program that we know people will buy and actually not watch, which is not useful, it gives us the ability to create a subscription model for them so that they can get all the answers to the content and then they can consume the information on demand at the time that they need the training. So it's just in time learning. It's like the perfect application of the Costco rule. I need to run a meeting tomorrow. I need to make people feel safe. I'm not sure how to do it. Thank you for the answer. I'm going to watch 45 minutes of training that it has now pulled up for me and I'll be ready for the session tomorrow. Thank you. Those are so I guess I ended up giving you a bonus one six.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

I've been. We were talking about this outside of today about like an AI clone. Delphi AI.

That's where I was saying even Sergi might be. It's its own business model might be threatened. Yeah. I will say one thing about that actually Delphi and that I'll let you continue. I apologize for interrupting.

Oh.

The one rule that I have about AI tools now is if you're. If you can don't buy a year long subscription because the tools are changing so fast. You probably want to go month to month even if it's more expensive.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I've made that mistake.

Yeah.

There's a podcasting description service that was very specific where you feed in a transcription and I paid for a year and then Descript, which is a tool that I use. Yeah. Functionality a lot. Oh, this is part of the tool. Now going back to the rule of if it combines into a tool it's better.

Yeah, yeah.

And now I'm like ah, okay, gotta wait now.

Yeah, yeah. I'm unfortunately losing like you either buy the new thing or else. And I'm using a tool that's not as good because I want to get my money's worth.

I think this is actually a good segue. So we've talked about some tools that you found helpful. Could you share an example where AI tools have significantly improved a coaching session or how you reported back and served a client afterwards?

Yeah, I think more I tend that's a good Question. I haven't used a lot in session unless I'm doing design work with people. So, like, in session AI tools, I will actually pull it up and give me suggestions. And I think there's a way, if you get good at using the tools, where you could actually use the. You could ask questions while you're in session to help give you new ideas and new nuances. When I do it, I tend to tell people, oh, let's go out and ask this particular tool right now. That works really well because people are like, wait, you can do that? Like, I had no idea. So it's particularly helpful in generating ideas. So very often I'm helping coaches design their programs, design their sessions. And so at the same time, I'm also teaching them the AI tools. And so that's how I'm using it in session. The thing that very few people. I haven't heard anyone else doing this, but I can tell you I've done it now for six months and it's worked fabulously well. Is taking the transcript of coaching calls and actually saying, please analyze this call for unmet needs or unspoken needs indicated by the client. Please evaluate my coaching skills, my consultative skills, my ability to create rapport, or and if it's a strategy session, please rate my enrollment skills on this call. And what I used to have to do is listen back to all of my calls with a critical ear, and I still wouldn't catch all the details. What I'm finding is that AI makes a really solid coach for evaluating where I missed opportunities, where I could have clarified, where I went off on a tangent where there was a really important thread that the client said that I didn't follow and like, shockingly accurate in identifying those things.

That's so cool. And it. One of those use cases I hadn't thought of until you had mentioned it. I think we were talking about this last week and I was like, that is such a powerful thing. Like this, this. And we. We teach like part of our coaching certification is after a session, you do feedback and it can be hard to remember everything or you're trying to be focused and in the moment for a client. And so you just don't pick up on something or miss it because you're trying to hold the space. But I love that feedback loop of read me on my coaching skills or read me on how I love the missed opportunities thing. I've stolen that already because it's just.

So good and it works. You actually try to wait. That works because, like, you read it and obviously if you do it right after the session, you remember it. Wow, I did miss that. Here's a good thing. If you have a long term relationship, like generally speaking, we're not on one off calls with clients. We have an arc of things list. You just put that in the notes for the thing to talk about the next call.

Yeah, it's masterful. So I guess this is another maybe, good question then. What do you think the biggest opportunities for coaches are with these tools and how this is more of the future thinking, how do you think things will change and then it's going to be insane next three to five years if you can.

So we now have access to all knowledge. Right. So like it used to be that we were stuck with a framework, that we learned a particular framework and we learned it really well. So the biggest opportunity I see for coaches is. So as an example, we'll give you a specific example. Cause I was on a call earlier today helping a coach who is designing sessions for very high functioning, like executive leaders, business owners, entrepreneurs who are burning out. And so she has a whole program on creating boundaries and energy management and all the things. Right. But I'm like, what else is being missed? And so I went to AI tools, in this case a combination of Claude and Gemini. And I said, for this avatar, high functioning individuals dealing with burnout, what are the key topics and areas that a coach might want to explore? And so then it gives you a list of 10 and inevitably one or two of the 10 things are something the coach hasn't thought of yet. And now you can start incorporating those elements into it. And if it talks about, let's say boundary setting and, and bring more of the right people into your circle and pull away from more of the wrong people who are like draining your energy. And then you could follow that thread and say, please give me a framework for how do I gracefully pull away from somebody who is draining me of energy. And then you can even have like specific conversations of, okay, act as like a networking coach and pretend that I'm actually talking to the person at a networking event. Can you give me the words to say to excuse myself from this conversation, from this energy vampire? And so now suddenly the coach, as you're thinking this through, can really create a beautifully detailed, nuanced and very practical curriculum for their coaching programs that wouldn't have been as, as easy to do.

Yeah, I keep thinking like having a whisper in your ear as you're coaching, like it's analyzing the conversation in real time and it's, hey, talk about their mom more. I think there's something there. Hey, they're really avoiding any questions about money, like things that we're like trained to do anyways. Um, those are like. I mean, I'm sure it would be more insightful than something that maybe that's obvious, but that's super. Then it get gets back to like, how does that impact the skill of a coach? Because to bring it full circle back to the beginning of the call, if you're not using these tools, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage out in the marketplace. But how to. That changes the craft, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, it does. So speaking like I'll be nerding out, but Iron man without Jarvis. So if you pitted two iron men together, right, and they have all the texts and the tools and they can both fly in something, but Jarvis is in Iron Man's ear telling him the really important data about what to do and how to navigate through the difficult situations. And then another Iron man who does not have Jarvis navigating in his ear like the Jarvis Ironman is going to win. Like he's at a competitive advantage. And so I agree that I think some version of that is, is likely. I have a tool now we're going into number seven, but there's a tool called Read AI which does give you like literally a real time dashboard of engagement. Leaning in interruptions, filler words, word word paste. So you could actually see sort of like the equivalent. And I think this is a very primitive version of what you're talking about. It's almost like an instrument panel on a car or an instrument panel on an airplane that shows you how fast you're going and what direction you're going and that kind of thing, that's somewhat helpful. But if you could actually have faster than this now, and I wouldn't be surprised if, like, I can't predict so far. Every prediction I've had about AI has always turned out to be wrong on the, oh, it'll take three years for this and then it comes out the following month. So it's usually been wrong to the faster rather than the longer side. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were like an AI coaching assistant that. That is somewhat practical before the end of this year. That could happen. I don't know one right now, or I'd totally be trying it out.

That's. That's one of those things where it's like, how quick can I try to figure something out to try to beat the market there. Okay, on that with A little bit of what might be in the future's fun. Guessing and nerding out about Ironman and whatnot. What do you think are some risks or considerations people should be thinking of as they're using these tools or as the world gets more steeped in AI?

The one thing I think everybody who creates content is going to have to grapple with is do I use these tools and risk the information getting out into the hive mind? The I'm sorry for using all sci fi analogies. The board, right. You get absorbed. So as soon as you ask, for instance, let's say you have this beautiful framework for a particular coaching program and you say, please analyze this and this presentation and look for opportunities to improve it. Now suddenly that information is in the hive mind. So I think everybody's going to have to come to their own conclusion about whether IP has, whether it's even possible in today's world to have proprietary knowledge that you're selling. You're only selling it based on the knowledge or is it more important? And this is where I'm coming to, of the knowledge is available. You can find how to do just about anything you want on YouTube or an Internet search or doing a Gemini search. And if that is the case, if all knowledge is available and easily at people's fingertips, is my job as a coach now to help people with implementation, with context, with empathetic listening, all the things we were talking about earlier. So that's the big downside I see is that a lot of people haven't thought through. You just need to assume that if you put any of your proprietary content into any one of these tools for analysis or improvement, it's no longer proprietary.

Yeah, part of the zeitgeist. Yeah, I guess this, like, is another interesting area about personal data. So have you thought or had any pushback from any clients about taking a conversation you had in a coaching context, uploading it into the hive mind, as you said? And now I'm thinking like, worst case scenario, you're with a client and they're like, yeah, I murdered that person. And then they put that transcript into ChatGPT and then ChatGPT knows that John Doe murdered that person. That's part of the model. Have you had any pushback or any thoughts on that type of information getting into the hive mind? And it's just out there now.

I haven't had a lot of pushback, but I think it's something to be super mindful of. And one of the things I've done in some sessions and Also, some of the coaches that I work with have done this is we specifically create space for the unrecorded portion and then we go into the recorded portion. So this is really useful in group coaching sessions where. Because the things that they. They don't want to share with the hive mind are also the same things they don't necessarily want on a recorded session. So like I have had some pushback on whatever. If you're talking about a deep trauma. My. My dad abused my mom when I was a kid and I'm still recovering from that. Like that kind of thing. You create a safe space in your coaching sessions so that people know it's unrecorded. It's not going into AI training, it's not being. So I think it's a. Both and because again, the tools themselves are too useful to not like they're getting a better product and a better coaching and a better service because I will take the summaries and send it to them so they appreciate the AI summaries of things. And if there are things that they don't want to discuss, I create space. And particularly in environments where people are talking about sensitive topics, where you create a space for the unrecorded. Un. Un. Unaid version of things.

Yeah, no, that, that makes sense. And I like how the things that might be sensitive might not get recorded anyways. So that's that kind of thing. I guess one more thing on potential risks, something that I. And we hinted at this earlier in the conversation too, but the quality of your coach or the quality of a professional or I still think experts are needed to do the discernment thing of. Hey, when I asked you to create, I have a programming background. Like I'm trying to access the database this way and you see it and you're like, that's never gonna work. It's not safe. You're not talking about doing it efficiently. Having that prior knowledge to evaluate what you get back from the system or tool still matters now and again. Like it's gonna. There's going to be a huge divide, I think, on amateurs trying to do something and experts and how do you then as a newbie, because a bunch of new young kids are gonna be entering the workforce. Like, how do you develop into that expertise with these tools? Will it be quicker? Will it prevent you from learning essential things that you would get from experience and banging your hat on. Why doesn't it work this way? That human exploration? Trial by mistake or failure? You know, I wonder if we're going to lose some of that and how impactful that'll be. I'm not sure if you've thought about that.

Yeah, I think like kind of the analogy that comes to mind is if you're ever gone to a particular place that you've never been to before, you plug your destination into the GPS and it'll get you there. Okay. Then if you've ever lived somewhere for 20 years of your life and you plug the destination into gps, you're like, why is it taking me this way? That's dumb. There's a faster way to go. So having that discernment of knowing, like having like, there's no substitute for experience. Now experience can be developed quickly, but if you use the AI tools, you'll still get there. You might just get there less efficiently. So you're probably going to have to make the trade offs of is it worth me becoming super familiar and super dedicated with the this particular process? And if it's something that is core to your identity of who you are, then the answer should be yes. So for like me, my core identity is becoming an excellent coach. So geeking out on these tools, the figuring out the nuances, understanding the emotions, understanding the pauses, understanding the empathetic, listening, all of those things are worth it to me to develop the experience of and the discernment of now. So that's an example of yes, take the time to learn it. And then when I'm doing comparisons between three different kinds of software, do I need to spend 10 hours on it or should I just take and trust what the AI tools are? Yeah, I think I'm just going to take the AI tools. It's going to get me directionally in the right area and I'm okay not spending 15 hours to make a decision on a $50 purchase. That's stupid. So why am I bothered? So I think we're going to have to keep making those value decisions. And the cutoff in my mind is this, is this core to my future identity, my future aspiration line? If it is, get good at it. And if it's incidental, then do the fast way. Use the AI tools.

I love that this is core to my identity. Yeah, it's not a question people ask before AI a lot, but still super powerful. All right, with that, Rob, what is the best way for people to follow up with you if they would like to learn more about the coaching or group coaching?

AI Coaching collective.

Yeah, Coaching collective.

We call it aic.

Yeah, aic. Yeah. If they wanted to follow up there or anything anywhere else?

Yeah, probably the best thing, if you want to see all the products that we, we have or the programs we have, we have the AI Coach Collective. We have the Super Membership which is the searchy based membership model. You don't have to pay $5,000. It's a much more affordable option. And that tells you, that gets you the AI Collective and it tells you how to do group coaching and gives you the searchable chatbot and then support for doing it. So that's the second program. And then I'm doing a lot of custom work for coaches now. So those are probably the three major offers and the best place to get information on that is to go to group coach magic.com store and you'll see a description of all the things that we have to offer in, in, in that. And if you just want to get in touch with me, send me an email. Yeah, robcoachmagic.com and I would be glad to talk to you. You don't. I'll say most of our information really helps coaches more than anything else. If you are a consultant or you are a influencer, I can still do custom work for you. So that would be the only exception. But generally speaking, what we do, I've been a coach, as we talked about before, since 2014. I've been at it a long time. And so now I have coaching skills, facilitation skills and AI skills. So that particular combination makes it easy for me to be extremely helpful to coaches in a way that I can't to other groups of people.

Yeah, I can vouch for that personally with that. We'll have that in the show notes, everyone. So if you didn't catch that, don't worry. As always, we got the links in the show notes. Before we let you go, what did you love about our conversation? What struck you about what we were talking about today?

I love the depth of the questions. Like you made me think and say things that I haven't thought of or said before. So like always a good conversation if, if you're taking places that you haven't been before. And yeah, I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of the questions you asked.

I absolutely love getting into the nitty gritty of all this stuff. I feel like we could probably turn this very easily into a three hour podcast, but I'm not going to do that to you or the audience right now. We all got stuff to do. So with that, Robert, thank you so much for being on the Meaningful Revolution podcast.

Awesome. Thanks again. Cool.

All right, we'll see you guys next time. So Take care.