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Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I am Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today I’m speaking to Michael Garden who helps people break corporate dependence and build a life that’s theirs. Michael, thank you so much for being here, where are you calling in from today?
Michael: Well, thanks so much for having me, Morris. I really appreciate the opportunity. I am in Madison, Wisconsin in the US. For those of you in other parts of the world, that’s kind of in the northern United States right in the middle.
Morris: Michael and before we hit record, I told him that I was in high school for one year in Wisconsin. I participated in an exchange program so I’ve been in Wisconsin too. Not so far away from him.
Michael: It’s amazing how small this world can be.
Morris: Yeah yeah. I have very fond memories of Wisconsin and the cheese hats, it was fun.
Michael: Yeah.
Morris: And also I was really surprised how warm it gets in summer.
Michael: Yes.
Morris: I mean really cold in winter but also surprisingly hot In summer.
Michael: Yeah we get the change of seasons which is why I really like it. I love having the change of seasons.
Morris: Michael, when did you become a coach or when did you start calling yourself a coach officially?
Michael: It’s a good question. I feel like it’s been an inevitable kind of long slow journey but I would with it. So two years ago, I really started calling myself a coach. I had been sort of denying my inevitable path towards this being a coach and two years ago is when I really said, my heart is aligned here and I really have to start working with people and helping them make the types of transformations that I was lucky enough to make, to change my life back in the day, that’s when it really started.
I’ve done a few other types of businesses before that but I’m really trying to in this, I guess, second half of my life I would say uh since I am over 40. I’m really trying to lead with my heart and help people who need it and so that change happened about two years ago.
Morris: When you said you were denying the coaching, does that imply that maybe in the past you had a bit of a different stigma attached to coaching? Because I see that a lot in the coaching space like coaches sometimes get made fun of by people who are outside of the coaching bubble. Does it have anything to do with that?
Michael: No actually, I think what it more has to do with was me denying my own real strengths and true advantages and not having a good idea of how to use them in the world. So you know, as a younger go-getter type person, a college graduate in the US, you’re sort of told to pick a lane. Finance, marketing whatever it is and you know the corporate world is set up to organize you into these lanes and I didn’t really know.
I didn’t really know how to choose. I feel like I’m interested in a lot of different things and maybe have talents in a whole bunch of things but I picked a lane because that’s what it was and I decided like, well, if I just make a bunch of money I’ll be able to do whatever I want and have this you know quote unquote Freedom.
But all the while, I was doing things with active work that I wasn’t passionate about and I frankly wasn’t super good at. And the things that I was good at, I was pushing down as maybe like those aren’t valuable valued in society necessarily like talking with people deeply, listening and all of that stuff and so it’s just been an evolution of me doing things and working and trying to make money.
And finally, coming around to the point where none of these, none of these outlets that I’ve tried have been me, authentically me in the world. So I just started finally, like listening to that inner voice and putting the puzzle together. It took a while but putting the puzzle together of like, oh yeah like these things that people come to you for. Mike, you, idiot are really valuable in this coaching space. Then it’s all right. Well, what’s the problem we work on? What’s the transformation you know? What is that and how do I bring out my authentic past into that?
Morris: Yeah I resonate with that. We sometimes assume that whatever we do professionally, it needs to be hard because if it isn’t hard, it’s not work. I didn’t tell you that before we started recording but after college I went into finance. I worked in the corporate world for a couple of years in finance and I really was not enjoying it at all even though I had a very very good career already.
It really shocked my parents. It was difficult at that time to just say, I hate it and I need to figure out really fast what I want to do with my life because if I continue in corporate finance, I’m going to be miserable no matter how much I earn and that was very difficult to turn away from that. Is this what you do with your clients?
Michael: Yeah pretty much. I mean my clients come to me in some sort of crisis. They have been on the what I call sort of, the just the corporate path, the default path right? You get out of college and you go get a job and that’s just how the world works. So we’re supposed to believe that
And they work hard and they’re smart and they know how to play the game and they get promotions and they get more money but they come to a point where they say, man, I have been on this road and I still don’t feel fulfilled. I don’t feel passionate about what I do and it scares me to spend the rest of my working days but call it 15, 20, 25 more years, you know trying to seek fulfillment in this along this path that I don’t feel like it’s going to come to me, so what else do I do?
And people have gigantic identities that are wrapped up in all of the work that they’ve done to this point. We have all of these past data points showing you this is how the world works and this is what you do and who you are and those are psychological things. That are really difficult to break from and I use that word all the time. This word break because I do feel like to make some type of transformation or to do something different, we have to sort of shatter the default perspectives, thoughts, habits that we’re accustomed to using in order to gain a different perspective.
And so we do a lot of work sort of identity work. The first thing we do is really create time and space like if you’re working a job, we need to create space for you to do some real work and deep thinking about your future but then kind of shatter this past identity and create an identity that you are pulled towards this future vision of you like who do you want to be? You have to decide who you want to be and we start operating from that future vision instead of the smaller version of ourselves right?
Now, that really hopes we get to our goal. We start thinking, acting and doing as if we already got to that place. The main vehicle I think for this transformation, generally, is building some type of creative business. I don’t think you have to necessarily become an entrepreneur in order to break corporate dependence as long as you have a very self-directed identity and you are creating, you’re owning your time and you’re owning your future but I do feel that for the majority of people, the key is in building something that is uniquely yours that you care about even if it’s small. That is the key to unlocking kind of this idea of self-directed freedom that I think a lot of us are after in that spot.
Morris: When you talk about who we want to be in the future or as who we want to be as soon as possible, I assume, does is that only the professional me or is it like the whole thing?
Michael: Absolutely not. It is what I call full stack human so the idea that you look you think your career has an outsized effect on how you feel about yourself and obviously the circumstances that you are in today because you spend so much time and energy in that. So if you’re able to change that again, that’s sort of the mechanism, if you’re able to change your work environment and again mainly through doing something that’s yours, you exert more control and you create a better total life for yourself.
So when I’m talking about future visioning and what is your like getting really crystal clear on what that is, it’s everything. It is what do you want your life to look like and feel like. What type of time, energy, space, calm do you want? What are the things, topics that get you excited that you could see yourself working on you know into old age, right?
Thinking about yourself and this is from the stoics kind of like thinking about yourself as an 80-year-old man or woman and looking back, did you make the bold decisions that you wish you would have, right? Did you do the things or are you regretting spending time with your kids, creating you know you had an opportunity, let’s say at 40 or 36 or whatever it is, to create a bold vision for your life and you didn’t do that? What does that feel like? What does that regret feel like? So what are you rying to avoid and what are you running towards? I think if we build the most compelling future vision for ourselves, the future Mike, the future Morris, and we start thinking about what that person do? What decisions did he or she make in order to attain that ostentatious life?
Then we start becoming that person in advance of seeing results and that’s how you transform because once you start to actually change your behaviors, everything else follows. The results follow but most of us have that backward. We think that once we get a result, then we will feel that way and that’s just it’s not true. It’s totally backward.
Morris: When you mentioned that we first have to become that person and we have to take action, does it matter or is it a script in a sense or is it unique where first you have to become the person and then you take the action or you take the action and then you become the person? Is there like do you see a pattern there?
Michael: I guess I see them as one and the same because we are our actions at scale. We are our decisions and our habits at scale. Like that is what personality is, you know that’s what character is and those are all parts of our sort of identity and so I think what helps is obviously like if you can write down and describe or visualize and come back to that vision that you’re creating and it can morph over time. But if you do that and you start thinking, okay what types of actions does this person take? Then you’re being your future self first and then taking the action but it can change over time.
You don’t have to sit for a week and come up with the perfect vision and then take action. If you make a big enough vision that gives you a direction to move in, you can start taking action immediately right? You can make the right next action, oh that person would instead of you know seeing Morris’s podcast and just passing by it because Mike doesn’t feel like he’s good enough to speak that person, that future version of Mike would say, no I’m gonna reach out to Morris and I’m gonna try to be on his podcast. That’s a bold decision that’s what future Mike would do and I’m doing that now and so now you’re just starting to become that person.
Morris: Yeah thank you for using that as an example. By the way, if anyone’s listening to this and you would like to be on the podcast but you feel like you know you’re not ready. You’re ready, Mike just said you’re ready. Please come on the podcast so thanks for using that.
Michael: He makes it super easy so it’s very easy to be on the podcast so come on I would love to hear your story as well.
Morris: Awesome! Was that your journey in a way too? Is that what you did with your own life to build the business you have today?
Michael: Yeah going back to the idea of like I felt like I was always searching and I didn’t have a place necessarily like I didn’t subscribe to these default lanes right/ Coming out of college, I always had a sense that I would do a whole bunch of different things and that was difficult.
So I made six large career changes kind of during my time and the lessons learned from doing that and navigating the uncertainty of it. I felt like I had something to offer people who were feeling very worried and very anxious about doing something new at a point in time when they had a lot of responsibilities.
That’s a difficult thing but the main lesson that I really draw from where in 2018, I was working in a corporate job. I was in between some startup stuff and I had a taste for three years of what corporate really was and I saw the future and I was like, this is not for me and I had three little kids. These, sorry, these guys over here were very little at the time.
And I started thinking like well, I’ve got let’s say 15 years with these kids left before they’re out in college on their own right? What do I want that 15 years to look like? What do I want to be? What do I need from life in terms of creativity, work, all of that stuff but also what do I need? What do they need from me?
And so I just was on this process of using my job you know to obviously keep the paycheck flowing and become using it to be an investor in my future self. So using my paycheck but invested my time and energy and some of that money into what I would do next in the life I wanted to create. Designing it from the ground up and I said, hey I don’t want to travel. I don’t want to raise money anymore. I want to be home. This is my home office.
So if my kids need something from school or whatever like I’m the first call. To me, that’s a flex like I get to be the dad that’s the first call because I can say no to stuff and I can you know. So that’s where this all came from and I said how do I understand my unique set of capabilities in this world? And, I just created a system that I call Advantage Mapping today.
This is part of the program that we use to help people map out how they create an advantage in their world based on their experiences, passions, interests, curiosities, energy like all of these different things. We sort of go through a really mind-mapping exercise of, okay this is the core of me. This is my advantage stack and if I use this stack to create a business coaching, help people, and serve people, I have pretty high odds that will work out. I went through all of that you know on my own and it was sort of a logical systematic way of thinking through just how can I be the best version of myself in the world. What do I need to lean into and it was things like, I found some unexpected things.
Like I enjoy coaching my kids in sports okay how do I get more of that feeling well I can coach people. All right, well, what are the big problems that I think exist in the world? I think people have a hard time dealing with uncertainty, okay? Well, how does uncertainty affect career choice and regrets later in life and all that stuff and so it was like a slow progression of, wow those problems and these skills that’s actually like just authentically me and that’s where I sit this idea of breaking dependence.
We are dependent on corporate and becoming self-directed doing it for ourselves for our kids, for our families on purpose, on our time, and on our schedule. That to me is the freedom we’re all seeking. We want to continue to work and create and be creative. I don’t think retirement you know out the window like I don’t ever want to retire because I want to keep doing this stuff how do I help people do that? Hopefully, that makes sense.
Morris: Yeah that makes total sense and I think, I mean what a bold move on your side though because especially with people who’ve built a career successfully there also comes the sun cost fallacy into play right? Where, what am I giving up for something uncertain?
Michael: Yup, 100%. And so we deal a lot with that problem like a lot of the resistance that my clients have about moving forward into the quote-unquote unknown is okay but I have all these certifications. I’ve spent all of this time. I make this money. I have these titles right and so that is difficult to break but that’s part of the identity piece right? And I think so a lot of the work is psychological, I mean, people come to me and they’re like damn you’re like a therapist and it’s somewhat true.
I think we have to live in both worlds. It’s the heart and soul and it’s also the logical brain of creating plans and how we’re going to get there and achieve those things. But yes it is all sort of rooted in identity and the more you can sort of loosen your grip on your identity and lean more into the possibility, the better chance you have of making it to the other side.
And I don’t think in any way you have to just abandon reason and you know the sort of say all right, you know throwing caution to the wind and I’m gonna burn all the boats and all this stuff. No, we can do this in a logical way, right? Like I don’t ever tell somebody, yeah you should go quit your job like. Keep your job. We’re just going to stiff-arm it. We’re gonna create some space here. We’re going to take your identity out of this thing and convert it to a utility where you’re not wrapped up in it mentally and emotionally.
But you’re getting work done and you’re still getting your paycheck and we’re going to use that paycheck, a little bit of it to invest in your future identity and when you cross that chasm, that’s where the magic really happens. People start to come alive with ideas, with creativity, and then they’re able to re-engage their you know that logical brain of like the builder’s brain, of okay, I have to sequence these events. Do this, that, and that thing. Here’s how I reach people. Here’s how I sell and it’s magical when that all kind of comes together.
Morris: Yeah the All or Nothing approach is pretty cool in movies but in real life, it’s not necessary. There’s a path, a reasonable path that’s a nice middle ground. When you just shared that, what I can see is almost like the job, the corporate job which was a thing that drained you. Now, turns into a tool. You’re using this as a tool to build your better future.
Michael: Exactly and that’s also part of the dependence piece right? Breaking that dependence of the power that job has over you as a person for your wealth or I’m sorry for your self-worth. I mean, your wealth also right you’re dependent on earning money but you’re also allowing something like that job to hold domain over who you are as a person and what you’re capable of doing. How you show up at home even.
And so if we can break that and we can show you that there’s another path by even if you just still stay in your job but you mentally flip that switch, you create space. You’re a different person now. You’ve already transformed and now you’re buying into possibility and the idea that you have the confidence to go do something else. That’s worth its way gold but there’s so much psychological baggage that comes from it’s that’s created. It’s like plaque you know plaque in the arteries. It’s like plaque in our identity. We need to get rid of that to become just people, human beings. That’s it like that’s what we’re trying to get to.
Morris: Yeah being a person again. Should be so easy it’s not.
Michael: It’s not, it isn’t. Yeah.
Morris: You know I speak with a lot of coaches or new coaches and I think they’re going through a very similar transformation or transition because they might have a job or a previous career and they already know what they want to build. They want to build a coaching practice or they want to be a coach professionally. So you said something very interesting and I find very important.
You said, to use your job, take a part of the paycheck and invest it into your future self into your better future. So once you’re clear on the coaching example, once you’re clear on which kind of coach you want to be and what your coaching practice looks like using the resources, you have and investing part of that into building it, what are some of the common investments that you see your clients use successfully?
Michael: Let’s see, they run the gamut um because I don’t just turn corporate people into coaches necessarily but I’ll give you a couple of examples of where I think it’s almost the scarcity mindset versus the investment. The spend versus investment. So one of the things is having a virtual assistant is so easy and cheap and if you work really well on training that person exactly what you need, you can start to do things that are you know well beyond your capability right?
Like if you have a job and you have to build a business, you need to figure out some leverage. So having a VA is a good one. Leaning into technology and solving any problem you can with technology using things like Zapier all sorts of platforms right? But anything that you can do to set it and forget it and take something off of your plate is an investment.
And then I think you have to think about client acquisition right? How are you going to get clients? I think unfortunately right now at least on X and on LinkedIn, the cool thing is to just go like create content and build a brand and I think that’s a long-term play.
I think it’s very valuable but if you think you’re going to just start putting up content and clients are going to magically fall in your lap like, you’re just wrong. So how do you allocate time, money and your attention to solve the client problem you know right now? You could do things like ads, of course, you could. I don’t know how that’s going to work out either but if you have like a really good coach or a really good program to follow maybe that will work.
And so it becomes like, well what would you do today if you had to make 2,000 bucks tomorrow? You’d probably stop investing your time on LinkedIn again, just for a short period of time and you would create a spreadsheet of a thousand people that you know and that know you and know who you’re who you are as a person and trust you and just start having conversations with them and pitching them your product.
Either your idea or your coaching. Either for them personally or and asking following up and saying you know who else should I talk to. Like that’s the old-school way things got sold that we’ve sort of forgotten. But you would do that if you needed to make some money right now. I think that is the best spot to start and it doesn’t really take necessarily a lot of money.
It takes some time but the added upside is you’re going to continue to get feedback along the way and I think people just don’t a lot of people, try to skip that and just go to like the direct kind of you know creation online funnels all of that kind of build an email list all of that kind of stuff. And I think all of that is good and all of it has its place but the big question is where do you start on that journey? And I think you need to start closest to the customer which is like with just a conversation.
Morris: Yeah and you don’t even know if what you’re advertising top of the funnel is going to convert. You have no idea.
Michael: Yeah exactly. So it’s like it’s just having that kind of experimental mindset. Not going into it as like, oh this is like a huge time suck but it’s like this is how I’m going to learn the fastest and even if no one buys I’m going to learn whereas. If you try to like, if you go pay for a bunch of, you know for a funnel to be set up and spend turn on the ad, you’re going to blow a bunch of money before you really have learned anything. That’s not true for everybody obviously but I do think that it’s a great place to start.
Morris: Yeah it works for some people but for most people, it doesn’t work out. That’s true. I’ve seen that too and it goes back to what you said about the VA right like when you say a spreadsheet with a thousand people, that takes time but that is something where you could leverage a VA and use part of your paycheck to get it done.
Michael: Yep same with like prospecting on LinkedIn or something like that too. You can use another person to kind of you know target a specific type of person on LinkedIn, gather the profiles, create messages, you know invest in LinkedIn premium for instance. There are a lot of different things but you are the owner now like. You’re in the owner mentality and so as an owner, you are a capital allocator and the capital you have is your time, your money, and your energy and that’s the most executive-type decisions that you can make is how you allocate those resources to get the results. So that’s how I would start to think about it right? I have money. What is the best allocation to use and just go from there?
Morris: Michael, this is really awesome. Thank you so much for sharing the actual details and action steps not just you know high-level generic information.
Michael: Yeah you bet.
Morris: People listening to this, how can they best get in touch with you?
Michael: My website is michaelgardon.com just my name and then LinkedIn. I am wide open on LinkedIn. Anybody can get in touch with me, Michael Gardon. If you just search that on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active there and then I do have a kind of career help advice site and that is called CareerCloud. It’s all one-word careercloud.com and I actually have a course on there of the advantage mapping program that I talked about.
So if anybody was looking for kind of a lower cost way to sort of understand themselves and their advantages, they can definitely go there but the best spot is really LinkedIn. Happy to engage, happy to answer any questions that come up.
Morris: Yeah you’re right. We didn’t talk enough about the advantage mapping maybe in a follow-up podcast.
Michale: Yeah anytime.
Morris: In the advantage mapping you mentioned it sounded like to me it’s about identifying our strengths and how to best monetize them in a way that fits with us, is that the correct assumption?
Michael: Yeah I do think it’s deeper than that. So when I think it has implications for your self-confidence, and understanding just who you are as a person. So definitely strengths but I use the word advantage very intentionally because I think just having strengths or skills, for instance, everybody’s got those. Those are hard things but it’s like the advantage comes from sort of the intersection of a lot of these hard skills and also soft skills and experiences and outlook and all of that stuff.
And I think once you understand the map of your advantages, the world of possibility opens up to you more because you’re more confident in what those are and then we ideate and use some design thinking techniques to create options what I call options portfolio and that’s really the monetization side.
So once you know yourself in the advantage and that’s all that is also covered in the advantage mapping course but once you know who you really are and how you can bring that to the world, then we create a portfolio of options and say, hey these are the things that you know you can do to make a living based on your unique set of advantages.
Morris: I like that Mike because of strengths and weaknesses, that’s kind of like an interview question right? What are your strengths and weaknesses but advantage is that’s something that has value in the market in the world. So that sounds like a really good first step.
For people listening to this and if you have questions about the advantage mapping method that Michael built, reach out to him on LinkedIn or you can go get the course right away. I’ll put both links below this episode. Michael thank you again so much for coming here today and sharing your knowledge.
Michael: Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
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