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Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I am Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today I’m speaking to Lorraine Chai. Lorraine was an introverted girl, she was stuttering, and she got even scammed in her career but today, she is doing collaborative book launches. She was on national TV in the US twice last year and she is a thriving coach. Lorraine, thank you so much for being here today.
Lorraine: Well, thank you for having me. I am looking forward, I’m actually really excited to be here.
Morris: Lorraine, where are you calling in from?
Lorraine: So for those of you who don’t know, I am currently in Sydney Australia.
Morris: Oh beautiful! Wait, is it warm at this time for you?
Lorraine: No, it’s winter. I’m wearing sleeveless because there’s like a heater around so I’m like really comfortable but if not like it’s winter for us. Maybe not as cold as where your winter will be but for us it’s cold enough.
Morris: Yeah I’m always surprised how cold it can get in certain parts of Australia because in my mind Australia is just you know beautiful beaches.
Lorraine: And warm in the desert, right?
Morris: Yeah exactly! So, Lorraine, the first question on my show is always how did you become a coach and when did you start calling yourself a coach officially for the first time?
Lorraine: So with me, I’ve actually always been a teacher. So my background is as a musician as a teacher and for me, I’ve always mentored people all the way back in when I’m in my early 20s. So mentoring was something that I really love and enjoy because for me it’s generating the next generation of leaders next generation of people that will change the future for the next generation and the generation to come.
So coaching was an easy thing but I never understood that concept of coaching until recently so probably the last five years, I always thought coaches were for sports people, right? You’ve got a football coach and Gymnastics coach so for me, I always thought coaches were just for sports.
But what actually gave me a push is as you said, I was scammed six figures of my life savings and that got me thinking about how I change this. That was actually like a shop from the University telling me that I’m in the wrong path and with that, the journey started to change for me.
You know, I started to study and understand myself. So it’s always self-development first before I help people and when I want to help people I always level up my skills so even as a teacher, I always want to level up my skills before I help my students become better or become great or become better than me in the future.
So with coaching is the same thing. I looked for the best coaches. I studied with the best coaches. I outgrew a few. I studied from a few of them and it changed from that to who I am today in terms of loving coaching you know loving to help people.
Morris: You mentioned always leveling up yourself. Looking back, what would you say were some of your milestones where you feel like those were the jumps that you made?
Lorraine: What was my milestone? Well, I love to always share the story that I used to be an introvert. Like an extreme introvert where you would not hear a word out of me like I was this, I was labeled as the mouse, right? But with through time, with me was, okay how can I overcome that fear of of being seen because I always love to be hidden and as a musician, it was great because you’re always stuck in the cockpit.
You see the musicians in the cockpit and for me, that was fine. Like I used to always get hidden there you know, creating beautiful music with all these lovely musicians so it was overcoming that fear and with me, it’s finding myself or putting myself in uncomfortable situations such as joining a modeling company, taking solo parts you know, people start to notice that, “Oh she can sing or she’s actually good on stage, she can act”.
So it’s putting myself in this really uncomfortable situation of being seen and through that journey is facing all my fears one step after the other. Like I was trained as a singer but it’s also, I hate microphones and it’s learning okay how can I project in a way where people can hear me without me having to depend on a microphone.
I know this is an interview and stuff that’s different but how can I be able to connect with people be it on stage, in person where they can hear me properly? And I use my skills you know as a singer, I use my skills, as in the modeling agency as a model to begin with someone that actually was a manager in a modeling company and a makeup company so it’s that journey of, “Okay what can I do next to challenge myself? What else can I do to level up, to upskill my current skills?”
Morris: Wow! Okay, I understand now. Your leveling up is essentially pushing out of your comfort zone?
Lorraine: Absolutely.
Morris: Have you done that already as a child or when did you start doing that?
Lorraine: So the realization came when in my early 20s. Back in the day, I’ve always thought, “Okay, this is not really me” because you know, growing up we, have our families, or some of us or most of us have our families that control us, our parents. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. You should be behaving this way and school is the same thing.
School trains the students to be sheep instead of leaders. Schools train students to be followers rather than leaders and I never understood why I always fell out of place, you know because I always question things I always wanted to understand how things work. It came to the realization with, “Okay I need to find me”.
So I came into that journey in my early 20s of listening to myself, understanding myself, and trying things. Going to acting classes even though I was so scared and shaking, you know taking extra lessons, going to a male singing teacher because you know I was fearful of so many things.
Doing the catwalk, doing, you know volunteering work where you have people at the festival with the tagging of the hand or just handing out brochures I did everything that I could to socialize with people. Because back in the day, I hated talking to people too. I was so quiet that I didn’t want to talk to people so it’s like, “Okay, how many people can I speak to in this event?”
So yeah it was a journey. It’s a journey that is always consistent with me in terms of growth. If I can’t level up anymore, I think I’ll be so bored.
Morris: I’m really intrigued though so, first of all, I deeply resonate with some of the things you said you know feeling out of place or being uncomfortable speaking to people however, I didn’t have I wasn’t stuttering I didn’t have any of the challenges that you had and so I really admire your courage to just push yourself into these uncomfortable situations. How did you like, where does this courage come from? Did you hear about it? Did you have support, external support or was it just internal? One day you said this is not me and I got to push.
Lorraine: So my mom’s a musician and she is a perfectionist so it’s like you have to do things well like why can’t you do it this way? Musicians most of us are perfectionists where it needs to be a perfect performance like even Lady Gaga. To us normal people, it looks fantastic and amazing but they always know that something to be better, something to improve in their performance.
So from a musical background that was what I grew up with, so I was always fearful of not doing well. What changed? Stepping on stage. The moment you step on stage you cannot back down anymore so it was telling myself, “Okay it’s now or never”, and then the moment you step out that’s it.
So it’s the same thing like the moment you step into an event this is it, this is what we have to do like there’s no point backing down because then you’re disappointing yourself. So it started with that philosophy of me being my own cheerleader in my head like, “Just do it, Lorraine, just do it” because no one else is going to do it.
If you have someone that encourages you then that’s great but I think the best motivation is more of self because you are the only person that allows yourself whether or not to do something. No one else can stop you from doing something. It’s the decision has to be the person themselves.
Morris: Yeah yeah that is very powerful, Lorraine. So what is it that you do today with your clients?
Lorraine: Too many things. I do a couple of things. I am an investor so I’m currently purchasing businesses and turning them around if I can, scaling them growing them. I do have collaboration and partnership with people. I also still have my teaching gigs because I do enjoy teaching. I enjoy seeing the faces of kids lighting up so I am still teaching a little bit here and there. In terms of music, I do a few conducting work, not a lot anymore I do turn a lot down because I do enjoy making a difference into you know these kids’ lives when I can, as well as on top of as a coach you know.
I’m also a business strategist coach as well as an author. I’m an author self-published author of 23 books in the education side but currently, my focus is mainly on business strategist coaching where I help solopreneurs restructure their businesses or have a solid foundation in the business and turn them into entrepreneurs, confident entrepreneurs in their industry.
Morris: Where do you see the difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur?
Lorraine: A lot of people don’t know the difference. Solopreneur, if you look at the word solo like for music performance, you say soloist, right? So solopreneur means one person doing everything, wearing all the hats so that means if you’re one person, you’re doing, you’re paying your clients, you’re doing the marketing, you’re doing the designing, you’re doing the calls, you’re doing the paperworks, is one person doing everything.
An entrepreneur is somebody that has a team working under themselves which means solopreneurs don’t really have time to work on the business right? Because they’re always busy in the business but entrepreneurs has the skill or they should have the skill in terms of leveraging that time and they have the time to you know scale their business and they have that vision of expanding the business and growing that business further.
So I’ve got a lot of people that I know of they are like, “Oh I’m a soul trader.” Soul traders also can classified as soloers but soloers usually don’t have that vision that huge vision and that could be of many different reasons but that’s the difference between solopreneur and an entrepreneur.
Solo means you’re by yourself doing everything. An entrepreneur you have people that works under you, be IT contract workers or people that actually work in your office part-time, full-time or as casual all right?
Morris: You already answered both of my follow-up questions I wanted to know like if you see a difference between solopreneur and a self-employed professional but I think it’s the same according to your definition. It’s the same thing and the other question I had was so if a solopreneur for example, hires a VA or they hire a video editor, would you say that already transforms them into an entrepreneur?
Lorraine: You’re on that journey.
Morris: Okay you’re like in the transition.
Lorraine: Yeah so it’s it’s like you’re on that journey of being an entrepreneur so by getting one person in that’s only one step. For me, you know, I’ve got a VA, I’ve got a social media team, I’ve got a marketing guy. It’s growing and what else, how many, how else you can leverage that time? So it’s having that team, you start and that’s the thing you start with one person at a time start with maybe a VA or maybe if you want to leverage your time with posting content, you can get a social media person or social media team but you have to start somewhere. If we could just employ everybody and then just run a company we we have to start somewhere and it starts by hiring one person first.
Morris: And your coaching clients are mostly solopreneurs?
Lorraine: Absolutely. Absolutely but you know I do have entrepreneurs out there or business owners out there that already have a business but they’re interested in doing more because of my background as a performer and a speaker, they want to do more in terms of that department.
I don’t do a lot of that unless people ask me to and there’s a person at the moment that has an accent. With being as speaker, you have to be able to be understood by people in your community. If you want to go global that means you have to have that understandable accent, right?
So I am originally from Malaysia and we’ve got a Malaysian accent that is really strong and thick so before I started my other business in terms of the education music side I had that vision of having my product international. But in order for people to take me seriously, I had to be able to speak in a way that is understood which means that I can’t speak in the Malaysian slang or dialect unless I’m talking with my local Malaysian or Singaporean people out there, then that slang automatically comes back.
But it’s changing the way that I speak, changing the way that I communicate with people where you know, it helps people understand and I guess because of that journey of my transformation, it’s helped me connect with a lot of people.
Morris: Now I’m curious to hear your Malaysian slang.
Lorraine: I can’t turn it off. You might have to backtrack. Got a Malaysian one.
Morris: So when you work with solopreneurs as a business strategist, what are some of the common you know problems that you see or mistakes that solopreneurs do that you can help them with?
Lorraine: I see a lot of soloers with scatterbrain. I call them scatterbrain or clouded minds. They have so many things that they want to do but they don’t know how to do them or when to do them. They don’t know what to focus on and it’s more of okay let’s organize things it’s like you’re going to a room and you see everything is in clutter so that’s what I see with a lot of solopreneurs.
They’re like I got this idea and I got this idea. There’s a possibility of me doing this, there a possibility of me doing that but they don’t know what to do and they don’t stick to what is important. So my job is to kind of clear that clutter first before we can focus on one component whether or not it’s leadership skills or confidence skills of how to communicate professionally with prospects or potential business partners out there.
But the main thing that I see with a lot of solopreneurs is or soul traders or whatever you want to call yourself is that the clutter in the mind.
Morris: The clutter in the mind and that is reflected in their day-to-day work? I would assume
Lorraine: I mean it’s great to have dreams and all these visions of yourselves like possible visions of your future I used to be that person as well I was like, “O I want to do this I want to do that.” But it’s what is of focus like you have to understand where you want to see yourself in 10 years and with having a coach you have that guidance with someone to assist you in terms of what you should focus on, where your focus should be on first, how to work on time and that’s the second thing, time management.
A lot of people don’t know how to work with time management. People have these excuses, “Oh my kids are sick or I’m so tired” or all these excuses that they can come off but for me it’s how do you manage or work around those challenges that you have like let’s say today this morning my car door didn’t open and I was late for work like how do I work around it?
Okay, my clicker didn’t work so maybe I can use the key to open up the door, try different things or I had a third solution or maybe I have to call somebody or catch a cab or something and pay extra to go to work. But it’s how can you find how can you act very quickly as a leader in terms of you know management. So that management skills a lot of solopreneurs need to upskill that part of themselves of managing time, managing themselves.
Morris: Oh interesting. That makes sense though, you help them learn to manage themselves and that’s what allows them to grow into an entrepreneur role where they’ll have to manage not just themselves but also others and the entire organization.
Lorraine: Yeah because transformation starts from within like you have to understand yourself from within in order to project the energy that you have within you. So a lot of people want to do a particular you know job where be it coaching be it whatever industry they’re in, but the change has to start from within.
The more you change and the more you understand yourself from within, the more you can serve your clients better, the more that you can do your job better, the better decisions that you can make. Be it, if you have challenges like unhappy customers or difficult customers, then you’ve got that skill of how do I manage or speak with difficult clients or how do I manage in difficult situations.
Morris: You mentioned the clutter the mind and learning to focus, do you have some tips for people listening you know solopreneurs listening to you, right now? Do you have some common tips that they could try out?
Lorraine: Take a step back like stop trying too hard. There was a moment in my life where I’m like, “Okay I wanted to be a coach and I’m like this is not working.” Now, once we start feeling that way although we have a coach like I had coaches that told me I’ll figure it out yourself so you know take a step back and go back to the drawing block, drawing you know board like see where you want to see yourself, get the right coach to kind of assist you and I always say this you know, I’ve got clients who have five different coaches, coaches in their confidence, coaches in the gym, you know we’ve got coaches in the gym, coaches in the business, life coach there’s so many different coaches.
But if you don’t want to go down that route of having your own coach then you know I take a step back and listen to yourself, listen to your body. Try and understand or try and be receptive of the area around you, the people that you communicate with daily because that can give you some spark of an idea of what you actually want to do or what could help you design that dream business or that dream life of yourself.
Morris: Okay taking a step back and writing it down I suppose that’s what I heard you say like taking a step back and getting clear.
Lorraine: Yeah so just write different ideas and the thing is that idea can change or that idea can evolve you but the thing is it’s always good to come back to silence. What was that guy’s name Captain America Chris what was his name Chris, this is bad. Everybody loves him.
Morris: I don’t know. I don’t know but I mean there when you say Chris I think of Chris Hemsworth but he’s Thor.
Lorraine: I know stray away. Yeah okay so Captain America the actor, sorry if I forgot your name, so Chris he mentioned in one of his interviews like what the interviewer was saying you know what would you tell yourself back in the day, what would you advise yourself he said he would tell himself to go ssshhhh just be quiet and just be observant of everything around you cuz sometimes the more noise that we get, the more pressure we feel and the more our our body starts to kind of break down.
So sometimes it’s always good to kind of go okay let me just find a quiet relaxing place, let me turn my phone off let me to my phone on silent. I need me-time so when I have me-time my phone is always on silent and if I have people calling me I’m like no it’s me-time. You always have to have me-time to focus on yourself to recuperate that energy.
And what I used to do is I used to go to the beach just to hear the waves, the sound of the waves and I used to go to like let’s say the lake you know just the water running and things like that all. People love meditation, right? That’s why people do meditation. So it’s going back to silent so that you can be more receptive with things around you.
Morris: And would you make that a daily practice? like 15 minutes of silence or 30 minutes of silence per day? Do you have a recommendation?
Lorraine: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s why people do exercise. I do exercise because when I run, my mind starts to flow more because my blood is my adrenaline was going. So for me exercising helps in of meditation because I’m always on the go like my my brain can be very noisy when it wants to.
But sometimes I know for myself that I need to also be in quiet peace as well so I sit down maybe just sit down mindlessly as they say right and just kind of go okay now this is just me-time. And then I like to visualize the future that I want to see myself in and bring it into the current states like okay this is who I want to be in let’s say 5 years 10 years and just visualize that moment of attracting that.
We think about the future that we see ourselves in and we act in that way to attract that to come into place sooner rather than later so I always have that view in mind which means that I don’t stop. I always keep going with that.
Morris: It’s interesting you brought up running. I love running too to like to reset my mind. I like to run I work my first half of the day then I go for a run and then do the second half and it helps me reset but I need to run like I need to run really hard to quiet my mind. If I just go jogging my mind is so like moving fast. I need to push so I can it forces me to focus on my breath but yeah running is great.
Lorraine: Yes absolutely! So I wake up about 4, 5:00 in the morning that means I have no distractions of cars going by and stuff like that and it’s just listening to quiet peace and it’s focusing on my breath and the air. Like the air will be cleaner as well because nobody is around so that’s why I like to start early.
People think I’m crazy but I like that peace. I like that peace where it’s just me and I just can’t focus about me instead of being distracted with you know the cars or the birds and stuff around me.
Morris: Or the huge Australian spiders that we all hear about on the internet.
Lorraine: Oh! I run through a lot of webs because I’m the first to wake up in the morning so that doesn’t work so I don’t run on the side path anymore I run on the road.
Morris: Oh! Gosh!
Lorraine: So I’m like there’s no cars, I can run on the road because if I run on the sidewalk because I’m like the one of the first to wake up in the morning, I do run through a lot of spider webs in the morning.
Morris: Oh! Gosh! What I’ve learned that’s I didn’t expect that one.
Lorraine: Yeah there you go. You talk about spiders so yes I run through a lot of webs, yes. Oh Captain America is Chris Evans.
Morris: That’s right! Yeah now that you mentioned it. Definitely heard his name before.
Lorraine: I need to get that corrected.
Morris: But he’s not Australian, is he?
Lorraine: No no no, he’s not Australian he’s American he’s from Boston.
Morris: Okay so you don’t have to feel bad.
Lorraine: But he’s famous! Everybody knows him.
Morris: Yeah I guess that’s right, that’s true yeah. So we talked about you know you work with solopreneurs and the first step is decluttering the mind. Great advice with the silence. Oh yeah you know, when you describe it like that, taking a moment of silence each day, it sounds so easy. It sounds overly simplified but how many people actually do it? I think that is really the difference here.
It’s so easy to assume that it’s too simple that you don’t do it like you underestimate the power of it.
Lorraine: But just to clarify moment of silence doesn’t mean taking out your phone and you know going on social media that’s not a moment of silence moment of silence is being present in your area with just you and your space so it’s not being distracted where your mind is on your phone swiping and you know scrolling on social media.
So people think oh you know I have my quiet time I’m on my phone when on social media it’s like that. It’s not really quiet time. Quiet time is the focus on yourself, it’s listening to yourself, listening to your body and that’s why people say that you know yoga is the best like I can’t do yoga so like you love to run, I need to run. I can’t do the meditation. Some people do the Chinese Chi or whatever thing they do.
So everyone’s different you know. Find something that helps. I used to as a musician you know I used to just play music and just be in a moment let the music just take over. So if you love playing music then by all means you know spend maybe 10 minutes just playing a music or something just focus on you. Just to kind of let everything go and you never know you may come up with ideas.
So a lot of these things that I do like running or playing music sometimes, I go oh my gosh maybe I should have done it this way or let’s do it this you know I have this idea of this project so you know. I start having all these ideas that come into mind because it just makes you more relaxed and clear of what you truly need to do.
Morris: Yeah thank you for clarifying that. Which instrument or instruments do you play?
Lorraine: Oh too many! I’m a one-woman band. So as they say, my major is actually piano but I do a lot of different instruments as well. Back in the day, I don’t play it as much only when I have to so don’t ask me to perform on stage because I don’t do that anymore. I can speak on stage but I don’t, it’s a decision where I’ve made where I don’t perform music anymore.
But yeah if you want, you know, I’ve touched in as a piano player that’s my main instrument. I have a diploma in classical singing so I used to do singing as well as performance. Strings, I do strings as well as woodwind so I touch almost every part of the orchestral instruments.
Morriss: Wow amazing! Circling back to your coaching, when you started as a coach, how did you find your first batch of clients? What did you do to get the practice off the ground?
Lorraine: So when I mentioned just now of mentoring, I was already mentoring which means that I was already doing a lot of motivational speaking with people in Asia and people in Australia. It was just something that I really enjoyed.
So people already knew my growth. I started with sharing the message first. So if you want to be a coach people need to know who you are, so it’s sharing the message of what I’ve learned from other coaches and when I look at with people is I would rather have a coach who has a coach.
Because they are also leveling up and I always encourage coaches you know do you actually have a coach because you can’t actually coach and help your clients properly if you don’t have a coach. Let’s say your client needs help, where you know, how are you just going to make it up just to seem professional or maybe you can go okay let me just think about it and then you know consult with your coach?
Someone that is you know a higher level than you are. So with me, it started with that just educating people with that concept of change because I never knew that this could have been, you know, a reality. I never knew that you know the grass, we all knew the grass was greener on the other side but I never knew there was a possibility of crossing that path into the field of green as they say.
So that’s the thing like start by educating people first, constantly growing. So constantly be in events, pay for it if you must, you know, find coaches. If one coach doesn’t work, move on to the next person. It’s okay to outgrow a coach. It’s okay if somebody doesn’t work because then there’s always somebody else.
Morris: Yeah that is very encouraging and it reminds me of something in sports where I read a lot that the best athletes in sports are highly coachable and sure there are talents and DNA and things like that but apparently the best athletes are highly coachable and other athletes who would have massive potential they don’t reach it because they’re not open to coaching.
Lorraine: Yeah but if you also notice about the World of Sports, each athlete has multiple coaches because you’ve got coaches that see things from a different point. So that’s a good thing like it’s okay to have multiple coaches because then you have multiple coaches seeing from their point of you.
Morris: So for people especially solopreneurs listening to us here, they’re ready to work with you. They’re ready to have you as their coach, where can they find you?
Lorraine: Oh you can find me on social media, I can send you the link.
Morris: Yeah I’ll put all the links below.
Lorraine: Yeah so the link will give you access to my Instagram so that you know what I’m all about and what I do so you can go through my Instagram. You can go through my Facebook account and you can always book a free session to see if there is a possibility of working with me or maybe after the first meet up, you think oh okay you know she’s not my kind of person then by all means that’s where the free session is. To see if you’re coachable so I also have to see if you’re coachable because that’s you spoke about just now it’s like not everybody is coachable.
People have to come to that realization that they are experts in the field and they have to be open to listen and that’s a problem with a lot of people. Like a lot of people find it difficult to listen because they want to prove that they are good already but if you’re not great yet that’s why you’re there to seek help. So always be open to help, always be open to receive information, and always be open to see other people’s points of view because although you may feel uncomfortable maybe their ways work you just have to try like what what do you have to lose? You have to try to be open to to people out there.
Morris: Wonderful closing statement Lorraine. Thank you so much! For people listening, if you’re a solopreneur and you are struggling or things you’re doing aren’t working or you just want to grow your business then book a free session with Lorraine Chai. I’ll put the links below the episode. Lorraine, thank you so much for being here.
Lorraine: It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure anytime.
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