#51: You Must Do The Work First w/ Grace Brown

Welcome back to the greatest project podcast. My name is Kelly Pool, and I have my favorite guest of all time sitting with me here today, and we are going to get into some very, very deep, good stuff. So Miss Grace Brown, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Kelly, so much for having me, and I was about to say, welcome back your favorite guest, you guys. It's your favorite duo coming at you live. Grace and I have something very special in the works in the pipeline that will be launching towards the end of 2026. So we figured what better way to celebrate this than to dive into a conversation about the work that you must do first as a coach. So often we see coaches who have not done the depth of the work within themselves and then end up either not knowing how to be the coach that they need to be for their clients, they end up projecting, they end up trying too hard to respond, being somebody they're not thinking that they're a healer. And even this work goes so deep as like sales calls. If you are unable to be present and genuinely hear what somebody is experiencing and is telling you, you're not going to close the deal. And so I want to start this conversation off, and I'd love for you to take it away, just what you notice within the industry of the work that coaches aren't doing within themselves first and how we start to bridge that gap. Yeah. Well, I think that if you like really break this down to the foundation of what coaching is, it's a relationship that you're building with a client. And I think a lot of people don't really look at how powerful that relationship is either into helping the client make progress or actually hindering or stalling them. And if we look at as human beings, how we learn to have relationships, what patterns show up in our relationships, whether that's friendships, family relationships, romantic relationships, there's usually patterns that all human beings have across the span of relationships. And these from, for everybody is going to show up in the coaching relationship, especially if they have not done their work. And it is going to, again, whether it's negative or positively impact the client's work that they are able to do throughout the time that they are your client. And I think a lot of coaches don't recognize that because they don't think it's actually talked about at all within the coaching space. And one of the reasons that I became so familiar with that is because my background is a therapist. One thing that they talk about when you're in grad schools, it's called the self of the therapist. And essentially it's a deep dive into your own internal world as a therapist of what are the things about me as a therapist that I could potentially project onto my clients, how have I learned to form relationships based off of my childhood romantic experiences, how are all these things showing up and influencing my lens on my client, but also the relationship that I'm able to form with them. And so I saw that pretty early on of like, hey, this is like one missing in the coaching space, but also look how influential the coaching relationship is for the client to either help them in their journey or also deter them. Yeah. I feel like where we should start with this conversation before we get into the triggering, the triggering, I was going to say, I combined entitlement and triggering, triggering, entitlement, projection, lens work, but like what it is to be a coach because obviously a lot of fitness coaches are going to end up listening to this and they're like, okay, do I need to know how to do this level of depth of work? And I'm somebody who I started out as a fitness coach and then found that it was really like the mind, the emotional, the somatic experience that was dictating all of these deeper desires and all of these behaviors. It was like that just deep drive and that's what I wanted to help solve. And so this is one of those things and I love just your opinion on who this is for because I feel like a lot of fitness coaches will say, okay, well, I shouldn't go learn about gut health and hormonal health and all of these things and yet their clients still aren't adhering to the plan or maybe those outside of fitness coaching specifically who do want to dive a little bit deeper into mindset, who was, who was this for? Everyone, if you're a coach, it's for you. I mean, and maybe that's a little bit biased, but I think that if you are going to be a coach, one, you need to understand yourself on a very deep level, but you also need to understand how your relationship with your client is one of the most powerful tools to help your client, right? Like you can, and I'm sure there are coaches listening to this right now who have a high level of education, whether it's in biology or the sciences, fitness, and they're able to apply those things and their clients still aren't making progress. So you can have all of that education and if you don't have the foundational knowledge of one, how your own internal world influences your client, where comes up within the client relationship, then that's going to factor into that client's success and you're probably going to become frustrated because you're going to be like, I know all this stuff, what is, and then start to blame the client project on, you know, all these things. But yeah, sure, for a story, this is for everybody. And I love the idea of starting with yourself because one of the questions I feel like I most often asked is, what continued education resources should I be learning on how to be a better coach? And my answer is always you need to go do the work yourself because your relationship with your clients is simply going to be a reflection of the work that you've already been able to do within yourself. And so when your client is triggered or they are projecting onto you, if you are emotionally reactive to that, or if you start taking it personal, you're not able to be a good coach to them. You're not able to stay grounded amongst the chaos. And so really a lot of the work starts with like, okay, can you see, like you said, where am I projecting in my life and what does that even start to look like? And how would we start to grow our own awareness of that? I think the easiest way of starting with your triggers, because I think everybody can become aware of that pretty easily of what are the things that I'm easily frustrated by, what are the things that I'm easily heightened emotionally by, when I'm in conversation with somebody, do I notice that I start to get tense, brace, uncomfortable based off of what they're telling me or what I'm hearing, when I'm scrolling on Instagram, what am I triggered by? Right? There are so many easy ways, I think, to start to become aware of your triggers just in your day to day, because I can bet you everybody is triggered at least once or has some emotional reaction at least one time a day. So I think for people, that's the easiest place to start, and then I'm packing them up. Yeah. That makes me think of the entitlement lens that I've seen with a lot of newer coaches is they are frustrated when their clients don't come to them perfect when their communication's not perfect, or maybe they have a really needy client and that becomes triggering. It's like, okay, what is the part of you? And that maybe is needy and does need a little bit of help, or is jealous that that person has the ability to even ask for help, where you had to be hyper independent your entire life and figure it out on your own. So now you project your assumption that, oh, everyone else should figure it out on their own. And so you're frustrated at your clients, and again, it's a relationship at the end of the day, and romantic relationships we know are one of the greatest places for growth because of how triggering they are. I tell every single woman that comes to work with us, coaching's a relationship. We're not mind readers, and at the end of the day, I'm going to ask you to lean in and lead in hard, and even some of their minders I give to clients is you are not a burden. You are safe here. You are allowed to be seen. You are allowed to speak up, voice your opinion, and even just personally, one of my clients said something to me, and I'm going to pull the rug out from underneath myself here. She was like, hey, I feel like last week I said something to you in my check-in, and you thought it was the opposite, and I felt like you kind of had brushed over it. An initial reaction as somebody who would have been operating out of ego is like, no, no, she's wrong, I'm right, I do everything right, I'm perfect, whatever it is. And I step back for a second, I was like, no, she could 100% be right. Some of my clients be type in paragraphs in their check-ins, and I'm a human being, and I'm not plugging their check-ins into AI, and we do a lot of deep work within the check-ins. It's not like she's saying, oh, I'm on day 10 of my cycle, she's pouring out her relationship with her partner, and what had been triggering her in that moment. And so I stepped back and I was like, hey, could you tell me exactly where I did that? I want to take full ownership of that. I do not want you to feel like I am not hearing you or that you were not seen, and could we talk about what you actually said and what I heard. Even she came back and was like, oh, hey, thank you so much, I realized I was taking it personal. I thought that you had brushed me off. And so it really was because I approached the conversation of like, I'm not right, I'm not perfect. Most likely I did make a mistake. She was able to come down and match me, whereas what I've seen a lot of coaches do is meet that fire with fire, and that's only going to make a bigger fire. That is only going to continue to trigger everybody because if I would have taken it personal, like she's saying, I'm a bad coach or that I don't care about her. If I would have let myself become emotionally regulated, unregulated, which a past version of me totally would have, it would have been like, fuck you. I know what I'm doing. Don't tell me what to do, and it is only my ability to zoom out and say, okay, I'm definitely not perfect. I know right now I'm taking all of my sales calls, I'm spread way too thin. That means most likely I dropped the ball somewhere. And I'm okay taking responsibility for that and owning that to my clients. And I even thanked her at the end of it just to be like, hey, you know what, I'm really fucking proud of you for calling me out because a lot of the time clients put their coaches on pedestals, I'm not on a pedestal. You and I are both human beings. This is a relationship and I needed you to do that. So thank you. - Yeah, I also love just the modeling that you presented in that of I'm gonna model to you that I can come to you with accountability and that we can work through this together to figure out like that repair or figure out away through this. Like it was not a, like you said, I'm right, you're wrong. It was, let's approach this with curiosity and compassion and meet in the middle. You're meeting her where she's at to then find the through line and then she's able to come to you and say, well, actually, no, I was actually just taking that personally. But what a beautiful modeling of like healthy relationship dynamics that you should be able to come to anybody in a relationship and say, one, I take accountability for this, but also two, like you said, for her to come to you and say, hey, I feel like you missed me here. Also really just a testament to the safety that you've built within your relationship with her that she's able to come to you and even say that and bring more of an emotional charge to you without you setting that on fire and bringing it even higher, right? Such a testament to like the work that you've done, your ability to regulate and not be triggered because there are a lot of people who if you haven't done your work, would be triggered in that situation. And the other thing that came forward for me, Kelly, as you're saying that is, I don't want to say coaching is easier, but I almost do want to say it's easier. It's like coaching is easier when you've done your work because you don't, you're not taking things as personally and you also aren't making it like, I'm almost thinking like things like your coaches say around, they almost like they have to work harder than the client, but it's because they are taking on more responsibility or they are taking on this like pedestal whereas like, yes, you are doing that. You are going to be working harder than your client because you're actually not inviting your client into a relationship with you where it is extremely collaborative and you are like when coaches do that, it's like you are stressing yourself out or thing you need to be because you haven't done your own work. It makes me think of I had another conversation with a client yesterday and she came to me and was like, I need your help because I'm not doing the work on my own. And I know, and she took Fullerton's Village, she's like, I know that I'm here to do the work and you can't do it for me and a lot of coaches, like you said, take the over-responsibility route where it's like your progress is 100% dictated on me and that's where you end up burnt out and you end up over-identifying with being a coach because it's like, oh, your results are up to me. But instead, I just worked with her of like, okay, is it a behavior thing? So are we just not planning correctly? Are we having resistance to you doing the work because what it might ask you to sacrifice? Like what is really going on there? And by leading by example and really instilling in my culture and in my core values that they know it's 100% their responsibility. That is one of the core values. And when you come into my program, we have an identity helmet which is basically, I tell them exactly who I expect them to be which is somebody who takes full and complete ownership and equally I have to, right, mirror and model and mimic that so they're able to see that. And then in relation to the modeling, I also think of setting boundaries as a coach. So what are the hours that I answer check-ins within? If I'm having like a bad mental health day or if I just need a break, I openly and honestly communicate with them because I work with a lot of coaches, I work with a lot of high achieving women who are used to burning themselves into the ground. They will light themselves on fire, they will take care of themselves last and I used to be that way. And one of the greatest things that I've realized I can do for them, especially again, we're kind of seeing the pedestal dynamic which I don't want, but subconsciously it happens. If I can show them, you can take a day off. You can communicate with your clients that you need a little bit of space. So I can take care of me, so I can take care of them. Like it's a domino effect there and I've had many of them come to me and be like, thank you for doing that because then I was able to turn around and do it to my clients because I'm not judging you. I don't think that you're less than because you did that. If anything, I'm like, oh no, makes total sense. Take the day off and I'll see you tomorrow. - Yeah, and if you are a coach listening to this right now who gets anxious a lot about not answering your client's messages, it's in your work that you have to do because there's over responsibility that you are placing on yourself about the fact that and it will go this deep that if I don't answer this client's message right now, that is going to impact their progress. Therefore that is my fault and I can't do that because I am 100% responsible for this client's ability to be successful and that means I need to be answering messages 24/7. So if you are listening to this right now and that's you, we've all been there, but that's your work. That's not your client's work and your client should be able to message you without you being triggered. - It's right, is it triggering an abandonment wound of oh, they're going to leave me and if they leave me, then it's triggering the scarcity wound of, I'm not going to be able to pay my bills or my monthly recurring revenue is going to go down, which is so funny and one of the things that I take a lot of pride in and what I do is I teach autonomy and so sometimes Nick and I have always said this, I will see somebody's message who I know just needs to sit in their ship. I'm not going to answer, you can sit in it for a little bit because you're looking for me to self-soothe and I will never become that person for my clients. Like yes, I'm there to hold you accountable, I'm there to support you genuinely nine times out of 10, I am there while they are actively experiencing it and I don't want them to need me because then they're going to be hooked to me for life, I'm going to become their regulator and I do not want to be that person for them. - Yeah, and I think that's something that as a coach, when you've done your own work, you can clock that pretty quickly with a client and set expectations with them from the jump about it. Of like, hey, as we've had conversations and we've started on this journey together, my sense is that this is one of your patterns, is that fair, like can we explore this a little bit? What does this look like in other relationships in your life? More than likely than not, they're going to have some awareness around that of whether that's in the romantic relationships or in the friendship, they feel like they need a lot of validation, a lot of reassurance, they don't have a lot of trust in themselves to find their own answers. And so when you're a coach who've done your work, you can clock that pretty quickly and then have a conversation with the client of like, hey, just so you know, part of our work is actually going to be in getting you to lean on me less because your pattern is you don't have a lot of trust in yourself and you really doubt the answers that you have within. And my goal as a coach is to help you figure this out on your own too. My support for you is in helping you break this pattern. And I want you to hear that my intention is never that you don't feel supported, but we have to break this pattern because the biggest gift that I can give you is that you start to trust yourself. I love that you trust me, but I want you to trust yourself more than anything because at the end of this, I don't want you to feel like you need me for life. - One of my clients came to me the other day, she goes, I'm mad at you. I was like, why? She goes, I thought you were going to give me the answers. I was like, mm-hmm. She goes, you've gave me no answers. She said, I love you for it, but I'm also very mad at you. And I was like, I know. And that's okay. Because I'm teaching her and one of my favorite things and I'm sure you experience and love this too when they're like, I hear you in my head. When I'm doing something. - Oh yeah. - I hear you're a little over my shoulder. I hear they'll repeat it back to me. They'll say, okay, so I thought this. And then I heard you asking me whatever some deeper question about it. And so they'll have that internal dialogue just with themselves because I'm teaching them how to stay curious about their own thoughts. And we were talking about this a little bit before, but that's really what coaching is is not for us to give clients the answers, but for us to be the mirror. And if you, depending on who's listening to this and like your relationship with the spiritual world, a lot of coaches claim to be healers or claim to be able to do these things for their client, I take zero credit. I'm genuinely just sitting here with ya vibing. You have all of the answers within you. Most likely nobody in your life has challenged you, has asked you questions, has given you space to sit in it long enough or kind of like you were saying when you've been coaching long enough, our pattern recognition. So even was on the phone with the girl yesterday. Every single shoe sent back to me multiple times. Oh, that makes sense. Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And on the fourth time of her saying, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I was like, oh, she's sitting in her brain right now. Logically, all of this makes sense to her very, very intelligent woman. And I was like, yeah, logically it makes sense. How does that feel to you? And you could see her eyes just kind of come back and she was like, well, and it was the, yes, she could digest it in her mind, but her body, she wasn't allowing herself to feel and move through these things. And so even like our job is the pattern recognition of you've become used to your own way of processing. Some people feel a little too much, some people don't feel enough. And again, like our job is to just hold up the mirror to support you figuring yourself out. Yeah. And where the clients blind spots are and when you don't know your own blind spots, it's very hard to even see your clients or hold up the mirror for your client in that. Which again, just circle back. That's why you're working. so important. A lot of you coaches. You got some life thoughts in there, which is not to like shame, like it's not to shame, but I do think and Kelly and I talked about this is like that is one of the biggest things missing in the coaching space is there are so much emphasis on, you know, especially in the fitness space, like continuing education around nutrition and gut health and stress and workouts, but there is not emphasis on the coach and the coaching relationship itself and I'm like, we are missing in my opinion the most foundational part of coaching. Yeah. I specifically in the coaching industry, it's all of the coaches are like, I'm self-aware. I just still don't have this yet or I know what to do. I just can't get myself to do it or I can see the problem that my client is facing. I just don't know how to work them through it and it's like, yeah, you might be aware and I post this on my Instagram yesterday just because the bird is aware of the cage doesn't mean that he's free from the cage and so that's what most people and most coaches are in like use are starting to come around to see your blind spots as a coach, but just because you're aware of the blind spot doesn't mean that you have the tools to navigate through around or out of it. Who showed you your blind spots when you were first learning how to coach? I think my clients. My clients and I, you know, I think because of my background and training, when I was, I wouldn't say I was always going to track in my triggers. Obviously, I've developed more awareness around them, but when I felt myself getting anxious about a client, when I felt myself thinking a lot about a client, like thinking about them too much of like, is this client going to be successful? This especially showed up for me when I started fitness coaching. You know, that was acute of me. Oh, there is something going on within me that is influencing and for me, it showed up a lot as anxiety or being triggered. That my pattern was over responsibility. If this client isn't successful, it's a hundred percent my fault and there needs to be, I need to be doing everything I possibly can to make sure this client is successful, but that led to me hand-wolding, which does not empower the client. Overcompensation. Yes, complete overcompensation because somewhere I had this idea that if my client isn't successful, that is reflection of me, and then I'm not good. I'm not good enough. I will never be good at this or other people are going to look at me and think I'm incompetent in this. There was a lot of judgment of myself, but I think also fear around what other people were going to think about me, but also what my client was going to think about me. That, "Oh, my client is going to not think I'm supporting them enough. They're going to think it's my fault that they're not making progress." Once I really got clear on that, I was like, "Oh, one, this doesn't help a client. It doesn't help me or make me feel better." I had to say, "How do I do my own work on this?" A lot of that was looking at my own relationships and my life because I filled a role within my family, but also through the help I'm the helper. I'm the one who's a fixer. This is my role. That was my identity. Of course, if that's how I see myself, I'm going to take on that role to an extreme in a space like coaching or therapy, where that is literally what I'm doing is serving as a helper, but I had to understand that that's not who I am. I'm not a fixer. I'm not a helper. It's an aspect of what I do, but it's not who I am. Who am I inherently? That allowed me to build a strong foundation and be so much more grounded and regulated within my coaching relationships, and I won't say that that never doesn't like kick up every now and then, but when it kicks up now, I'm like, "Oh, there's that thing that I used to do a lot, and I can bring myself right back out of it very quickly because I'm so familiar with that pattern myself." What you just said was it goes back to the first part of all this of identity work, making sure you're not over identifying with or identifying as, "Oh, I'm the fixer." It's just a part. It is a piece. It is not all of who I am, which a lot of coaches over identify with being a coach. Their identity house, the way I describe it, is one room. If your house is one room and that one room floods, you're homeless, but if you have 10 rooms in your house and one room floods, you can just go to the other room and you will still have this grounded sense of who you are. Making sure as a coach, you still understand that you're a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a human being, like all of these other different aspects and capacities of you. Mine, funny enough, you've always known yourself to be or having the traits of the fixer or the helper. I'm the complete opposite. I never, ever saw myself as somebody who helped people, wow, which is so funny because of what we do. It's a recent thing. Even then, I don't identify myself as somebody who helps people. It's always been for me. I grow and then I turn around and just show somebody what I've been able to do. I accept that my path is I must be learning, I must be growing, continued education, going to the depth of within myself because anytime a new thing comes up in my life, I meet with a new client and it's what they're going through and I just sit there and I laugh because I'm like, oh, I'm one step ahead of you. That's it. I'm still figuring this out. I'm still equally triggered, but it is so fun to sit and just hear them and then almost get to, like you said, like heal myself and work through my own triggers. Through them, yes, because we have so much more compassionate to them than we are to ourselves. Yeah, and that's the other thing of like, I'm curious how you thought, like what the identity was for you when you first started coaching, but also what you just sat around, we get to like heal alongside it. It could become so much more of a collaboration. And to me, I'm like, this is so much more fun. This is so much more easy. I feel so much more regulated and rooted in this work when I take off. Almost you're like, you are taking yourself off the pedestal. It's like, yes, now I will not be the only reason to this client. It is not me that makes this client succeed. Yes. I'm holding up a mirror. I can help to facilitate. I can collaborate with them and ask powerful questions and be a good mirror for them. But I am evoking in my client. What was within them all along? And it's almost like when you take yourself off the pedestal, you're like, oh, like, wow, I just took so much pressure off of myself too to feel like I have to perform. Yes. They're saying a performance. This is a relationship. Anytime I try to be profound, I sound like an idiot. Idiot. I'm like, you're a moron. Shut up. Yes. When I start to get advicey, I'm like, you're trying to prove something right now. Every now and then, and I'll tell them that. And I will typically only do it with clients that I'm maybe a little bit more friends with. I'll be like, I'm going to step out of coach role for a second. And is it okay if I tell you something like very permission based. If I see something and I see that they have the capacity for it to receive it because 90% of the time telling people what to do ain't going to be the thing that's going to do it for them. And that's something you actually had said earlier. Like when clients bring coaches problems or things that they're experiencing, I think 95% of coaches probably respond with, this is what you need to do. Here's my advice. And actually, what is more powerful is asking them questions. Yeah. And they're, I was just going to say there's, there's a time and place to like, there's a time and place to give advice. There's a time and place to give feedback in that way. But when you start to like, over explain yourself and go on a rant, attend it. That's when you know you've, you've gone too far. Literally dying laughing. We're in an improv class right now. We are. Have you ever seen the thing where it's like yes and and that's the improv class. Yeah. That's me and you. We both started our sentence with and so we could keep going. Me and Kelly are like, there's like fireworks coming from my brain to hers of like we just like say one thing and I'm like, idea. Thought. Let me tell you something. And you say something and then I'm tracked this way and then I have to come back and just I have two thoughts that'll circle back to actually three, probably five. One, peers, content creation and or just caring what other coaches in the industry think about you is coaches kryptonite. My business literally doubled when I stopped making content for the people around me and started making content for the people who needed quote unquote needed me. Like if you are trying to look smart or look well spoken or look a certain way for the people next to you. I said this to one of my clients the other day. If I'm facing sideways, I'm not looking at my audience. So it's like how many times are you too busy looking at the person next to you instead of the crowd of people who is standing in front of you and need something from you. The second piece of this unrelated but related for me, my understanding that I was the piece of my growth was my business growth. It was never I always knew I didn't need more systems. I didn't need a better strategy. I always knew what to do. I wasn't getting myself to do it and so that's where I understood it was the depth of work It wasn't more knowledge or more information or a better system or a better strategy And I'm even so much of the embodiment of that right now. I'm not oh, I need a DM strategy or a content creation strategy It really just is when I'm on my shit doing my own internal work staying grounded meditating journaling meeting my triggers being around people who push me Everything does great. Like it was always me and so that is where I became obsessed with the work is Understanding if I could get everybody to realize they are the linchpin in their progress You are the one determinant at the end of the day. You either build yourself up or you tear yourself down and you need to pick what that is for you That's what I'm obsessed with this. Yeah, I love that and I love you pointing that out because I Maybe didn't follow a lot of the business that I got about DMs and Certain metrics that I need to how I love you pointing that out But you probably have more of a need for systems because of the scale that you're at than I do right now But I was like Fuck this shit like I'm going to do my own work essentially and you know There's a place for me to implement that a little bit more But I would be the first to tell somebody I didn't follow anything really traditionally within my business and how I grew my business I was like let me do my work show up authentically online and in my sales calls with people and people feel that People feel your confidence. They feel like you're unattachment to Whether they do this or not. It's like I'm an advocate for you in the part of you that I really wants this But I'm unattached to it like there is I you know whether you do it or not I'm not gonna go boo-hoo cry at home about it, right see and I True like that is such a good good point of this is so many coaches are like You know what do I need to do? Do I need to send it more DMs do I and sure there's like a numbers game to this but also The most power you are the tool that drives us and when you really get that and you do the work on a deep level there is nothing that really Like takes you off track too much like you are able to return a base line so quickly and it's be like let's keep this thing rocking and rolling I think of it in relation to sales calls of what you're saying of Too many people are Outcome focused instead of process focused of how do I close the sales call? Not how do I listen to this person sitting in front of me? How do I genuinely hear what they're saying and I was auditing my sales teams calls and It's so funny because I'm just getting irritated as I'm listening to them I'm like you guys aren't listening to them. You are too focused if I could love love them They are too focused on following the sales script following this process that they had been given whether it was from a salesperson Whether it was from me then you are to hearing the person in front of you I have three questions when I get on a sales call first one is what are we doing on this call? Why is this important to you now and where do you want to go everything besides those three questions? I don't give shit because everything I need to know is within the depth of like what are we what do you want and why is When did you decide that this was something that you wanted to do and just hearing people and even I mean Everybody knows that they'll come say well. I want to be more confident in my life Okay, what confidence means to me it might not mean to you. So what does confident mean to you? How let's say six months down the road for now. You're more confident How are you showing up in your day-to-day life? How do you show up in your relationship? Does this also benefit the way that you show up in your job? Most people just lack clarity more so than anything else And that's 90% of our job as a coach is to ask them those deeper questions to sit and challenge them because again a lot of these people just don't have anybody who directly listens to them and they don't have anybody who directly challenges them Which then I could go down the rabbit hole of be the embodiment of what you want, which that's a whole I'll pause. Yeah, because that's a whole but even what you're saying right now is just like foundational skills to build a relationship Listening, rapport, reflection, curiosity and It's like I know the coach is listening to this you you logically get that but because of your identity and the relationship that you have with yourself And how you see yourself and your business you miss these foundational things as Like the sales call is this start to building a relationship with that potential client So you want to be working on listening, building rapport with them, getting to know them, asking them powerful questions Being curious about them and their story and their blocks and what led them to this call today And it's like when you focus on that it's like I am wanting to do this once so I can see is this client really in a line fit for me but also so that I can Allow them to see that my goal is to build a relationship with you But this is how I lead that and the sales calls the start to that But yeah, I just love you putting that out. I mean, these are foundational relationships skills That's like what we're just talking about in the beginning I Always kind of implement that don't take what they say at surface level and don't assume you know what they're talking about and that's where most people Leave things and that's why they're not going deeper and then you had said you called it trigger tracking Is that what you called it Yeah, you called it trigger tracking and I was like that's so smart and what I want every single person listening to this To go do on your next sales call Be fully in your own body Because most of the time you're so anxious that you get in your head and you start saying stupid shit Or you start becoming outcome oriented where it's just like how do I close this call Versus okay, I'm noticing my heart beats a little faster right now. So that's gonna trigger some like Anxiousness within me and then I'm not as present because I'm thinking about the future I describe it as like depressive thoughts are thinking about everything behind you anxious thoughts are thinking about everything in front of you But if I can be where my feet are now with this person to just sit here and Do what I need to do for them and same thing of noticing like okay, where do I have the like people pleasing tendency on a sales call Versus again telling somebody what they need to hear instead of what you think they want to hear and that's where If you are not a hundred percent convicted and confident in who you are you will let somebody else tell you who you are Which is where it's your responsibility to do the work not to get somebody else to like you But to know who you are and let that be magnetic Yeah, and the other part of that which you know maybe not even a sales call but it could come up in a sales call or later on in the coaching relationship Goes back to what you were saying earlier about how that client came to you And was able to be honest with you. It's like if I don't do my own work But also recognize that if I am telling this client what they need to hear in this moment I trust that regardless of their response or how they take it we can work through it Right if you have it done your own work you don't trust that you don't trust the client and to me That is selling the client so short on their own capability and capacity to like step step forward in that It's like this client can't handle this essentially and I can't handle the conflict or the confrontation or Them possibly miss hearing me. So I'm just not gonna. I'm just not gonna like bring forward what actually is necessary When we trust ourselves, but also trust their capability you bring that forward and that is so much more empowering and Helpful for that client that we can have a difficult conversation and that doesn't mean I hate you That doesn't mean I don't want what's best for you, right? That doesn't mean you're gonna hate me It just means like we have those nitty gritty hard conversations That's another big thing if you are a coach and you struggle with conflict or confrontation or hard conversations in your life You're gonna struggle to do that with your clients and I am someone who has struggled a lot with that and still like have to remind myself of that constantly today is that It is a disservice to my client to not bring that forward because of my own fear And my that is my fear that I have to take personal responsibility to work through and again We're gonna stay in a million one times here. That is why your work is so important because otherwise I'd be projecting onto that client and Ritting them of a service that would actually probably be so powerful them and for them and our work together I always tell my team easy clients won't make you a better coach Those client relationships where they listen to every single thing that you say the coaches Okay circling back to entitlement the coaches who are like yeah, but I just want clients who do everything that I say yeah, don't we all Like brother I fucking wish everybody did everything that I said, but that's not the way it works and you're not gonna become Better at conflict better at communication and understanding and the program that we're in the anyogram really changed my perspective Because I was blind to the fact that not everybody wanted to achieve at the level that I want to achieve that I'm very like achievement driven in the world and like control of situations Not everybody is like that and so I was subconsciously pushing an agenda on some of my clients And then there was like this resistance versus understanding them and what matters to them? Why are they here? What are their intentions? And I'll circle back to what you said you said it in the beginning and then again But just you do clients a disservice by withholding Either something that you know they need to hear and or pushing on a sales call because you have this desire to be liked. So I would rather them like me than think that I'm pushing them, or I would rather them like me than say this hard truth. The only person that you are hurting is the client. And that's where most people get the sales stuff wrong. They're like, "Well, I don't want to be pushy and I don't want to be salesy." That person doesn't believe in themselves. They are stuck and they're on the phone with you because they are asking for help. And until you can root so deeply that you have something that can help this person, they just, they need to see it first. They need somebody to believe in them because they don't believe in themselves enough. And that's 90% of what sales calls aren't. Fitness is such a great example of this. They've just spent the last 10 years not being able to achieve the thing they wanted to achieve. To me, it's effortless. It's a walk in the park. Give me six months and we can do it. Like, borrow my belief. That's all a sales call is. It's like, borrow my belief and I tell all my clients that. Like, borrow my belief as long as you need to. But eventually, I will force you to grow your own. And like, it's slightly aggressive. But gosh, sorry, I'm manipulating you to believe in yourself. Literally. The other part of that, Kelly, is there is a misunderstanding. I think people have that if something lands on your client hard and it's like, "Oh, I can see that trigger them." You can have a conversation with them about it. You don't have to brush that under the rug. It's like, "Oh, I see that." It looks like that's landing on you a certain way. Or how did that land for you? Like, whether it's a sales call or coaching calls, if I say something that I'm being honest with my client or reflecting something back to them that might trigger them, here's the thing you should trigger your clients. It's one of those things you're building their capacity. You don't want to trigger them like a hundred out of a hundred. But like, let me bring my client to a 30 out of a hundred. Let me trigger them a little bit and build their capacity to sit with this discomfort of what we're working through. So when you're on a sales call or on a call with a client and you see that something you said landed, this is where doing the deep work, you can track your clients, you track your clients easily. But I can tell when stuff land kind of wonky on my clients. I'm like, "How'd that land for you right now?" And there might be like, that was kind of hard for me to hear or I can feel like some bracing in my chest or I'm starting to have these kind of thoughts or whatever. That's an opportunity for a conversation to work through it so that they see triggers aren't bad. This is an opportunity for your growth and opportunity for our relationship to walk through this together to collaborate on this and for you to come out of it on the other side to see triggers aren't bad. They're an opportunity for your growth and teaching. So that's the other thing is like, if you trigger a client, have a conversation with them about it in a curious and compassionate way. Beautiful. What a better opportunity for that relationship. I feel like something that we should touch on is kind of what we are saying at the beginning of a lot of coaches fear going the compassionate route because they fear being seen as soft or they can be walked all over in that capacity whereas compassion is honestly one of the more brave things that somebody can do. And there's a line of empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. I can have empathy towards what my client is experiencing but I don't feel bad for them because at the end of the day like we know obviously when you are a kid you can't dictate and control that stuff but you now in your 20s or 30s listening to this even as a coach are in the driver's seat role and shame works, compassion works better. And I always love everybody's judgment of me based on the videos that I make on like shorter form content versus coming to something like this in listening. 90% of the work I do with my clients is like leading with compassion because they've been using shame-based pain-based tactics up until this point which is the exact reason that it's not working. People don't know that you're so compassionate. It's very compassionate but it works. It is very action oriented and yeah there's this idea that compassion makes you as a coach like a rollover and you're just like a mush on the street and you're no longer taking action and you're not like tenacious and ambitious and driven. It's like Kelly of anybody is such a perfect example of this. If you see Kelly you see this one side of her that is one side of who she is but what I want people to hear is that you see this side of her that exists a long side of her compassion which doesn't you don't always see as much of that her clients get witness to her friends get witness to her friends get to experience that and I love that I think that Kelly is such a perfect example for all of you coaches that those things can coexist and it works and it works and there's not one or the other it's like you could have both who said you can't have both why can't you do both why do you have to be compassion and emotionless question like you don't do anything and yeah you're just a little baby it's like what I got a big backbone and a mushy heart she does like she does it all and yeah so it's like for people to hear compassion is so action oriented and it is so effective for evoking change and I see it time and time and time again I have like a case study and I want your opinion on this I'm gonna give you mine and then I want yours because I feel like you might you might differ from me yeah but that's okay because I go for I want it I have had me and a couple of my coaches we are having the conversation about clients who are experiencing shame or guilt because they are not doing what they said they're going to do and then they say yeah but I want to give myself grace I don't want to make myself feel bad and so they almost swing the pendulum back the other way where they are too soft too nice not experiencing consequences or like allowing themselves to actually feel the shame which in my opinion if they fully felt the shame and the weight you would have no other option but to change your actions which is where I my perception of it is shame is healthy because it shows you where you're living out of integrity with what you say that you want most and so can we use shame as a signal not to soak in it not to overindulge in it not to be with forever but to say like oh the shame is present what is making it be present I'm not following through and what I said I was going to do what is blocking me from doing that and then changing action moving forward and so I think they should feel shame I agree with you yeah I think there's actually an avoidance of their shame and I'd be curious to know that for those clients if they have certain coping patterns or behaviors that actually allow them to avoid the shame they're aware of it in some way but the shame comes up and then whether it's they overeat doom scroll get constant reassurance or validation like there's some probably pattern that's coming up for them I would assume that is allowing them or helping them to avoid the shame yeah right and when they actually allow themselves to sit with the experience and the emotion I would say shame comes first but then sadness comes yeah grief comes and that is it's not to me I'm like it's not necessarily the shame that's the driving factor it is the sadness that they sit with as a result of the way in which they haven't been showing up for themselves right when I really allowed myself to sit with the patterns I've been playing out I see I've been constantly abandoning myself I see I don't show up for myself I say don't trust myself actually to follow through on that and when someone sits with that emotionally and semantically that's like heartbreaking in a way and that will be the thing what is your so long ago I wrote it down somewhere but like the core of every single both programs everything I do everything I want to teach is that the price of love is not self abandonment like just triple quadruple underlying as like high achieving women tend to have and I hate saying that but it is that's what what we classify as of like right you will self sacrifice in the name of validation love attention whatever it is but even like you said of like oh at the end of the day all of these patterns kind of come back to this place of I'm abandoning myself like what would you tell to somebody who notices that pattern within themselves I think that that's where the compassion comes in it's to understand why did I feel like it was better or safer to abandon myself or the sake of other people or patterns and I think there was a period in my life they're I don't think I know there was a period in my life where I did that and I think a lot of it had to do with how my identity was rooted in being a selector and a helper and it was I put people for myself I privilege other people's experience above my own to set an after sacrifice of me and where I learned that within my family system and the roles that I felt filled and that I chiseled this identity and thought well if I'm not a fixer and helper than who am I and I had to learn who I was outside of that that my worth and value are inherent regardless of if I fix people that I'm lovable regardless of if I do you know if I'm successful or if I'm a helper right that a lot of high achievers it's like you're lovable without success you're lovable without having teeth this all and when people get that they're then able to see oh I get now why I was privileging all of this before me and I can now start to shift that pattern but first having compassion for the fact that you may have had awareness but you didn't really know another way of being until now and can we have compassion for that and hold the grief and sadness of that that Wow, I really did privilege other people's experience. above my own and I missed myself so much. How sad that is. Because to me, for me, for my clients, that I see the driving factor that pushes them to have more love and compassion, which compassion again, action oriented. You are then so much more fierce for the way that you show up for yourself when you love yourself like that. It's like, "Shit, I am going to take care of myself." That was my biggest on one of the like peer practice sessions. I had been in a shame spiral about doom scrolling and I used, it was not working, shame every time to move me out of it and she was like, "How shame working for you?" And I was like, "Oh, it's not." And so it was like, "Oh, okay, when you can go root it in compassion, oh, then I'm back in control." Because then I don't fear the like berating self-talk around it, which again, this all goes back to constantly doing the work of myself so I can emotion. So I know what it's like to experience because when you have a lived-in experience and embodiment of the thing, it is so much easier to turn around and support somebody else in doing it. So much easier. And it's so much more fun. Like this is fun, this gets to be fun. I love this work. It is. And I feel like time is going to be our next podcast episode is just like, "How to have fun and how you don't need to suffer to be a millionaire?" You don't. You don't. I love it. Yeah. Well, Grace, where can the people find you? You guys, you can find me right next to Kelly at all times. No, literally. Literally. You can find that Instagram at G.K. Brown. G.K. Brown, baby. That's where you can find me. Go follow me. You're perfect. I love you. I am going to choose. You want to? I'm just going to say, we've got something big coming. It's coming. We're going to put a form to join at the wait list. We are going to cap numbers of the amount of coaches you don't need to be a coach. To join what we are doing, we will have more details throughout the rest of the year, but the first round is definitely going to be capped because we really want very intentional. Just a very intimate intentional group of coaches going into this. So we will drop the link for the wait list in the show notes below. And Grace, thank you for coming to the show. I love you so much. I love you so much. Thanks for having me. Of course. Bye guys. Bye.