Kevin Stafford 0:01
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the conversations with coaches podcast. I’m your host, Kevin and I am pleased to be here with someone who, once again meeting for the first time I love this dynamic where I get to like, we’ll exchange emails and we’ll get things scheduled. And then I get to meet someone new, and talk to them about what they’re most passionate about it. I know, I say it a lot, really gets me out of bed in the morning keeps me up all day and energize. So today, I get to introduce you to Craig Martin. Craig is a serial entrepreneur, business coach slash consultant. And I love this phrase, recovering advertising executive, guiding entrepreneurs to build seven plus figure businesses and exit to freedom for the past two decades. These days, he’s on a mission to help 1 million entrepreneurs to make a real impact on our world. And we’re gonna get to talk about that today. Craig, thank you for being here. I’m pleased to meet you.
Craig Martin 0:50
Thank you for having me. Yeah,
Kevin Stafford 0:53
let’s, uh, let’s go back to the beginning, not all the way back, not like I was born, you know, we’d have to look, we can go back that far if you’d like. But I’m always fascinated by how people get their start. As a coach, I often sometimes, often sometimes, I often refer to it as the superhero origin story. I feel like every coach kind of has that moment where like a key mentor came in and sort of told them that maybe that maybe coaching would be right for them or that coaching is something they’re already doing. They just didn’t have the word for it. So how did you get your How did you get your your powers as a coach? How did you get your start as a coach?
Craig Martin 1:27
Well, I had some pretty genius mentors, coaches in my early days, but the decision came after I made two decisions in my agency, and one of them led to now being a full time coach. The first was me, stop using stop doing like brainstorm sessions. Because I think it wasn’t delivering the full impact. Because of you know, normally people pull from the strongest person in the in a room. So I decided, okay, we’re not going to do this no more, we’re going to give everyone an opportunity to develop their own concept, their own ideas, and then we will merge them together and see the result that we get from that result from that was great. Then I decided that I’m not going to work from creative briefs no more. Now, you know, those two things are the bedrock of an agency. That’s true. Yeah, well, any creative director maintains your own, I can tell you that 90% of the creative brief that you normally get. Kind of pretty hard to translate. Yeah. So I decided, Okay. This is not really giving me all the detail information that I need to translate back to what needs to be done. So I decided, okay, well, we’re going to start solving problem and a conversation basis. There was some resistance in the early days, eventually, some clients came around, and then it didn’t take long for them to start reaching out to me for another advertising consultation, because now the cover is start getting lifted, and they’re getting a deeper look in their business through those conversations. Because, you know, creative briefs, most of them were created based on perceptions they were invalidated. Mm hmm. So that eventually started the whole pivot into the coaching consulting space. And then clients now start pushing me like, I think you should look into this more seriously. Eventually, after almost 17 years running the agency, I finally decided to pivot out into the coaching consulting space.
Kevin Stafford 4:13
I really, I really do love that story. I had some had some experience at an ad agency when I was much younger, and there were things I liked about it and things I didn’t and things that I’ve taken with me into my career that I have currently. But one thing the two things one, I love that you like one of your real strong motivating factors was you really were you realized, and it bothered you that you weren’t able to have the kind of impact you wanted to have. You kept noticing that there were these significant limiters or you know, a muting of voices, and just a difficulty of actually connecting with and serving your clients and having and helping to generate the kind of impact that you want. And you didn’t just sit there with that discontent. You were like I need to do something about this. Things need to change and then you started going about changing it and I love that. You just found your way to come coaching because it became the answer to your question. But you went out you began, you didn’t wait until the Hey, maybe you should try coaching kind of came to you out of the blue like a lightning strike, you started you’ve got you got to work, and you started making some changes. I love how that exemplifies coaching value so beautifully. And I also really, really, really loved the way that you did very cleanly laid out how, how brainstorming sessions, and things like that can be an inhibitor can be a limiter of creativity and can really silence or at least quiet a lot of other voices. Because like you said, like you pointed out like that in those brainstorming type sessions, the loudest voice or the strongest voice or the more, the voice that is most adept to that particular kind of environment gets more weight, regardless of the value of their ideas or their thoughts or the potential effectiveness or impact of what they might be saying or what they might be thinking and putting out there. And I love that you were just like, No, this is not. This can’t be we got to do something different. This needs to be different. We need other voices, because I know that they’re there. They come out in different environments. Let’s create that space. And let people speak into it and see what comes out. And I’m I’m completely unsurprised that what came out was a successful diversity of voices generating better ideas and more impacts that slide you see it? And it makes so much sense. It seems so simple, but it’s a hard decision to make.
Craig Martin 6:22
I like to disrupt the flow of things sometimes.
Kevin Stafford 6:31
But you are you’re you’re smiling big, very, very big smile. That’s,
Craig Martin 6:35
yeah, I like to disrupt things. Sometimes. Things might be going good, but it might be going to orderly. Hmm. So sometimes I will create a little disruption just to, you know, motivate a situation sometimes.
Kevin Stafford 6:57
And sometimes that disruption serves to prove the strength of the order where it’s just like if you know, if there’s a certain kind of order or way things are done. And you poke poke a little disruption in their poker little change, introduce a little we all
Craig Martin 7:09
need to disrupt yourself at some point. Yeah, yeah, you could test the
Kevin Stafford 7:12
resiliency and resiliency as it’s if something is vulnerable or weak or very easily disrupted, that’s a good sign that there’s some changes that need to be made there.
Craig Martin 7:24
Yeah.
Kevin Stafford 7:26
I love this. This is great. So let’s, I want to, I want to move things up into the present now and talk a little bit about, we’ll talk a lot about what your coaching practice looks like today. And I usually ask this question, it’s kind of like a two parter. Basically, it boils down to who do you coach? And how do you coach them? Who being generally like, if you have a specific focus, where you really like locking with certain like, you know, for example, executives have a certain level or people in certain industries or careers, they’re trying to move from one area to another, or, you know, things like that, maybe it’s just like certain types of people or certain people in certain industries or places in their career, their lives. And how do you coach them is basically the whole spectrum of coaching, whether you focus on your one to one clients, you have group coaching or masterminds that you run or help to guide whether you have coursework or you do keynote speaking, maybe you’ve written or are writing a book or two or 10 or whatever it is. So yeah, basically the whole gamut who you coach and how do you coach them,
Craig Martin 8:26
but my main focus is on intrapreneurs that are really, you know, stated trying to grow a business to seven plus figure. It may not be your goal, currently, but if you’re at the stage that okay, I feel and I need to move to this level, then that’s my focal group. You know, my main focus is on growth in terms of the methodologies i i try not to I use a lot of frameworks and I use some of the common available frameworks, but I try not to use the I would say the fast food method, that Happy Meal method of coaching step by step process that I use across the board, I try to develop framework thinking. So, that allows me to take So, I can take with a client, I do my assessment and then I can pick the parts elements from each framework to design a framework to solve that problem for that client. So a some of the common With available frameworks that I have a whole bunch of them that I rearrange to suit my needs, this doesn’t serve me, I take it out, I put what I need in it. And so I have a whole lot now that I develop. For me, that’s really the way to do it. Yeah, I pick elements to serve the needs of the client, and not just have like a five step or a seven step process that I just spread out across the board, you know, that. It’s like you’re walking into a fast food restaurant, and you know, they just hand you a meal and you go out and you know, not everyone that goes in the restaurant going to need everything that is in that meal.
Kevin Stafford 10:42
Exactly. That’s such a great such a great point I loved and this is really like, I feel like this is very, this just shines a big spotlight on the real value of a coach. It’s because these frameworks are still out there, there’s the frameworks are a dime a dozen, they’re they’re relatively readily available, there’s a ton of them, there’s five steps, seven steps to 27 steps, the 30 day, the six months, the 12 month, the what and all these different methodologies and frameworks, and they’ve worked for some people. But really, I think where people will get get lost or get maybe get stuck in the mud is they’ll just apply the framework without any real critical thinking or without any guidance, they’ll just throw it on top of their business or their lives and execute on it without really giving. Exactly, exactly. And so a real a really good coach, which it sounds like you are understands that you pick, you understand the framework, you comprehend why they work, the way they work, why they exist in the first place, they don’t become frameworks, unless they have some level of effectiveness, you see what’s there. And then you look at your client, and you look at what they need and where they’re at. And you’re like, you know what, this part is going to be perfect for them. But the rest of this stuff, they’re just not, that’s not their industry, that’s not their goal, that’s not their desire, that’s not their impact, that’s not their scale, whatever the reason, and so you kind of brush that aside, and you bring that good, that good piece over, and you look at the other frameworks, and you’re like, so I’m very familiar with this one. And just from that one, I could see these two parts being very, like it’s, I can see these two really working, so you bring them in, you could attack them or in my head I’ve got there’s just like this mad scientist going on where you’re in the lab, and you’re building these custom frameworks, almost like a tailored suit or tailored clothing where it’s just like, you know, the measurements of your client, and you’re gonna get them something that fits them like a glove, it’s gonna feel it’s going to make them feel like a million bucks, literally, eventually,
Craig Martin 12:26
after solving problems for two decades. You know, your wins your losses, they do teach you valuable lessons and you know, give you a new perspective, for looking at things, you know, it takes you from that linear space and Bucha we give you a world view.
Kevin Stafford 12:46
The world does not the world is not a framework based place the world is chaotic. And, and adaptive is always moving and always changing. And that’s a very agile environment. Yeah, and that’s the Western way it shouldn’t be. That’s it, that’s actually a feature not a bug, and it’s something new embrace, and not try and deny or keep out and that’s, again, valuable,
Craig Martin 13:07
we’re all different. And that’s something that needs to be embraced and applied into the practices of mentorship coaching. You know, in terms of the stuff Well, I haven’t written a book yet but I recently launched a group coaching platform. Excellent, that’s yeah, that’s, that’s acclimated minds. So that’s, again targeting for intrapreneurs that are you know, looking to network and you know, build your business up with a group of like minded people focusing in achieving their, their end goal.
Kevin Stafford 14:06
There’s something I like I’ve I’ve gotten to speak to hundreds of coaches now at this point, which is still like it’s kind of heavy to me. So I have like, whenever whenever I’m hearing someone talk about like, their new program or whatever it is, I’m always like, Oh yeah, I remember when so and so are these like four or five people when they first started getting into group coaching and what they how they how they spoke about it, and I love how how amplified or how you can amplify your impact in a group coaching environment because that transition from like doing working primarily one to one to kind of moving into group coaching it’s still coaching and still has a lot of the same power and it’s still imbued with your with your coaching principles and your passions. But there’s a there’s a slight difference to it and then when when you have it right, and you’re guiding a group and they’re almost coaching each other at the same time as they’re being coached by you. It’s really a magical is a word that gets tossed out there a lot but there’s just a there’s there’s something really just inspiring about it to watch it happen.
Craig Martin 14:57
Yeah, the key thing I think is to understand people’s process, you know, it’s easy to try to teach the way you teach. It’s better to understand how people learn, how they receive, how they organize, or the process information.
Kevin Stafford 15:21
Hmm. That’s it, man. That’s it. It’s something I think about a lot. And it’s a lesson that I have to I have to learn on a regular basis, especially as someone who like hosts a podcast and like talks a lot and has to communicate my excommunicate myself a lot, that it’s still the number one job is for me to understand, not what I’m saying, but how it’s being heard, how it’s being received, and, and how much more of an impact that can have if I take the time and the energy and the focus to consider that and to leave open, the possibility of that leave open where that might go. And then think about that. Like, I often think about our little internal team dynamics here at pier at boxer, and how, how much I’ve learned the ways in which people best process information, and how I how I speak differently to them in ways that are that are considered and how I continually evolve how I speak to someone how to communicate to someone. And it’s, I find it to be endlessly fascinating. I mean, I say endlessly fascinating, like, I’ll enjoy this for the rest of my life, just like thinking about the way human beings interact and how they listen and how I touch them, and they touch me and all this stuff, personally, professionally across the board. And I just I love I love the way that you are helping that to happen for an area for like a type of person because entrepreneurship can be a very, how do I say this, it can be very isolating. It can be it can be it can be a little bit lonely, you can feel like you’re on a journey. And it’s good to know it’s good to have someone there to guide you. And also to show you it’s like they’re are they’re on their own journeys. It’s you’re doing your thing, and you’re doing well. But they’re still there. There’s a whole plethora of people out there who understand on a base level, where you’re at what you’re going through how you’re developing, and then maybe they’re a little bit behind you on their journey comparatively are a little bit ahead and they have they can have insights to offer you that you might not get on your own. It’s just I think it’s really important work.
Craig Martin 17:15
Yeah, if you look at see a sport recruiter, they go out and they look for people that have a magic that needs to be thrown out in the world. And they develop so they get that person and then they take that person to a coach a coach develop that person you’re not instilling something in someone you’re bringing out what’s already hinted that person Mm hmm.
Kevin Stafford 17:50
Couldn’t said it better myself, Matt’s I’m looking at I’m doing that thing where I’m looking at the clock and I’m like, Man, I want it I just want to keep talking. Because we’re tapping into those deep pools that I love. It’s like there’s the real stuff. But I should I should wrap things up here. But I do want to ask you another little two part question before I let you go. Because I want people to be able to find you and learn more about you and connect with you. So where can people find out more about you? What’s the best place for them to go to learn more about who you are, what you do, what you’re up to now and coming up in the future? And also what’s the best way for people to connect with you if they want to start a conversation and maybe start a relationship
Craig Martin 18:27
I’m on LinkedIn I am just getting active on social media after being my head over the years I oh you need to be on social media you know putting my foot forward and trying to get myself out there but um Instagram and LinkedIn those are the two platform that I am most active and now so my it’s I am Craig Martin and for my Instagram and LinkedIn it’s your Craig Martin most times people set out to put in Craig marketing coach or consultant because there’s a whole lot of group
Kevin Stafford 19:08
there’s a few there’s a few
Craig Martin 19:12
yeah, there’s a whole lot so you know if you reach out and say I had to put in consultant or coach to see your pop ups so you know, but anyone can connect with me and any one of those platforms and you know can reach out to said I groupco coaching platform that’s acclimated minds that come that’s something that I just get started and in an effort to try reach, you know, wider network of engineers get you know, some Japanese sometimes they’re hoping they would like to get coaching and mentorship but you’re starting out sometime it’s a little bit out of their reach cost wise. So Hmm. You know, that was the motivation behind that. And also the acclimated minds is the journey that I took to arrive where I am today, you know, I worked with some great mentors and coaches and stuff. So that is just embodying that process those people. So that’s where the acclimated mind, mind, mind. Mind is within this. That’s where we came from.
Kevin Stafford 20:41
Excellent. And I’ll make sure that the links are in the show notes to this episode, and all that usual stuff. So people won’t have any trouble finding you. I’ll put the links directly in there so they don’t have to search. I’ll make it great. Great. This has been I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, I really, I can tell, I want to the kind of conversation I want to have with you. I want to slow down a little bit. And really, because like obviously, this is a short form podcast. And so I’m always trying to make sure we’re getting getting through fashion but I can feel like the way in which you engage with the world and the way you express yourself. I feel like I just want to settle in with you. So I might just have to have you back for a little a little a little slow pod in a few months and we can keep this kind of conversation going.
Craig Martin 21:22
Yes, reach out to let me know.
Kevin Stafford 21:26
Sounds great. And to the audience. You know what to do next. You’ll probably hear Craig again on this very podcast feed some time in the not too distant future. You know where to find him. Links will be in the show notes and we will get a chance to talk to you again here very soon.
