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Get In Touch With Haydn Griffiths
Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m Morris from creategrowprofit.com, and today I’m speaking to Haydn Griffiths, who is on a mission to become the number one mindset coach in the world. Hayden, thank you so much for tuning in today. Where are you calling in from?
Haydn: My pleasure, mate. Thank you very much for having me. I’m calling in from the United Kingdom, a little island on the southeast coast called the Isle of Sheppey.
Morris: The Isle of Sheppey? That’s a funny name. And before we hit record, you told me you’re originally from Australia, and that is quite a long trip from Australia to the UK.
Haydn: Yeah, Australian-born and bred. You can still hear it in my accent. If anyone misunderstands me, I apologize. We Australians have a lazy tongue and tend to slur our words, probably due to our convict history, being a bunch of criminals.
I’m on the other side of the world, married with two children, and planning for more. I’ve set up a career where I can travel the world, and right now we’re in the UK.
Morris: Talking about a career where you can travel the world, you’re a mindset coach on a mission to become the best. Tell me, who do you work with?
Haydn: Currently, I work with business owners I love business owners. They want to be independent. They want to do it their way. They have a Vision. They’re willing to get uncomfortable and do the work and turn up every day. They’re learning to be independent and manage their time, their finances, their mind, their abilities, their actions. There’s so much going on for them. And they’re willing to take it on.
I find they’re great, they are great bread and butter for me, in my business. There are years of work in taking their mindset from a student to an employee mindset to a manager to a business signer to an investor. Taking them through those different stages and transforming their mind to match their vision. Yeah, I love business owners.
Morris: That is very interesting. What you just said about the transition, the steps going from student to an employee to manager to entrepreneur to investor, is that right yeah?
Haydn: Manager to a business owner to an investor.
Morris: Interesting! I’ve never thought about it that way but now that you’ve spelled it out. Yeah, I can see how that evolution happens. Does anything come after the investor?
Haydn: That’s what you’re chasing.
Morris: Okay, all right. That’s like the personal mission, I guess, or that’s the personal mission — the bigger purpose in life.
Haydn: Got it. Yeah. You’re going all the way, love that. You want to be someone who has the ability to generate wealth and then reinvest that wealth to generate more wealth where the wealth does the work for you.
Morris: What do you do with your client as their mindset coach?
Haydn: That’s a great question. There are different aspects to it. Let me see if I can boil them down to core aspects. I have them become of the mindset that’s already there so that’s their thoughts, their beliefs, their opinions, their views, their perspectives, their assessments, their judgments, and their decisions that are already there. Once they become aware of them, how they created them, we can start to remove them which creates space for new thinking, new mindset, new thoughts, new views, new opinions which opens up new actions to take and new results to get.
So our mindset is at the source of everything we feel, everything we do and everything we get in life and so often I see people try to change what they’re doing without trying to change the mindset that’s causing them to do it in the first place. When we get to the source of their behaviors, we can actually cause serious and lasting results in their life, new behaviors to emerge. So I, through conversation bring people aware of the mindset that is there that they don’t know, then I train them on how to remove it or deal with the moment in their life where they created it and complete it that sets them free and it creates this space where they can create themselves a whole new mindset that actually matches their future.
So if you imagine, their mindset comes from their past and all going to create more of what they’ve gotten in their past. When we complete and remove it, they can create a new mindset to create a new future so that’s what I do with my clients.
Morris: Yeah you’re so right with the present that we’re experiencing today is based on the mindset we’ve learned from our past so if we want to create a different future, we got to change the mindset. Yeah and when somebody comes to you, how does somebody know that they’re ready or let me ask this differently how does a person know or come to the realization that they need help with their mindset?
Haydn: First, I’ll say help isn’t the appropriate word. The people I work with aren’t helpless. They’re not looking for help, they’re looking for training and development. They’re looking for access to what they really want so someone will come to me. If they want something and they don’t know how to get it, say they want happiness, they want confidence, they want success, they want freedom, they want peace of mind and yet they just find they’re not getting it in their life, they’ll come to me and I’ll train them and develop them to get that.
Very similar to, if you imagine a child wants to play soccer and then they want to win the championship. They go get a soccer coach because the soccer coach can guide them to becoming and having that championship. I’m guiding people to becoming that future self they really want to be happy, confident, peaceful whatever it is for them so they’ll know that they’re just not where they want to be in life and they’ll know that there’s a possible future that they could have. They’re just not sure how to get there.
Morris: I really really admire how your choice of words, Hayden. You said they’re not looking for help, they’re not helpless, they want training and development that is very powerful and I can see how that resonates with business owners and even driven-individuals.
Haydn: Yeah. Cool. Thank you for pointing that out. I like to be reminded of these things.
Morris: Yeah. I try to pay attention to the words that people choose because in marketing, right, if we don’t speak the language of the audience, then we have difficulty connecting with them and you just made me realize that you know there are so many people out there who are coachable but they don’t resonate with the idea of being helped but they might resonate with the idea of getting training or getting development that’s why that stood out to me.
I recently heard a phrase and I’m not I’m going to try to repeat it here I’m not sure if it’s correct word by word but I’m interested to hear your take on it and it said “no, you don’t think yourself into a new way of acting, you act yourself into a new way of thinking”. Implying that, by changing our actions we change how we think and perceive the world, how much truth do you see in that phrase?
Haydn: I think perspective is at the source of all behaviors. That’s how I see it so for a new action to take place, someone needs a new thought. They need to think I’m sick of this, I’m done, I’ve had enough, this isn’t working for me, I want something new, I don’t like Who I Am anymore before a new behavior will happen. If people are unaware of their thoughts, their behaviors will be reactions, they will simply keep functioning out of the thinking that’s already there, the perspective that’s already there.
The people I see who say you need to change your behavior, well that’s a thought and then the behavior will change. I don’t know if you can change a behavior without thinking about. I don’t know if that’s possible. Whenever we’re learning any skill or any action, it’s a conscious process. You think about brushing your teeth if you switch hands, how much you have to think about it to happen but before you even switch hands you need to think oh I’m going to use my other hand otherwise you just keep using the hand you’re using.
So I disagree okay with that with that opinion and it’s not the truth, it’s not reality, it’s simply my perspective okay?
Morris: No, no that’s great. I love that. I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot because it’s depending on the situation and depending on the day. I feel like my perspective changes on that phrase and I don’t remember who posted it but it was some like you know successful guy who talked about it and since then I kept thinking about the phrase.
No, I definitely agree with what you said because right even to take the action, you need to have a different thought you need to, I know wake up or read something and say to yourself oh I’m going to try it differently today or I’m going to spend my day differently. But where I resonate with that phrase is in the sense that we got to practice the new mindset, what do you think about that?
Haydn: Yeah 100% it’s practice, practice, practice, practice. Yeah.
Morris: All right so yes so clearly you experienced that in your work too. Where, yes we we need to change our mindset but then we need to live it or try to live it in a sense to fully I don’t know what the right word is but to shape that new identity.
Haydn: Yeah it’s a moment-by-moment practice of hatching what’s here and then choosing what we’ll do with it. Hatching the thoughts and then choosing what we’re going to do with them. Moment by moment that is the source of greatness. Great people are moment by moment choosing their principles and values to live by and letting their principles and values lead their life. So they’re not reacting to situation or circumstance, they’re stopping themselves, they’re thinking about the principles and their values and then they’re acting.
Eventually, they just wholly become their principles and values. It is a moment by practice, managing one’s mindset and this is the thing, if you’re not, so there’s no in-between here. It’s black or white. If you’re not manage your managing your mindset, your mindset is managing you. So you area default reacting out of a mindset created in the past and that goes back as early as three years old.
So whenever you have a tantrum or you’re frustrated, you’re stressed, you’re angry, you’re upset all of that’s coming out of some point in your childhood or puberty or early adulthood, you’re reacting out of the mindset you created all the way back then. So if you’re not managing your mindset by default, your mindset is managing you and you may not want to be behaving like a three-year-old in your relationship when you’re 30 40 50 60 years old.
Morris: Yeah I definitely don’t want that and if and when it happens then you feel really silly about it afterwards when things calm down.
Haydn: You calm down and you come back to being the adult you’re like well that was stupid where did that come from that totally took over me, you know.
Morris: Yeah and it’s funny because relationships is something we can all relate to but I think it also happens in business and even the hours we spend alone like which parts of the business am I working on today or how do I react to rejections or challenges and things like that
Haydn: Yeah all of that so when we this is why it’s so challenging to go from you know employe to a business owner or even some people are brave enough to go from student to business owner is the mindset we’ve created in life is one of you know, what told what to do, told where to be, told how to be, told when to speak, told when to eat and all of a sudden we have none of that and then we’ve got to make all these decisions in these new environments of sales and marketing and yeah it could overload people in the early stages of business.
If anyone’s listening who’s in that stage, I say keep going, you will get through it. It will feel like hell but I promise you the gates of Heaven lie in the depths of hell and you will for yourself from the fire and become this person you didn’t even know was possible. I promise you will become this powerful confident capable communicator instead of simply being a product of your environment, your environment becomes a product of you. So keep going.
Morris: Well that is such a good and motivational message, Hayden. Talking about keep going in your experience working with people who are going from student to employee, let’s say from student to business owner or employee to the business owner, how long does it usually take for such a change to really solidify?
Haydn: There is something of value in the idea of the apprenticeship in the three to four-year period. If you look at apprenticeships, they’re typically four years. If you look at Universities, they’re typically four years. There’s something about that 4year period that works. If you can commit to this with a daily habit of turning up within four years, you’ll be a professional. You may or may not have overcome your impostor syndrome and if you get stuck with that, get a coach but that four-year period seems to be what works. As long as you’re in that four-year period, you are studying your profession whatever that is whatever that involves which involves sales marketing time management, financial management, leadership involved in any business they are all there.
As long as you’re studying that and your specific profession you’re studying it as well, as long as you’re practicing and implementing what you’re studying every day and you’re seeking guidance, you’re having someone who’s walked the path before you, a mentor, a coach, a role model who can guide you, you will get through that apprenticeship and you will become that professional and you will achieve all your goals but that seems to be the magic number, four years.
Morris: Oh I like it, yeah and I like the reference you made. I can’t really calculate this on the spot but do you think this four-year time period also aligns with the 10,000 hours idea? Right, there’s this idea if you invest 10,000 hours into something you’re a master at it?
Haydn: That’s mastery so that’s different. Again, so four years you’ll go from being a beginner to a professional. You’ll be considered a professional and consider yourself a professional. If you’re not then something in the study the practice and the the guidance was missing. If you’re not there yet then something in is missing.
The 10 years is Mastery. That’s what you do, if you’re doing I believe it is eight hours a day five days a week for 10 years, you’ll have done your 10,000 hours you’ll be considered a master. Now, if you do 20 years of that you’ll be considered the best in the world. And you can take that if you look at boxes they start when they’re early, I don’t know, early whatever age and then they’re boxing they do their 10,000 hours typically over 15 years and in their early 20s if they’re stuck to it, they’ll start being seen fighting on the world stage but the ones who double their hours they get to be the best in the world.
Yeah, so you’ll see that in any profession with that where you’re like okay I’m gonna give eight hours a day five days a week to anything you can be. You could become a master and you do that long enough you can be considered one of the best in the world. In any field, you want you just choose what are you willing to give your life to and now I don’t mean sacrifice, I’m not. We’re not killing. We know, we’re throwing young ladies into volcanoes or slitting the throats of goats here okay?
You’re giving your life to it. Now what may need to be killed off is the irresponsible, lazy, procrastinator that’s in you. That inner child who doesn’t want to do any of the work who wants the parents to do who wants the sandwiches made for them, you may need to kill off your inner child at times. That’s the only thing you may need to sacrifice. What that will make available is your leader, your inner leader that powerful presenter, communicator, influencer that is in you which is waiting for you to release them.
So when you let that inner child go you can move towards and open up that leadership that is in you. Yeah, not sacrificing okay? Not killing we’re not actually killing anything.
Morris: Well, one child is being sacrificed, the inner child, right?
Haydn: The inner child, they gotta die. they do. The world doesn’t need a bunch of grown-ups behaving like their children, okay? We don’t need that. We need grown-ups. That’s what the world needs right now. Responsible levelheaded people who are able to communicate, get along with anyone, love everybody, have fun, and commit to something they want to master. That’s what the world needs. Yeah not these wingy, cry I’m offended, you know it’s your fault I feel this way. We don’t need those people.
You don’t like being that person. When you’re that person, I don’t like it either you know that’s what needs to die. No, I’m not saying actually kill those people, that’s what I’m not saying, the inner child. It’s a metaphorical speaking.
Morris: I love what you’re sharing here, Hayden, that is yeah and it’s funny. Before we started the interview, you told me that you really like the stage where you’re at in your coaching, and now you’re on a mission to become one of the best speakers and writers. So taking this idea of 10,000 hours, is that your story? You’ve invested 10,000 hours into your coaching and now you’re investing 10,000 hours into speaking and writing?
Haydn: Yes with coaching I thought, okay I’m 35. My 30s is about mastering being a coach and my 40s will be about mastering writing and speaking and when I started coaching, I would turn 30 was I want to coach as many people as I can as quickly as I can. I want to learn I want to learn I want to learn I want to learn I want I want real-life experience. And I do with every coaching call, I learn something. Something more about people, something more about my coach ability, something turns up that I can add to this to this library that I am. This toolkit.
So now, I coach, what am I looking at and maybe it wasn’t eight hours a day maybe it was 20 hours a week five days a week no 20 hours per week times 10 years is 10,000 hours. I think that’s the accurate number. I stand corrected. So now I do a minimum of 20 hours a week coaching and I just coach coach coach coach coach and I am mastering it. It’s turning up. I’m able to listen to people and get to the source of what’s not working and then open it up and create something new.
So that’s what I’ve developed, that skill through the practice, through the studies, through the guidance. What I’m starting to do now with my writing and my speaking is I have two emailing lists one to my business community; and one to my mindset community and I’m taking what I’ve learned and I’m learning to condense it into an impactful and enjoyable message. Something short, something sharp, something that’s going to shift their perspective in some way. Guaranteed to get a result in some way and I do that every week so two pieces of writing going out every week.
Then with my speaking, I speak at my business networking every time I turn up and I do podcasts. I get myself on podcasts to start talking to people, asking different questions, communicating my thoughts and my ideas, and seeing how they’re received. So I’m getting the ball rolling. Now, I’m not going all in. I don’t need, “I need to shift change my entire life”. It’s no okay I’m thinking 5 10 15 years out. I’m getting the ball rolling I’m building the momentum.
When I started as a coach, it was the first goal is one client one call a week and then it’s two and it’s life is very much exponential growth. So now that I am successful and I have this network and people are talking about me, I get three or four new clients a week. They just turn up. I go to a networking engagement and I’ll have three people want to work with me in a room of anywhere from 20 to 50, there’ll be three clients like yeah I’m ready let’s go. Perfect.
Now that didn’t happen at the start but now that I have the skills and the ability from the work, my effectiveness increases dramatically. So my ability to produce results is much steeper. So anyone who’s looking, look far into your future what you really want and then think what’s something what that I will and can do today towards that future. When you turn up for yourself every day taking that small step, you build confidence, you build ability, you build skill and you’ll start to take more steps each day and eventually you’ll be running towards your goal. You’ll be sprinting, you’ll be moving so fast with results happening so quickly. You’ll be blown away.
Morris: That is brilliant Haydn and I love the energy at which you communicate this. So you already answered that when you started coaching like 10 years ago, what made you decide that you want to be a mindset coach?
Haydn: There’s a few layers to that. One is I can only take someone as far as I’ve been. So at the start of coaching, I didn’t really know I was just like I didn’t even know coaching existed. A friend connected with me and said hey you should join this Facebook group for coaches and get some coaching and see what it’s like. Now at that point in my life, I was lost. I was extremely successful whatever job I did, the revenue would increase, the boss would be happy, and the company would grow. I knew I had something of value. They’d promote me to manager. I’d lead people. The people I managed said I was the best manager they’d ever had, so there was something there.
But I didn’t go to school. I started ditching school and doing drugs, injecting drugs at 14 drinking at 13, you know, I didn’t go to school at all. My teachers go, Oh Haydn, it’s really nice to see you today, you know. And they passed me because they liked me not because I did the work just because I was respectful. I was sneaky. I was like how do I get through school without actually doing school, you know? Well if they really like me anyway. Yeah. The true entrepreneur I like I’m not gonna I’m gonna do it my way. Who are you to tell me what to do?
So I was at this and it was actually five years ago that I discovered coaching. So I was lost and I was like what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get my life together? How am I going to get a job? How am I going to use all the skills that I have and continue to develop them and my strengths within the values that I see, you know? I don’t want to do anything destructive. I want it to be impactful. I want to contribute to others and my friend said to join this Facebook group so I did.
And I was really uncomfortable. I really didn’t like being told what to do or having yeah I really didn’t like being told what to do back then. But I put myself out there which I was also horrified of. I’d like to be coached and a few people coach me and I thought I could do this. You telling me people are going to pay me to sit at home and drink coffee and just listen to them? This is the best thing ever you know. I discovered coaching out of nowhere. I thought this is it, you know. So I was like online coaching courses study study study I picked up my phone. I started calling people on my list and was like hey I’m a coach you want some complimentary sessions, you know? That was it.
Bob’s your uncle but then what happened was one of my managers who actually fired me from a previous job, I offered him some coaching and he loved it and he said, his name’s Derek by the way, he said would you like to start this business coaching franchise that I’m buying with me? And I saw the company values and I was like oh my, I connect with all of these. And they had one value on there that I’d never heard of before- abundance and I was intrigued by what is abundance.
So I was all in and Derek he actually paid for me to do the training, 12 and a half grand to get this business coach certification and start this company with me. So I got this whole business coaching education, the problem was I had never grown a business. It was very inauthentic. I just didn’t feel right in that space and what was happening was the clients I was attracting, I was mindset coaching them because that’s somewhere I had developed. That’s something I had grown in.
When I was younger, what led to the drugs and alcohol abuse was I thought I was worthless. I couldn’t be loved. I’ll never be good enough. I don’t have a place in the world. I caused nothing but destruction. I had so many, I hated myself, and I was ashamed of myself. The more I used drugs, the more ashamed I became like there was so much in here that was leading to these destructive behaviors, and in the next you know I overcame all of them. That was something and I got to see that all of these behaviors all of the feelings I had came from how I saw things, not the things himself. How I saw myself was my own perspective and none of it was true. I’d made it all up so that was something I had traveled a long way in.
I had developed myself in and I found myself naturally guiding people in the business realm through their fears, through their anxieties, through their whatever that happened in their relationships with their parents and their siblings and through their puberty and all the stuff that was still lingering around. So I naturally got there and then I ended up quitting the business coaching because it wasn’t a good fit for me. And just stuck with mindset coaching with business owners. Does that answer that question?
Morris: Yeah absolutely and thank you for sharing the whole story! So authentically and it sounds like you found your coaching niche by doing the work like you coached and that’s how you refined your ideal target audience as opposed to you know over analyzing and researching and all that stuff.
Haydn: Yeah through action. Through actual feedback from reality yeah I didn’t know at the start. I had no idea. I was willing to do the work. I was really lucky that when I was 13 and I walked into my classroom and I looked around in high school, my first year of high school and I thought I know nobody here, and some of the naughty boys up the back, Aaron and Anthony, said “Haydn you can come sit with us”. And I thought to myself, effort, let’s see what happens and I became reckless at that moment.
That was the you know, I was like you know, would you like to let’s smoke. Effort let’s see what happens. Inject drugs, effort, let’s see what happens. Go out all weekend without telling my parents, effort let’s see what happens. I became that and because I had these you know what we’re looking back now insane things happened to me in near-death experiences. At a young age, I really got the idea that what’s the worst that can happen? Go for it. Take the risk. Be reckless. It can really work in some areas of life.
And in this coaching realm, it totally worked for me. Being able to put, you know, take that risk, put myself out there and coach people, just it worked and I got the experience and practice through that. And another tip for everyone, in the first three years of my coaching, I think I got coached by 50 people or more. So I was like show me how it’s done, show me I’m going to be on the receiving end. I want to know what it’s like, what people go through. I want to see what works firsthand, what works in who they’re being, what works in who I’m being, what doesn’t work and I would take everything that was working and then I’d apply it directly to my clients and see if it worked with them. So it was very much, you know, get coached like I was letting it pass through me.
Morris: Yeah we talked about that a little bit before we hit recording, right? The topic of coaches should have their own coaches, right?
Haydn: See, I’ve worked with my clients from the start for years and they have phenomenal success and we grow together. So when you’re being coached and coaching, as long as you’re growing steadily and you’re growing at a pace at the same pace as your client, you can coach them for the rest of their life. Now what that makes available, is you don’t have to be so involved in sales and marketing, you don’t have to find new people all the time, you actually get to develop these lasting relationships that become so deeply connected, you actually want to be in it for life and what happens to you and your network goes like this, your network expands and because you’re loyal, they’re loyal and they stay with you.
As they grow, you grow and you can increase your prices as you grow and they’re happy to pay because they get the value. So your network grows, your client base grows, your revenue grows when you when you stick with it, when you stay with your people and you keep getting coached and developing yourself. If you stop your self-development, you stop getting coached, they’re going to outgrow you and they’re going to leave. Guaranted. They are gonna outgrow you and they’re gonna leave.
Morris: That is a beautiful picture to to wrap it up on on the topic of coaching. People listening to this getting inspired by you and I really sense that you’re very courageous, you know, just looking at the bits of your own story here and how you went out into the market, how you’re going out making things happen and I sense that you instill some of your courage into your clients too, right?
Supporting them to make these big mindset shifts and becoming a new person which sometimes can be scary. So people listening to this if they want to reach out to you, how can they get in touch with you?
Haydn: You can find me on LinkedIn. Love to have you in my network on LinkedIn. I share my email, the written piece I do every week. Otherwise, you can find me on email. You can email me, so my name just there, HaydnGriffiths@gmail.com so you can send me an email we get connected there. If you’d like to go on my emailing list, you’re more than welcome. If you’d like to have a chat, you can call me +44 749 592 2658. So that’s +44 749 592 2658, that’s my mobile phone number. More than welcome to send me a text, drop me a call. If I don’t answer, I’ll call you back.
Morris: Love it! You’re so approachable, Haydn. Is it okay if I put all these three contact details in the episode below?
Haydn: Yeah.
Morris: All right. Haydn, thank you so much for coming on to the show today.
Haydn: Yeah my pleasure, mate. Thanks for having me. That was great. Really enjoyed that.
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