We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP464: The Billionaire Coach's Playbook W/ Matt Spielman

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. My guest today is author, speaker, and executive coach Matt Spielman. Ever since reading a book called Trillion Dollar Coach, I've been interested in executive coaching. If Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and countless other billionaires use executive coaches, then it's something we should explore. What separates Matt is that he's insanely qualified. He holds an economics degree from Columbia, an MBA from Harvard, a nutrition science certificate from Stanford, an integrated health certificate from Duke, and even an executive

Starting point is 00:00:30 coaching certificate from Columbia as well. On top of his education, he's held executive positions at Megacorpos like MTV, Nielsen, Return Path, and others. Matt is now the founder, CEO, and head coach of Infliction Point Partners, where he coaches high-profile clients like Alex Rodriguez. In this episode, you will learn Matt's experience interacting with Bill Campbell, the quote-unquote trillion-dollar coach in the eponymously named book. What billionaires are often looking for when seeking out a coach? a framework for determining when it makes sense to follow your passion and how Matt defines success? Why Matt decided to go back to school before becoming a coach, even though he had a highly pedigreed resume? What coaching is and what it is not? Matt's game plan system and a whole lot more.

Starting point is 00:01:12 I truly enjoyed this conversation with Matt, and I felt like I deepened my learning in the art of executive coaching. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Matt Spielman. You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we see. study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to The Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie, and I'm so excited to have with me today, Matt Spielman. Welcome to the show, Matt.

Starting point is 00:01:53 That's really great to be here, Trey. Thank you. I am super excited to talk to you. And that's because I at one point read this book called Trillion Dollar Coach. And the book was about all these billionaires, all these names that you know of like Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt of Google and many others in the Silicon Valley world who were using this coach named Bill Campbell, who has since passed away, unfortunately. But I realize that a lot of our listeners probably aren't even aware of the fact that all these Titans we know and love were using a coach. And it makes you wonder, why? Who was this coach?

Starting point is 00:02:28 And you've actually had the privilege to interact with Bill at some point. It's worth noting you both went to Columbia at different times and there's that connection. But I'm curious to hear what your experience of him was like. Well, I'm smiling on this end because Bill was just a remarkable human being. And he was all about positively impacting others and helping people become, you know, kind of the best version of themselves. And he was called the coach. You know, in Silicon Valley, he was called the coach primarily because he was the football

Starting point is 00:03:00 coach at Columbia. And they didn't necessarily do so well during that time frame. He kept the moniker, however, and he continued on and he was a coach to scores and scores of people not only in Silicon Valley, but across the U.S. and the globe. And you mentioned, as you were saying in the opening remark there, I had the good fortune of talking to him, interacting with him. And man, what a gracious person. And he kind of made you feel like, you know, when I would email him and talk to him, that I mattered. I was important. And I know we had a thousand other people who are emailing him and texting him.

Starting point is 00:03:35 And that's just a gift. That's just a gift. And just incredibly inspirational. And I was really fortunate to have met him three times for a good chunk of time where we got to interact a good amount. Yeah, you hit it right there on that nail on the head there because what a gift it is to make people feel like they're the only ones. I remember in the book, all these people who were using him as a coach, sometimes I didn't

Starting point is 00:03:56 even know the other person was using him as well. And so they kind of felt like they were the only client. and he made people feel that way, which is so special and really hard to come by. You know, I'm kind of curious, given that you're a coach nowadays, what in your opinion were some of these billionaires using Bill looking for in a coach? Yeah. All of these people who had achieved this remarkable success didn't get there just by accident or just kind of with their feet up on the ottoman sitting on the couch and watching TV.

Starting point is 00:04:25 They were sort of at it, trying to improve, develop, grow. were trying to do whatever they can, you know, read books and articles and talk to people. And it's that mentality that leads somebody to say, hey, you know what, I'm living and I sometimes use a scale and it's the numbers are somewhat arbitrary. But let's say, I'm living an 8.7 out of 10. And I want to maintain that. And it requires me to continue to go to the gym and to continue to invest if I want to, you know, stay there. Generally, it's not necessarily staying there, but they want to get to 8.8 out of 10, 8.9 out of 10, a 10, you know, 9.1 out of 10, whatever the case may be. And those are the people who are raising their hand and saying, you know, I want to partner with somebody because I know that partnering with a trusted, trained, objective, third party person is going to help bring the best out of me and get at some of the things that drive me and what it is that I want to bring about and see those really meaningful and consequential results come out.

Starting point is 00:05:23 I want to highlight that word you just threw out there, which is objective. I think that's a huge part of this because where do you find objective opinions? You know, especially when you're running a business, maybe you have thousands of employees. Everyone close to you is maybe on your payroll or in your family that's somehow affected by your decisions in some way, shape, or form. It's very rare to find something like an objective opinion to really bounce ideas off of. It's vital. And, you know, that objectivity, there's a big difference between a coaching partnership and one that may be a mentor, an advisor, a manager. a friend, parental.

Starting point is 00:05:58 It's sometimes people in giving advice, they're often sharing what it is. They think that you should do based upon what they have done. However, it's time needs to be spent to understand what do you value, what interests you, what excites you, how do you see the world? And it's this finding a partner who is all about truly listening and hearing, which is incredibly rare anyway, but especially these days, in an objective way where it's really what's coming from you is most important, not what I, my experience that I went through and you should follow this and this is what I, that may be relevant like down the line, but really identifying

Starting point is 00:06:38 what's coming from within, from within you. That comes through having that, you know, train third party objective and other person focused relationship. It's not about me, but it's all about you. Yeah, you and I, we were joking earlier because my experience with my coach is almost frustrating to that degree because at some points I'm telling you're just I'm just like just tell me what to do he won't do it you know it has to come within as you said well you know Trey I think so if I told you what to do a you know who am I to tell you what to do right I'm that may be a field that I'm an expert in but there's so much more going on on your side that if I give you advice maybe this afternoon it would work but a week from now it's like that came from somebody else it didn't come from within inside you

Starting point is 00:07:22 Real meaningful behavioral change is something that comes from within you. It's sparked from within you. The eureka goes off within you. And that's really the science behind and the import of the coaching conversation. I want to come back to the science there. But keeping on with Bill here for just a moment longer and then transitioning to you and your career, you know, you've mentioned this, that he was somewhat of a failed coach, meaning he was coaching at Columbia.

Starting point is 00:07:47 They always had a losing record underneath, you know, his tenure. And I find that so funny. But you, unlike Bill, you have a very impressive resume going from this economics degree at Columbia to Morgan Stanley to Harvard Business School MBA to becoming an executive at multiple megacorps like MTV and return path. What's interesting to me about your background is it appears you were following a fairly traditional path into finance and then pivoted into things like marketing and ultimately into coaching. So I'm kind of curious about a few of these inflection points, if you will, along the way that led you to where you are today. Yeah. So it is quite when I summarized the last 20 years or so before I launched this company inflection point partners, I've gotten to where I could do it fairly, you know, succinctly.

Starting point is 00:08:35 But it's with every step I took, I got closer to that which drove me and that which I was excited about and that which, you know, I wanted to do, which triggered kind of the energy that I talk a lot about in the book. Because we can't always articulate what it is that we want to do. But energy, we definitely know. We know if something energizes us and we know if something takes energy away. So a couple of the key inflection points or milestones along the way or decision points where I did start my career in finance on the fixed income trading floor at Morgan Stanley. It was a really great experience.

Starting point is 00:09:06 But I also just in identifying energy, I found that I was sort of getting up out of my seat and just kind of going around and talking to people naturally because I was very curious about what it is that people were doing. At the same time, I was awarded for being to really focus on one sliver. I was working on the mortgage back security desk for one sliver of that particular product area and I was going to be most useful to my clients if I was an expert in that particular element. And that just didn't work well with me, especially for a 24 year old, very curious person.

Starting point is 00:09:36 So I applied to business school. First year, I did not get in. Next year, I did apply and I was fortunate enough to gain admission. And there was something that happened when I landed on the campus to pursue. my MBA, sort of had this wide open emotional aperture, and I wanted to take in all the stimuli I could. And I tell this story that there was one night I was preparing for class the next day. I was reading one of the cases. And I saw a commercial on in the background. What I thought was Billy Joel playing at Madison Square Garden. And I heard what sounded like 18,000 people

Starting point is 00:10:06 in unison singing piano man. And it really struck me. It struck me. And I had three thoughts. The first thought was, wow, be pretty amazing being at the concert. you know, Madison Square Garden, what I thought was Madison Square Garden. And it's like a religious experience to have 18,000 people singing in unison that particular song. Second thought I had is, what if Billy Joel had chosen not to become a musician? We would have dozens of songs that weren't penned, it weren't part of people's backgrounds and even part of their present. And now, you know, he's still performing. And I'm going to see him next month again. So that was the second thought I had is, what if he had taken the path of least resistance? Because it's not in the

Starting point is 00:10:46 necessarily a sure thing to become a musician, certainly not at the level that where he has performed and the record sales and the concert performances, et cetera. It's really amazing. The third thought, which I think was the most important for me at that time, is what is my version of that? What is not necessarily write a song or a series of songs to perform them on stage, but what is my version of his piano man? You know, I wasn't quite sure, actually. And whatever the outcome was, I was going to be okay with it. I couldn't articulate it at that time, but that started in earnest the journey. So then, you know, continued to grow, evolve in my career, which also meant taking a more responsibility, which meant managing people and managing larger teams. And I found, talk about

Starting point is 00:11:26 energy, I was absolutely drawn to seeing people grow, develop, thrive, giving them opportunities. If I was going to go see the CEO later that day, I wanted one of my employees to go and have that experience. And I wanted to engender the fist pump, whatever version that is, and I'm clenching my fist now. Whatever that version of that is for you, that's what I want to see in the folks that I was managing. And that was absolutely the most rewarding. Yes, I was in sales and we had a revenue target to hit. Yes, I was in marketing and we needed to get the messages out. And all that was important. All that was done and all that was achieved. But I really derived a tremendous amount of energy from seeing the folks on the team just really thrive and light up. And that was, okay, that's really

Starting point is 00:12:06 important to me. And right at about that time, I started working with my coach, Peter Hazelrig, and I've been working with him for 12 years. And he gave me permission. He said something super simple, yet it hit me like a ton of bricks. And he said, Matt, just because you're good at something, doesn't mean you have to do it. Which then started a couple of years of conversations back and forth, about a year and a half, where I ultimately turned to him and I said, Peter, this relationship has been one of the most important in my life. And the impact that you've had on me has been, you know, almost immeasurable.

Starting point is 00:12:33 I want to do what you're doing was basically the conversation. So then we set out and set out an action plan for me to how could I realize that? And, Trey, this was at age 42, 43 years old. And people thought it was a little bit crazy that I would sort of leave an sea level executive path to actually go back to school and sort of pursue executive and career and organizational coaching. All right. So there's a lot there.

Starting point is 00:12:56 I'm going to stick with Billy Joel for a quick second here because this stood out to me and I'm really curious about it because there's actually this quote from Billy Joel in your book. It says, if you're not doing what you love, you are wasting time. And this is like, it shouldn't be controversial, perhaps. But it is. There's two sides of this coin. I've heard billionaire Mark Cuban, for example, say that it's actually terrible advice to follow

Starting point is 00:13:18 what your quote unquote passion, because passion sometimes comes from getting or being good at something. So I'm kind of curious how you define passion or what you love and where it makes sense to actually do that. I think where the issue is less about the word passion, I think people are pursuing happiness. And I think sometimes the most challenging workout, there's nothing happy about it. But at the end of that, there was a satisfaction of working through that high intensity interval training or that CrossFit workout or getting through that 2,000 meter row or

Starting point is 00:13:51 whatever the case may be, there is nothing happy about that. And I don't think anybody's passionate about that actual experience. But I think it's the feeling of satisfaction, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of, you know, I can do that. And also there are positive impact. There are positive repercussions and there are positive impact from that. So I think it's the pursuit of meaning. It's the pursuit of consequence.

Starting point is 00:14:16 And it's also, I talked about or I intimated at the fear of let's say Billy Joel gave into, you know, well, I'm not going to be a musician. You know, my parents have certain expectations for me. Like what are the odds of me becoming? That's sort of fear speaking. We have sort of those narratives in our head sort of swirling around those ruminating thoughts. that's the opposite of what I would think of success, which is, you know, giving into those thoughts and the fear.

Starting point is 00:14:39 And it's actually proceeding forward, really going within and listening to what it is that may, we talked about energy before, that may energize me, that may light me up, that may excite me. And I'm going to pursue that. If I want to get fit or I want to run that ultramarathon or whatever the case may be, that's something that is meaningful and consequential to me. and I am passionate about that outcome and the impact on me, I may not certainly be happy going through the training or happy about that particular, you know, but I think that's the delineation, Trey. You threw something out there as well. I want to explore it a little bit more.

Starting point is 00:15:12 You said the pursuit of consequence. What do you mean by the pursuit of consequence? I think that in the book, there's a chapter called should versus could. And I think a lot of people that I talk to, they're very high achieving people. They are working at really good jobs and high positions. I went to really good schools and all of that.

Starting point is 00:15:31 And all that's fine. There is this life that a lot of us have gotten into. And I raised my hand. You know, it's like, hey, I kind of should do that. I kind of should apply to this school. I should apply to that job. And that's okay. As long as it aligns with it's a much more powerful question to say,

Starting point is 00:15:48 huh, maybe that's what I should do. But right now, at this moment, what could I do? What would be meaningful to me? And if even just say that to yourself versus, hey, what should I do? do here versus what could I do. One is an exogenous force on you. The other sort of really coming from within. So it's the could goals, the could outcomes that are much more of consequence and they feel much, much better. The ideal is if there's sort of should and could align. You know, you and I determine that, hey, what we could do is launch this particular endeavor that we have in

Starting point is 00:16:23 front of us. And we lay out a plan and we may wake up the next morning and say, hey, you know, we should get on that because we both agreed that would be meaningful and consequential to us and potentially the world around us if we launched that initiative. So I think should and could could absolutely align, but it's going to be much more meaningful and consequential to us if it comes from within. And just a footnote there, I've spoken to more than one person who a friend encouraged them to run a marathon. Hey, you know what, Matt, you should run the New York City Marathon. You know, and that, if it doesn't really come from within, the training may last a month, a month and a half, you know, and then it's February 6th and it's 11 degrees outside and it's

Starting point is 00:17:01 raining and it's disgusting out. And, you know, I'm not going to get up. I'm going to roll over. I'm not necessarily going to train for that marathon. If it comes from within, if I could do that and I envision myself crossing the finish line and I have friends and family there and that's something I really want to do, that goal stands much more of a chance of actually manifesting. We're going to get into the process here a little bit more. But on this topic, there's a question you pose in your book, which is what is important to? to me. It kind of goes in line with what you're saying here, but what is consequential to me. And I can relate. My wife and I can definitely relate. We always thought we'd be musicians and we

Starting point is 00:17:34 went out there. My wife ended up being the background singer for Rihanna for almost five years. So touring at the highest echelon of that industry. And I had some big success on my end in other ways. But when we actually sat down and we said, well, what is important to us? We realized that family time was important to us. Being home, like raising a family, having a consistent income. Even though we were really good at these things, when we define what was important to us, our decisions changed. So how can people think through adjudicating those two things? It's one of the things that we talk about a lot with our coaching partners. And they're talking about as clients.

Starting point is 00:18:13 We talk about it as partners. We look at, I sort of think about this, there's something I designed called the purpose puzzle. I talk a little bit about it in the book. And there are these nine facets or pieces of your life that contribute to how you're feeling on the data. day basis. And you know, you mentioned there are a couple of things that you mentioned in your puzzle. And I'll just read off a few. There's, you know, family and health and connection with friends or sometimes lack of connection with friends, life partner, career, your physical environment, spirituality, et cetera. And what we do is we go to I want to identify sort of where we are today.

Starting point is 00:18:46 And let's say on a scale from one to five at each of those nine puzzle pieces. And there may, you know, maybe a three for career at a five. It may be a four family. And that helps. us identify sort of present state. And then we could begin to talk about the future state. And if I were to say, Trey, okay, this is what your purpose puzzle looks like. And we use shades of red. So it goes from pink to crimson and sort of various shades in the middle. I say, okay, there are three goals that you can set for yourself to either maintain a four or five out of five or move something from a one to a three or one to a four. And you may say, okay, well, I want to focus on my career, I want to focus on being more present with my family and also my health.

Starting point is 00:19:28 Where finances could be one of them as well. And then we set a goal around that and we talk about what a meaningful or consequential outcome would be for you in those, and let's say those three areas and then inching them forward from a two to a four, let's say. But again, this is all you focused. This is not what anybody else thinks you should focus on. And you're taking an honest, objective assessment of where you are today, where you might want to be tomorrow across, let's say, three or four sort of areas of your purpose puzzle. That's incredibly interesting. This quote, you can have anything, but you can't have everything kind of comes to mind,

Starting point is 00:20:01 at least all at once, right? Sticking on this, we did define passion earlier. I'm kind of curious how it relates to success, given that what we just talked about, having success in different industries and moving around, you've had a lot of success in many industries. But how does that relate to the success you feel today? How do you go about defining the word? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:20 So it was my last class of our first year. It was a course called Leadership and Organizational Behavior Lead. And we're reading a case about somebody who had a decision. The protagonist had a decision he could either go to one firm and make X amount of money or go to another firm and make Y amount of money. And the class was debating about, well, basically netting out that he should go here. It's a better brand name and to be making more money. So he'd be more successful.

Starting point is 00:20:45 And I've like vehement. My hand shot up by vehement. And Professor Kang said, Matt, it looks like you're going to jump out of your seat. And I said, well, it really depends on how the protagonist defines success. And like any good professor, he said, well, Matt, how do you define success? And I said something to the effect of success is having the desire and the ability to listen to oneself and then the courage to act upon it. So I think we get caught up sometimes in sort of lofty outcomes and maybe brand names or a certain amount of money. in the bank, and all of that can be successful, as long as it aligns with what that person wants

Starting point is 00:21:20 to do on the inside. And only that person knows. And I remember there were a couple of years I did participate in the New York City Marathon a couple of times. And people, you know, I always got this question kind of bothered me a little bit because it wasn't really why I was doing it. But it said, well, you know, what did you run? And I told him what I ran and said, that's really good. Well, that's them actually thinking from their perspective, that's really good. Let's just say it was a 3.30, three hours and 30 minutes. They don't know if I was pacing to go on like a 310 and I've been working really hard and that was really disappointing for me. Or I was at four hours and that was amazing that I was able to accomplish that and that was really successful for me.

Starting point is 00:21:58 So only we know inside whether we are successful or not. And you mentioned that I've had successes in my career. I'm not sure I qualify them as such. And there will be other things that other people would say that weren't necessarily successes, and I would say that was some of my biggest success. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo

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Starting point is 00:26:18 That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. All right. So given the level of education we mentioned that you have and the experience through your career to date, it'd be kind of easy to assume that you would have enough to justify coaching somebody else. But why did you feel the need to go back to school in order to become a coach? Yeah, that was really, really important part of the process for me. I sort of viewed launching

Starting point is 00:26:49 myself as an executive, organizational career coach as a three-legged stool. And I felt like I did have the two legs. I needed to add the third. The first leg was I felt like 20 years of work experience would help me kind of be a little bit more empathic and understand the situation that my clients are in and hiring and firing and presenting to boards and raising capital and exiting and that kind of stuff. So that's sort of leg one. Second leg was just I discovered along the way, we talked about a little bit earlier just how I'm constituted as a person, kind of what drives me. And I like, you know, igniting careers and energized lives and then triggering the fist pump. That's my fuel, man. So those two legs I kind of had down and I felt pretty good about those.

Starting point is 00:27:27 The third leg was doing it the right way, the education, the science behind. There is a science behind the coaching conversation. And what is a coach and what a coach is not? And I found the most rigorous coaching program because I feel like the coaching profession can be squishy. Anybody can call him or herself a coach. There aren't necessarily like if you want to be a doctor. You can't just walk around saying that you're a doctor or similar with a lawyer and therapist, etc. So I wanted to make it as rigorous as possible not only because I want to work in service

Starting point is 00:27:55 of my clients, but I also want to message to my clients or my partners that I take this craft seriously and I'm going to invest the time, the energy, and the significant financial resources to do that. So I entered the Columbia Coaching Certification Program back in 2016 in May. And then I, you know, after that, I launched inflection point partners in August of 2016. And the training continued. You know, I complimented that with that experience with going down to Duke and Durham and studying in the medical school there and becoming a board certified health and wellness coach, study that the Duke School of Integrated Medicine, and then other sort of trainings and follow-on certifications from there, because there are various things that I learned that I put to practice

Starting point is 00:28:34 in all of our conversations, you know, in some form or fashion. You highlighted there what a coach is and what it is not, and I'd like to explore this a little bit more. You gave a few examples earlier of what it is not. A lot of people kind of picture a therapist type figure when they think of a coach, especially when it comes to business and personal relationships and things of that nature. So maybe go ahead or a little step deeper there on what coaching is and what it is not. So let me take the therapist versus coach. I actually think they're more similar than different. I think the main difference is, and this is broadly speaking, so I may get texts or emails after this and I welcome them. But therapists and psychotherapy in general

Starting point is 00:29:16 tends to look at today looking backwards. And coaching tends to look at today going forward. And the coaching conversation and the coaching partnership is absolutely therapeutic. And people hang up the phone or close the Zoom or end the in-person meeting with more energy. There's more intentionality to their day. There's more conviction to their actions. And it's very therapeutic. But it's definitely not therapy. We don't get into sort of childhood trauma or certain blockages. we will go back and say, well, we may look at a particular instance that mirrors what's happening today, what you may have done in that particular instance, what worked well for you, and sprinkle some of those ingredients into the current situation. Anyway, so that's the therapist versus coach,

Starting point is 00:30:02 and that's actually more similar than different. But what a coach is not, and the way we are trained, and really in most programs, I think they abide by this, is it's not directive, it's not prescriptive, It's not giving the advice. It's not telling you what to do. That's not necessarily learning, that's sustained learning. It's more of the empowerment model. It's more, as I say, it's more reflective than it is directive. So it's really, I would picture, it's the way I think about it is if we're in a car together,

Starting point is 00:30:31 you are behind the steering wheel, your hands are on the wheel, your right foot's on the gas, right foot could be on the brake and your left foot could be on the clutch for those who still drive manual. I'm in the passenger seat. You've determined through our conversations where you've entered your GPS coordinates of where you want to go. And you're navigating. You're driving. And it's through, you know, you have a partner there who's encouraging you, who's supporting you, who's challenging you, who you know, you may want to pull over at the quick stop and have fast food. I may say, well, you know, I know you're hungry. You know, what are some other options along the way type of thing that might be a little bit more, you know, helpful choices for you. So it's that type of a partnership. And actually the word coach, the derivation of the word coach is this, we both get in this

Starting point is 00:31:16 sort of vessel of movement at the point of origination together. And the stage coach then through the power of the partnership moves forward to that desired point of destination. But it's really driven by you. Now, I'm not going to say, yes, we ask Socratic questions. We really listen. We really hear, as I mentioned earlier, which is really rare. And we really try to ladder up to various outcomes.

Starting point is 00:31:37 There are instances when a. client may say to me, so Matt, I'm presenting to the board tomorrow. We're talking about my preparation, you know, how would you go about it? And what I would do is, you know, I sort of like, pretend take off my coaching hat and I sort of slide over and I take out on a different person. I say, well, if I'm presenting to that board of directors tomorrow, and these were my objectives, as we discussed, I might approach it like this, this and this, you know, and then I go back to my coach, say, how does that land on you? And then, you know, I'll say, well, that's not really my style. Well, tell me about your style, you know, something like that. And then there are certainly instances,

Starting point is 00:32:07 Tray, where I move from coach to more of an advisor, consultant, mentor, and I say, I actually really think you should do that, you know, based upon the information that we have. But I do call it out. I do it. The coach's job is to empower and encourage and to derive the awareness in the coaching partnership. That's a good distinction. It almost sounds like there's a lot of accountability involved as well, like almost having accountability partner to some degree. How much of it is setting a goal and then being there to hold people accountable along the way, make sure they're doing the work? It's a really big part of it.

Starting point is 00:32:39 And I do a lot of work within organizations. And recently, I was just last week, I was walking out of the office and the managing partner said to me, I said, Matt, we just like everybody there at the firm created one of these game plans that I talk a lot about in the book. And each of the clients creates. And he said, just having you here, I feel like it just holds us accountable. Like you're walking around. You all know what our goals are because they've all shared them.

Starting point is 00:32:59 And sharing goals is the platinum standard for goal achieving because it creates accountability, transparency, and alignment. And I know what they all are. So yes, that just knowing that I'm there, knowing that and whether it's I or a coach or a spouse or a son or a friend, if you've shared your goals with him, her, or them, just them knowing that and that the person may check in and sort of see how we pacing against that goal. You know, you mentioned you were whatever the goal may be. What progress have you made against that? You mentioned you were to get to the gym sort of three or four times a week or you mentioned that you were going to fill in the blank.

Starting point is 00:33:34 How's that going? What's working for you there? Let's identify that. Let's do more of that. What are some of the things that are getting in the way? What are the blockages? What are the friction points? Let's identify those and let's try to create workarounds there.

Starting point is 00:33:46 So, yes, the articulation of the meaningful and consequential goal to that person, sharing it creates really important accountability. And I think the way goals are set and often not achieved is unfortunate. And often, you know, New Year's resolutions by the third week in January, most of them have gone by the wayside. and that that's really unfortunate. So we try to do almost the exact opposite of that and create a whole system around it. Yeah, that kind of raises this question of what are the reasons you see coaching relationships fall short? And you've seen a lot of them. I'm kind of curious if there's any common denominators as to, you know, if it's just the wrong fit or someone's not living up to the accountability measure.

Starting point is 00:34:26 What are some reasons it doesn't work out? Chemistry is important. I also think you're going to do yourself a service if you find a coach who has been through rigorous training because there really are. So there's not only a lot of great learnings going through the training and there's a lot of sort of practice coaching and being coached, you also have access to a lot of people in your cohort who are really serious about it and you check in with and they ask you about your coaching and they can ask questions. So I think finding the right partner is, I would say it's step two. Step one, Tray, where I've seen the partnership not work as well,

Starting point is 00:34:57 is if it doesn't come from within, which is a bit of a constant theme of today. Sometimes, let's say a spouse may say, Matt, I think you should consider. Again, the should part. I think you should consider coaching. And then that person reaches out to a coach and talks to a bunch and then hires one and starts working. But it didn't really come from that person. You know, first step is to admit that that person really wants to partner with somebody. That's what of step one. Step two is find the right person. And I do think that step three is be open to the mantra, which we use all the time here, as somebody who likes action and jumps into things really quickly, is I think we need to slow down in order

Starting point is 00:35:35 should go faster. Before we like session one, we don't like start crafting goals and writing that what I think we need to understand what I was talking about earlier, which is, you know, our values, how I see the world, what matters to me, what would be meaningful and consequential? Why? For what reasons? What are the outcomes that are, you know, what do I see? Where are I see my life in five years and 10 years? I'm working with a client now. It wants to create a 50 year vision and he's 47. And we don't just jump into goals. We actually slow down, take a deep breath, go within, go through a couple of exercises in order for us to go faster. That would be step three.

Starting point is 00:36:09 And then the rest kind of, you know, that regular cadence that works for that coaching partnership. And it's different. It could be every week. It could be a check-in every day. I've check-ins with every day with some folks. It could be every month. I've check-ins every month with people.

Starting point is 00:36:21 It really varies. But I do think that regular, some form of regular cadence, to your point earlier about the accountability, I think is important. Okay. I want to highlight here that all the examples, you've given so far. Let's just take the getting in the car together and going somewhere and me saying, I'm hungry. I'm going to go to the in and out or whatever. And in all of your examples, you have not ever started the question with why. You know, why do you want to go to it out? You know, why do you

Starting point is 00:36:47 want to do X, Y, Z? I've noticed this and you highlighted it. I'm kind of curious, how important is it in a coaching relationship to steer away from the question why? It's really important. Coaches ask what or how questions. What about that would be meaningful to you? how might we want to go about that? How can we envision that coming about? Why tends to trigger a bit of defensiveness? I mean, oftentimes, you know, a parent, I almost think about why is, you know, why were you home at 11? Like, there's a bit of that. And that's the last thing we want to do in this really special, it could be an intimate relationship of, you know, both sides are really open and really listening and hearing one another. The last thing we want to put up is any kind of a barrier. There are different ways

Starting point is 00:37:31 to get at that, but the what or the how questions can be magical and be really powerful and you just get much better information. I'm kind of curious, out of the now thousands of hours you've done coaching, what are some of the most common topics you typically see people bring up to you? I would say that a meaningful percentage is centers around how to better manage my time and my energy. And I'm often speaking to people who, you know, they have. have resources, they have means, and what they don't necessarily have or none of us has is

Starting point is 00:38:07 infinite amount of time and energy. In fact, quite the contrary. You know, energy kind of renews each day, time that we have 24 hours a day and we can't get any more of that. So in this world where there's infinite opportunity, infinite noise, infinite noise, it's super important to find the signals. So that's one that comes up is how do we best manage our finite amount of time and energy. The other is interesting, kind of surprised me because I recently, somebody asked me this question maybe six months ago and I had it was more anecdotal as my answer. And I started keeping track after that of, you know, what topics are people bringing into the coaching conversations? The second one is preparing for challenging or difficult or sensitive conversations.

Starting point is 00:38:47 So we often may think that we go in one side of the difficult conversation that it comes really naturally to the other person who's maybe delivering feedback or whatever, what might be really sensitive could be laying somebody off or whatever the case may be. You didn't get promoted today. I'm just, I'm here to tell you a little bit of a secret. They wrestle with that, period. So we spend a lot of conversations and coaching conversations thinking about they're pretty clear on the what needs to take place in the conversation. We talk through about the why the conversation needs to take place. We spend the bulk of our time on the how. And oftentimes they want to push to like the by when and generally it should happen sooner rather than later. And they want to push it out.

Starting point is 00:39:25 but we don't let that, that accountability partner. So I would think that's the second one. On that one really quickly, do you ever rehearse the conversations, role play? Yeah, so often very much, and that's actually where my work experience helps a lot. And everybody who works on our coaching roster has work experience. So that's really important.

Starting point is 00:39:42 I will absolutely role play, for sure, Trey. I might be the person that they're talking to and even adopts, you know, if there's a longitudinal relationship, meaning over, you know, weeks, months, and potentially years, I may have gotten to know that person or even just by hearing about him or her, and I can adopt a little bit of the persona, for sure. There's this topic that comes up and I have to channel kind of the legend in the coaching space is Marshall Goldsmith is, you know, what got you here is not necessarily going to get

Starting point is 00:40:10 you there. And there's a realization that, you know, Matt, I've been so successful. You know, I'm a managing partner and I was able to get the next 10 years of that firm and that firm success, that person needs to adopt a different way of doing things. because what got that person there is not going to get the person in the next five or 10 years of the future of that firm. Those are conversations that we talk about. And that's really tough, because they're really good at the things that got them there. And they need to maybe shed some of those or, you know, the D word delegation. And then there's developing new habits.

Starting point is 00:40:40 You know, Matt, I got to figure out a way to work out in the morning because my afternoons, my evenings are just too busy. So developing new habits is something that we talk about a lot. And that's one of those where the accountability partnership is super important because it's a 30 to 45 day type of thing. It doesn't just, a switch just doesn't go off one day. I want to talk a little bit about your style because as I was reading about Bill Campbell, it became clear that he was really known for his verbal tough love. I mean, he did not use kid gloves, right? He was always delivering exactly what you need in his own style, if you will. But he was also delivering support in very emotionally intelligent ways and showing up for people when they needed it most and providing

Starting point is 00:41:21 sufficient praise when it was deserved. I imagine Bill's tough love approach is not for everyone. So have you found a style that works for a broader set of people and maybe even how does that tie into your own? I read a lot about Bill's approach and how he put two executives together and sort of went up both of them and until they resolve something. And that worked very well in that context, especially coming from him, the elder statesman in the Valley, who had done it before in his 60s and 70s. And that was an amazing.

Starting point is 00:41:51 effectively effective style for him. I, maybe it's my sports background and I can be supportive. And I think that's really what you were saying earlier. I could be supportive and I could be really stern and I could be really tough. And it is really all about performance and achieving our mutually agreed upon expectations. I'll share with you this mini story. In college, I played baseball. And I loved playing the military academies. And I derive some of my, I'm going somewhere with this, which is my style is derived from and can be seen from the following story. So in college, I played baseball and I really enjoyed playing against the military academies, Army and Navy.

Starting point is 00:42:29 They played hard. They gave it everything they had. And I saw that kind of firsthand as shortstop coming over the bag, turning a double play. Their job is to take me out so I could not complete the double play and get the out at first base. And there was one particular time where we're playing Army. and I came across the bag and the runner did his job and he took me out and I did not complete the play. He played hard and he did what he needed to do. He was stern and he took me out.

Starting point is 00:42:57 And when I was on the ground, he extended a hand and he lifted me up. And I feel like, you know, we have a job to do in our coaching partnership, client coach. And we agree upon our outcomes that we're going to work towards and that we're going to hold the partnership accountable. We're going to create goals. We're going to document the goals. And I'm going to be supportive. and I'm going to encourage and, yes, you know, empathic and sympathetic. And I'm going to challenge.

Starting point is 00:43:22 And we're going to bring about the outcomes that we've agreed to. And I will extend to him. That's my style. See, I think that's so important because going back to that objectivity, how you even value someone who can call you on your BS for lack of a better word, right? Because we tell ourselves so many stories and we live by stories, our own stories about ourselves. And to have someone actually challenge you on that is just invaluable.

Starting point is 00:43:45 And sticking on storytelling for one second here, one of the things from my experience sitting in peer groups and even in my own coaching sessions, it's amazing how much time can actually be wasted on the situation, the players involved, the risks and rewards, when, you know, basically the story. And I see in peer groups, they love that part. Everyone loves the story. They love to just like go to solutions, ask people, have you tried doing XYZ, asking more about the details around the story. but when fundamentally it's actually something usually much deeper. There's even a chart that speaks to this where the story is sort of the tip of the iceberg and everything below the water is where you get to the much deeper issue. So how do you guide people to look for the deeper and sometimes more personal issue at hand?

Starting point is 00:44:34 Yeah. So I think about it as, which is, I mentioned earlier, the slowing down to go faster. And I think there is, especially the people that you're referencing in the group that you're in and the people that I talk to are really kind of very motivated high achievers and they want to jump right into action. But we don't just leave the driveway without plugging in the coordinates of where we want to go because then we're just sort of driving around aimlessly using fuel, which doesn't make much sense. But I understand why it happens. I think about it as if we use the metaphor for a house and we need to spend time excavating the land and pouring the cement to the foundation, very unsexy work. wildly important. And that's where the word sort of foundational came from because the rest of the house, you know, sits upon that. And then we, you know, we look at the architectural plans and then we're like,

Starting point is 00:45:21 okay, we need to build a house on top of this. And then we need to ultimately complete that house and do all the fixtures and the finer things and the window shades and all that stuff. So I think about the pouring the cement of the foundation is the why. And we need to start on why, Simon Sinek said. Then the architectural plans of what it's going to look like is the what, right? What is going to sit on top of that house? What is that going to look like? What could that manifest into? What could that be?

Starting point is 00:45:47 And then the building of the house is actually, it may take the longest, most physical labor and it's tiring, exhausting for those who are doing it. But that's probably the easiest part. That's the how. So it's almost like the ready is the why. The aim. What are we sort of going towards is the what? And then the fire is the how we're going to kind of bring that about.

Starting point is 00:46:06 And the why is often the most overlooked part, which is why we slow down. There are a couple of different exercise we do. We want people to understand themselves a little bit more, their preferences, their behaviors, their prelections, what drives them, what interests them, what excites them, what energizes them. And then we get into, we do visioning of, you know, what could they see themselves doing, becoming, realizing, achieving, and, you know, in what context, over what time frame. And that's the work, Tray, to your point, like below the water line, that that's the really important part.

Starting point is 00:46:42 The actual, the people that we're talking to, they can execute like crazy against these things quite successfully. It's the time, the important time that's spent up front, kind of the pouring the cement to the foundation, the very, the why part, the very unsexy part, and often the most overlooked part. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business.

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Starting point is 00:50:14 slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. Yeah, a recent example of that for me was we had a member who was dealing with someone at work who basically gave an ultimatum. And he was struggling with this thing about like, well, this guy's my friend and he's whatever. And it took someone kind of posing this question of like, why are you letting someone who's seemingly your friend treat you this way or make you react in this way? Like what is triggering you about XYZ?

Starting point is 00:50:43 And that's the real work in my opinion. It's kind of understanding those deeper issues. I want to touch on the quote unquote coordinates that you mentioned earlier because another thing I've noticed is how important the right question is. So for example, how do I blank? You really can't solve the problem until you have the right question in place. So this sounds simple, but actually distilling an issue into a how to why question is deceptively difficult.

Starting point is 00:51:09 So I'm curious if you use this technique, how do you typically guide your clients to find the quote unquote true how do I question? a hand. How do they find the coordinates, if you will? People generally come with an idea of what it is that they want to do and multiple things that they want to do. They come with the point of view. And then it's our job to explore the contours of that, kind of the drivers behind that, and then get a little bit even more clear about what that could be, what about that would be important to them, how might that positively impact their life? But they generally come with a point of view. And the purpose puzzle that I spoke about earlier is a wonderful mechanism to get at, you know, nine facets or pieces of your life that may affect how you're feeling on a day to day basis.

Starting point is 00:51:52 And that was the life partner, career and friends and health and community and finances and physical environment and family and spirituality, et cetera. And in and around that, people have pretty strong feelings about things that they may want to dive into, want to bring about. And those are the good starting points. Those are good starting points. And we go back to, you know, when was a time in your life when you felt, you know, like all these people that we talked to have rich experiences that we can dive into. And they could be negative, neutral, or really positive, but we can learn things from them. One thing I really loved about your book is that in lieu of having a coach and some people listening may or may not have a coach, you can actually use the book as a really great stepping stone or a place to start. and it all kind of stems from this game plan system you've put into play.

Starting point is 00:52:40 So walk us through, if you will, the game plan system or GPS, as you call it. Yeah, so the game plan system or GPS, the double entendre is intentional because it's intended to provide direction for you. And yeah, in the book, you know, people can download all the tools. And it's really a three-step process, which makes it a system. And I'll talk about the actual game plan, which is sort of the middle step. But it follows a lot of what we've been talking about so far, which is the first. which is the first step is we need to gather information. And there's formal and informal information that we gather.

Starting point is 00:53:13 The informal information comes from questions that we ask, the coaching conversation, kind of like some of the questions that we were sort of trading back and forth here today. Some of the formal information come from assessments. So that could be the NBI, it could be the MBTI or Myers-Briggs. It could be the via values and actions, which ranks somebody's strengths from 1 to 24. And it's a free assessment that I encourage everybody to do. You can go to via character.org, I'm not mistaken. And it provides, so that's to generate awareness in oneself and what really, what I'm about and what really drives me.

Starting point is 00:53:47 And also awareness of other people and why other people might do things as well. Sort of pouring the cement to the foundation, you know, as it were, right? So that's sort of step one. Step two is we create this document. It's a single page and I often laminate it, document. And think football coach in college on Saturday or football coach on Sunday in the NFL. And those are the plays that are going to win that particular game. And they could change from week to week if they're, you know, 16 games or 12 games in college

Starting point is 00:54:15 or something like that. But think about that document housing four goals. Usually it's four goals. Could be three. Could be five. And there are multiple components to that goal. And we use a goal achieving model that speaks to goals that these are goals that you can action against. So 300 sunny days in Colorado next year is not something that you could do anything about.

Starting point is 00:54:35 They need to be meaningful and consequential to you, as we spoke about earlier. So the A is for action oriented. The C is for consequential. The H of Achieve, and this is part of a larger acronym, this is the achieve goal setting model. The H is hard, but not Herculane. So it's a stretch goal. The I is an integrated goal. If there's more than one goal, the ideal scenario for us to give us the greatest chance for it to come about is that working in service of one goal increases the chances of another goal happening. So if I'm positioning myself for promotion in one goal and I really want to learn a computer programming language because I'm really interested in it, those are integrated goals in theory because learning that computer language could help me position myself

Starting point is 00:55:20 for promotion. The E in the achieve is it needs to be specific or explicit. V is let's tap into the power of visualization. Athletes have been doing it for decades. why not all of us? And then the final E is endpoint or the time horizon. So when do we want to have brought about this goal? So each of the goals on this laminated single page document and we have four goals needs to abide by that achieve model. Now, it may sound a little bit like the smart goals that some people may have used before the acronym smart. And I just believe that smart was lacking in several places. And I went back to the 1950s and Latham, who are the goal setting experts and read a lot of their work. And I infused a smart goal approach with this new

Starting point is 00:56:01 acronym called Achieve. So this document houses the four goals and we laminate that. We move to step three, which is we identify if the partner is open to it, key stakeholders in his or her life that you can give this game plan to, to create that accountability, to create that transparency, to create that alignment. You know, three cliche terms that in business that all of a sudden are not cliche anymore. And then we execute like crazy against that game plan. And it establishes a bit of an agenda for when we when we check in and we have our coaching session, which is a natural question, Trey, it's how are we doing against the goal? What's working well? What are some of the things that are getting in the way? We also at times revisit the goals.

Starting point is 00:56:43 And oftentimes with clients, sometimes they'll create two to three versions in a given year because they've achieved either much of the goal or almost all of it or they sometimes sharpen it because context changes in their day-to-day in their lives. We need to gather information, which informs the co-creation of a game plan. And then the third step is we execute like crazy against the game plan. And it holds the partnership accountable as well. So I want to stick on the H of the game plan, the hard but not Herculane. This is interesting to me because I've been struggling with this one myself.

Starting point is 00:57:19 There's a guy I follow very close. I look up to a lot. He recently said something to the effect of realistic thinking gets to realistic results and unrealistic thinking gets to unrealistic results. And I think what he's trying to say is, you know, don't limit yourself is what he's saying, right? And sometimes when your goal setting or trying to develop a goal achieving plan, which I love that reframing, it's hard to know if the goal is achievable or not or Herculane or not or realistic

Starting point is 00:57:47 or not. And then begs the question, should the goal actually be something unrealistic? So I'm kind of curious, how realistic do we get when it comes to goal achieving? Yeah. So if we need to understand a little bit more about what is realistic and what is, you know, within the realm of possibility, sometimes that could become a coaching conversation for us to determine is that realistic? Is it too unrealistic?

Starting point is 00:58:12 And we may seek an outside expert. I will say that from the school of positive psychology and area that I studied, that if the goal is too easy to achieve and. and you actually achieve it, it actually becomes a little bit more hurtful to your self-esteem because you sort of achieve it. And like, well, I probably should have achieved it anyway. And the science actually says that if we reach a little bit higher, then we might be comfortable and we sort of aim for the sun and maybe we land on the moon, you know, something along those

Starting point is 00:58:41 lines, that and maybe we fall a little bit short, but to how we feel and our self-esteem, it actually increases and it's a really positive feeling. So if there is a decision point of do we reach for a little bit higher or we settle for a little bit lower, we generally reach for a little bit higher. Kind of ties into this idea of goals versus tasks. So when you're setting goals, sometimes people just come up, you know, say you're sitting with your team. You say, what are these goals for this quarter? A lot of times they're just tasks, you know, disguise this goals. We want to get this done.

Starting point is 00:59:13 And it's important to kind of understand. So how do you define goal and how do you separate it from a task? A goal is an outcome. By the end of this quarter, what is it that we want to have seen produced? And oftentimes when I first started doing this with clients and they were creating these goals, I actually phrased it in a tense where it was by the end of this year, we will have brought about a certain outcome. So we sort of like put ourselves in that future point. And then the tasks are the action items, which are on the game plan and the actions. Those are the specific tasks. that bring us closer to achieving those goals, and they work in service of bringing about that outcome. So I think about goals as an outcome that we want to bring about and the tasks that actually work in service of those goals. You mentioned coaching Little League, and I want to kind of see if there's any correlation or connection here between your coaching playbook and parenting. You know, for example, are you speaking and teaching or coaching A-Rod the same way you would,

Starting point is 01:00:15 you know, a Little League team, right? Like, is there a difference here? Are there similarities? There are a lot of similarities. And, you know, Alex aside, and we use sort of baseball metaphors as often as we possibly can. We share that sort of interest and passion and a little bit of our background there. But the, I would say one of the biggest lessons, and I was the president of Little League and I coached 16 teams and, you know, from seven years old to 13 years old. And we really focused on control the controllables.

Starting point is 01:00:44 There's so much out of our control, right? But what is in our control is do we get a good night sleep the night before? Do we try to quiet a noise around us as we're walking to the plate? Do we think about maybe, you know, what happened last game that may have worked or didn't work? And do we get down in our stance in the field and ready ourselves for the ball? We can't control what the pitcher throws. We can't control how the ball bounces before we sort of field it.

Starting point is 01:01:09 And maybe there's an error, something like that. So we really focused on control the controllables. And that's exactly what we do in the coaching. conversation and then the coaching partnership, which is why the A in the Achieve model is really, really important because it's what can we action against? And notice before I said something about positioning ourselves for promotion, we wouldn't necessarily say, you know, I'm going to get promoted by the end of the year. We'd phrase it differently. We may not actually have the control over that, but we want to do what we can to position ourselves for that. And I think, you know,

Starting point is 01:01:40 that was one of the key things that I focused on as a little league coach and in my conversations. And yeah, it's sort of a universal theme. All right. I have some bonus questions here if you're up for it. You post some of these questions in your book. So in the spirit of that, I thought I kind of flip them around and ask you the same. This should also give the listeners a little bit of a framework for how they should be thinking. What are some primers?

Starting point is 01:02:07 So here we go. First one is, what are you most proud of? I'm most proud of the relationship with my wife over the last 22 years. and we are true partners to each other. There are times when her career was in the foreground and I was in a little bit of the background and then that switched and we're constantly looking out for one another and sort of fueling what the other person sort of wants to do. And I certainly know that I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today in terms of

Starting point is 01:02:33 and having made this transition without her support. And we have two boys who are 18 and 17 and they're fine young men who are good to the core. And I'm most proud of that and that feels the best. to the point earlier about having the desire to listen to oneself and the courage to act upon it, I am really proud of the transition I made at age 44, you know, going back to school and then launching this sort of second act, as it were. Here's the next one.

Starting point is 01:02:59 What has been your biggest disappointment? Yeah. So I normally don't think about things like that. Kne-jerk reaction would say, would answer that question as in my sophomore year of college, I was a starting shortstop for the team, and I subsequently played really poorly. And I talk a lot about the why. And, you know, after the first 13 games, I was benched, watched the rest of the 33 games from the bench, and I lost my starting job. And I had to sort of kind of win it back.

Starting point is 01:03:28 And that was a real disappointment. But the reason why I troubled answering the question a little bit is I don't think about it in that frame because that's not where the story ends. You know, I had shoulder surgery after the season, managed through the rehab and getting back. on the field and telling the coach, I'm kind of winning the starting shortstop job back. And he mentioned to me, well, okay, Matt, we'll see. We'll see the performance on the field. And I did. So the balance of the story is my junior and senior year.

Starting point is 01:03:52 I did play baseball, standing at shortstop, you know, playing in each one of the games. So, but I don't tend to think about things like that because that's just part of the story. It's what the follow on is the response, which is the really important thing. What words describe you at your best? I am, it's almost like I've been shot out of a cannon. and I use the words, energized, enthusiasm, excitement was sort of, I think about the three E's and sort of leads me to like full engagement. And I'll lose track of time and I'll look up and it's like an hour and a half is past.

Starting point is 01:04:25 And that's when I'm at my best. All right. Last one here. What one wish would you have fulfilled? I want to do a TED Talk. That's something that I really want to do. I'd like to boil a lot of what it is that I've learned and experienced in the, 3,100 coaching conversations into 12-minute, 16-minute, 18-minute discussion.

Starting point is 01:04:47 Fantastic. Maybe help us reframe what these questions, because you also ask the coach questions in the book as well, but what are these trying to achieve? Yeah. So before those questions and some of those questions that you ask are sent to the client prior to session one. And we usually give the person, let's say three to five days to ingest, marinate, think about, and then answer, and then send ahead of time and the coach spends time, you know, reading, understanding, and it sort of sets up the how we're going to think about. I sort of think about that's a little bit of cement of the foundation that we were talking about earlier. And it sets up how we're going to approach conversation one and informs

Starting point is 01:05:24 the partnership more broadly. And you can tell even from some of my answers where even the question about disappointment, where I framed, I talked to you about it, you could actually get into, hey, well, you know, what happened? Tell me about that. And, oh, so you don't, you don't think about this point. Tell me how you think about things. How might we use that in our discussion here? So it's really good fodder for important, key, incisive questions that drive the partnership forward. Very cool. Well, you've definitely done an amazing job distilling down these 3100 coaching sessions you've had into this amazing new book, inflection points, how to work and live with purpose. Before I let you go, Matt, I want to definitely give you an opportunity to hand off

Starting point is 01:06:03 to people where they can find the book and learn more about you and follow along with you and what you're doing and any other resources you want to share. Yeah. So I appreciate that opportunity. The URL of the website for the book is www. The inflectionpointsbook.com. The inflection points book.com. There, if somebody wants to reach out to me or anybody on the team, you can do that and we welcome

Starting point is 01:06:30 people reaching out. The book provides free resources where you can do it. download all of the tools, all the templates, all the questions that Trey was asking and the game plan that we were talking about earlier. I do go back to something I said earlier. There's a wonderful free assessment that everybody can use. It's called via. And I believe it's via character.org. And it will rank the way you answer the questions. It'll rank your character traits from 1 to 24 based upon kind of the energy that you have around those. And your top five are your signature strengths.

Starting point is 01:07:03 And the science behind it is the more you use your signature strengths in a day-to-day basis, not only the happier and more fulfilled you'll be and the more energy you'll have, but the more success you'll have, the greater outcomes will be produced. So we tend to focus from a position of strength. And that is a wonderful assessment. There's a free version and there's a much more rich, you know, 48-page version, a paid version. Fantastic.

Starting point is 01:07:25 Well, Matt, excellent book. I love this conversation. It's not something we often explore on the show. but again, if a billionaire needs a coach, you probably do too. So I appreciate the time, Matt. Thank you. Thanks so much, Trey. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you this week.

Starting point is 01:07:40 If you're loving the show, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app. And if you feel like leaving a review, it really helps the show. You can also reach out to me directly on Twitter at Trey Lockerby. And I highly encourage you to check out all of the resources we have for you at the Investorspodcast.com or simply Google TIP Finance. And with that, we'll see you again next time. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to millennial investing by the Investors Podcast Network

Starting point is 01:08:07 and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional, this show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting. Thank you.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP464: The Billionaire Coach's Playbook W/ Matt Spielman

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