The Missing Piece in Most Coaching Engagements: The Human Side of Business Growth with Roy Castleman

What if the missing piece in most coaching engagements isn’t strategy or execution, but helping leaders reclaim their health, time, and clarity?

In this episode, Cam sits down with Roy Castleman to explore why sustainable business growth starts with the person leading the business. Roy shares his entrepreneurial journey from building and acquiring technology companies to navigating burnout, health challenges, and the pressures that come with scaling organizations. They discuss how business operating systems, AI, and wellness practices work together to help leaders create businesses that run without them, rather than because of them. Roy also unpacks the importance of understanding your ideal client deeply, building trust through storytelling, and why the best coaches focus on the human side of business growth just as much as the operational side.  

Biography

Roy Castleman is an entrepreneur, technology strategist, and business coach who helps business owners build scalable organizations while reclaiming their time, energy, and quality of life. As the founder of All The Power, Roy combines business operating systems, AI implementation, and wellness practices to help leaders create sustainable growth without sacrificing themselves in the process. Having built, acquired, and scaled multiple companies throughout his career, he is passionate about helping entrepreneurs live the life they love while growing businesses that can thrive without them. 

Links

Connect with Roy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

Learn more about Roy's work: https://www.atpbos.com/  

Use code AC20 for 20% off Ninety: https://www.ninety.io/?utm_source=community&utm_medium=abl&utm_campaign=cam 

Join our free LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/16297012/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Ambitious Coaching Lab, powered by Nine Food. I'm your host, Dr. Pam Lott. Each week we explore the real time, tough conversations, and breakthrough moments to drive coaching content. Let's jump into today's episode. Hello, friends. We have got Roy Castleman with us today. He is an entrepreneur, a tech strategist, a wellness innovator, and a business coach on a mission to help business owners regain control by blending business operating systems, AI integration, and holistic performance strategies like breathwork and mindset training. Roy's approach is both grounded in forward thinking, helping leaders build businesses that run smoothly so they can live better, healthier lives. So welcome to the show, Roy.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Thank you, Cam. Lovely to see you.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Absolutely. Yeah, I am very excited about this conversation. We've known each other for I think probably a little over a year, maybe a year and a half now. And uh we've had lots of, we connected on LinkedIn, we've had many conversations, and I am just I am so intrigued with your just value proposition, your setup of how you approach business coaching, of kind of combining the personal and the professional. So I am so excited to jump in, but why don't you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how you got to where you're at too today?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

My entrepreneurial journey starts um as many do in uh you know taking a bit of a chance. So uh the first uh job I had in the UK was actually for an IT company. And um my brother, who was a is a mensa, yeah, yeah, a menser uh um uh person, so yeah, he's got lots of brands, more than I have. I got the looks, you got the brains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said to me, IT is great. I love IT. Uh and uh I hadn't I just knew how to turn the PC on. So he said to me, Roy, why don't you do it? He was in South Africa, I was in London. He said, Why don't you do this IT thing? So I said, Yeah, okay, well just send me your CV. So um he sent me a CV, and back in those days we had fax, right? It wasn't none of this email stuff. They had fax and he said he sent me a CV. And luckily his name is Ian, my name is Roy. So I got the white out, the TIPX, I tipex out his name, you know, and I I printed my name in, yeah, and sent it out to to uh uh ten different agencies in London. And I found myself with my first uh interview. Yeah, so off I went to this interview in my newly acquired, very cheap suit, and uh I spoke to spoke to the guy, uh Peter McHugh, uh, Computers in the City, and he said to me, Well, Roy, um, if you go to this customer and this customer and this customer and you fix their problems, then you can have the job. So I was like, okay, interview turn turned into a job. So off I went to Merlin Biosciences, who are an amazing company, uh, spoke to George, uh, got there, and I'm like, George, what's the problem? And he shows me this PC and I'm like, I have no idea. George, could I just use your toilet, please? So off to the toilet, uh, pulled out my lock-air phone, you know, those banana ones. Yeah, what do I do now? So and I spent yeah, two and a half m uh months on the toilet. So my clients, I don't know what they thought. But then, yeah, fast forward to 2017, and I'd been running IT companies for a couple of years, but then I started in 2002, and I got the chance to acquire computers in the city. So, yeah, that's how I that's how I got in there. And yeah, as I say, I started my first one in 2002, I started my next one in 2009. Uh, I then went through the process of acquiring an adventure center, which is indoor surfing and indoor skydiving, right before COVID. And I tell you, that was where I learned the learned the most. That was really where I learned the most. So, yeah, what things not to do. Things not to do.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Those uh those tend to be the best lessons. At least uh maybe they're the most dramatic. Maybe that's why we like them. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

And they're lessons you can't learn in a university, huh?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

So it's so true. I mean, there's so there's tremendous value to academic conceptual knowledge, right? But there is something about, and I think especially in the lane that you play in with business coaching and working with entrepreneurial leaders, there's something about walking in those shoes where you can understand the battles and the challenges and the losses and failures. You can speak directly to that. That probably makes you that much more attractive as a coach and growth advisor, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

2017, I had two IT companies running. Um, yeah, yeah, multi-million, not massive, but yeah, enough that I felt reasonably successful. But I had 14 hours a day, seven days a week, yeah, and and no time for me, and yeah, my mind was a mess. My body was getting to be more of a mess. And yeah, along comes this guy, and he makes me this amazing offer to acquire a third company. And I was just like, I can't. I just can't. You know, there's no ways I can do it. And at that point, somebody else had walked in the door and handed me traction the book and um you know uh and said, you know, we should do this. So we went about finding a coach and spent a lot of money on a coach, a lot of money on a coach. And that changed my my uh you know, my the way I do business and how I do business. And you know, it really gave me a good solid grounding, you know, that there is another way. And I think so many business owners go through the entire journey without this knowledge. And that really is is we one of the key factors in what we do with all the power and how we try and help people. So that was that was the first piece. And I went from working 14 hours a day every day, and now those three IT companies run themselves and I work five hours a week, you know, doing that. And that's that's opened up my my journey in into into this um yeah, this venture. And really this venture for me, yeah, I want to help business owners live the life they love. Right. You know, I love traveling, I skydive, I free dive, I do all sorts of other crazy things, uh, get into cold exposure. The things that happen as we go through life is uh throughout business life is we really get busier and busier and busier. We work in the business and we get so busy, right? And then when we're in the business and we're so busy, what actually happens from there is we start losing our clarity, we we lose our focus, we lose everything. And we don't we can't see a way in which we can actually get time back. And this is kind of where the bigger concepts of all the power come from. Firstly, we use AI, which is now so powerful, to help business owners get some time back. Secondly, we then look at wellness techniques, whether that be breath work, cold exposure, meditation, or whatever works for them. It doesn't need to be anything too far up. But how do you just get some of you back, right? Because the business owner that is really fundamentally grounded and happy and not thinking about the future and worrying about the past and all these things, they're able to make much more, yeah, much better decisions every day. You know, they really are able to be much more powerful every day. And then we layer on the business operating system and the clarity just comes in. Because so many of the challenges that I have when I walk into people, I just don't have the time to do this right. It sounds amazing, it really sounds great, but where am I going to get the time to do it? And that's really how we can wrap this together. Give them some time, give them some of themselves back again, and then let's now work on the business and grow the business to what you can believe it can be.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

You have such a clear picture of that as you're describing that, not only your offering stack and your your value prop, but you have a very clear understanding of who you're talking to. And when we were talking about, when we were first talking about coming on the show, you mentioned your your persona or whatever you want to call it, Mark, I think is what you had named him. Can you talk a little bit about how that has shaped how you get clarity and understanding? I mean, you said, I think you even said like, I talk to Mark when I'm talking to somebody. Can you talk a little bit about how that came into conception?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Well, I've done a lot of marketing over the years, and then marketing has been one of my strong points. My IT companies, you know, they sit at the top of Google. And you know, when you when you get to the top of Google, you think, that's it. It's all just gonna flow in. I'm gonna be rich. That's it. And IT is probably one of the least sexy things in the world to sell, right? Everybody has an IT guy, you know, and unless the IT guy does something really wrong, you know, he he's staying there and you're not gonna you're not gonna budge him. And so I've had to dig into a lot of different marketing plays and and what works. And I realized very early on in life, yeah, uh, that yeah, people buy from people, right? People really buy from people. And you have to build rapport and you have to get to know people, and you have to respect and understand them and you know listen to them. Yeah, and and then yeah, people are interesting. That's why we do this stuff, right? Life is great, meet interesting people. And yeah, in order for me to actually be able to talk to the people that I want to talk to, you know, in my marketing messages, I came to realize and I've studied, I've learned lots of different things, and looked at all the masters out there, and I've come to realize that actually, yeah, yeah, it through their trainees as well, if you're not talking to your ICP, your ideal customer profile, your ICP, your persona, or whatever it is you call it, if you're not talking to him and all the noise that's out there, yeah, you get lost. Yeah, so many people I speak to, so many business owners I speak to, they say, you know, and coaches and and yeah, uh other organizations, they say, Well, I say, who do you serve? Who is it that you talk to? Who's your ICP? And they they go on and they say, Everybody, my service is for everybody. And I'm like, Yes, your service is for everybody, but you can only talk to one person. Yeah, if you can only talk to one person, who would you talk to? Yeah, how would you dig into that? How would you really find the the kernel of that person? Yeah, so we we we I I I basically talked to myself five years ago or ten years ago, yeah, because my journey is what I offer people. Uh my journey, yeah, trying to avoid the pitfalls that I've fallen into, you know, trying to bring in the shortcuts that I've found and all these kind of things. Yeah, I what that's what I love about Boss Up, you know, the BOSSUP system, the 90 system, is that we can bring our own element of of the coaching into it. It's not just a prescribed simple system. And this this idea that, yeah, if you if you're really digging into your ICP, your person, you know, a lot of people say, okay, let's work out my ICP. Well, it's a company, it's got 50 to 60 people in it, it's got two million turnover, it's got this, it's got this, it's got this. And I'm like, okay, fine. You know, that might be your niche, that might be, but who is your ICP? Who are you talking to? And then we come up with Mark. You know, Mark. Mark is 45 years old. He lives in Boston. You know, he is quite successful, he's serving people, yeah, in his business, you know, with something that he's passionate about. You know, he spent, yeah, 10 or 15 years building this business. And he actually knows, you know, that that his business is, you know, almost it's cost him his his his wife because the family, you know, the relationship broke down because he was so focused on his business. He doesn't get to see his kids as much as he would like to, partially because of that relationship failed, and partially because he's always too busy. Yeah, and and Mark really just wants to get his life back again. He came into business so that business could help him have a better life. He didn't come into business to be a slave to it. Now I can talk to Mark, right? Now I can really kind of have a communication with Mark. Because it's it's one-sided initially. But if I send my message out there and say, Oh, yeah, yeah, I do business operating systems, because what we do as humans is we get so excited about the stuff we learn, right? Yeah, we we go and learn a whole bunch of stuff, you know, and and we're like, okay, yeah, with my first IT company, my first website uh that I dove into, back when websites were before Google, huh? I'd learnt about all these PCP, uh PCI boards and the different the diff different things in the motherboards and the memory and the yeah, and this was just great. And I made a whole website about this. And it probably took me five year five years to realize that my customers, they just wanted the damn thing to work. Yeah. They didn't care about anything about that. And I was so excited about that. Yeah, and and so when we start this journey of reaching out to people as coaches and or as business owners, we can't talk to what we know because so often it doesn't matter. We have to talk to you know what their pain point is. You know, what what what what is something that's emotionally affecting them? Uh yeah, how am I gonna talk to Mark and say, Mark, how would it be if I could actually give you four or five hours back in the day so that you can connect with your kids? Yeah, so so that you can actually you know not be thinking about your business all day when you're with your kids. Yeah, would that work for you? Would that be nice? Yeah, I'm d I'm not gonna talk about AI, I'm not gonna talk about business operating systems or wellness or anything like that. I'm just gonna talk to his problem. Right. And as I talk to his problem, as I go through and say, right, well, yeah, now I've been where you are. I know the pain you're suffering. I've sat there with my waiting for my daughter to come and visit me, yeah. Yeah, and and her not coming because when she does come to visit me, she doesn't really feel like she connects. Yeah, I've been in that pain. And this is what helped me a lot. So now I can have a real connection with him and we can be humans.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, the it's it's deeply human in the way. I think there's a a model um with the story brand with Donald Miller, who wrote Building a Story Brand, great book. Uh, but he talks about how everyone, there's there's this external problem that I'm facing, you know, the typically it kind of stays on the business level, right? But then there's a it's more of an internal problem, I think is how Don describes it. It's that it gets into that emotional level. So you're doing that work where you're getting down to that emotional, hey, I'm not, I got into business to have a better life, but I don't even see my kids anymore. That's that's on the emotional level, and that's where a lot of decisions are made. And then he talks the third one is this philosophical problem, like, hey, I got into business, like it should be better than this. There's a better way, or you know, kind of a just overarching worldview type thing, like, hey, there should be a better way. And so I think you tap into that as you're talking to, and number one, humanizing it, but number two, getting much deeper to where the true pain lies for that individual. Doesn't matter about business operating systems, it doesn't matter about AI, those are very important, but that's not why they're gonna make the decision. And you with your persona have figured that out and you can talk to that, both in your marketing messaging, but also I would assume on kind of a one-to-one basis where you're interacting. So it it it applies in so many different ways.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I sat I sat down with a client, um, a new potential client a few days ago. And you wouldn't believe it, his name's actually Mark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

No way.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

I have three on my my books at the moment that are called Mark.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

That's how you know it's on. You're spot on.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

And and you we we spoke down and we just spoke about you know really life.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

You can't sit down. I go into a a sales meeting, right? And it's a sales meeting. We all know it's a sales meeting. But but if I'm not gonna connect with you on a human level, you're never gonna buy from me. Yeah. Uh you it's just not gonna happen. Yeah. And and this this is uh for me, this is half of the joy and the fun of it is to learn about other people and to understand you know where they are. And and you know, maybe they've got a problem I haven't seen before, and I can, you know, have some fun figuring it out. Yeah, but the the the that first connection is just look, how do I get to know you? How do I actually get to know about your four-year-old son, you know, who's fiddling with all the things? And you know, how do I get to to know with uh what what drives you and you know what do you enjoy doing? Because that's the spice of life, right? Yeah, that that's what makes life, you know, this job, especially getting up worth doing. Yeah, because I I know when I go in and I I make a connection and I understand the person, I actually know how deeply what I'm gonna do with them helps them at the end result. Yeah, it's not just okay, we're gonna have a figure, oh, it's gonna look great and and staff are gonna be happy. It's they can go and spend some time with the kids. Yeah. Yeah, and and that's that's as a as a as a person, that's what drives me. Yeah, and that's why I come back to live the life you love, right? If you can live the life you love, what a blessing. What a blessing, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit on your your business development strategy, right? I mean, you've done a lot with building out content. That's been a primary way you've built out courses. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then even some partnerships along with that, of how you structured your business development. I always call them levers that you pull that you want to get. You have quite a few and a very clear funnel or journey that people can go through to to work with you. Can you explain a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, for sure. I think yeah, as we go through this journey, we can look at coming in the door and saying, right, I'm gonna charge you five grand a month for the service.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

And now what happens? We go in, we're we're we're not connected, we're we're not engaged necessarily. You can see I have a value, but you know, you you don't know me. You really don't know me. And it's a it's a big, a big ask, a big stand. So, you know, what I what I want to do, I I wanted to I want to make sure that I touch on all the different areas. Firstly, I don't want to just help the people that can go and yeah, pay me five grand a month. Right? I want to help the people, you know, that that don't have any chance of doing that. And I want to actually get them to be able to pay me the five grand a month, because then I've done my job right. Yeah, then I really have done my job right. So my my my first we we we talk about value letters. Um, Russell Brunson really deeds into value value letters and how they work. And so what what should your value letter be? Yeah, and for me, yeah, I have free content that I curate and I put out on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and and all the other channels that I can find. Yeah, podcasts and and and the like. And and then, you know, it's okay, so here's free content. If people then get interested, you know, they then join me in my funnel. And my funnel is I'll generally bring them into a webinar, and the webinar will be I will give them value. And the first piece of value I give them is right, you you know, the first part of our our our our um three things is AI. How am I going to get you to come and use AI correctly? And people will come down and I'll sit there and I'll say, Yeah, but I'm already using ChatGPT. I'm I'm using it for my emails, and I'm yeah, and my job then is to blow their minds in 60 minutes. Right? Because you can use the AI for one element of what you do, uh, or you can use it, yeah. Our our internal company rule is if I'm working harder than my AI, I'm not doing it right. Okay. And yeah, as soon as we get to a problem, is can AI solve this? Yeah, can AI do this better? And I will come back to something on AI in terms of how people think about it. But so we we bring people into this webinar and we run, okay, so here we are. Come and join the webinar, or we'll give you some things. And they leave there with a valuable set of tools they can use, whether it be ChatGPT, Opus Pro, NVIDIA, any of the other tools that are out there, I'll give them a structure, a framework of how they can go out and use this. Then at the end of that, I'll offer them to join my community. So I have an AR community, we run that specifically in the evenings in the UK, so we can serve as people in uh you know the US as well. So, you know, people come in and they'll join at a very low price point. Okay, and as they come into the community, they'll have a whole bunch of every every session is recorded, every session has a has a has a uh a lesson on it and an exercise. And these are all like the current one we're doing is an eight-week course on how to build flow into your business. Flow being people coming in. You know, so so how do I get clients in? Working in your ICP, working your UVP, your unique value proposition, you know, you using storytelling as a mechanism to to engage people. And then we drive we drive all the way through that. So all of that content is there. You know, the next content might be looking at your vision or looking at your goals or whatever it is, we're using AI to use to using AI to actually get the business functions done more evenly. As we go through that process and as they learn, something important has happened. You know, I'm build building a relationship with them. And even if I've got 20 or 30 people on the call, I'm still building a relationship with them. Now, if they then want to come and talk to me and they join me, they can join me for my once-a-week uh uh program, Elevate 360, which so once a month program, where they'll I'll join them for a low low fee, 500 pounds a month at the moment, yeah, for uh one session per month. But they'll get access to the videos, they'll get access to more more training, you know, we'll give them guidance, and they can email me or my team, you know, and and and we'll build them up and we'll get them to the next level. Or then they can come to two days a month, and then they can come to four days a month. Yeah, and that's a one-on-one training. Then after that, they say, listen, you need to come and help me with my team. Then, okay, now we go into the five grand a month, we'll come in and help them. Right? And yeah, so so we we look at all of these things at this is the bottom level. The step up from that is gonna be that you can come and join my mastermind community, which is slightly higher level, more looking at the boss-up stuff or the the the business operating stuff and the IT stuff, but also looking at automation in business. How do I use AI and automation together to really streamline things? Yeah, so there's a very clear value ladder in how people have their journey with me. Yeah, and that that journey, you know, ideally I want to get to the end of the year and I want them to be turning over, you know, five times as much and be able to go out and and and and live by themselves. They shouldn't need me. You know, and then it's just an executive coaching piece. So, okay, Roy, we have these challenges and the you know, the the you know, we but we go through the the the the month the annual and the quarterly meetings and keep them on track and you know go from there.

unknown 21:59

But

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah, you can't, yeah, from my from my own experience, I can't walk in the door and say, Right, you know, he has a he has a ten grand piece of uh uh work we're gonna do for you, yeah, and and you know, then have to sell it.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

I I would rather take them through that journey. I'd rather have them go through that journey, yeah, and get to know me. Because the other side of it is, yeah, if this person doesn't gel with me, I don't want to work with them. Yeah. Quite quite frankly, I really don't want to work with them. Yeah, I I only take on personally I only take on five clients at that level. Right. Yeah, yeah, some of my team will will will take on ten. Yeah, but then uh I live in the life I live. I'd I have no interest to go and spend yeah, all the time, yeah, working, working, working 14 hours a day. I've done that. Yeah, and I don't want to do it anymore. But the the added benefit of that is my AR community, you know, it's it's currently got about 25 people. I've been look it's been running for two weeks, sorry, for two months. I intend to get that up to a thousand people by the end of the year. Okay. If that's a fifty dollar a month uh subscription, yeah, that's fifty grand a month. Yeah. And I'm serving my community, I'm helping my business owners, I'm giving valuable information, and I'm able to touch more lives like that. So does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_00 23:19

It does. No, that's great. Uh what I love about that approach is that it meets people where they're at, right? I think it's a little presumptuous for a coach to come in and just expect that they're at that high ticket level right from the start. They may not quite be there or they may not quite understand that they need to be there. And so you have lots of different ways that you have them come in and number one, build rapport, which I think is huge. Like, I mean, people buy from people they know, like, and trust, right? They have to have a level of trust in you. But then also I think the value add, you're leading with that. There are free versions of that. Then there are some that provide more of a community. And then as people get in, they're like, this is transformed my organization. I want more of this. Do you find that that is naturally the flow that it goes? I mean, how does it work from a true lead generation for your top-level services through that funnel? I mean, do you have success stories from that?

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Every day.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Every day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah. And by having the price points where I know people are able to meet me, yeah, meeting them where they're at, you know, and having that understanding. Yeah, we're we're only talking initially about the the the low-level basic training that we have to go through. Right. Yeah, just have a basic understanding of business operating systems. Yeah, I'm not giving away a huge amount of you know uh um uh content. Well, I'm giving content, but I'm not giving away how to do it and the depth of that. Simply because people aren't ready for that yet. You know, they have to they have to go through the the the learning stages. And then when they get to the point and say, listen, actually, I'm trying to work out for my numbers for my company, you know, whether it's a scorecard or KPIs or whatever that is, I'm really struggling with that. You know, can you come and help? And then we can sit back and say, okay, let's go back to organizational charts. Let's make sure you know that everybody has roles and responsibilities properly worked out. You know, let's make sure we know what the numbers of and how those numbers actually relate to people. Yeah, and those conversations, you know, you can't you can't have those conversations at the low level. You have to have them at a higher level, down you know, down the line. Uh but to get there, you might be a five-man business or a three-man business, and you're you're struggling to get your momentum in. I come along, we give give them a marketing play that works, they speak to the ICP, they know what the UVP is, you know, and then move forward. In three months' time, it's okay, they know what I'm doing because every time I'm going on a call, I'm saying this is what I'm doing. Okay, well, now I've got a problem. Uh oh, what's that? Well, I've got too many leads coming in, I'm selling too much stuff, uh, and I'm not able to deliver it properly. Okay, let's go to the next stage. Right? Now I know they've got you know ten grand in the bank. Right? Yeah, because I I've made sure that they have. Yeah. And I don't feel bad about going and saying, all right, give me give me your your grand inheritance so I can tell you what to do. Yeah, it's it's yeah. I I need to be able to wake up with myself in the audience, right? Yeah, and and I need to be able to I've I've had, yeah, so much experience in business for people to just go in and take. And that that's not what this is about. This is go in and grow. Yeah, and then then partake, right? So yeah, a different piece. And I mean, to your point, I I did a lot of networking in my days, uh, and you know, going out to networking events and there were a thousand coaches out there. There there's every networking event has got fifteen coaches, yeah, uh, or twenty or thirty. Yeah, and they'll walk up to you and say, Hey, how are you doing? I'm a business coach, I can help you get your business up. And I'm like, okay. So the first question I always ask them is give me your last year's financial accounts.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Uh uh uh I said, well, I need to net know what your turnover was, what your gross profit was, what your net profit was, yeah. Uh uh and and then we can start talking. So well I I can't give you that. Well, so unless you've done more than I've done, I don't want to talk about uh I don't talk to you. Yeah, and that just flummox, I've never had anybody give me the information. And anybody wants, they're welcome to come and ask. Yeah. Yeah. And and that's that's really I think, yeah, you to your point, so many people just go out there and they push and they push and they'll push, right, without really having that value add. Yeah. Because at that point, when somebody asks me that, I'll say, Yeah, but also ask me about my failures. Because I've learned more in my failures than I have in my successes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit on your your you have a very distinct offering, right? And you have, I mean, we've alluded to it already. I mean, there's the business operating system part of it, there's the AI part of it, and then there's also the the personal, holistic, I would call even health aspect. Can you talk about how you have packaged all of that up into this comprehensive offering? I mean, you have a even you you mentioned it before. You have it's a very logical flow that people go through. So can you talk a little bit how you came uh into that conclusion?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

I mean, let me tell you a story. I'd acquired this this uh massive, massive project, right? I was running IT companies. You know, I acquired this adventure center. Inside this adventure center, a wind tunnel, uh, a an indoor wave, a flow rider, a hotel, two restaurants, uh, a swimming pool, a gym, um, yeah, uh, uh, a jump off a tower, 130-foot tower, jump off of that, uh, uh climbing wall, and a range of other bits, soft play area. And I'd come into it literally before COVID. Yeah, and I and I walked in the door. It was stuff I'm passionate about. I love all this stuff. And you know, I just kept on pushing and pushing COVID, they closed us down, they opened us, they closed us, yeah. I was throwing millions of pounds of it from my other companies to try and keep it running. Yeah, and I just got to a point at one stage where it was just too much. Yeah, and I got up one morning at four o'clock in the morning and I walked outside. I was in the hotel, walked outside, climbed up the 130-foot tower. Yeah, and I was gonna jump off. Uh and and I was like, okay. Yeah. And I'd been doing the Wimhoff breathing, I'd been doing some breath work, and I thought I'm just gonna do a bit of breathing. So I did a bit of the breathing. And that was enough to bring me down. Yeah. And that's that's why it's so important that business owners actually understand their mental health is is the first key thing. Yeah, nothing's worth it. Yeah, and to the point that I had to walk away from that business because yeah, that was the biggest lesson I learned was sometimes it's not gonna work. Yeah, and you have to walk away. And and as somebody that always, always does get, yeah, the the the outcome that they they yeah, they they're going for, that yeah, almost broke me by itself. Yeah, but ending up in in hospital for eleven days with a first colon from stress, you know, um and you know going through this whole thing, this has given me such an appreciation for mental wellness, for mental fortitude, but also for understanding how we can get there. Yeah. And yeah, this this this journey is so common for so many business owners, right? Yeah, we we just we stretch, we stress, we we bring ourselves into our whole, you know, it's it's a it's such a a lonely place to be a business owner. You know, your family doesn't want to know about it, your friends don't want to know about it, nobody can actually get excited about the things because you've always had five things to be excited about. So, you know, understanding that this wellness is so important. I went out, I did my Wimhoff instructors, I did other breathwork courses, I do meditation courses, I do mindfulness courses, and and slowly got a really good understanding of how it's affected me. Right. And from there, I'm now able to coach and bring people back into to that piece. And yeah, I I only employ coaches that have an understanding of how important that is, so that they can s they can sign mark people and bring them in. And yeah, then then we we go to the other stage of it is okay, so well, I don't have the time, I really don't have the time to do that, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

And I've been there up at six in the morning, you're working, and then you look again, it's eleven at night. Right? And you still have you look at your list and you haven't got anywhere. That's okay, let's fix some of that first. Yeah, because you've only got so much energy in the day. Yeah. If I put something else in front of you, th the two there's no ways, you know, that you're gonna be able to do it because there's no energy. So I have to give you something there first. Uh so the AI, it's just so powerful now. I've spent two years digging into AI to the depths. I'm an IT guy. I started using ChatGPT, and would it work?

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Nah.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Would it damn? Yeah, so I've had to learn all these different tools and tricks. Yeah, and and I just see the gap growing between what people you know are know and how far AI is going away. Yeah, and it's just growing and growing. So now I need to make that gap shorter. So, right, but just let's focus on what you need for your business. Where can I save you the most time? Let me talk about your emails. If I can have your emails sorted out, categorized, put into folders, yeah, and then put your drafts written already for you in a draft folder, so that's what you needed to do in the morning. Will I save you an hour a day? Yes. Okay. So if I save you an hour a day, could we spend half an hour doing breath work in the morning? Yes. Okay. Now let's work from there. Yeah. You can't go and work with somebody that's overstressed, overrun, doesn't know where it's going, yeah, uh uh has has no capacity to take any more anymore in. Yeah, you can't you can't put more pressure on them. Yeah, m consciously I can't do that. And and that's where our our whole range comes to. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, that that's that's where No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

I mean, it's very what I and I appreciate you sharing all of that. Um the it's deeply personal to you because it it's from your experience. And you're not alone in that because you have mapped it out to you know, tying it back to to your persona mark. Um, that's probably part of it. You know, you alluded to some of that, but it it it's an experience that you have been through, and that I think that's what makes it resonate because it was so deep with you, and I was at the point of breaking, and these things help me get through that. And I think that speaks so loudly, and then you start to build in, okay, we get that in check, and then we start to buy some time back, which is gonna take some stress off, and then we build in the business operating system, which makes the business less dependent on the owner. If you boil it down to that, that's typically what it does. It's operating itself, right? And so that's I think where it's this uh I would almost call it this secret formula that you found that is your experience, and now you're helping others do it.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yeah, and and that's yeah, that's yeah, remember the goal. P business owners, business owners are amazing, huh? Yeah, they are the economy. They they are, yeah, um, yeah. They solve problems. They go out and they solve problems, they see a problem and they say, I'm gonna go and solve that problem. I know how to solve that problem, I'm gonna solve that problem for others.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

So they go out and they do that fit quite selflessly, quite often, they solve a problem. And then they go in the hole. And they deserve to live the life they love. You know, and that's really kind of that's my job. Yeah, that's my mission, is to go and give them that.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Really, you have weaved in this beautiful story of your life into your offering. And that's not something that I had kind of tied when we first talked, but hearing you talk about that, I think that's why it's so powerful. And if I could encourage, and and maybe you can speak to this a little bit, but I think that's probably one of the missing pieces with a lot of business coaches, is they are trying to just base it off of features in their service offering, or they're trying to go at these benefits that you get. Whereas your story resonates because it's that very thing. It's a narrative, it's a story that you've weaved in and been able to find that. And I think that's truly why it resonates. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 35:32

100%. I think every every every coach should try and st and build his story bank. Right. Uh and you know, I I work with my clients, I build a story bank. What is a story bank, you ask me? Well, Russell Brunson starts talking about some of this. But a story bank is the things that you've been through in your life, you know, that have resonated in one way or the other, that you can actually give to people in the form of a story. Yeah, um, I have 30 or 40, I've got hundreds of stories, but I've got 30 or 40. Yeah, and this is a work in progress that I'm I'm pulling out that really resonate with people, you know, that that that I share that, you know, yeah, yeah, actually people lean forward and they're like, yeah, okay, yeah, shit. Oh, yeah. That they feel some emotion, they feel happy, they feel sad, they feel whatever it is. Yeah, because yeah, once you once you say to somebody, you know, come along with me and do this, right? Yeah, let's let's just I'll give you an example, just a simple one. I used to hate meetings. I really used to hate meetings. I would go into a meeting every day, yeah, and I'd sit there in front of my team, and from my team, you know, I would get a whole bunch of questions and I'd be firefighting all these different things, yeah, and then you know, we'd get to the end of the meeting, and everybody would run away, and I'd I'd be retrained, right? And then, two weeks later, I'd go into the meeting and have exactly the same meeting. Yeah, and in meetings, I used to dread meetings. And then along came 90, and and and and the operating system, and going through understanding how to actually set up a meeting, yeah. And now people come in, we are nice and relaxed, we have a segue, we break into it, everyone comes in, you know, we we go through any major issues, uh, we go through any headlines and things we need to, you know, we go through a couple of other stages, we we then do the to-dos, which everyone has their to-dos from last week, and that then everyone can see if people are doing what they need or not. Yeah, and then we offer to help them, so it's never a criticism, it's uh you know bringing people together. Then we dump that all down to issues, and we spend my meat of the the the meat of the meeting into the issues, yeah. And I walk out the meeting, I get an email into my mailbox that says this is what we need to do, and I never have the same meeting again. Isn't that something you'd like to do? So this is a story, right? I'm not just saying you should use my meeting system because it's great, because of this. Look at this stuff. Yeah, you you just bring a story into it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Yeah, do you find that I I'm just I'm intrigued with this, I'm stuck on this for some reason. This is just fascinating. The but do you find that I mean, do you journal or or how are you kind of r recollecting those stories or those moments that you can then bring into conversations with other people? How what is your process for that?

SPEAKER_01 38:17

I I remember a lot. I did spend quite a lot of time with ChatGPT, you know, saying, right, I want to go through and I want you to ask me questions about my journey, you know, and I want you to really dig in. You know, um, so I I went through my my first job, my very first job, you know, uh I worked on a mushroom farm in South Africa. And um, you know, from that mushroom farm, I I would at the end of the day, not magic ones, just more normal ones, from the from the end of the day, yeah, I I would finish my day at 11 o'clock. Uh and I'd first of all, a whole bunch of friends would say, bring me some mushrooms, bring me some mushrooms. You know, and so from there, I started taking a few bags of mushrooms. And then when I started that, uh I was I was earning 1,500 Rand a month for as my salary. But within, as soon as I started doing that, I saw my entrepreneurial brain kicked in, you know, and I'd say, okay, great. Yeah, and then from there, I started taking more and more and more mushrooms. And within three months, I had a company turning over 10,000 Rand.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

So I take I take experiences like that, and I say to TPT, right, now I'm helping people, I want you to act as a storyteller. Now I want you to act as someone who can really dig out the stories. Maybe you're gonna be a ghostwriter for me. And I want you to understand that uh elevate 360 is my plan, Mark is my ICP. So what things are gonna resonate with them? And now I want you to ask me questions and ask me back and forth. And we go through and we have you know uh uh strategy sessions where I dig out what I need to dig out. And then at the end of that, I've got a list of, okay, here's 15 things from that one story that resonates at various points.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Well, that's that's such a great use case uh because so many people use AI as write me this email, and it will take its collective knowledge and it will write uh halfway decent email. But when you're partnering with it as it almost your strategic partner, where it's you're allowing it to ask you questions to pull more out of you, what an excellent use case to be able to find those stories that were probably hidden deep down in your brain's memory. But ChatGPT, an AI tool, is helping you get that out.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

And there's so much power in so many things like that. Yeah, um, I will you know I'll take videos that I've taken from years ago, you know, put them onto some of the other tools, get a transcript, I'll pop it in here and say, right, yeah, here's a transcript. Yeah, I can take this podcast for for example, and I can go put the transcript into the D script, edit it out, put it in the chat to T and say, right, yeah, I want you to help me here write 150 posts for my Twitter around all these things on there. Yeah. And just yeah, make sure it speaks to my ICP or mark. You know, make sure it's impactful, make sure you're acting as an expert in Twitter. Yeah. And then boom, I've got you know literally weeks and weeks and weeks of content. Wow. Yeah. So so there's so much you can do with with AI. But you need you need to know how to talk AI. Yeah, and you need to know also, you know, it's not just Japet or Gemini or Claude or Copilot, you know, it's not just Opus or all the other tools. They they all have a very uh um you know uh very impactful purpose in in one element of the of the journey. You have to know which things to use and which uh which elements. Because you buy one that's X amount of money saying it can do everything, but really it can only do one part, right? Right. And this this is a this is a moving goalpost, right? And that's what we do in our AR communities. We're not, okay, you know, guys, what is the actual problem?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Right?

SPEAKER_01 41:45

What's the problem you're trying to fix? Yeah, now how do you fix it? Now, is ChatGPT right? Or do I need to go out and build the video, or do I need to go out and cut something out and and and just put that together? So it's it's it's digging into this whole piece of yeah, this this tool is gonna change the change everything. I said to you beforehand that I I wanted to really come back to one point on AI. And then the main point for me on AI is so many people I speak to think AI is gonna make me dumb. Okay. Yeah. And AI is just gonna we're not gonna think as much, I don't have to do anything. It it's just for me, it's entirely the opposite. AI has put me on fire. Yeah. It really has. Yeah, because now I have sitting at my fingertips the a thousand experts in any field in the world I want. I don't need to know all the things about that. Beforehand, I I did Cisco, I was a Cisco engineer, I had to learn how to do Cisco stuff. You know, so I had to go and read all the books and learn everything and get it all right.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

You know, I knew what a router was, and then I had to go and dig, dig, dig, dig. Yeah. Now I can know what a router is and say, I want you to be a Cisco engineer and I want you to help me code this, this, and this. Just by knowing that one piece. I get that out, it's out of my mouth, I don't have to type it out, you know, and then that allows me free time. When you when you get things out of your head, uh as a business owner, I have ten different things going on at the moment. I get up in the morning, I bring on Chad CPT, I say, Hey Chad, how you doing? I called him Chad. Yeah, hey Chad, how you doing? Yeah, I want you to just help me. I've got a bunch of things in my brain at the moment. I need you to just yeah, uh uh prioritize them for me. Yeah, and then I go through and I just brain dump. Yeah, no order, no anything, just as it comes into my head. Okay, you got that. Right. Now you know what my goals are, you know what my vision is. What do I need to do today, yeah, from that list? What do I need to put into a future future task list? Okay. And say, okay, I want you to ask me a few more questions if there's any clarification points you need to know. Right, okay, and we talk and we literally have a back and forth conversation. Right. Uh, you know, using the the the the the voice one. Yeah, and then I get to yeah, start my day and it's out of my head. So now I've got space. Yeah, and now I've got space to yeah, and that's just I've done six years worth of work in six months. Yeah. And I know how to work hard. I I know how to put the hours in. Yeah. And in that same six months I've been to Mexico, I've been to uh Iceland, I've been to Switzerland, yeah, um and other places in Europe. Yeah, and I've been to Seattle. Yeah. So I'm I'm living the life I live and AI is allowing me to do that. And it's turning like you know, putting my brain to be a a supercomputer. Yeah, so there's there's all all these kind of things, and and that's what I want to give to other people. Yeah, I want to help people understand that there's the way you can do it. And it's not easy. It takes time, it takes practice, it takes systems, it takes all these things. Yeah, but the the Nike system, the Nancy operating system, you guys do awesome work, right? It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, uh perfection. I think it's amazing. The the the coaches that I work with in Boss Up, yeah, they're they're awesome as well. And we're just yeah, it's gonna be such a power well, it's already such a powerful team.

unknown 44:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

And Underscotch kind of and uh I think there's just yeah, this this whole driving force behind you know, Mark's very much about this, Mark Abbott is very much about this. Yeah, business owners are awesome, we need the right tools, we yeah, but also, you know, be good to yourself, be kind to yourself, look after your staff. Yeah, so that's the kind of organization I want to be working with. And that's why when I saw when I saw you know that you had the partnership piece up and you know, then you introduced me to Scott, I was like, Yeah, that that's awesome, that's what I want. So it's been a really, really awesome kind of um uh journey and and uh yeah, uh uh it's just helped me solidify so many things in my plan. So thank you.

unknown 45:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Oh well, thank you for saying that. I I appreciate that. Man, this has been great. We have dove deep and I love it. I love I am not a superficial surface level person, so I love when we can go deep. Uh tell me this. I always like to ask guess a couple questions on the tail end. If you could go back and with all the knowledge and experience that you've gained as a business coach, pulling from all sorts of what you've learned, what advice would you give yourself as as rookie Roy just starting out in business coaching specifically?

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Talk to your customers as people. Yeah. Understand their pains, understand their challenges. Yeah. Don't walk in with solutions until you know a whole bunch more about the situation because you never know what's actually going on. Really, really dig in deep before you go out and start saying, I know how to fix your problem. Yeah, because there's nothing more disrespectful than that. When somebody walks in the door and says, I can help you fix your problem and they don't even they haven't heard you. Yeah, and you know you haven't been hurt. Yeah, so I I would say it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

My dad always said people are far more complex than our overly simplistic perception of them. And I love that. It's so true. Whether that's personally or professionally, right? We're we're a lot more complex, and so I think that speaks directly to that. And then the other thing that I always like to ask is what is a lesson that you're in the middle of learning in this current moment.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Right now, um, marketing is changing at such a pace. Yeah, and I've spent thousands of hours, uh multiples of thousands of pounds, tens of thousands of pounds, really coming to grips with how to to market to the new world of AI, to the new world of business owners, to the new world of of solutions out there. SEO is dying, a death, YouTube is having a rise. Um, you know, and there's a there's a range of these things that, you know, uh you can't do Facebook ads the same way, email campaigns are a different thing again. You know, so this whole business play is is is different. There's some amazing tools coming out, but you have to you you have to dig into learn. And I think that's a that's a a journey that that keeps on on growing, but and will always be there, I guess, from a marketing point of view. But definitely my my IT companies were bringing me three or four leads per week per company because of the top of the gill full of them. And and that just yeah, ran for a while. Right. And not obviously not all of those are brilliant, and now they're rocked down to a lot less. Yeah, so now we have to change. And for me, that's the that's a journey I'm in the middle of at the moment. How do I and I I do I do it for myself, right? So I go out, I I do it, I'm learning Facebook, I'm learning these things in in different ways. And I'm getting knowledge and yeah, I l I love the the acquisition of knowledge. If you can keep on acquiring knowledge, then you know you you never get you never get bored. So yeah, so that's that's what one of one of them right now.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

We'd uh we'd call that uh one of the what we believe one of the core competencies of being a good coach is mastery. So that pursuit of never being satisfied and always trying to acquire more knowledge and wisdom. And and I you're a testament of that. So and I love that about you specifically. So let's say um, I mean, if someone wants to get in touch with you, maybe they want to learn more about maybe some of the communities or maybe want to pick your brain on some things, what's the best place to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 49:09

In touch with me at roy at uhpower.co.uk uh on LinkedIn is a is a great chart as well. So you always reach out on LinkedIn. Don't just do a connection request, give me a message, tell me who you are. Uh-huh. Um and uh uh all thepower.co.uk is a website. So yeah, that that's that's the best place at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

We'll link all that out in in the show notes to make sure people have it really clear. Roy is a great follow on LinkedIn, a connection. Make sure to send a message. Uh but he he cranks out some really great content on all of the things we've talked about today. So uh, but thank you, Roy, for coming on. I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate you as a human, uh, and I am appreciative of our friendship. And so I am uh looking forward to continuing that into the future. But thank you for listening. Uh, we love business coaches, we love seeing successful coaches like Roy who have grown their practice and are taking things seriously about being an ambitious coach, really diving in and becoming masters of their craft. So if you're interested in learning more, please get in touch with us. We have a wealth of knowledge and resources that we can connect you with. We can also connect you with incredible coaches like Roy. So thanks for listening and have a great rest of your day. Take care. That's it for today's episode of the Ambitious Coach Lab. My hope is that something here helps you sharpen your craft and keep building a coaching practice you're proud of. Before we wrap, a quick thank you to our sponsor, Nine. If you're coaching leadership teams, having your clients run their entire world in Nighty truly elevates your work. Vision, rocks, scorecards, issues, it all lives in one centralized place. The Clarity keeps your clients aligned between sections and makes every conversation you have with them more focused and more impactful. I've used NIDE with over 500 leadership teams, and I can say it makes great companies better and great coaches even more effective. Feel free to use the promo code AC20 for 20% off. Again, at AC20 for 20% off. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I'm Stan. Carry on as you grow your ambitious coaching practice. We'll see you next time.