The Difference Between Lifestyle Coaches and Ambitious Coaches: Lessons From Over 3,000 Coaching Conversations with Tom Brinson

What separates coaches who build thriving businesses from those who simply create another job for themselves?

In this episode, Cam sits down with Tom Brinson to unpack the patterns behind thousands of conversations with coaches, consultants, and fractional executives. Drawing from his experience recruiting and supporting coaching partners at Ninety, Tom shares why ambitious coaches build businesses instead of lifestyles, the importance of having a clear vision for your practice, and how narrowing your focus creates better clients and stronger referrals. They also explore why systems matter from day one, how technology should amplify rather than complicate coaching, and why the future belongs to coaches who help clients execute, not just strategize.  

Biography

Tom Brinson is the Head of Inside Sales at Ninety, where he helps entrepreneurial leadership teams and business coaches leverage technology to improve execution and organizational alignment. With more than 15 years of experience in high-growth startups, Tom has spent the last several years working alongside thousands of coaches, consultants, and fractional executives, giving him a unique perspective on what separates good coaching practices from truly exceptional ones. He is passionate about helping ambitious coaches build scalable businesses, create lasting client impact, and lead with clarity and intention. 

Links

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-brinson/

Learn more about Ninety: https://ninety.io

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_02 0:00

Welcome to the Ambitious Coach Lab, powered by Nightmare. I'm your host, Dr. Cam Lawson. Each week we explore the real tactics, tough conversations, and breakthrough moments that drive coaching success. Let's jump into today's episode. Hello, friends. I am so excited to welcome Mr. Tom Brinson, one of my personal best friends. So this will be a fun one. But he is also the head of Inside Sales at 90, which is actually where we met originally, was at 90. We were coworkers, we were teammates, and then we have become lifelong friends now. So it's been quite the journey. But man, welcome to the show, Tom. Excited to have you. Dr. Lossov, it's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Man, let's kick it off a little bit for those that maybe don't know you as well as I do. Tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming the head of inside sales at 90.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Well, that's uh it depends on where we want to start. It could be a long journey or a short journey, but um I'll give you a little background. So uh I've been working in hyper-growth startups for about 15 years now. Um I got introduced to EOS at the first startup that I was a part of. I was one of the first non-founder employees. Um we had a book club traction came across as one of the books in our book club. We read it, we adopted a number of the principles from it. Um big one was the level 10 meeting, huge fans of that. Um we scaled that company with remarkable speed. Um it was a lot, a lot of fun. Um, had the opportunity to join a different startup uh where I came in and I said, man, this company would do a lot better if they had a little EOS in their life. Um but the in this situation I wasn't on the leadership team, so didn't have the influence to make it happen. Um, but eventually uh I found myself uh noticing a friend of mine had joined 90. So I I knew the platform, I knew the EOS world a little bit. I called her and asked for a job. Um basically in that moment in time, 90 uh just created a position for um recruiting coaches to join our channel network, our channel uh network here at 90. Um so I was you know ushered into that position. And then over the course of the last, let's call it four, four and a half years, I had the opportunity to talk to, I want to call it between coaches, consultants, advisors, fractional executives, three, four, five thousand different coaches, consultants. Um, and in turn learned a bunch from those folks. Um about a year ago, maybe nine months ago, um, 90 had some issues with their onboarding team, their inside sales team. So um, as companies often do, when you've shown success in a role, um, they said, Hey, we have this mess over here. Can you come clean it up? And I got, you know, thrust into this new position where I get to focus a lot of my coaching energy on actually coaching individuals that are on the team as an internal coach, helping to elevate the, you know, the account executives that are going out there and actually converting our deals.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Yeah, man, that's so cool. Yeah, we I remember uh a fellow uh guest on this and one of our good friends, Brandon Sander, we were so excited uh when we found out that you were moving into that role. It's like, oh, who better of an individual, you know, with all the context. And I would argue you probably had a leg up of interacting with thousands and thousands of coaches. You probably learned a lot of lessons over the time to actually be a better leader and also I would say, you know, internal coach to the team, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I would wholeheartedly agree. I mean, that was the fun part about this job, you know, when I first joined uh several years ago, was I got to talk to these very sophisticated, very educated, um, very ambitious and driven folks that are business coaches or EOS implementers, whatever you want to call them. Um, and just every conversation, I would learn something. After maybe two years of doing it, three years of doing it, you get a little bit jaded and start to hear the same things over and over again. You're like, well, this isn't so novel anymore. But uh um, especially the first couple of years, it was like just aha moment after aha moment talking to these really powerful coaches.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Oh, 100%. And that's actually where we cross paths because and it's it's kind of full circle to help guess understand why I had Tom on this. So Tom was really influential in really the ambitious coach concept. You know, we were basically tasked with the job to go out and find, you know, referring partners to build the channel for 90. And so that's really where this podcast kind of came from was hey, let's get a top-of-funnel initiative to go out and talk to based on the conversations that we all had and all the learnings that we took over the years of, you know, dialoguing with finding out, you know, what the best ones do and what separates them. That's really what this came down to. So, I mean, let's transition into that a little bit. I mean, um, so one of the primary competencies that we talk about a lot here is vision, right? Coaches have to have an understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. You know, they get into coaching for a reason. And if you don't have a clear why behind that, it's not probably going to be meaningful and impactful to you. So, I mean, can you talk as you've had lots of conversations with, we called it the coach. I mean, it stretches two consultants, fractional executives, you know, all of the above. But as you've talked to those, I mean, what kind of separates the ones that are good to great, if you will, or good to ambitious, you know, if we want to take it into the title, but what kind of separates them when it comes to having a clear vision for their practice and why they do what they do?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, on the vision front, I definitely find a clear distinction between the two camps. So there's a lot of coaches that sort of fell into this and they created a great job for themselves with some decent branding a lot of times. But when we think about the ambitious coaches and the vision that they live with, I often, you know, hear from those coaches that, you know, they have a clear vision for their practice that extends beyond just client outcomes. Um, one of the things that I think is most important with those ambitious coaches is they know exactly who they serve, but more importantly, they know exactly who they don't serve. And so by being selective about which clients they take and who they want to work with. I mean, granted, you have to build a practice to start turning clients away, or else you might not eat this week. Um, but once you have that practice built out, turning clients away is probably one of the most powerful things that aligns to their vision. Because if I'm a, you know, a coach that likes to serve, you know, law firms and I start taking medical practices as clients, I'm not going to be able to do the same work for them. And I'm creating a system that's not scalable. So being able to see the future state that I'm building into, dare I say, eating your own cooking and having your VTO mapped out or your strategic vision execution plan, your one-page strategic plan, whatever you want to call that two pages of the stuff that you do as a coach, it's just as important that you do it as it is that your clients do.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yeah, man, that's so good. Cause I, I, you know, even as I ventured out into the, you know, fractional world, right? And, you know, I'm what, almost 12 months in at this point. One of the things that I found is you do feel that pressure where it's like, okay, hey, I've taken this leap and I I gotta pay the bills. You know, and so you go out and it's like, you know, if anybody smells green, you're like, you're like, all right, let me go after this. And so, and one of the things that I found is I had kind of set for myself, okay, I'm gonna go after kind of in the EOS ecosystem and stay in that. And there was one gig that I had taken that was a little bit outside of that, and I felt that so hard. It was, I mean, you and I dialogued on this quite a bit, but the um I just felt that inner tension of, and I think they felt it too. It was like just very clear, not alignment. And it's not that we were bad people, it was just very clear I was outside of my niche where I was comfortable, and so made the decision to kind of move on from that. And then literally immediately after that, it was like everything fell into place. And I found as I stayed niche and really narrowed that down as uncomfortable as that felt, because that did involve me saying no to a couple of other things. But what it did is it opened it up to where now it's like the personal brand falls into place under that, and people start to know you as, for your example, the person that's focusing in on law firms, you start to get known as that, and it almost becomes easier to close deals versus trying to like be a jack of all trades or just a you know, generalist that can kind of help anybody. And it's not to say in certain niches, like EOS implementers, you know, they have parameters around, you know, size of company and whatnot. But I think you're absolutely right. You've really got to get narrow kind of in that.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

I was gonna say to double click there, I think some of the coaches that I admire the most, and some of the folks that you had on your show too, like um like Cullen Talley or Chris Snyder or others, like they actually built an agency and a practice versus like just purely selling their time for money. They've also been able to productize offers. So like they have a template for the offer that they're gonna make and they're gonna sell. Um, they're able to use teams for leverage. So, like Chris is not best in class marketing person, but he has somebody on his team that can come in and do marketing support or HR consulting or whatever. He has these different players that can sub in. And then what that actually means is it actually gets you into this like a standard operating rhythm. You're able to give a consistent client experience. And dare I say you're able to take two or three weeks off in a row and nothing catches on fire.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah, that's so true. I feel that tension now where it's um, you know, you build it off of your back and it's like it is a little hard to take vacation sometimes, you know. And so, but yeah, you're right. I think there is a lot of value to that, that they're actually, I would argue they're true entrepreneurs who can't help but scale beyond themselves, right? And so, you know, Chris and Cullen are just great examples of that, you know, like I don't think they could help but do that. And so that's really interesting. I mean, what would you say in in your experience of talking to lots of people, what are maybe some of the the common mistakes that coaches make as they're like, maybe let's let's take as an example someone who just graduated boot camp from from EOS, right? And EOS Implementer brand spanking new. They're out there, they're you know, grinding it out, they got to find their first five clients. What are some of the mistakes that you see are common for for say a newer coach like that?

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Yeah, I think we touched on it really briefly, but chasing every client. I mean, yeah, you're really, in my opinion, you're not qualifying clients, you're disqualifying them as a coach. So there's some factors that I'll use for those qualifications, like, you know, do they have aspirations of greatness? Yes or no? If no, stop chasing. Are are they willing to take guidance if I give it? So you give them a free session or whatever and say, hey, read this book. Did they actually read the book? If no, wash them out of your pipeline because those are people aren't gonna take action. So you got to get people out of your pipeline. So chasing every client's one. I think a lot of coaches confuse revenue with progress. So they think, oh, well, I'm making money. That's a good thing, which it is, and I'm not gonna knock them for making money, but progress is so much more holistic, where it's like, am I getting better at facilitation? Am I getting better at business development? Am I getting better at all these things? Just because you landed five clients doesn't mean that you've made it super far. It just means that you did a bunch of hard work. And as an extension of that, I would say a lot of coaches, in my experience, they wait way too long to start to systematize their approach. So, like, yeah, initially for the first client, second client, third client, whatever, or if you bought a franchise in one of these big coaching programs, you have some of it already pre-built and system systemized for you. Um, but like business development's a great example. Like, if you systematize your business development and you're very consistent about it, yeah, you might not harvest any fruit this month or next month, but you just keep doing it over and over again, have an hour blocked off that you're gonna do your, you know, your outreach to this group or you have an hour blocked off on Thursdays that you do your outreach to this group and having a system behind it. Um, and then I think a lot of them are building around kind of today's capacity instead of like looking at tomorrow's vision and building what expands my capacity. So, like I think that those would be kind of the four points I would make is don't chase every client, don't confuse revenue with progress, um, systematize early and then build around tomorrow's vision. Don't just build because you're a one-man band and I can only do so much. Um, someday you don't want to be a one-man band anymore, or maybe you do, and then you just created a great job.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah, right. And I mean, I think that goes all ties back to ultimately the vision that they have for their practice, right? Like, okay, hey, in three years, I want to have three other consultants or coaches underneath me, or hey, I want to be at this revenue threshold, or hey, I want to be at this client number of sessions per year. I want that to go down or whatever. You know, like I think, but it all ties back to, hey, am I practicing what I'm preaching as, hey, if I work with a client, I'm having them think about where they want to be in one, three, 10 years or whatever. Let me do that exact same thing for my practice.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Well, and this is even to the name of the podcast. Like, there's lifestyle coaches and there's ambitious coaches. If you're a lifestyle coach, you get your 10 clients, cash your checks, phone it in from you know your corporate retirement until you're ready to formally retire. That's okay. Like those people aren't wrong for doing it. But if you're an ambitious coach, you're not gonna be satisfied. You're always gonna want more, more clients, more revenue. And part of that is kind of following some of those steps we talked about.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yeah, 100%. Um, I love that. That's great. The and I think one of the things that's characteristic about the ambitious coach is they are forward thinking, right? Where they're thinking about what's next, what is, and you know, the talk of the town right now is, you know, AI and how that fits into all of the, you know, aspects of of really life in general. But, you know, as a coach, like, I mean, you can tap into all sorts of things. But I mean, if you look in your crystal ball at like what the future of of coaching looks like, what would you say, like, what is the profession going to look like in five years?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Well, you you said a term I'm not familiar with. What's what is AI? Haven't heard about it. You live under a rock. I haven't heard about it. Um, but yeah, great question. I think if I'm thinking about the future of the coaching world, I think it's a change from the current order of things where you know a lot of coaches, consultants, fractional executives, you know, they're selling advice right now, right? And in the future, I think it's gonna be more about orchestrating execution. So um AI, in my opinion, is going to make information nearly free. So, like almost anywhere you want any information, you'll have access to it. And so just having a framework won't differentiate coaches anymore. So, because I have an EOS logo on my shirt or a pinnacle logo on my shirt or whatever, that's not gonna be enough for differentiation. But the accountability, the judgment, and the implementation start to become a premium in this new AI world. And then the coaches are really becoming those execution architects. So now it's their job to put the pieces in the right places on the board through the conduit of the CEO, but give them the execution playbooks, not necessarily the pre-built ones, but the ones that are, you know, um uh specific and to that individual business. Um, and then I think technology starts to handle all the administration administrative loads. So coaches spend more time creating behavior change in their clients, more FaceTime with their clients. Um, I don't know that, you know, in the future state that the five sessions per year is gonna be enough because that human element, that human bonding, the camaraderie that comes out of it, you know, that's where you're gonna want to spend the bulk of your time as a coach in the future because you won't have much administration overhead. You won't have a lot of these hurdles that they're dealing with right now because AI will just take them off your plate. So then what's the best use of your time is going meaningfully impacting the clients' lives, um, helping them execute against their own visions.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah. Man, that's so good because it's it's so true. I mean, there's so many things where even when I go in and ask, you know, Chad or Claude or whatever, a specific question about a framework-based thing, whether that be Storybrand or EOS or whatever, it already has, because of the information online, it's already pulling it. Honestly, most of it's like, wow, that's actually very accurate. How to think about that. You know, I've been in the US ecosystem for a long time. It's like, you know, I understand it really well. And so, and it's like, that's spot on. And so I think you're absolutely right. And I would argue that I think that's why you're seeing the fractional space growing at the pace that it is right now. Because people are looking for that execution layer. We have all the strategy and all the like framework thinking that is, and it's not to say that if you're doing that, that you're not in the right space. But I think that's one of the things why the fractional world is exploding right now. Because, well, hey, why would I hire a consultant to come in and kind of tell me what we need to do when we've got that? I would rather have somebody in the business that is working with my sales team or marketing team or whatever it is to actually drive execution. So I think there is a little bit of tension, which is healthy for those two entities. And so that's really uh an insightful way to look at that. So one of the things that I think is is another competency that we talk about a lot is is practice management. So, you know, you get clear on your vision, right? You package an offering together, and then you get good at business development. You can go out and sell that. Then just like any business that goes out and sells something, what do they have to do? They have to operationalize it and actually get it done. And so that's really where practice management comes in is that, hey, this is the, you know, now you have 10, 12, 15 clients. Man, you got to run your practice now from a facilitation aspect to driving, you know, data to the actual financial side. So, like, talk. I mean, you've had a front row seat to thousands of coaches. I mean, what are some of the operational habits that maybe consistently show up among some of the most successful coaches in your brain?

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yep. So, great question. And in talking to, I don't even know how many coaches, I find that one selfishly, and maybe this is my own confirmation bias, the ones that actually run their practice on 90, um, they get in, they build out their own VTO, they run their practice on EOS powered by 90. Um, that is a huge lift for them, but it also gives them clarity of vision, which we already talked about, the power of the vision. Um, but I think common habits of like those elite firms, I would call out like everything has a rhythm. So, kind of like with business development. Tuesdays I follow up with my prospects, Thursdays I follow up with my clients. What everything has a rhythm and it's just marching to a beat. Um, the client experience is intentionally designed. So, like when we talk about the big coaching firms like EOS, they have a designed service delivery mechanism. They give you training on how to do that service delivery. If you're an independent or unaffiliated coach, you have to be really intentional when you're building something that it's potentially a competing product with something that's a brand standard. I find that some of those great coaches for their practice, they are so disciplined about metrics to drive decisions. Like it's not just vibes. Typically, your business coach, the ones that I see that are successful, they're uh um, you know, they're pretty high visionaries, quick starts, they're able to go do business development. Yep. Um, that doesn't always lend to being like metric or data driven. And so the folks that have that duality of like, hey, I'm a rainmaker, high-powered closer, but I also make decisions based upon what the data tells me. That's like a huge unlock. Um, and then eating your own cooking. So I'm gonna improve my business the same way that I improve my client's business. I mean, that's a huge part of it. That run my practice on 90 or EOS powered by 90. I'm gonna do these things that I teach them to do, and then I'm gonna see the outcomes that I'm teaching them to go find. Um, all of a sudden it just snaps into place.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

I mean, I can speak to that as a fractional executive and and practice, you know, where I have a practice that I manage in 90. I mean, Brandon and I have a periodic meeting where we get together and just hold each other accountable. And so it does, it gives you a level of accountability and almost visibility into the data of what you're going in and and focusing in on. And so, I mean, let's take it a step further. Like, let's double-click into that. So, how do the best coaches utilize technology both for themselves and for their clients? Like, what does that look like? Because I mean, I think a lot of coaches are probably like, okay, yeah, I mean, I get like we got to have some kind of technology stack, but what does that look like in practicality?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Well, I'm not gonna get into the specifics of the stack outside of always choose 90 as your preferred software for business operating systems. But beyond that, as far as like the actual use of technology and systems, like I think that a lot of the best coaches or great coaches, they don't use software just to document the work, they use it to improve the work. So it's like an accelerant that they're applying to the work they're already doing. It also, you know, unlocks this visibility component that creates accountability. Um, it lets them coach patterns instead of anecdotes. So by having all the stuff in a centralized repository or having whether it's you know 90, a BI tool, a CRM or whatever, now all of a sudden the coach could take a look at what's under the hood and they can start to see patterns that are emerging and those fresh eyes from somebody who's you know, uh whatever the coach's background was, but you know, high-powered executive probably, um, they see things that you can't see as a business owner because you live in it. You know, you're in that business every single day. So if you can just surface your BI tool, your coach is gonna be like, well, this doesn't make total sense. Um double click on it, look into it, understand it better. So I think coaching from evidence instead of just like coaching from anecdotes and memory, like that's all part of the systems and the technology that you layer into the business as you support.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Yeah, that's uh one of the things that we always talk to when it comes to to coaches. So I think a lot can really get into a almost an unintentional frustrating spot when it's all right, well, hey, I'm gonna play the the neutral party that's like, hey, there's lots of great tools out there. And then pretty soon before you know it, you gotta have 20 different things that you remember. It's like, okay, yeah, I'm going to the session and they're in Google Sheets. Okay, this one is in 90. This one, you know what? And I think that really starts to almost fragment your brain to where it's like, okay, you you kind of like know how to stumble around in a couple of them, but then it's it's there's no consistency in rhyme and reason. And we just talked about that. The best coaches are in that rhythmical cycle where it's just okay, hey, I know I'm going into session. That's one of the things that I respect about it's we've come up many times on this show, but Colin Talley was my coach at the first ever organization that I met USA. I just got lucky. And so, but you know, it really he had such a systematic way that he onboards clients. It's like, okay, boom, we didn't have a choice about what tool we were going in. But honestly, as the client, that actually was super helpful because we knew exactly if we were getting into an engagement with him, this is what this is the path. This is exactly what this is how they do things. And to me, as a client, that actually made it easier because I think you're almost doing them a disservice if it's like, okay, well, here's the five different options you can choose from nowadays. I don't have I'm a I'm a busy executive. I don't have time to think about that. And so that I love that you dove into that because I think that is such a differentiating mark from the truly ambitious elite coaches versus the ones that think they're actually doing the right thing. And sure, like, I mean, I get it. The heart probably is in the right place behind it. But at the end of the day, how are you making it easier for the client?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Yep. I think you hit it right on the nail right on the head. The client wants you to be more prescriptive. Like when it comes to picking a CRM, I have strong preferences. I've been dealing with CRMs forever. So like I'm gonna tell them, I like HubSpot. There are many options out there. You can go shop if you want, but the client's often not equipped to go out and do that shopping because they don't really understand what they're comparing between, like, if we if we were picking on 90 and some of our competitors, the client typically doesn't understand that they're comparing what what's in there, what's going on, like with your CRM. Like clients oftentimes don't understand like what is this feature set on lock for me because they haven't gotten to that level of sophistication yet to use the added stuff. Um, and that could be true across, you know, HRIS tools or whatever else. I think making a recommendation to a product like shouldn't scare the coach, even though it often does, because they think, no, well, now I'm associated with this associate this product that I recommended. And if they pick HubSpot and HubSpot breaks, they're gonna blame me for it. I I don't find that to be totally true. If HubSpot breaks, I'm not gonna call you know my business coach and say, hey, what the heck happened? HubSpot, AWS went down and HubSpot went down. This is your fault. How could you do this to me? Like that that's not how people view that, but like giving them a bunch of options to go explore. One, you just bogged down their bandwidth, stole a bunch of time from them. Two, they're not informed to make the right decision, anyways. So like you're better off just picking at that point and then helping them grow into the tool that they purchased rather than saying, go shop these tools you don't understand and pick one and hopefully it works out. Good luck.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Yeah, I mean, it creates an unintentional bottleneck or inefficiency, you know, that really then I think the coach, but if you can start to expedite it and you, you know, pick and choose which, you know, tool you want to use, and we go in and we understand that, and that becomes part of my process, then your client onboarding becomes simpler. Your simplicity of finding through specific, you know, lanes of data and being able to just check in on clients becomes a whole lot more expedited because it's just boom, boom, boom. I mean, in 90, typically you get access in, you get free access into each one of the accounts. So then all I've got to do is go up in the top left corner and just boom, company ABC, company D E F. You know, like all it's just it makes it really easy. I can quickly go in. Oh my gosh, the last few meetings have been rated four out of tens. Man, Jerry, how's it going? What's going on? Like, you guys are right, like, oh my God, we need to talk about and it makes you a better coach. Yeah, and you're not having to jump around from you know, tool to tool to tool. So, I mean, if you were advising a coach on how to build a scalable, sustainable practice over the next, say, three years, I mean, what systems and processes, rhythms, disciplines, we've talked a lot about that, but what would you say to advise a coach if they're wanting to kind of build that scalable practice over the next couple of years?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Well, I think we talked about some of it already, you know, being clearly defined on your vision. So where are we trying to go? Because success is gonna be very vastly defined vastly differently for different coaches. Like my success might be 10 clients. I work just hard enough to make enough money that I'm really happy and content. Or it might be that I'm a true ambitious coach. I'm not gonna be happy until I have 25, 30 clients. I'm running hard, making big piles of money and driving huge outcomes for my clients on the other side of it. Um, because I think most of the coaches that I know, the ambitious coaches, the money is like a product, a byproduct of the value they create. They're not worried about, they're not chasing money anymore because most of them have enough at this point that the money problem's been solved. Yep. Um, but as far as like a scalable practice, I think getting away from that idea of like the company of one, like you can't build a scalable practice as a company of one. And what that means in the early stages is maybe, you know, bringing on uh an executive assistant and you know, you can find somebody really affordable overseas and you can use AI tooling to get a bunch of stuff that outside of just having an assistant, you can have AI tools, do some of the parts and pieces. But like even if you sit down as a part of your VTO build out and maybe you build a draft of an accountability chart that you want to see in three or five years. So, like again, still vision exercises, but put yourself in all nine of those seats that you sit in, because you're head of sales, head of marketing, you know, you're head of operations, you're head of service delivery, you're head of all of these departments as that company of one, eventually it breaks. So, like if you really want to get to that next place, you you have to understand that you're you're the bottleneck. You know, as a company, what you are the only bottleneck, and you're probably not documenting anything because it all lives in my head. I'm the one guy, so I know everything. Um, they try and customize too much. Like, that's one of the things I love about EOS is it's like here's the box. There's not a whole lot of customization, but with independent coaches, I've found that every single one of them that I talk, not every single one, most of them that I talked to would come to me and say something to the to the ilk of I came up with this incredible new thing. It's super novel, you're gonna love it. And then they start presenting me on their new framework that they built. And I go, Well, this sounds a lot like this other framework, or this sounds a lot like this other framework, or did you just take these two frameworks and smush them together or whatever? But they're always trying to do custom because they're gonna invent a better mousetrap. Um, I do think that a lot of those coaches say yes too often. Like the most successful people that I know, especially the most successful coaches, I mean, they say no a lot. Um, they're really intentional about saying no. Uh, and then finally, this is like just a really nitpicky, easy one is like they spend a ton of time doing admin work. Like, that's not your highest and best use of time. Like, get that off your plate. And that kind of brings us back to the hiring an executive assistant is probably the first onboarding that you do as an independent coach. Um, because you you're billing a thousand dollars a day, $250 an hour, whatever it is, it's $5,000 to $8,000 a day, $1,000 an hour, and you're sitting there at your computer doing data entry at $25 an hour work, but you're invoicing at $1,000 an hour. So stop doing that entirely and focus your energy on go getting another client.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Yeah. I mean, I I just uh had a good conversation with Jim Coyle and he said CJ Dubay had told him, you know, what's the closest to the dollar work that you can do? Okay, a session. All right. What's the next closest thing? Well, doing a 90-minute meeting, you know, all these things like just stay closest to the dollar. And the further away you get, if you are getting in and doing CRM management, I'm I'm going through that right now. I mean, just vulnerably and transparently, like that's something that I'm experiencing is just, oh my gosh, like I'm, you know, you you get yourself involved in things, and I'm at my best when I'm able to get in conversations with people and keep things moving. And then when I got to go do the execution side of things about, okay, I need to go document that conversation in a CRM. Like, it's just, I'm just not great at that. And so, and it's not necessarily the best use of my time. You know, I would much rather fill my day with doing the work that I'm paid to do versus, and there are people that absolutely love doing that kind of stuff. It's the delegate and elevate thing. It's amazing to me when you start to actually live that out and do that. It's like, wait, you enjoy doing that? No way. So, but they find enjoyment and fulfillment in organizing things, and it's like, wow, I hate that. You love that, it's perfect. And so there are people out there that you can get that. And so that's a that's such a great word. So let's I want to take one one thing to give you an opportunity to kind of talk. So let's say somebody is is a business coach, they're they're working with leadership teams, they're thinking about kind of finding an operational platform. Why 90? What what makes you guys different?

SPEAKER_00 31:59

What makes us different? Well, we're the best. I mean, that's the easy answer. Um you probably want me to say more than just we're the best. If you want to. Well, we're the best. And you can call it the end, end of the show. Thanks for having me. 90's the best. No. Um you know, with 90 in particular, what I what I love about us is like I'm not going to compare features, like, that's not really what I'm worried about. But what I love about us is how heavily we index on trust. And so like when I think about 90, I think of the platform for EOS that people know, love, and trust. And so when I say trust, trust is absolutely measurable. And it's something that's built based upon like connection and competency and you know, the frequency with which we're connecting and all that, but additionally following through on the things that you say you're going to do and then doing them, um, taking good care of your stakeholders, whether it's, you know, partner, whether it's a client, whether it's an employee. 90 does that consistently. Um, and on the technical trust side, you know, we have security protocols and SOC2 level two, you know, we're working through additional stuff like GDPR for our European markets and like all these things that we treat your data as if it's yours, which is very different than most technology platforms. So if you decide tomorrow that you want to break up with 90, we'll export everything, package it in a nice Excel spreadsheet for you. We'll scrape it from our platform if you want and get it gone. Um, we're very restrictive about training our AI models too. So, like we don't just let our AI model play in Cam's account when it's working with me. It can't learn from Cam to go teach me things. Right. Um, but we've indexed really heavily on trust. And I think it shows in a bunch of different ways, like how we handle your data, how we handle our customers, how we handle our partners. Um, and so I I would say trust is the big, big differentiation.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Yeah, that makes total sense. And then on the flip side, what makes uh a good partner for you all as a coach, consultant, whatever it is? I mean, what what separates the the ones that maybe are, you know, not the right fit, culture, whatever, uh values, whatever, whatever it could be from the ones that absolutely thrive when they work with 90?

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Well, I'll share a story. So, one, we when we were peers working in the same seat, recruiting coaches, you, myself, and Brandon all had conversations around um basically like this idea of pushing versus pulling, right? And so Brandon liked to push things through the pipeline. He liked to create as many deals as possible. He liked to go aggressively, try and move them through deal stages, advance them forward, get them on the other side of it. And then a bunch of them never produce any referrals. My approach was different in that I I like to pull people. So, like I like to be big and uh, you know, a little braggadocious at times, um, attract people towards me, and then basically arm them with next steps and say, go complete your next step, let me know after you have. And so, really, what it was is those self-starters that were self-motivated, that were driven, that saw the alignment to the work that they were already doing. Rather than just trying to fit every square peg in the round hole, I would just go around and talk to every peg out there and the ones that were like, hey, you have a round hole. Oh, I'm a round peg. Let's let's talk more. And then I'd give them a homework assignment. If they could complete their homework, then we'd have a further conversation that would advance them. They'd get another homework assignment. But then over the course of, you know, two weeks, three weeks or whatever, they'd be pretty well ramped up and ready to go perform. And it was so much more about their mentality than it was about anything that like I could find on LinkedIn or Zoom info. I couldn't data scrape. Like, are these self-started, self-motivated? Are they in love with business operating systems? Those are tangibles. So you just had to go pollinate as many people as you could. And every once in a while someone would come through the pipeline that was like the perfect fit.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

Yeah. I mean, that that that I feel like is very applicable even to coaches with their clients. I mean, there's ones where it's just, you know, you can tell when you just, it's like if you have to drag them in, you can't drag them out, you know, like it's just that. Uh, and so that that really makes sense, though. I mean, I think there is different levels of approaches, but I felt that tension. I kind of adhered to that philosophy when I was going through work. And granted, I was in a little bit easier of a segment with the EOS. There was a lot of culture or like product alignment, you know, fit. Yep. Um, but the, you know, there is a lot of truth to that where, okay, let's find the people that are are ambitious. I think that's where this show came from and the concept. It was just like the ambitious ones are just are able to take the puzzle pieces and see how they all fit together to like, okay, hey, this is gonna help me grow my practice. And I understand the benefits of having a singular technology platform where I'm able to go in and start to build out processes that make it easy for my clients to go through this that I can replicate and have the same exact client experience across every single one of them. So I can get predictable on that. I think that's a big differentiating factor with at least the ones that I had was able to have the privilege of interacting with versus the ones that kind of were just a little bit more, oh yeah, like I'm just gonna like willy-nilly go with every, you know, wherever my client wants to go. I there you could, there was a clear difference on those for sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Well, and I'll give you an example. So a story that was told to me by another guest on your show, um, a guy named Jonathan Smith, JBS. Uh, he said that when he gets a 90-minute meeting with a client, he walks in and he says, Well, I only have one slot available, so convince me why I should be your implementer. Versus, please, can I be your implementer? It's such a different dynamic where now he's moved the seats around and that he's sitting in the buyer's seat saying, I don't have room for anybody else. If you want this, tell me why. And now the client's mentality shifts because it's like, well, I don't want somebody else. I want you because you're the guy who's too busy for me. Um, and that scarcity kind of spurs them to pull themselves through the pipeline versus like, oh yeah, I've got tons of slots, I'm always available. Nobody's excited by that. But the message of I don't have room for you, I'd make an exception if you can convince me.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Yeah, that's uh that is such a JBS thing. And also he talked about a little bit of that because there's a level of cash confidence you have to have in order to have that conversation, which is fair. Like if you're brand new, you probably don't have the cash confidence to do that. However, I think the sooner you can get to that point, I like 100% agree because it is, it's a shift because it's every bit of client interviewing coach as it is coach interviewing client to make sure that they are the right fit. Because in certain situations, I understand my radiating positivity brand may not be the right fit for somebody. And I want to make sure that I don't ever get in that situation, you know? And I think that's something that it's very much a two-way street. So I love that that you know, challenge because it is. I think I've seen too many coaches get down the wrong path where they do, and it is it's a it comes across as desperation, and they may think they are hiding it or you know putting it under something, but it's clients can usually smell right through when they are looking for a sale immediately, and that is the biggest turnoff that you can get.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

I have another story. This coach will remain unnamed, but I talk to them fairly free fairly frequently, probably once a month or so. And every time I talk to them, they're like, Hey, do you know so can you introduce me? Can you, can you, can you, can you, and like I just the commission breath. Like I I I mean, I get what they're trying to do, and I have no problem with it. And I've made a number of good intros for this person, but like ultimately I'm like, at some point, like you can't keep asking me for another one. Like, and it's it's just the way of the world.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

So there's somebody I was talking to somebody um uh about uh just a mutual person that we knew, and we were talking about there's a level of magnetism that is required, right? If you have that magnetism and people are drawn to you, what that does is that creates more of that, and your orbit like becomes even bigger. And those are the kinds of people that I think are that next tier up, right? That eleven, but versus the ones that it's like it's almost retracting and it's like things are going away from them and they're having to like grasp and pull in. You can tell, usually, those are people that you don't really enjoy being around because it's like they're always trying to grasp at things, they're falling away from them, and that mentality is like slipped into the truly their philosophy. And so the more you can be magnetic and people are coming into your orbit, I think that is is truly the mark of not when you've arrived as a business coach because we're always focusing on mastery of being better, but there's something about those magnetic coaches that it's just they can't help but go in and things just come in their way. And I think it truly is a mentality uh shift, if you will. So I would agree. Well, Tom, dude, this has been incredible. Thank you for coming on and and sharing your wisdom across. You're probably one of the few people who have had conversations with thousands and thousands of coaches um over the years. But let's I always like to ask guests a couple questions kind of on the tail end here. Okay. If you could go back to rookie Tom with all the knowledge and experience that you have, what advice would you give yourself?

SPEAKER_00 41:34

That's a great question. Um let me think about rookie Tom. He's kind of wild. Um aren't we all? I think if I could sit down with that version of myself, and I'm thinking five years ago, just for context here, I might say something to the to the uh uh to the theme of you know, stop trying to prove you're valuable. Um I'd probably say something about spend more time listening and I might even give myself a little elbow in the in the rib and say, and shut up a little bit. Um I think I would probably encourage myself to build systems earlier. And I don't mean like just professional systems, but systems in my life, you know, like my wife, my kids, like back then we only had one, now we have three. So like we couldn't survive today without systems, but then we could, and so we did a lot of things ad hoc, and I think we didn't make it as far as we wanted, as fast as we wanted, because we weren't systems oriented. I've found that relationships compound a lot faster than transactions. So previous sales leadership roles that I've been in, um, very transactional in their nature, didn't forge long-lasting, meaningful relationships at some of those organizations at others I did, especially as I progressed through my career. But like relationships compound way faster than transactions. And and the reason I hit it twice is that like I'm really intentional now, and I wasn't back then, that like I try and leave most human interactions with the other person. I don't want to say they owe me, but like I like to buy the drinks, or I like to pick up lunch, or I like to do the thing that means that like I did a good thing. I I hopefully will spur reciprocity one day. I've just been stacking these relationships all over the all over the world now. And so then whenever I do have that moment where I'm like, hey, I need help, I have all those relationships where they remember that I took care of them the last time, and then I say, Hey, I need help, can you help me? They're gonna raise their hand and do it.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

I mean, I can you're you're a testament to that. I there's a story that I can think of. Um, it was in uh San Diego, and it was uh the EOS conference when it was in San Diego, I think it was 2024, and I had ended up losing my wallet. And I, you know, number one, we made a whole joke about it, and we got a lot of free drinks and a lot of free desserts at a lot of restaurants based on your idea of telling it, hey, it's Cam's birthday. I could never prove it because I didn't. My wallet. And uh, but one of the other things I had promised my son that I would get him a stuffed animal at the San Diego Zoo. And the only day that I could go was the first day, and I didn't have my wallet. And so, and you were like, without even thinking about it, dude, whatever you need. I think you gave me like a hundred dollars cash. Yeah. And it was insane. And but I never forgot that, dude. And so you are a living testament. And I don't, I think obviously I think I paid you back if I didn't send me a demo. But like, um, but the, you know, that meant a lot to me. Just you didn't even think about it. And um, that allowed me to make sure I fulfilled my promise to my son. And um, but also just meant a lot to me. So you are you live that out and and don't expect anything in return. Uh, so I I appreciate you as a friend, uh, first and foremost. But yes, appreciate you as a friend.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

I'm glad you got the stuffy and everything. You got the wallet back too. Delta. I did.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

It was like all in all, it was a great thing. It was buy one, get one free on the stuffed animals. So I had to ship my clothes back so I could fit my stuffed animal in the suitcase. But uh, you know, all in all it worked out. So just got my jeans and underwear back like two weeks later. So uh, but you know, you live and learn. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I mean, the second question that, you know, you kind of alluded to it already, but what is a lesson that you're in the middle of learning kind of in this current moment?

SPEAKER_00 45:21

Yeah, I think, and I gave this a lot of thought because I knew coming into the podcast and having heard heard you do this before. And I think it's taking a moment to pause and look back, I guess is it's kind of where this is coming from. Is like I'm realizing right now that the higher you go and the higher you climb in your career, the less your job is about having the right answers all the time. Cause I I like having the right answers. It's like one of those things that I know things and I like having right answers. And as I've advanced in my career, it's more about building the environment where great decisions can happen versus having the right answers was going to get me from being a sales rep to a sales manager once upon a time, you know, whatever, or it got me from one job to the next job because I knew the right thing to do. But like now, you know, I spend a hundred percent of my time leading. I spend zero percent of my time actually out there doing any production. And so like I had to create an environment and make people comfortable, make people safe where they could make great decisions in a perfect state. I think we're probably six months out, but like I would like to, and I I've seen it happen with some of the short stuff where I've been away, but where my team can solve their own issues, you know, because I still solve 60, 75% of their issues for them, which is natural. But like I'd like to keep growing these humans to where the environment is such that maybe a peer can solve a peer's issue, or maybe they can self-solve an issue, but like getting those people to a place, getting my team to a place where um they have such a good environment that they know the right thing to do, they know the next thing to do, they know who to lean on, even beyond me. Um, that's that's the lesson I I'm learning. Is like it's not about having the right answers, it's about building the right environment, the right culture, um, all those things.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Yeah, it's that's really good. Uh I appreciate you sharing. And and I can see that in you, you know, as as your friend of the intentionality behind that. So uh, but I appreciate you sharing that on the air. Uh so of course. Man, dude, this has been awesome. Thank you for taking the time. Let's say, I mean, somebody, let's say somebody wants to get in touch with you. I mean, what's the best place to to reach out and talk to the old Tom Brinson?

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Yeah, so the easiest is email tom at 90.io. Um, that's my direct email address. Um, beyond that, I'm available on LinkedIn. Um, you can track me down. My phone number is listed on Google. If you want to give me a call, just Google Tom Brinson.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

So you can see.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Google knows all. Yep. Well, man, thank you. And I I appreciate you sharing all your wisdom. And we'll have to do this again sometime. It's been fun. Thank you for being a supporter, you know, of this kind of from the start. You were involved from the start, man. It's been fun to see it come to life.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

So I am always, always so grateful to be a part of this journey with you and see you grow and see your career trajectory. And uh, it's been a real honor getting to know you. So thanks for having me on and I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Man, thank you for saying that, and thank you for watching. We got lots more where this came from. Stay tuned. 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, 90. If you're coaching leadership teams, having your clients run their entire world in 90 truly elevates your work. Vision, rock, scorecards, issues, it all lives in one centralized place. The clarity keeps your clients aligned between sessions and makes every conversation you have with them more focused and more impactful. I've used 90 with over 500 leadership teams, and I can tell you it makes great companies better and great coaches even more effective. Feel free to use promo code AC20 for 20% off. Again, that's AC20 for 20% off. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I'm Cam. Cheering you on as you grow your ambitious coaching practice. See you next time.