You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Good morning and welcome to the pub. I'm Claire Pedrick and my guest today at the table is Robbie Swale, whose friend Alex Swallow sent me an email and said, Robbie is trying to be on a hundred podcasts. Would you like to invite him? So Robbie, welcome. What number podcast are we? good question. I think it's like about 17 or 18, this one.
So we're recording this in the middle of April. So it's like, I'm behind a bit, but not miles. And I didn't really get going until a few weeks into January. And in terms of ones that are kind of scheduled, I've got a few more in and confirmed a few more. But yeah, I love that intro that Alex did for us. So Alex is one of his, kind of the big body of his work over the last few years has been about influence.
for the last, for most of the time that I've known him, I've known him for about, wow, it's getting a long time now. Like. maybe 10 years, maybe 11. And for most of that time, he's been thinking a lot about influence. And I think one of the ways that he influences really well is by connecting people to each other with a lot of enthusiasm. So that I, you know, yeah, so that here we are. We'll have to have him on as well. loads to say. So Robbie, tell us a bit about you and your journey.
Yeah, so it's funny. just, had someone ask me that question. It might have been on one of these other podcasts. We can talk about why I'm doing, why I'm being on a hundred podcasts in a bit, because otherwise it's bit weird, it? But it might have been on one of these podcasts that someone asked me, or it might have been a new piece of work that I was doing. Someone asked me that question. I finally realized after, so I've been coaching for about almost seven years now.
And I realized that about somewhere around just, just gone was when I felt like obliged to say what I did before coaching. So that, that, you know, for me, that was interesting. It's like, okay. So I used to say, I'm coach, I've been coaching professionally for however long. And before that I did this and maybe I'll do that bit. Anyway, but yeah, essentially I work as a coach these days and the way I think about my work is, so I do some work for myself.
I have some associate relationships and the way I think about my work is I'm really interested in three things. I'm interested in leadership and that's big chunk of the one-on-one work that I do and some of the training and facilitation that I do. And what I'm interested in there, one of the challenges that I get from clients seem to come with a lot and I get interested in is what I sometimes think of as leading with honor.
So people feel like they need to, you know, they get to a point and to get their next bit of success, whatever that means for them, they actually have to compromise who they are. And we might think of honor, you cause I'm a fantasy, fantasy novel geek. We might think of that as like doing the right thing, even when it's hard. So the hard thing is how do I try and succeed in this work without just doing these little bits of behavior that I don't really like.
And is it possible, can we, can we, me and the client have a, have an engagement where we think, okay, what if you can get just as much success whilst staying true to who you want to be in this work. So, and of course it includes lots of other things as well, but that's one of the things that I get interested in. I'm also really interested in coaching and the craft of coaching.
So I have a podcast as well called The Coaches Journey, where I speak to coach, which really came out of when I first started my coaching business, I had some conversations with experienced coaches about how they'd got where they were and then spent the next like four years wishing I'd recorded them. so that I could share them with other people. And then about four years after that thought, well, I could record some new ones or some of the same ones again.
And a couple of years on that was there. So that's been running for two and a half years or so, although it happens a lot less frequently than this show. So there's far fewer episodes. And I also run a community for coaches. As I know that you know, there's a lot of... coaches come out of their training and they're thinking, how do I make this successful and what's the right support for me now? And it's lovely that some coaches think that I'm the right support for them at that point.
And we have a lot of fun together in that community, which includes Alex. That's the way we work together. the last thing I'm interested in is creativity. is like my personal, in some ways, personal struggle over the last few years, especially as I was starting my business.
you know, when I say creativity, you know, I'm interested in that in lots of ways, but one of the ways is why do we sometimes, so many of us, really want to do something and on the surface know that we want to do that and then, you know, weeks, months or years go by and we haven't done it.
And that happened to me in a few different ways in my life and certainly as I was starting my coaching business, that was really rearing its head because there's all these ways that you have to kind of put yourself out there in the world. And that was always part of the stress for me about the creativity piece. And that's where, I published my first book at the end of last year, and that's what that's about. The book's called How to Start When You're Stuck.
And it's really the story of how I a writing practice, a short writing practice to kind of break through and then gradually develop confidence in sharing things with the world and some of the things that, you know, the things that I learned as I did that. I've had a really good dip into your how to start when you're stuck, but Robbie and it's, yes, it's, it's really interesting and it has lots of connections for me. cause my blog is going to be on its thousandth edition in June. Thank you.
It's amazing. But I wrote it like you did. I mean, not, not on the train. Yeah. Clapham junction to Waterloo, but, just noticing one idea and writing one idea really quickly and then getting it out there really quickly. I think there's some real good stuff there about not over-processing stuff. know, you know, there are things that we need to do where we do need to over-process, but the thing I like most about your book is how little you got obsessed by it. Say more about that.
So you say, you know, you say that when you wrote the blog on the train, the LinkedIn posts on the train, you'd write it, you'd have one look and then you'd upload it. Yeah, that was basically the practice. Yeah. And then in your final chapter, you fess up, you, in your book, that you had, that you didn't quite only have one look, but you only had like two or three looks. And there's something about when's good enough, good, Good enough. you know, how to start when you're stuck.
Maybe next one of your next books could be, you know, how to know when good is good enough. Yeah. Or maybe I will call call that. And so the so so a few things I could say. First of all, like, yeah, I really like your blogs and it gives, you know, I've read a few of them and it was not a thousand. What's great about it is that there is just this way like it's just like here's an idea. And I hope that that's what what mine is like. And the book is a compilation of those.
So it is a different approach to that challenge of starting when you're stuck than some people would have, because essentially in the book, what I'm saying is, here's how I did it. And then here's a load of ideas about starting that might be the one that really makes difference to you. But certainly one of the lessons I learned from that is like, it is exactly that thing about when it's good, good enough.
And I kind of thought that... good is good enough when I'd done loads and loads of proofreading on something and I thought about it loads and probably I'd like written an academic paper on it. And ideally I had got a PhD in the thing and then I'd written this article, right? And what I learned is, you know, of what we say like 80-20 rule to the extreme that if you just sit down and write something, you know, especially if you practice that a bit, like the first ones weren't that good.
And then I'm on about 200 and something now. they're much more complete and I'm much more skilled at doing it because I've done 200. and something practices, but you can get like a long way towards good enough in one pass, essentially, much more than I ever thought. And one little exchange I had on one of my articles recently was with someone who was, or maybe it was with somebody, I think it was with somebody who'd read the book and had kind of tried the practice of sitting down.
So for people who listening, it started off as me, because I was procrastinating, because I was... feeling quite anxious about the idea of sharing something I'd made on the internet, or even just anything actually. My memory is at the time I was scared, you I found it quite anxious, even just like tweeting or putting a joke on Facebook. That all felt kind of quite horrible.
And the game that me and my coach set up was a little practice where I would write on the train, as you said Claire, from Clapham Junction to Waterloo. And I'd write when the train was moving, stop when it stops. That's enough, proofread it once, post it on LinkedIn, because no one reads LinkedIn. and see what happens. And then that evolved gradually. I discovered that, yeah, discovered that a few people did and some of them quite liked it.
And it felt like a really, it wasn't necessarily a nice or easy thing for me to do still at that point, but it felt like a good thing to do. It felt like kind of, again, that kind of the right thing to do, even though it was hard. So I kept it going then as a weekly practice. And in the end, I... in the end, I stopped getting the train as much and I checked how long the train was and it was about 12 minutes. so I set a timer now for 12 minutes, right?
Well, the time is going to stop when it stops. That's my way of making sure that I don't get lost in making it good enough that I just go, look, here's an idea. Here's what I can think about it in 12 minutes. And there is and someone had taken that idea and having read the book, I think, and written something in the discussion on that on that post. It was nice because there was this It was like, yeah, you can actually write a surprising amount in 12 minutes. And I've done it a couple of times.
I've had this idea that I would at some point in the future write a longer piece about something. had this insight about branding, which we need to talk about, I we could do. I thought that it would take, again, that it would take me sitting down for an afternoon to do it. And then one day I just thought, maybe I'll just, that piece has been kind of, that idea has been sitting around in the back of my mind too long now. It's annoying that I haven't written that piece.
Maybe I can just see if I can do it in 12 minutes. And it turns out. could and I actually have no idea what I'd if I'd spent three hours on that I have no idea what more I'd have written than I essentially did in the 12 minutes.
I have a theory Robbie I'm gonna run past you I think that every big book has got one thing in it yeah and and yeah I just think every big book's got one thing in it and I often say to people and I share ideas with people on courses and stuff, you you probably don't want to read this book. You there are some books that are worth really reading and digging into, but, often there are books where the one idea is amazing. And then there's an awful lot of book around it.
Yeah, it's really true, isn't it? And you're right, there are some and a couple of like popping into my mind now where I'm like, but in the way they stand out because they've got more than one idea in it, or they stand out or sometimes it's worth reading it.
In my experience for me, if like the idea is so basically if like, if your whole viewpoint is gonna be changed on something, you probably need a book's length of time hearing that idea again and again to actually change, I need it that long anyway, to actually change my mind on something. And so sometimes that's really useful. But yeah, just what's interesting, one of the things that's interesting about that is the reason I'm doing this 100 podcasts challenge, there's a few reasons for it.
But one of them is I realized like when I was thinking about my book and I was thinking about what is success for the book. And I did some work with Robert Holden last year and part of his work is around success and what he, know, the two questions are what is success? And then once you've answered that, yeah, but what is real success, you know, with the italics on real.
And when I did that for the book, like success is of course, selling some books and maybe having some more, some new people who I wouldn't otherwise come across or connect with or work with. And when I got to real success, it was pretty clear, you know, that I just know what it's like and remember what it's like to be in kind of. creative hell where you've got this idea and you know you want to do it and you can't and you don't feel able to.
And I realized that real success for me is someone, you know, saying to me, because that's the only way I'll know it's happened. I've been wanting to do this thing for years and I've been procrastinating or I've been afraid and I finally, I came across your work and I finally started. And basically I realized exactly what you've said that they could get that by reading the book, but to be honest, we can shortcut that and we've done it in the last, what, like 15 minutes.
we've essentially told the story, we've talked about this thing, which is that it doesn't have to be as good as you think it is to have the impact you want it to have. And there's enough there now that if someone wants to sit down and do a 12 minute writing practice, they can do it now based on the last 10 minutes or whatever it is. I think that so people can go off and buy my book if they listen to this, of course, and there's lots more ideas in it than that.
But that's one of the reasons that I decided to try and tell the story a lot. And the reason I set a challenge, which I think is interesting for coaches, because it's something that's been really helpful to me in my coaching business, is for me, it doesn't work for everyone. But just for some people, when I set myself a kind of semi outrageous challenge, I need to, you know, I don't know 100 people that have podcasts, that's two a week.
I have, I only work four days because I do a day with my daughter, like, I have quite a busy, I'm quite busy. It's quite hard, you know, but if I set myself that challenge, what's a lot of things that are interesting happen, I, stop procrastinating as much. I get out my own way. I say yes to stuff which I might otherwise be nervous about saying yes to.
I'm doing a talk for a bunch of people at Deutsche Bank in a few weeks and I just had to say yes to it as soon as my friend connected me to them because I knew that counts. And it gets me creative and it gets me to ask for help. that's, know, and this is again an example of that. Like I put it out to some of my communities in different ways. Can you help me with this? And someone helped and I'm not very good at asking for help. that kind of stuff all really helps.
And in my coaching business, I've done this kind of thing with inviting people into coaching conversations. So how do I just get comfortable? So it's a great way to practice that. I think we set a challenge for me to do that 30 times in a month once when I was just starting out. And it's amazing, the seeds that get planted when you do something like that. Yeah, so I just wanted to kind of put that in as well, because it comes from, because we're here, to a certain extent, talking about coaching.
that was super useful for me. did that. And then I did a proposals challenge as well. So one where I have to get to get to practice the money conversation, essentially a slightly different challenge for that. Because both those things saying, I might be able to help you with this. Would you like to just do some coaching as a gift from me? That used to be an excruciating thing for me to do. Just like saying it costs X pounds to work with me for Y months used to be just like writing an article.
on the train and then posting it online used to be an excruciating thing. And what's interesting about turning all that into a book is you start, I started, you may have had this, I'm sure this has helped with your coaching when, you know, given the book that, you know, the coaching book that you've written, it's like, once you've written the book and you put the ideas into a place like that, I start seeing everything through the frame of the 12 minute practice.
And it's like seeing all the impacts of that. And one of them is just how important practice is really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the say yes. Yeah. It's such a difference. Like it's just, I don't know. I've, I've been through phases in, I think lots of people, see this if you work with people who people in organizations, I see it, you know, you get to a certain level of success in an organization. And I think you do in a kind of coaching business by saying yes to everything.
And then having a can do attitude. That's really useful that at some point that's a really, I feel like most people have to go through a phase of saying yes, really tactically instead and saying no a lot more. And then what's interesting is you can get trapped in that too much as well.
you know, certainly this has been good for what I've noticed about the saying yes piece is there's a load of things that because I've been being very careful about my time in the last few years to, for example, to make sure that I get this book out and the ones that in the rest of the series, because very useful to write a book about procrastination, because then when you're procrastinating on it, you see it perhaps a little bit earlier than if you're writing the book on something else.
But, Yeah, it like, you know, Claire, I've lost my thread there. I'm not even sure what I was going to say. That's so funny. When I started out in coaching in the early two, well, the late nineties, I met a coach called Mark Forster and he was no good at time management. And he wrote a book called how to get everything done and still have time to play, which was quite a best seller for quite a long time.
And I, and, the The reason people bought it and the reason people liked it, I found it really useful, was that he wasn't very good at it. And most books like that are written by people who are ninjas. So I love the fact that you're a procrastinator and that you've written a book about procrastination because I don't want to read a book if I'm a, I am a procrastinator. I don't want to read a book by a ninja because they don't understand me.
Yeah. And it's like, I just, It does feel like, don't remember who said this, if you know this, I'd love to know. I've definitely read it somewhere, know, that mostly people write the book they need to read on some level. And I definitely, you know, it's been so obvious in the publishing process of this first book that that's been true for me. And it's so useful. The podcast challenge is another good example. I was getting totally overwhelmed by it, right?
The first few weeks I was like, why have I said this? What an idiot. Like, how am I even going to get close? And then I remembered, I know how I do this. I know how to deal with my overwhelm of the scale of things. set aside a small amount of time every week. And if I do that on this, that's enough. So I have 30 minutes every Tuesday morning where I, you know, for example, reply to the email, the intro email that we had, but also occasionally reach out to people and do all that stuff.
And that makes a lot of difference. And one of the things that I love, I love the timer. It's become again, once you start seeing the impact of the 12 minute timer on my writing, I've started using it more and more elsewhere, but it. You know, I'm just, when it comes to time management and procrastination and not being a ninja, I'm just, I just think humility about what we need to do in order to get things done is like the number one quality.
So it's like people, I think, people think, I have thought many times, I shouldn't need to like do this in order to get things done. But like I do, and I need to, like, it's hard, I've been harder during COVID when my wife's working at home as well. I used to turn off the router if I needed to do some focused work because That's the only way that I can know that I won't end up accidentally procrastinating on something. And timers are really good.
And yeah, just accepting that there are some silly things sometimes. the world, you know, the world, the attention economy, there was that documentary on Netflix, if you saw it, called The Social Dilemma. it's about, you know, it's like how some of the smartest people in the world are building the smartest AI systems ever built, all competing with each other to be the best at distracting us and capturing our attention.
And so it's really useful to turn off the router sometimes or accept that, know, I, one of my inspired by one of my clients who created a practice where she was going to leave her phone at home and go and do, that was, that was what she needed to do, go and do some focused work. You know, I did that a few weeks ago and I was working on book two in my series and got to tell you, it was a wonderful thing, wonderful few hours to just.
So just every now and again, have a slightly anxious feeling of checking my pocket for my phone and then realize with joy that I deliberately left it at home. That's amazing. You're talking a lot about things like humility and honor. Where does that come from for you, Robbie? So. I guess, you know, there's maybe two ways to kind of answer that.
Like one of the things I think that having a writing practice, you know, or a practice where I get interviewed by people on podcasts, you know, either of those things are, and being coached a lot, all of these things, helped me see the things that seem to matter to me. And so humility came out for me.
was like, it was just an observation in a conversation I had about, this is, this is the quality that is actually enabling me to do things which, which if I didn't have it, if I, you I wouldn't be able to do these things. So, so that one feels like it came from there. I think it is, it took me about, let's say, so when I was, an honor that does come, I think, from a kind of, like I, it does come a lot from all the stories that I've always loved.
So when I was a kid, there's pictures of me wearing like green tights, because I wanted to be Robin Hood and lots of Spider-Man comics. And also, and then from my teens on with lots of fantasy novels, particularly an author called David Gemmell, where you could really say he was a British author. died about 15 years ago. But you could really say his books that kind of page turner fantasy novels and that kind of just like, how do you cope with the human experience?
And of course now it makes sense that I like them, given what I do for work now. And honor is really in the middle of all that. And then I guess the last piece that comes up when you ask that question is also the reason that kind of maybe that I'm talking about them is I feel like in the last couple of years, I finally got the values thing.
And it's bit embarrassing to say that, but basically, you know, since I started coaching, and first did the training, I did some values exercises then, and everyone's always talking about values and values led leadership and I kind of knew, but it took me about four, five, six, maybe, yeah, four, five, maybe six years to kind of go, this is why this matters.
And the insight for me was really that if I know what my values are, then I can have what Fred Kaufman His is a book actually, The Meaning Revolution, which I think is worth reading because there is more than one idea in there. But in that book, he talks about one of the things he's maybe there isn't maybe there's just this one idea actually, I'd have to check it. One of the key idea or the one that I'm going to talk about is he talks about success beyond success.
And one of the ideas there is look, we can't no matter how much we get into the player mindset, and we recognize our responsibility in a situation and we take action to sort that out. We can't control the outcomes in our lives all the time. but we can always control success. So that would be success. We can always control success beyond success, which is, we at peace with ourselves at the end of the day? Did we act in line with our values?
So since I kind of really finally felt that values thing about seven years after someone first kind of tried to tell me about it, that was six years, those values, I've just noticed how useful they are for me. And I haven't really thought that humility is one of them, but it- It absolutely is. in the way that I, guess it goes with honesty, but it's like never, I'm, I'm, I'm always trying to never, you know, be having some kind of false front and that's humility.
It's like, and you know, one of the things that you mentioned in an email we had is, which is really where my podcast came from in some ways. So I wrote an article a years ago about how I became a full-time coach and what I had done in that. Yes. And that went kind of viral for me, which is it got read like eight or 9,000 times or something over the first year or so.
And I think that that was really what that, you know, that became in some ways because it created so much satisfaction and connection and abundance for me. was such a wonderful, if I look back at the things that I've done that have created the most of all that, this was like an afternoon, wasn't 12 minutes, but it was like someone canceled on me. was like, right, I'll finally write that thing I've been thinking about. Most of it came out.
In some ways I've used that as a, what would you say, like a blueprint for, because there was something about it and about me doing it that people liked. And I think it was that, I think it was the sense of humility. And a bit like you're saying about the procrastination, writing the book on procrastination, right? It's like, there's something a lot, there's something that people like about that kind of messy truth, I think. There's something about being human, isn't there?
And it drives me bonkers where, There's a fantasy, I think, in the coaching world that the coach is somebody sorted, working with somebody who's a bit less sorted. Yeah. And I think being honest about humanity is really important. Twice in the last week, I've had conversations with people who go, I can't believe I'm in the room with you. Yeah. I want to go, I'm just, I'm a, I said, by the time we finish this conversation, you're going to have realized I'm a human.
Yeah. And I'm getting this phrase that I would say, don't guru me. Yeah. Because I think there's such a danger in that. I find it so ironic that I'm the one who writes about partnership and power and not having power over others and trying to get this as much of inequality as we're able to in the conversation. And yet people still say that. you know, that's a lovely thing to hear. And it also makes me go, don't do that, please don't do that.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like this, because people do do it in different ways, don't they? And it's like, yeah, that's so funny. And it's interesting for the coaching relationship, right? If they're, if they're going to be clients of yours, or, men, you're mentees in supervision or something like that, like you say, the power dynamics, really important.
And I had a conversation on my the last episode of my podcast that came out with one called gene Balfour, we had this really nice conversation about, It started from me trying to get her to tell me how she used to talk about coaching and how she talks about it now, because I was interested. And we just got into this really interesting conversation about language and how the word coach is interesting for that. And I think she did a lot of training with Nancy Klein in the early days.
And so she was talking about thinking partnership. And in a way, what we were saying is that describes it better. And one of the reasons it does that is because it's got the word partnership, not later when people look up on the ICF website what coaching is, but like here, when we first... first talk about it and you get that balance. yeah, that's, it's also funny though, I have to, like, it's a, it works, that guru thing, works both ways.
I have to remind, it's good to remind yourself what you look like from the outside sometimes as well. Cause like, I feel like messy me. Essentially, I still feel like the little boy in green tights, like a lot of the time. And who was shy and didn't want to go to school and all that kind of thing.
And it is a, like, then you get lost in the who am I to publish a book until like, and I had to like, I got some nice people to write nice things who I'd worked with on using essentially the 12 minute method on things or, you know, who I'd helped with those procrastination things, all that kind of thing to write little things to go in the front of my book. as the finished, the published line was approaching, I had to read that quite a lot.
I had to keep thinking, yeah, but these people say this about me. So. perhaps I should publish this book instead of just hiding. So it's like, not only do you not want to be guru'd, but you also need to, we have to not like underplay the impact of our work, which is the kind of, I guess the other side of that. It feels like the other side of that coin. I don't know if that makes sense.
Yeah. And we've got some interesting conversations coming up at the coaching and actually around that edge, which is how do you not over promise? How do you also acknowledge that there will be outcomes from, know, people need to know what coaching is for, don't they? Yeah, it's such a, again, it was like, I've definitely been guilty with with clients of essentially letting us together over promise. It wasn't always me. But like, I think that there's something wonderful you can do as a coach.
My friend Mike says, you know, even by sitting down with somebody who wants to make a change in your life, in their life, you're doing something wonderful with it with them, you're basically believing that the change is possible.
And certainly by agreeing to work with someone, no matter what they've said, it's like an amazing gift you can give because you can say, you know, you basically by just hearing what they say about what they want to change in their life and then not saying that's ridiculous. You're saying, I believe this is possible. And it's a really powerful thing and a fun thing to do with clients just to push that sense of possibility.
Because my experience has been that often people, including me, are not very good at knowing what's possible. Mostly, I think we underestimate it. Especially if you're going to sit down with a coach, you know, a couple of times a month for a few months, that makes a lot possible that wasn't possible before just from the amount of thinking energy that's going into whatever it is people are working on. But I've definitely been guilty of the over-promising piece of having an ambitious goal.
I guess the equivalent of a hundred podcasts in a year, right? You've got to hold that, that's got to be held with the right amount of seriousness, some and not too much. And then I think what I've really learned in the last couple of years of my coaching is, and we just need to be real, in the way I've approached some of that, what you've just mentioned is, being really explicit that it's really good to set these ambitious goals.
And we have to accept that, unfortunately, if, really look for it, where, if this is actually outside the control of two people who are gonna meet, you know, 10 times in the next three months, then we have to accept that at this point and think, well, what is the thing, what are the things which are within our control that two people can actually do in these conversations? And we have to measure our success by that to a certain extent. That's tricky. It's like it's a real balance.
I definitely like I say, I've, I've made mistakes. I think there's a real, it's like a, what is it? So can be quite damaging to people's self-efficacy and confidence to set an ambitious goal without saying, we might not be able to achieve this because it's outside of your control as a human. Yeah, it's interesting. I did some work probably 20 years ago with around ambition, with people whose values meant that they thought ambition was a dirty word.
Yeah. And... I used to talk to them about the concept of what I call possibility centered leadership, which is actually I believe I could. which has got a sense of direction to it without a, I must grab it at all costs. Cause it's really important to have the, believe I could. Yeah. And that again, maybe that's that thing that Mike's saying about like when you sit down with somebody and you you believe they could as well, which can be a really magical thing.
Which feels for many people, I think, I believe I could feels a lot softer. then I believe I must or I will or I will at all costs or I absolutely must. Who's gonna write that first in a blog, Robbie, you or me? You can do it, I think you've gotta do it. You've gotta do it, Claire, because it's definitely come from you. But it's like maybe I can find another slightly different angle to write the same thing. that's the thing that I've learned about from writing, like it's okay to write.
same thing that someone else has written. This is I really felt didn't feel true. Like, because what's good? What was it? What was did you say? It's like, is good, good enough? Like, it wasn't if it was like, if it didn't feel if it felt like I was just writing someone else's idea, I've just completely changed on my mind. And in fact, I think that probably one of my strengths, in fact, and I'm saying is I can hear that I've just done this a bunch of time in this conversation.
One of my strengths is kind of collecting ideas and frameworks, and then sharing them with people. And, you know, talked about Kaufman. Robert Holden and all kinds of people in this call. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, I think you should write that. But for me, yeah, it's like, it is a it is a really lovely frame. I believe I could, yeah. What I love about what you said though, is that you always credit the person who's it is. And actually that's all that matters, isn't it?
Because, Yeah, I mean, I'm like you, I often say so and so says this. And then just leave it and let it make its own meaning in somebody's life. And it's far better than some contortion trying to tangle it up and make it my own and make it sound as though it comes to me when it never ever did. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So let's just go for simple. Somebody, Sarah Klein, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago. She posted a quote this morning on LinkedIn.
I can't even remember what it was, but I looked at it I thought that is I'm just trying to find it because it was brilliant. And I just I've got no internet. So so I looked at it and immediately made my own meaning. Yeah. And it was just a phrase. Now, if she turned that into an article, number one, I probably wouldn't have read it because. I was just flicking, I was actually checking you out on LinkedIn. I was doing the same thing probably at the same time.
TBH, Robbie. But I know that I'll go back to it and I'll probably write it down. I'll probably stick it on a post-it somewhere and think about it. And I'm sure that I'll share that with somebody, but I'll share it as from who it belongs to. But I think often in coaching, what happens is people go, I have a concept that I once read in a book, which I think I can use in this conversation. So then we start listening to use it.
And then we also start listening to make it listening to them and to the thing that we're remembering to make it our own. And by the time we bring it in, it's just a bit tangled up and a bit of a mess. Whereas actually to go, do you know, as you say this, that quote from whoever comes up for me, I mean, the one that's most meaningful for me is the Maya Angelou quote that says, I belong everywhere. I belong nowhere, no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.
Somebody offered that to me and I sat with it for like five years. Yeah. What was there so much in there? You know, think on the coaching level, like you're so right. It's just like that. I can just imagine myself doing that thing you just said about the, you know, thinking about the framework, thinking, trying to listen to everything it wants. And it's just like, there's so much going on at that point that you almost can't possibly be present. And then you go. Let's talk about belonging.
Yeah. Because because I've got a really good quote that is kind of inspiring the next bit of this conversation. Just say the quote. Yeah. And like, I think like it was a it was a big shift in my coaching when essentially I did a training course that was about this really was about presence. They didn't call it that then. But but it was about well, if there's a straw, like the power of learning to listen to ourselves to know like Right. What's the intention of showing this?
Is there an intention that I've got this cool quote about belonging that I desperately want to share? Because like I read it this morning, I think it's amazing. And I want to share it with everybody, even you when this is nothing to do with client, when this is nothing to do with with belonging. Or is it just like when you exactly what you said, like when you said that this came into my mind. Here it is. And seeing what happened.
And when I started doing that, essentially, partly probably because my mind wasn't was much less busy because I wasn't thinking, how do I help this person and what do I do with this framework? was just thinking what idea comes into my mind right now? The coaching definitely got more powerful. I just wanted to say I had this funny insight about sharing things the other day and I haven't had any, I want to share it partly because I haven't forgotten it.
And it's one of those things, know, one of my dad's old friends is a storyteller. And he said that when he learns a new story, he tells it to himself twice within 24 hours. And if he does that, he's pretty much got it forever. in his mind, when you're a storyteller, don't necessarily, you don't know all the words, right? You just know the story and you inhabit it essentially. So even if he was driving himself home by himself, he'd tell the story. And so I try and do that with things.
And the insight that I had, I just noticed that I think I used to share, you know, the Robert Holden, what is real success question and credit it out of a defense mechanism. This is just quite an interesting. insight into my psychology, maybe people's psychology. It used to be like, I don't want to be present in this. But I so I can essentially hide behind the ideas of other people. And I think a lot of my, you know, and I think this is often true with our strengths, it certainly is with mine.
A lot of our strengths come to get developed to keep us safe in some way. And that really feels like it with me. And then what's interesting is it's become an absolute strength, you know, is essentially what what the book is.
what I do in my coaching a lot, but it's evolved into, I'm able to collect these ideas, which perhaps, perhaps, if we're going psychoanalyse, I did originally to kind of keep some distance between people and me, but now it's just a really wonderful gift to have, to be able to share those things really. And I think it's a thing that we can do in our coaching. yeah, we just have to be, you know, and I don't always get it right. Definitely. I don't want to say that.
I'm much, much better than I used to. And sometimes I'll share an idea. In fact, I often contract with clients on this at the start of our works. Like sometimes I will put some ideas and things into our session sometimes. I'm not going to be a coach who doesn't say anything to you and just gives you your own language back. That's not me. Like that's what we're going to do, but full permission to just say, that's not very useful right now, Robbie, let's move on to something else.
And it's great when they do that. And sometimes I'll do it. I'll be like, yeah, that thing I just said, I think we should just forget that. wasn't, that wasn't really it, was it? Or, you know, it's the same as when someone says, Can you repeat that question? It's like, I don't think so. Cause I think it was a terrible convoluted question. Let's let's ask something different instead. So now I've got two blogs out of this conversation so far. yeah. What's the second one?
The delete button in coaching. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. Well, it's funny. Like, cause you could, one of my, guests on my podcast, I don't know if you've come across this cloud. Maybe you use it. I haven't. but there's this software called Descript. Have you come across this? No. So it's a podcast editing thing. So what it does, it takes your audio or video and turns it into a transcript. So that's great. It's a very accurate transcript transcripting tool.
But the amazing thing about the software is you can then edit the audio by editing the transcript. So you delete the thing on the transcript, suddenly the audio gets edited. So that's essentially what, you know, we can just do that in our coaching, except we don't have to do that. We can just go, yeah, let's just go back. I'm going to try something different. Yeah. Rewind. You know, we can use it in training rewind or delete, but I think actually we need to use it in real life.
Yeah. So you tantalizingly earlier on dropped in your 12 minute branding thing. So in, this, as we fit, as we wrap up our conversation, just tantalizingly drop in a little bit more about branding. about branding. Yeah. So basically my friend Nahal moved to New Zealand. And she told me this, she lived in London, that's where I met her and grew up in the UK and then moved to New Zealand. And she told me this story about like we were texting or emailing when she'd just moved there.
And she told me this story about what it was like to go to the supermarket and anyone, and when I later, we lived in Costa Rica for a few months after that. And I saw this to be true then, or actually maybe I'm getting the timing wrong on that, but I could remember being in Costa Rica, just like when you're on holiday in Spain and the supermarket is a much harder place to be. And essentially, that's because the branding is different.
Yeah. And what branding does, and we can think about this, and we should think about this for our personal brand as coaches as well, is essentially it's a trust mechanism. So it's like, can we, have we got a story or a thing that shortcuts people to a place of knowing what the thing is and trusting it? And then my thought was, I wonder if branding is the greatest energy saver that humans have ever created.
Because if we think about other candidates for that, like the washing machine is really high up that list, right? Until the washing machine was created, people, mostly women in the West, you know, and this still happens in lots of parts of the world where they don't have access to them, we spent a lot of time doing the washing. Like a lot of time, physical energy, mental energy. And when the washing machine is not only exists, but is available to lots of people, that removes all that.
And it frees up all kinds of possibility for humanity. And then the other thought that I had was there's those stories, I think there's, don't know whether they're real, I haven't checked them, but the stories about both Einstein and Barack Obama essentially wearing the same, like it may be the same thing that Steve Jobs does, although he has sort of OCD element to him.
But Obama and Einstein, the stories that I've heard both said, I wear the same tie essentially so that I can use like Obama's case. I've got more important things to think about in my day than which tie I wear. So I'm wear the same tie, or the same three ties all the time. so that I've got my decision-making energy for how to sort out the country and the world. And Einstein is like, if I don't waste all my time thinking about what I'm gonna wear, I can create theories of relativity.
And so what's happening in supermarkets every day is that people are walking down the cereal aisle, seeing Weetabix and getting it without having to go, which one of these, would you imagine if you would, if like it was just a clear bag with the cereals in? You'd be like, the Weetabix looks a bit like shredded wheat and it looks a bit like shreddies if you haven't got your glasses on. And you kind of have to get really close to it and work out what it is.
Or worse still, if you're in New Zealand and it's, you know, there is a kind of a Weetabix thing there, but it's called something different. It's a different color and you've got no idea which one it is. And you have to spend 10 minutes on the cereal aisle. And then the next time you spend eight minutes and then the next time six, and then in a few months, you can grab your Weetabix straight away. And the energy is saved by the branding.
And so then there's obviously there's questions for us like, how do we do that as a coach and like creating a body of work? Like you've given your story about, can't believe I'm in the room with you. Another way of looking about that is that someone already knows you in a slightly weird way.
And that's why it's, can't believe I'm in the room with you, but they already know you by the time they get there, because they've read your book or they've listened to your podcasts or any number of other things.
we can, as coaches, that's a, I would say it's like, if I was going to give a, I don't know, five things, like the things you have to do, or I think that are most useful to do to have a successful coaching practice, I wouldn't put that in there, but it, you know, because I think there are other things you can do, like get really good at coaching that are much more useful than having a body of work that people can get to know you through, but it is a useful thing to do.
And it is nice when you get, you know, it's a lovely, it's a really different. first conversation with somebody when they come having listened to 20 hours of me talking to people about coaching. And essentially they just want me to say, this is how much it costs. Shall we do this work? And I'm one slowing it down going, wait a sec, do we actually want to do this? Is that the right thing? That's a really different experience to when you're first starting out, people have no idea who you are.
Of course it's what referrals do as well. They are part of brand. If one of your friends or former clients says, you should work with Claire, she's like this. then the person again comes with a sense of who Claire is and has less to do in that first time, second time they meet you. Yeah. And they've got that quality assurance from their friend, haven't they? Yeah, definitely. Well, Robbie, what an amazing way to spend the beginning of a morning. Yeah, absolutely is. It absolutely has been.
Yeah, I feel really, really good, Yeah. So how do people get in touch with you? All the places, really. So you can find me on robbyswale.com. is my website, my personal website about my coaching business. But the coachesjourney.com is where all my kind of the resources that I've created for coaches are all collected there. So there's a podcast, there's that article I mentioned, there's some other pieces of writing and some videos I've made about how I run my business.
can find out about the community there too. The books on Amazon and the Waterstones website and places like that as well. And yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. That's where my blog is still. It may move, I think it'll be six years of that. So I've been doing an article in 12 minutes for five and a half years. It'll be a bit more than that. It'll six years in August. And I'm wondering if that's the time to move it. It's also on my website.
So if you find it, it might get moved off LinkedIn finally at that point for various kind of slightly dull reasons about me thinking, my thinking about how it can find people better. And yet people want to connect on LinkedIn. love to connect to it.
to new people, but always like, let me know, especially if you let me know that you heard me on the podcast, because especially if your job title is I help coaches and consultants make 10,000 pounds a week, I will probably ignore you unless you say I heard you on the podcast that actually like to connect. Yeah. Yeah. We won't go there. It's a funny world. I was just let's go there for one minute. I was thinking the other day, like where is the training course?
I want to find the training course, which says this is a way like, cause you know that it's a pyramid scheme, right? Or it's like, it's a bit like that. It's like, there must be someone somewhere saying there's this way to make money with no effort, which is by selling coaches, gullible coaches. a way to make money with no effort or like desperate coaches. And that's what they're doing. And someone's training them to do this.
And someone needs to email that person and say, can you just stop doing this? Because I don't think it's helpful. Or is it that they just came up, they've just thought of their best ideas and their best idea is to connect with people on LinkedIn and invite. I often say to people, have you read my website? Because you obviously haven't. Yeah. We can make you a global brand in the next three months. Really? That's good, because actually I already work around the world. Thanks for that.
Thanks for asking. We can get you. We can get you 2000 followers on LinkedIn. thanks. Yeah. That'll be nice. It's so weird. It's bit like the... there's an element of it that's like the guru thing as well. don't quite know, I can't quite do that connection in my head this morning, but it's like this part, feels it's part of that same world, isn't it? That everyone's a guru and we can make you a guru in these 10 easy steps. It's kind of got that kind of, that kind of feel. Yeah. there's, yeah.
And I don't want to be a guru, but I think that people come to me because of the depth of experience. And you can't make that up in your first three months as a coach. You haven't got that. And that's just how it is. Well, Robbie, what a delight to be on your list of a hundred podcasts in a year. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on that list. It makes it a lot. Like I feel good that we've done it.
It's one of the things I get to now, right, you know, update it on the ZipAid if people want to follow that challenge or if people have also, if anyone's listening and... has a podcast that would like to have me on or knows of any that they think I should be on, given the things we've been talking about, please do let me know. I need help. But also there's a list on my website.
And one of the things like whenever, again, it's like a thing that I've done in my coaching business, I'm taking to this work with the book. It's like, I'm not, I have had to practice celebrating success. And one of the ways I do that is to just track things a little bit. So every time I do a coaching session, I fill it in on my log. That's the end of my wrap up of a coaching session. And I feel. Yes, I'm doing it.
And every time I'll after this go and add it to my list on my website of podcasts. So thanks so much for having me on the show. it's been lovely to meet you as well. And you. And I hope we get to talk again, Robbie. Me too. Yeah. you could, if you, if you don't mind me being the next 80 episodes of your podcast, that would actually be really helpful. did you not say? Different podcasts, very clever. No, didn't. mean, when you're making it saying, this is another thing I've learned.
It's good to, you know, it's like that thing about create your own life, like make your own rules for these things. It's got to be a thing that I can possibly succeed at. So I count my own. I did an episode on my own podcast. I might have to do more if I'm not getting close to it, you know, that counts. I'm going to count some events that I've spoken at because I don't know how many people listen to a podcast. Like it might be less than is at an event. So I should be able to count that.
So yeah, it's just about telling the story really in different. in different places. We'll have you back later in the year. Yeah, it's great. then the other books will be out. And maybe I didn't write it down. I'll have to listen back. When is Good Good Enough? So the fourth book in the series, very quickly, so I'm we were wrapping up, we? The fourth book in the series is through four stages of the creative process.
It's going to be the four 12-minute method books from the first three years of that blog. And it turned out I'd accidentally written about that the whole time because that was what I was struggling with and interesting in this creative question. And the last one I was gonna call, it's gonna be about sharing work.
So it's gonna be something like how to share your work when you're scared, know, because that's essentially what the whole thing was about for me, but it could also be maybe the subtitle will be something about, you know, sharing when things are good enough, not when they're perfect, something like that. Wow, well, Robbie Swale, thank you for coming to the Coaching In. I'm Claire Pedrick and this has been the best of mornings. Thank you. So bye bye everybody.
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