Podcast Episode 1
Gaining Client Trust

Brilliant Miller [00:02:24] All right. Recording in progress. It’s almost like something official has happened. We have crossed a threshold. The liminal space of. Are we recording? Are we not recording? We’re now recording. We’ve crossed the transom, my good.

Dean Miles [00:02:36] Friend. I like the prompt. Right. It says recording now process. And I’d like. Got it. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:02:45] Yes. Okay. So today is a bit of an experiment. Life is an experiment. I remember when Tony Robbins pointed out to me that people die every day. Do people die every day doing the things we do every day, walking their dog, eating a meal, sleeping. And it’s really a reminder that life is a gift. But can I go philosophical and sometimes deep? Pretty quick. But today, an experiment and hopefully no one will die. We’ll just have fun, we’ll learn, we’ll share. So today I’m here with my friend Dean Miles, a fellow coach, a fellow member of the AMG 100, the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches Group. Dean, thank you for being a part of this conversation with me today.

Dean Miles [00:03:26] Brilliant. You are welcome and I have been looking forward to this.

Brilliant Miller [00:03:31] Yeah, me too. I know it’s something we’ve been talking about, and I’ve been looking for a way to mix up my podcast a bit, where for the last four years I think it’s been four years now. I’ve interviewed authors, I’ve only interviewed one non author, but he was a filmmaker so it was pretty close. But I’ve thought that I want to take some inspiration from people that I admire who are podcasting that I get value from and see if I can just find a new way to enjoy this and to create content and to share and serve. So Dean, right now I think you’re in Mexico, is that right?

Dean Miles [00:04:07] I am just north of Puerto Vallarta.

Brilliant Miller [00:04:09] Beautiful. But you were here in Salt Lake a week or so ago, and we went to an event hosted by the Nature Conservancy all about climate change. And we had a conversation that night about, hey, what if we just did like five of these? What if we kept it to like a half hour or 45 minutes? We just explored a few things that were on our mind. We direct this at coaches or those who are in the healing or helping arts and just see if we can have some fun, make some friends, do some good in the world. What did you want to do with this or what do you want to get out of it? Or Why are you a part of this?

Dean Miles [00:04:43] Dean Yeah, great question. So the brilliant is coaching can be lonely, you can be isolated. You’re in a constant place of pulling out other people’s greatness, right? And finding their vision and finding their purpose. And it’s not often you can just talk shop with what are you hearing and what are you sensing and what are you feeling and what where are you perplexed? And then what sources are you using and what’s inspiring you and what’s demotivating you. And so to have someone who is finger on the pulse. Paying attention and then willing to just get out there and react in a raw fashion with it. Yeah. Everything about you, brilliant. From just your energy to the visual representation of what you are says. Like you’re the guy who could do this. And so when you pitched it, I knew I’d found my partner.

Brilliant Miller [00:05:39] Well, thank you. And I knew when you and I met a few months back and you explained that you have organized your life so that you now.

Dean Miles [00:05:47] Work.

Brilliant Miller [00:05:47] One week a month. I thought either this guy has got it figured out or he’s full of crap, or I’ve got something to learn about. But I know you went into coaching like in 2007, is that right?

Dean Miles [00:06:00] 27? Yeah, I was I was kind of double dipping. 25. 26. This wasn’t sure if I could make a living doing it. And then 27. Yeah, called Merck after being there over ten years and said, I resign. My parents were upset. My grandparents cried because it’s what are you doing? Right? I mean, you’ve made it one of the big companies, if you’re going to stay there and get the pension, the whole thing. And so you were being laid off and I quit to go into what? Right. My dad’s like, who would give you a nickel? Thanks to hear. To hear your thoughts. Yeah. So it was three years later and I hired him. He became our third coach, went.

Brilliant Miller [00:06:45] Yeah, that’s awesome. And that was the start of Bridgepoint, is that right? That’s your firm?

Dean Miles [00:06:49] Yeah. Bridgepoint coaching a strategy group.

Brilliant Miller [00:06:52] That’s awesome. Who’s your client? Who’s your ideal client and who’s your real client?

Dean Miles [00:06:56] Yeah, well, gosh. Well, my. I didn’t have any ideal clients when I first started. Right. I mean, you’re just trying to. Just get those first 100 hours. Forget the 10000 hours. It’s What do you do and how do you coach people that aren’t in the mood to be coached? Because we’re doing corporate clients, which means they’re hiring us. Over the course of a week, we may have between 25 and 100 people are coaching. Here’s what we found. A third of them are really excited about this. This is exactly what I’ve been hoping for. Another third of it’s kind of lukewarm. I might see how this goes. I’m game, but if it gets weird, I’m out or it’s hard to entrust calls, I’m out of here. And there was another third. I mean, the body language, everything about it was this is the biggest waste of time. And this is just one more reason why I hate this company. And now I get to walk in today. Here I am. Right. Let’s go be amazing together. So there was a lot of learning, right? I couldn’t think of a better option to cut my teeth and was in the oil and gas industry. I deal clients are people that are motivated but haven’t been unlocked yet, right? I mean, they’re successful, but when they’re sitting on potential, they’re sitting on some doubt, they’re sitting on some imposter type of a mindset to be a pick a locksmith and to find a way to unlock that. That’s where really great leaders are made and exceptional results. A friend of mine, Robert Hargrove, wrote a book called Masterful Coaching. That was my Holy Scriptures. Brilliant. I mean, I did everything in that book. Masterful coaching. And a comment that Robert makes in there is when a great coach meets a great leader, sparks fly and history is made.

Brilliant Miller [00:08:58] Of Marshall Goldsmith and Alan Mulally and more than one leader. Isn’t it? Yes.

Dean Miles [00:09:04] Yeah. Some leadership coaches, even to sports and athletes with the coach. Sparks fly and history is made. That’s my ideal client.

Brilliant Miller [00:09:14] That’s awesome. Yeah. There’s so much that I love about coaching and I think is still a thing as popular as it’s become that it’s still a little bit misunderstood. Right. And I am often I marvel at the reality that you are one must have a license to be a therapist or real estate agent or even like an institution. But anybody can just be a coach, you know?

Dean Miles [00:09:39] Yeah. Yeah, well, you can start practicing while you’re in the. How would I say that? As long as you’re in the act of becoming certified, I hear that language that. When you’re going through the process of being selected, I will hear other firms say, All of our coaches are certified or in the process of becoming certified. Can you imagine if that was said about your upcoming surgery? All of our doctors are certified or in the process. And so even the process of just means they have thought about it. I mean, this isn’t like a an intern or someone in residency. Right. They’ve done a minimum. This is someone who hasn’t spent 5 minutes of what it means to be a coach, but they’re in the process of.

Brilliant Miller [00:10:29] They haven’t committed to anything else. That’s. That’s all that means.

Dean Miles [00:10:33] Yeah. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:10:34] With this, too, we we even talked a little bit about what to call this podcast format. And as a working title, I’m just kind of calling it the Mystery Mastery Coaching Minute, maybe the coaching hour with with Dean and Brilliant. And I have a loose structure that I thought might be fun to follow. But even before we go there, if I just say a moment, I maybe should have said this a little earlier about who this is for. So I think a lot about who I like to work with, who I want to work with, who I want to help make a contribution in the world. And I sometimes fall into that trap of everyone. Well, it’s everyone, but I really do have a place in my heart for coaches because I believe that everyone I have this deep belief that everyone on the planet truly can well, virtually everyone can benefit from coaching, whether one lives in a dung hut in Africa or whether one occupies a Fortune 500 executive suite or one is a homemaker or whatever, that we all sometimes get stuck. We all get lost. And I love that coaching isn’t just about telling people what to do. Diagnosing problems, fixing things. There’s a time and a place for that to be sure. But with this, I really want to help coaches and those who aspire to coach or to lead, to live a good life, to be a great coach. And then for those who want to make some money from this or make it a profession or their career to earn recognition and money. And so that’s ambitious to think that we could have a conversation every couple of weeks and we could touch on all of those things in a way that actually makes a difference, including and this is where my curiosity and my interest go so many directions, those who want to write. Because writing, I think is such a big part of this, whether it’s blogging or microblogging and tweeting or whether it’s a book or just in journaling, but actually putting some structure and some discipline to the creative process that is writing. So with all of that, I have a few prompts for some questions that I thought we could explore. But if that’s good with you, maybe, and I know we cover all that before we’re recording, but I guess a little.

Dean Miles [00:12:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so let’s do that. I mean, okay, yes, let’s do that. You know, I’ll. I’ll save my little bullet point for when it makes sense.

Brilliant Miller [00:12:57] Okay. All right. And all right. So let’s start with this. Let’s start with. And someone once described to me human beings as in full force, that we are constantly consuming information and has never been truer than today. Right. But we’re always feeding ourselves something. So, Dean, what have you been reading? What have you been watching? What have you been listening to? Maybe there’s games even that you’ve been playing. What what’s been going on in your life? What have you been consuming?

Dean Miles [00:13:25] Yeah, great question. My wife and I were watching the sunset last night and my wife asked me this question. So, Dean, what did you learn to write? Just had this, you know, vomiting of, like, so many things hit me so hard. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. Here’s what’s been coming into my space. Brilliant. We’ve gone from 200 years in our country of being known for working really hard. We work hard. We work a lot of hours. COVID has shifted that we don’t we want to work less. Yeah, I find our appetite now or we’re just obsessed with inspiration. We want to be inspired, you know. And so just just as we’re never satisfied, we’re at the table, the smorgasbord banquet table of inspiration, and we never get full. We need more inspiration and more inspiration and more inspiration of more inspiration. But I don’t find that we’re doing the hard work then in response to it. We’re just consuming inspiration. That’s what’s been on my mind. So now what do we do with that? Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:14:40] Well, never has it been easier for one to share one’s thoughts. Right. With so many people. So it’s no surprise to me that there’s a lot of inspiration. And of course, I think there’s a lot of the opposite of that as well. But yeah.

Dean Miles [00:14:55] A lot of down and down. The other thing that came to my mind, brilliant, is is what’s happening with artificial intelligence. There’s a couple of things I think one’s called Dolly detailed that e I think I this is it’s an open source it’s really unbelievable. Wanted to learn it. Right. What is artificial intelligence is learning. And what concerns me. Is where it only knows what it has access to. Someone has to be the teacher or something has to be the source of the information. And what I’m finding is that it’s learning some of the worst aspects of us as human beings. Now, within coaching, here’s what I’m finding. I’m finding more of these AI type coaching platforms that you’re talking to a bot. Yeah, that’s coaching it through this. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Brilliant Miller [00:15:55] You know, I. I’d like to find this again. So maybe if somebody listening knows and they would email me, it saved me some effort, or maybe I’ll come across it again. But I remember reading that back in like the fifties or sixties when computers were becoming a thing that they were. There was a university that used it in its psychiatry lab, and they used a computer for talk therapy. And what it would do was it would just take a person. It would start with a question like, how were you? And then it would take a person’s response and turn it into a question, and then it would just feed them back a question based on their response and what. So but that’s not what’s interesting. What’s interesting to me was that that the people who engaged in that, even though they knew that they were engaging with a computer, they still reported having benefits to that kind of therapy. You know, like, oh, how are you? I’m down. Why are you down? I’m down because my dad won’t talk to me. Why won’t your dad talk to you? You know? Like, that’s amazing to me.

Dean Miles [00:16:56] I think it even goes back to that magic people. Right. And how many decisions were made by yes or no or maybe or that that little paper thing where you would do this thing and you would go to open this thing up and we would it would give us insight and direction.

Brilliant Miller [00:17:12] Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Any have you discovered any new technologies aside from and by the way, who’s behind that artificial intelligence? Do you know? Is it a university or a corporation or.

Dean Miles [00:17:23] You know, I think it’s it’s I don’t but I think it’s a yes. I mean, I think it’s. Would it be open source? It’s it’s it’s all types of groups are now feeding into it. Um. Really, really, really fascinating stuff.

Brilliant Miller [00:17:37] That is interesting. Speaking of technology, have you found any other like apps or or tools that have been like kind of fun or helps you be productive.

Dean Miles [00:17:49] Or.

Brilliant Miller [00:17:49] Interesting?

Dean Miles [00:17:50] Yeah, one that I used earlier on in my and growing my coaching firm was mine tools dot org. I think it started working to become in mind tools and were that helped me as an executive coach as business was to learn business language. So to go into these larger buckets of leadership or of strategy or of marketing. There are just known models. So we all know SWOT analysis or the pest analysis, but there are so many others that I just didn’t know the language of business.

Brilliant Miller [00:18:28] And what was that? The pest pest website.

Dean Miles [00:18:31] Yeah. Pest PSG. I would I have no idea. I just I remit I rooms and.

Brilliant Miller [00:18:36] Supply to matrix.

Dean Miles [00:18:38] Exactly. Right. And you squish it. Yeah. You’re just making that last part up. But mine tools, it was a really great resource for me. It used to be completely free. And now there’s I would say probably half of it is is open source and the other part is membership based. But but that’s a good one. I refer a lot of the new coaches to that.

Brilliant Miller [00:19:00] Right on. That’s awesome. You know, something my wife gave me for Christmas that I’ve been using is is the remarkable tablet, the remarkable two. Have you seen those or used one?

Dean Miles [00:19:10] I have not used it, but I’ve seen it.

Brilliant Miller [00:19:12] I think it’s pretty cool. I didn’t think I would want to carry another device or charge another device or.

Dean Miles [00:19:18] Or.

Brilliant Miller [00:19:18] Whatever. But I really love the tactile feel and I use it to plan my next day and I love the act of having it with me. It syncs with the cloud like all that, and it’s quite different from an iPad. Very, very different.

Dean Miles [00:19:34] But I’ve also try to use other things like coachable. Is a scheduling building type of a software base. I found those just to not be user friendly. I mean, full disclosure, I really haven’t found anything within the coaching space where I start off with. Wow. Like, that is great. Exactly what I’ve been looking for. I tend to be disappointed when it comes right down to it.

Brilliant Miller [00:20:03] Yeah. I’m with you there. The one tool that I use a lot is cowardly. Do you use cowardly or anything like. Yeah.

Dean Miles [00:20:11] I use time trade. Go ahead.

Brilliant Miller [00:20:16] What’s time trade?

Dean Miles [00:20:18] It is a cinch with your calendar. I just find it. It’s very it’s. It’s a single use. It mean doesn’t really do anything else fancy, but it creates that link that I could put in my email. They open that link and there is the calendar and it’s just clean and it works every time and is very inexpensive.

Brilliant Miller [00:20:36] That’s awesome. That’s cool. What are you reading right now? Have you in the middle of any books? Have you finished anything recently?

Dean Miles [00:20:43] Yes, I’m I’m currently reading Marcia’s new book, The Third Life.

Brilliant Miller [00:20:47] Oh, yes. I’m waiting for my copy. It’s in the mail.

Dean Miles [00:20:51] Yeah, well, I actually I guess I got the pre copy. So I became friends with Mark Ryder, the coauthor of the book, and he sent me the the third revision pdf form of don’t share with anybody at all. So I was able to just start on that and it’s just so good. Probably the most transparent Marshall has been. Um, I’ve just some of his own learnings, his own reflections, and then how much the last two and a half years of the pandemic really kind of really opened up and shifted what he saw and how he felt.

Brilliant Miller [00:21:32] Yeah. This is Marshall Goldsmith’s new book, The Earned Life. Right. What’s the subtitle? I’m going to look up.

Dean Miles [00:21:38] It’s it’s lose regret. Choose fulfillment.

Brilliant Miller [00:21:42] Read on. Yeah. Every everything I’ve read that Marshall’s written, I have found something very insightful, many things insightful in. And he’s one of these rare authors, I think, who can look at the negative space that everybody’s looking at, whatever the latest trend or fad or whatever. But he’ll look at the things that are more timeless and maybe not so obvious, like, what got you here won’t get you. There wasn’t how to be more successful. It was what to stop doing to be more successful.

Dean Miles [00:22:13] That’s exactly right. I mean, what I find challenging, even in the subtitle of Lose Regret and then Choose Fulfillment. Is that he really believes and sets this up that it’s a choice. Yeah. That it’s not extrinsic, it’s not based on circumstances. It’s all intrinsic and it’s your choice. And this breath. Not the breath. 30 seconds ago. But in this breath, I can choose happiness. I can choose fulfillment. That seems like a lot of Kool-Aid to drink, because sometimes I feel like that’s easier for me. Sometimes I find that really, really challenging. And then even as a coach, to show off physically, to choose my own level of fulfillment so I could be of service, whoever I’m about to coach, because if I’m calling them to this, I should be doing it myself. Whereas you get this really weird chasm and gap of just not this inauthenticity. Yeah. And just being a liar makes it great. And that doesn’t. I don’t want to be that guy, right? I want to be that coach. But how can you do that? How do you do that every single day to choose fulfillment?

Brilliant Miller [00:23:25] Yeah. That’s that’s the question right at the heart of this school for good living. Right.

Dean Miles [00:23:29] Even if you.

Brilliant Miller [00:23:31] Live a good life, how can we do it? So that’s something I’m certainly working to figure out. But I know this podcast is one of the answers for me. Just because it’s such a fun way for me to make new friends, continue learning, continue sharing what I learned, I hope to continue growing, you know, that kind of thing. I did an interview this morning with an author named Britt Frank. She wrote a book called The Science of Stuck. And I loved this book. I took 32 pages of notes. I did my I did a Kindle where I just copy paste. I save all my notes in Google and it’s 32 pages long. We had a great conversation today about just so many different things from relationships and boundaries and stuck and grief and like all this kind of thing. But authenticity is right at the heart of all this. And the truth. What’s true for us? What do we really want? Who are we?

Dean Miles [00:24:24] Right.

Brilliant Miller [00:24:25] So that’s that’s one thing. And then another. I’m excited because next week I’ll interview Stephen Cutler, who’s the expert on flow. He was part of the founding, the Flow Genome Project, and he’s written books with Peter Diamandis. And his latest one, I think is The Art of Superhuman. But this one, it’s a novel. It’s his second novel, I believe, and I’ve begun reading it. And it’s about it’s a future in a dystopian future where there’s a psychedelic drugs that people can take that gives them intense empathy, like with all life, with plants and instantly and I’m only about 30 pages in, but it’s pretty interesting so far.

Dean Miles [00:25:10] Yeah, that’s really fascinating. Well, you got me thinking now with all of these sources, you know, if I think about those that we would like to be listening to this podcast of coaches, how do you find the balance brilliant between all of these sources and then making them your own? If I go back, I remember maybe my second year, my wife, she would come to my office. I was renting a space at the time and she’d walk by and she would hear me and I would just be name dropping or quoting the Marshall says this and Brilliant says that. And Tim Ferriss says this. And she pulled me aside and she’s like, They hired you? Like, Why are you telling them what Tim thinks and what Marshall thinks and what brilliant things were about what Dean thinks? How do you how do you fight that as a coach?

Brilliant Miller [00:26:01] Yeah. You know, I love this question because I have a lot of people say this to me because, as you know, you know me, I love quotations and I have a repository on good low income. I save, I have calendars, blah, blah, blah, I call this. And so I call people often, hopefully accurately. But one of the ways I look at it is that the words there’s there’s the literal content of any communication, and then there’s also the energy or the intention behind it. So when someone says something, I believe, who says it matters not just because it’s an appeal to authority or Oh, they’ve accomplished a lot or whatever. So their words have more weight. But I think the specific like the exact words matter in the same way that they matter in poetry. Like you wouldn’t take a poem and like, what’s the word? Paraphrase it, you would write even down to the punctuation and the line breaks and the spacing. And like all of that, it matters. And so to me, it’s like, I don’t think I can say something any better than someone has said it because they said it and there was both their intention, there was their energy, there was it was them who uttered or wrote those words. I would just tell you, like to me there is a poetry like that’s the best word I can come up with right now for this. But when someone says something and it has this quality to it.

Dean Miles [00:27:27] It’s evocative.

Brilliant Miller [00:27:29] It is. Right. Like I love I said this one today in my conversation with Brett, but it totally resonates. Like when Tony Robbins said, the part of you that’s wounded will always be wounded. It just can’t be in charge anymore.

Dean Miles [00:27:42] Yeah, right.

Brilliant Miller [00:27:43] And I might not have that exactly how he said it, but I’m pretty sure that was exactly how he said it. But if I changed that, if I tried to paraphrase or interpret that or put it in my words, it’s like why Tony said it. It was beautiful. I think. So I’m just going to tell you what Tony said, because I had the privilege of being there or I read that book and here’s here’s how I think it’s applicable in this circumstance.

Dean Miles [00:28:06] I think you bring up a really great point, and I think that’s the discernment of knowing when to choose something. It isn’t distracting. I mean, if if if you said let me tell you about this. If you’ve been wounded, Tony Robbins, and then that then breaks the momentum of the moment. And then you see SEAL my face. I have no idea who Tony Robbins is, but now you’ve got to go into a third layer of here’s what’s coming from and here’s what he meant. Right? That’s obviously not a good place to do that. But I think this term of knowing. When to drop that, something that’s already been crafted, like your idea of poetry, but it’s communicating evocatively. It does. I have a dream. I don’t want to say anything else. You know what I’m talking about? Ask not what your country can do for you are just those things that are just said so clearly. They’re immediately practical. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:29:06] Absolutely. And I remember when I did, I did my first real what I consider my first real coach training with Jack Canfield like ten or 12 years ago. And at the end of this was a nine month program, three weeks in person. And he developed this curriculum, shared it with us. And at the end of it, he said, to use it, feel free to share all this content. And and then what he talked about was there will come a point where your own voice and your own message will start to come through. But he said, you know, with so many comedians even and this is like stealing jokes is not a thing to do. It’s like when people are practicing, they borrow they borrow liberally from other people’s pacing, their tone, even their content, not publicly per se. But then it’s like we all learned. It’s how we learned to speak. And we mimicked our caregivers and those around us and what we heard on TV. And I think this is true in marketing and in messaging and even figuring out what we believe. So I think it’s a pretty it’s a pretty natural process that we can be pretty critical of ourselves about.

Dean Miles [00:30:12] I like that. I like that. I think of the goal that I set early in coaching. My goal is to inspire insight and shift perspective. It has real value. To inspire insight and perspective. And so if that’s poetry, if that’s a quote, if I can refer to a source, I mean, I’ll do whatever is necessary to inspire that insight. I’ll be the fool if necessary, right?

Brilliant Miller [00:30:37] Yeah, that’s right. That’s I think that’s a beautiful perspective. That’s that idea of whatever works, whatever works, whatever is appropriate in the moment and being aware and present. Well, let me let me do this. So I thought that we could explore. We’re about to see already. We’re about a half hour in and told you that framework was ambitious. Let me let’s explore something. Let’s do these two things I thought live a good life. Hopefully what we’ve covered is adequate. Hopefully somebody is taking something from this that will help them to live. I live a good life. Let’s talk for a moment about something that we’ve learned. One of us we don’t both need to share, but we can explore what’s something that might help a listener be a great coach.

Dean Miles [00:31:26] Well, since we’re name dropping, I’m going to share something I heard Marshall say. Marshall Goldsmith that. And I’ve been thinking a lot about it. You need to be competent. We need to be known as competent. I pause there before I get to the third one. There are times where we have met celebrities of which they are known as competent, and once you get to know them your age, you realize they’re not right. We can’t put them on a pedestal or memorize a script, that kind of a thing. So it’s important as a coach to be competent. Second, you need to be known as competent. And third, you need someone to share their credibility with you or with you, right, to share their stage with you. And that’s what really helps to grow a coaching practice. You can go and do it alone, but to have another individual or a group to go with you. So as you’re doing your work of becoming competent, you’re doing your work. Another friend of ours, 100 coaches, Mitchell Levy, talks about you have to be able to get your niche to within seven words. Write one powerful sentence so that brilliant can go tell his network what you’re really good at, what you’re known to be competent because that allows brilliant to then share his credibility with his stage.

Brilliant Miller [00:32:49] Yeah. That’s that’s powerful. That was something that I remember Marshall talks about a lot, like have it be principle on a t shirt. You know, sentences are less like kind of on a billboard thing. And I think his is, I hope successful people achieve lasting change in behavior or something like that.

Dean Miles [00:33:07] I think that’s it. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:33:08] And I thought on that a lot and I think it makes a lot of sense. I find it’s very challenging, though.

Dean Miles [00:33:15] Oh, my gosh. I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I still struggle right under pressure of. So did what are your what’s your one sentence? I think for sure I’m in a constant state of becoming. I think we’re out of land now. And you’ll you’ll see that on my on my LinkedIn. But it’s unlocking leaders. I mean, that’s what I do. I unlock. And not just any leader. I unlock successful leaders. In the process of them finding exceptional results. So it needs work. Well.

Brilliant Miller [00:33:57] You know, we always start somewhere and we always end up somewhere. And as far as I can tell, there is no right answer. So.

Dean Miles [00:34:04] Yeah. Yeah. Well said. What to what are you thinking about these days?

Brilliant Miller [00:34:08] Um, you know, something of be a great coach that hit me today was in this conversation with Britt French where she she had a question, I don’t remember exactly the context, but I thought, bam, that was such a great coaching question. What she said.

Dean Miles [00:34:25] Was. Um.

Brilliant Miller [00:34:33] What is your primary motivation right now? That was the question for someone, whether they’re making a decision, whether they’re feeling stuck. You know, they’re they’re weighing options. So I thought that was interesting. What is your primary motivation right now? Because it’s amazing to me that we can go through days, we can go to our lives and not even necessarily know what’s motivating us. And here’s the real thing. And this is something Tasha Urich with her book Insight and the MGM 100 she talks about is just thinking about ourselves, doesn’t actually yield insight. Like research suggests that introspective doesn’t actually tell us the truth. So if I tell you, this is my motivation. I might believe that, and that might even be my motivation. But it also might not be.

Dean Miles [00:35:20] You know. Sure. Our ability to to convince ourselves. Yeah. Just give me a half a second. I could convince myself of the most positive intent. That is so self-serving.

Brilliant Miller [00:35:34] Yeah, but. But nevertheless, I think that question is really a valuable one. So again, I know there’s no algorithm, there’s no formula to make coaching simple or effective. But but in the in the toolbox or the quiver of questions, what is your primary motivation right now? That can be a great one for a coach to help them be more effective.

Dean Miles [00:35:52] I really like that. If I join you in those sorts of thoughts. Did you do your best today? Hmm. And if not, why not? What is that question?

Brilliant Miller [00:36:06] Yeah, I do, too.

Dean Miles [00:36:08] Right. Because I know, right? I know. I know if I did or if I didn’t. But there really is that it’s. To be a great coach. You have to be able to identify those areas of what you’re going to give that discretionary effort to do your best all day, every day for a long time. You have to identify that principle kind of a thing. What’s that 20% that’s going to give you every person those results. You have to identify. It had to be to maximize. You have to do your best. Every day, all day for a really long time. That’s hard to do and then do it. I like Lindsay Lindsey, his title of his book, the advantage and he def he has this working definition the advantage is to be successful and help. Yeah and like that counterbalanced behind that. And that was a lot of my friend trying to get down to a week, a month. Right. So so our coaches within our firm were two weeks, a month at full time for us. So you’re on a week and then you’re off a week and you’re on a week in your awful week. But in that off, I want you recovering. I want you living. I want you to feel right so that when you come back into the client, when you come back into serving humanity, your sauce or your or your cup, is this overflowing? Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:37:33] Yeah, that’s right. Because you can’t get from an empty tank.

Dean Miles [00:37:37] Yeah. And I don’t want to just barely be able to give it. I want to have access. Right. Sloshing all over the place of joy and happiness and contentment. Yeah. And it’s. And it’s possible. It is possible. I mean, I’ve been doing that for seven years now of the week, a month. And there’s I could be making much, much more money. But I would not be as healthy as I am today. I know that. I’ve been on the other side of that. Yeah.

Brilliant Miller [00:38:05] Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, let’s explore for a few minutes. This an idea? I say this idea of an idea that can help.

Dean Miles [00:38:14] A.

Brilliant Miller [00:38:14] Coach or anyone who has something to share or to sell to earn recognition and money.

Dean Miles [00:38:20] Or.

Brilliant Miller [00:38:20] What have you. What have you seen? What have you done? What have you tried that hasn’t worked? Anything come to mind that kind of lives in that vein? And I’ll just jump in. Sorry. Into that question. The one thing that you just said, by the way, about having someone else kind of see your praises, those weren’t your words. But yes, you huge. Right in the marketing world that’s called social proof. And we see it all the time with books when people blurb it or they endorse it and said, if you ever give us a if you ever give a talk and someone introduces you because you don’t want to come up on stage and say, here’s what I’ve accomplished and here’s all my degrees and here’s the clients I’ve worked with. But if someone can read that in four sentences and then you come on and boom, credibility, hopefully there’s likability, there’s trust and so forth. But. But that’s one idea that I didn’t want to just let slide by, because I think that fits into this earned recognition. And so can you how can you help others do that for you? And how can you do that for others?

Dean Miles [00:39:19] You know, it’s it’s it can be an uncomfortable spot. Brilliant. I actually wrote a blog this morning of where’s that line between establish your establishing yourself as an expert versus bragging or just being obnoxiously. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Yeah. Sometimes it’s hard to know when that when that crosses over. My intent is good. But it might be obnoxious, and that’s not my intent. Yeah, well, does it make you think.

Brilliant Miller [00:39:55] Well, what. What’s funny to me about it is I remember. I want to be careful how I phrase this, but Gary Vaynerchuk. Right. You know. You know, Gary.

Dean Miles [00:40:06] I don’t think I do.

Brilliant Miller [00:40:07] I don’t know how you’ve lived on the Internet for any period of time, seven years. So Gary is he is a social media expert. And he made his money, I believe, in like wine wine.com or wine TV or something. I feel like I should know more. But he’s gone on and he he openly says, I want to own the New York Jets someday. And he’s written a bunch of books and he has all this presence. And he’s he’s very sophisticated, like social media communicator. But one of the things is he I’ve heard him say on some of his posts, like, I want to be famous. And it’s like, well, what’s funny to me is he’s one of these people that might be viewed as obnoxious, being out there in your face, like looking for attention. But the fact that he’s so transparent about it, I’m like, Okay, cool. There’s not a desk.

Dean Miles [00:40:54] That’s part of his brand. Yeah. Now this is part of his brand. He’s just being so in-your-face. You know, I would say there’s no doubt a turning point for me. Just brand association. I’m guessing here, I think it was around eight years ago that Forbes had a pay to play kind of thing, where if you would pay, I think then it was like 1200 dollars annually that you could be part of the Forbes Coaches Council. Hmm. And so every Wednesday, I think it was they would they would say here is a list of a dozen different things that people are talking about. Submit 100 words or less. Your thoughts. And we pick the best ten or the best best 12, and we publish them on all their social media sites. Well, those of us within the Civic Marketing Council and Lawyers Council and our Finance Council, we have a coaches council. I knew I paid for that brand affiliation. But my future clients don’t know that. Right. All of a sudden, they see Forbes, they see me. So Brands Association. And so Harvard’s Institute of Coaching is the same way. Right. So I’m a fellow with the Institute of Coaching, Harvard’s Institute of Coaching. It costs me $2,000 a year. Brand Association.

Brilliant Miller [00:42:18] Yeah, well, there’s something to be said for. I mean, that’s a version of social proof, right? Because there’s. Who else? Like what other thought leaders or leaders or whatever are endorsing you. But then there’s the places you’ve spoken, the universities or the.

Dean Miles [00:42:35] Organizations.

Brilliant Miller [00:42:35] The clients and all of that. And then there’s also the publications. So have you been featured on Huffington Post or on.

Dean Miles [00:42:41] Forbes magazine, right? That’s right.

Brilliant Miller [00:42:45] So there’s something, I think, to be said for being deliberate about, like where we’re trying to go or how we want to be perceived. And it’s for me, it’s a balance because it’s recognizing, you know, some of this, I think for all of us, too, is ego. Some of it is. Look, if you want to reach and serve a large number of people, it helps to be visible. It helps to stand out. It helps to be clear who you serve and what you do for them. And then it helps to have that kind of credibility behind you that that self social proof imparts. So it can be uncomfortable. It can be awkward. It’s not the kind of thing that most of us are, you know, learn wherever we grew up. It’s something that we can do if we choose to.

Dean Miles [00:43:27] Yeah. Brilliant. What it makes me think of where I was probably. I think the last two years I’ve gotten much better at this, accepting it, and you’ll see it on my own social media that I wasn’t there. And now I have. I didn’t feel good about this. About the whole trading day. Right. You’re in the top 100 coaches. You’re in top 50 gurus. Right. Well, I mean, what in the world is all of this rankings and ratings, just like the Oscars at the Grammys, it says, we also congratulate ourselves. And for a time period, I wanted nothing to do with it until I heard this argument. I don’t have to like it, but it’s how the game is being played. So let’s go back to Uber. We used to be at a rate, the driver. Well, the driver now rates us to be rated everywhere. Your doctor is rated, your accountant is rated, your dentist gets rated.

Brilliant Miller [00:44:23] And university professors get rated.

Dean Miles [00:44:25] Yes. So we are very much if you have a higher rating, you have higher influence. So we’re all influencers. That’s just how the game is. So someone’s going to be in that top ten? No, let’s just go back to less of the silliness and more of the being serious here. Less silly, more serious. If you really do have good intent, if you really do want to make a difference in people’s lives, to inspire that insight, to shift that perspective for the betterment of humanity. Is the world better off if you’re not ranked at all or if you’re ranked in the top ten? If you’re better off. I mean, so I’m not saying to be illegal, immoral or unethical, but within those guidelines. Elbows out, right. Get up there. Because if you can help one person, great. But if you can help millions, that’s even better. Yeah. Does that help me switch to do it? An authentic way to participate in the rankings? And unfortunately, it’s working.

Brilliant Miller [00:45:35] It’s going to be a challenge to work more than a week. A month.

Dean Miles [00:45:39] It’s happening at.

Brilliant Miller [00:45:42] Work. Okay. So hopefully some of that was useful or at least interesting for someone who is looking to refine, deliver their message, expand the influence they have in the world, the contribution they make to others.

Dean Miles [00:45:57] Okay.

Brilliant Miller [00:45:58] Cool. So this truly is an experiment. It’s a co-creative process, just like coaching, just like life at its best. I think as we come down the stretch in our inaugural experimental episode here, Dean, we talked about having some kind of call to action for listener or some kind of invitation. What do you feel are now?

Dean Miles [00:46:24] Well, with it being mental health awareness in the month of May, that’s kind of where my mind’s up. I kind of have that cringe every time I see the headline of his or on LinkedIn or social media of another suicide. I think the call to action is my guess is someone’s on your mind right now today. Reach out to somebody. Right. It happens to me. I don’t always do that, but I’ve got someone on my mind. And so my commitment is I’m going to text them as soon as we get done here.

Brilliant Miller [00:46:59] Awesome. That’s great. And then what I would add and what I would ask for people listening, if they’ve listened this far, if you’ve enjoyed this in any way, if you have found any value, I would invite you to share this. To share this, go for a living podcast. Even if you’re really feeling like it’s worth 5 minutes of your life or 3 minutes of your life to rate and review the score for good living podcasts. Wherever you listen to this, I know on YouTube, if you’re watching us there, doesn’t really work there. I don’t think he gave a thumbs up. And you can subscribe. Beyond that, I would also invite you to email us if you have a question or you have a topic that you would like us to explore. I would love if this became somewhat interactive where we could actually look at some real world issues that people were dealing with and devote some of our time and conversation to to breaking that down, hopefully serving people in that way. So I invite you to email me at brilliant good living dot com. Okay. Well, you’re going to text somebody. I will take that on as well. I will text someone that I’m thinking of today. I will let them know that I love them. Thinking of one person in particular. And with that, let’s do this again. Maybe in a couple of weeks, I’ll text you. Well coordinated time.

Dean Miles [00:48:17] Perfect.

Brilliant Miller [00:48:18] Okay. Well, thanks, Steve.

Dean Miles [00:48:21] Yeah. It’s been a pleasure.