Kevin Stafford 0:02
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the conversations with coaches podcast. I’m your usual host, Kevin, and I’ve already been having an absolutely delightful conversation with Stephanie Burgo. To silent, correct. practice pronunciation is a very important part of being a podcast host. And I’ve gotten to mangle and learn so many great names over the past couple of years. It’s quite, it’s quite nice. Actually, I have a very boring name Kevin Stafford, easy to pronounce, for the most part. Stephanie holds a degree in applied neuroscience coaching and a master’s degree in cultural business management. She has been a potential catalyst for more than a decade, and she’s supported many individuals and businesses and in achieving their goals. Her primary goal is simple that every person can bring the best of herself to the role that suits her. That’s a very strong, simple and strong mission statement that I’m excited to talk with you about today. So Stephanie, thanks for being on the podcast. I’m, I’m excited to chat.
Stephanie Bergot 0:58
Thank you for inviting me. I’m super happy to be here.
Kevin Stafford 1:01
Excellent. Well, let’s, uh, let’s start at the start. Let’s begin at the beginning your superhero origin story, as a coach, how did you realize that maybe you were already work Coach, how did you decide to become a coach? Who told you that you had these certain attributes or abilities that hey, you kind of have you seem like maybe you should try coaching? How did you figure that out? Or get that beginning? And then how did you go from there to the business that you have today?
Stephanie Bergot 1:24
Well, when I was 18 years old, I started a business and event planning. And you know, it’s project managing, and then I changed. With time, I became a project manager, I had a business where I helped entrepreneurs, hiring new people building new product, opening new division and stuff. And every time it was not the project part, that was more of a challenge, it was much more when we get to the end after investing after time, after everything, that the entrepreneur or the owner of the project were like, doubting doubting themselves doubting the way it was done. A bit scared, because sometimes it’s like, it’s it’s like, you know, getting something new out, is sometimes challenging, and, and you feel fear and everything. So I’ve been helping my clients at that time with what I was and what I knew at that time. And I was naturally built for coaching. And six or seven years ago, I decided I wanted to go and search for tools, special tools, and to get them out of their limiting beliefs, for example, to help them lower the stress and anxiety, and all of those. So I decided to do two year classes in neuroscience applied to coaching. I like to understand what’s going on and neuroscience help you understand the functioning of the brain and why you act like this or act like that, and what’s going on with this or not, so I was super happy. I chose that. And when I while I was doing my diploma, they strongly recommend to start coaching, but I was already accompanying many, many people. So I started doing coaching and techniques because it was needed to try them on previous client and I did a Facebook post just wondering, like if anyone would be interested in me following them for a couple of hours just so I could practice and everything. And I had more than 40 people that answered that small Facebook post, and I was like, oh, okay, so they asked us for one or two and I was like, Okay, now I have to choose out of 40 some of them I couldn’t because it was people too close to me and like to really practice it’s not recommend. So I’ve chosen 10 of them. Finally, I’m a pretty intense person I like to try stuff and I wanted to be the best at that. And so I chose 10 Different person and with each challenge different challenges and like that at the same time I realized what I really love to do and what I love a bit less like for example all that weight loss related. I leave that to personal trainer I prefer to work on mindsets business, that strategy and stuff like that. And that’s how I became a coach and since the last six years now I’m not doing project management anymore or on special All big six bases bases. And now I do only coaching.
Kevin Stafford 5:05
I love I love a lot about that story I love, especially like you, when you reach out, it’s one of those things that life tends to provide you in one way or another when you when you find yourself on the right path, and I’m kind of putting air quotes there, because that is changing and growing and evolving thing as you move through life. But there tends to be that moment of abundant enthusiasm. And when you put out a request for one or two, and you get 40 back, that’s one of those like, Okay, I kind of already knew I was going in the right direction, and I’m really enjoying where I’m going. And it’s one of those little like, I always interpret that as a little nudge from from life, whatever it is, that yeah, you’re going in the right direction, and you know what, your problem is not going to be that you have too few your problems gonna be that you have too many, and you’re gonna get good at being discerning.
Stephanie Bergot 5:46
It was very, very touching to see that. Friends I have for decades, were willing to learn about themselves with me. People I knew from a professional standpoint, wanted to evolve also on mindset stuff with me. So I was very, very touched by the answer. And clearly, it created an evidence for me that it was the right path to go to
Kevin Stafford 6:14
all these people that knew you in so many different capacities or barely knew you at all, all recognized, that core element of you that that you recognized that made you decide to become a coach, it’s like that core ability to get into a situation, whatever it happens to be. And I love that you kind of came from project management because what’s a human being it’s not a project to be managed at times, I say that very tongue in cheek jokingly. But some of the same principles do apply to the way you move through life and crisises rise and fall and plans need to be made and systems and strategies in place. And also you need to be there in the moment to realize when things are maybe starting to slip, and you have that like expertise where you like you could see a place that needs your attention that needs some help and need some guidance and move into it before it even becomes a problem. That dynamic aspect of coaching that I love so much. I get very enthusiastic about it when I talk about it. But I always see the connections there. But I just love that. So many different people from so many walks of life, saw the same thing in you that you saw on yourself. And that’s what makes you a good, a good a great coach. And I just I love when and this is universal to every coach, and I’m talking a little bit too much. But I love acknowledging this. Every coach I’ve spoken to answered the call. They heard it, and they answered it. And that’s that’s something that takes it takes more courage. And I think sometimes we appreciate even in ourselves to just heed that call that realization that you know this, you know, this might be something I should be doing. Or I’m feeling a stirring in my life a passion or an interest or an excitement or just even a curiosity. And you answer the call. And I think that’s what makes coaches so valuable to the people that they coach is that the people that are asking for coaching, they’re essentially right at the beginning of that journey. They’re like reaching for the phone, so to speak, you know, they’re about to answer that call. Maybe they don’t know how or they’re scared or whatever happens to be blocking them or stymieing them. And they answer that call and a coach having answered the call themselves, I feel like it’s perfectly positioned to be the guide in those those moments in life and career in a relationship and anywhere. Not really a question there. I’m just acknowledging that I’m so glad you answered the call.
Stephanie Bergot 8:15
Exactly. And we were talking before a call about the challenge of the posting those type of conversation with coaches because the they are really mostly close to their emotion. They’ve done the work about knowing themselves and everything. So I think that answering that call comes also from a real willingness of doing the right thing, and being at the right place. And like for me, coaching was the like, like, I do the puzzle analogy. Like, I did many, many things in my life. I’ve been an event planner, I’ve been a project manager, I’ve worked with dentist as well as artists as well as athletes as well. So all those knowledge were like in a piece of puzzle. And it was like if there was only one piece missing. And when I did the coaching stuff, like I mean, the learnings about it if it was for me often Yeah, I already knew that it was natural in myself. Yeah. So it was like completing the puzzle with the coaching piece was like making it complete. And now it only grow bigger because I’m learning new stuff, achieving new stuff, learning new skills. And I think that the curiosity part, most coaches are the knowledge of themselves and of emotions and communication and the willingness to help people are like Get trio that really brings them to the right place.
Kevin Stafford 10:06
I couldn’t agree more. It’s the beating heart of every coach that I’ve met and gotten the chance to know it’s that’s that and I love the way that you have your hand gestures there just audio only podcast, but I could I do the same thing where my hands will rise up to the camera and you made the perfect hand gesture of almost like that bound together. The way it’s like I’ve, in my head. In my heart, I’ve often found myself going to the analogy of a braid or a rope where it’s like a rope. It’s just these these slender threads that you found you woven together in such a way so as to make this strong, useful length of material have something that can tie you to things there’s like, I often think about what a coach does does that, that braiding together of things in such a way that makes the whole so much stronger. I just said to you, it seems to me the beating heart of coaching.
Stephanie Bergot 10:50
Yes, exactly. And all the curiosity I’ve always been interested in learning from people learning new stuff, learning from new industry technology. And coaching for me was exactly what I’m I needed because like that, I can, for example, help you with something that is not in your industry, but I’ve seen it somewhere else and like Crus the information and knowledge and then feeling useful and bringing other ways of doing it I’ve seen before and so yes, all of those like became a full peace instead of being all pieces around. So it’s like a puzzle, it makes a cool image at the end.
Kevin Stafford 11:38
I love I love I in my head, I have actually my head and my heart in my way my games closet, I have a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle, I’ve loved puzzles since I was my mom kind of got me into them when I was very, very young. I’ve always loved them. And I’ve just been kind of waiting for the right weekend. To tackle it. I just I loved I love the way, the way it feels when pieces fit together to bring up to bring it back to what we’re talking about in coaching. And I’m realizing that I’m doing the thing I told you that I would do and I’m gonna losing myself in the conversation delightfully. So I’m going to bring us up to the present. And ask you about basically who you coach and how you coach them these days. What does your business look like? How do you engage with your clients? Is it primarily one to one coaching or maybe small group coaching? Or like executive team based? Do you do keynote speeches or any kind of coursework? All the above? And then some like so basically, who do you coach these days? And how do you go about coaching them?
Stephanie Bergot 12:29
I know many, many of the one names first, I do keynote speaking because I feel like like that it’s possible to transfer knowledge and emotion easily to many people, I mostly do one on one because like that we’re able to work directly on the thing you want to improve or change or evolve or most of my clients are entrepreneurs, I executive or athletes, people that are really into getting the best out of them. And sometimes also I have part of my clients that are people that want to change drastically their life for example been employed in in a big company for 1015 20 years. They they feel empty even though they have like the nice family the nice job, the nice salary, nice everything but they feel a bit empty, and they want to change drastically some stuff. And I love that because we’re building pieces by pieces, a bit of the same thing as the puzzle. Like okay, what’s gonna be the next step? What do you need to prepare before doing the jump? Where do you want to jump because sometimes they’ve been lost for so many years that they don’t even know where they wanted to go after leaving that job or after retiring. And I do also retiring athletes, you know, when you spend most of your life training for example for the Olympics, and then it’s done and you choose to retreat, which is sometimes you do one if you’re lucky to and some extraordinary athletes then four or five, but it’s very rare. But what’s next after that you’ve put your entire energy and life around something a project and sometimes it’s the sports and then you’re not quite sure what’s going to be the next step. So I love those type of clients. I like working with them and opening doors to new stuff they love. And so yes, mostly I do group coaching also as well and some training programs and stuff around that too. But mostly mindset and now know how.
Kevin Stafford 14:47
Yeah, special tips and tricks, techniques, things that people like you were sort of acknowledging earlier things that you you didn’t realize you already knew. That’s a lot of times what these what these tools will reveal a coaching tools will reveal is like you can’t you kind of knew something or so Somewhere in the backburner, or you are aware of it in some way, but then through coaching and through the tools and through techniques, you discover that or you’re coached to learn how to use, you see something about yourself or about your life or your job or your family or whatever, just slightly differently enough to where all of a sudden it comes almost like comes into relief, like the way something will look different. When the lights going down the sky like at sunset, you see the all the shadows and all the all the things you didn’t see before you’re like, Oh, I knew this all along. And yet, somehow I didn’t know it and that I love those moments. And like we were talking about what the puzzle pieces clicking together those moments of realization are. It’s what coaches live for, quite frankly.
Stephanie Bergot 15:35
Yes, what I see often is there’s no change with without consciousness, and consciousness and knowledge is two different things. If knowledge was the only thing, no one’s going to be would would be smoking still cigarette, I mean, everyone knows that it’s wrong for your health and everything. But why is there still some people, it’s because it’s not conscious yet. But if one day, the doctor told them, like you’re out, or you have a cancer or someone you love as a cancer, now we pass from knowledge to consciousness, and then you want to make a change. So sometimes I have a client that are very, very successful, like I mean, money wise, business wise, family wise. And although all of this is good, they feel like they need to change something they need, for example, to, to come back to a regular schedule, for example, they’ve been working hours and hours, because the thought that to be an entrepreneur and a good leader, you need to be the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave. And now after 15 years of that you’re like, tired, or you feel like you’re missing your family or you feel that something else is more important. And it was at the beginning. And sometimes changing stuff in which you crystallized is not that easy. So the book consciousness, and then they call me and they’re like, Okay, I know I want to change my schedule, but I don’t want my revenue to decrease. I don’t want my employees to be sad, mad, feel abandoned, or whatever. So those are all things we all all know, coaches are not there to teach you some stuff. They’re there to make you realize some stuff. And sometimes it’s just a one plus one thing and you’re like, Oh, that makes so much sense.
Kevin Stafford 17:34
I love that I was thinking about that in the context of the athletes to especially high performing athletes, longtime sports fan myself and I’ve always been very fascinated and had a lot of empathy for when someone when an athlete especially one who’s had great success because in their career has been long and they’ve essentially been doing this one thing at the highest possible level for 2030 Sometimes 40 years the lion’s share of their entire life even going back to before they were an adult in so many cases and then that’s just done because your your ability to physically achieve things wanes, even as your mental and emotional abilities kind of continue to grow as you go through life. And that’s unbundling moment. It’s so it’s so fascinating because you want it’s I can only imagine what that would be like and I’m always so grateful when athletes are willing to share that transition because I it’s so I can only imagine the difficulty of unbreaking unbundling yourself from the identity of who you who you were when you were achieving these things yourself as the athlete yourself as the as the smoker you know yourself as the 80 hour week, you know, our 80 to 100 hour week entrepreneur who you know, built everything from scratch and his first one and then last one the leaves like how do you shift your identity without compromising what you’ve built and who you are and who you still want to become it’s, I find it? Obviously I’m like I’m reaching for words, I find it endlessly fascinating. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for that process. And I love that that’s an area of like a focus for you in your in your coaching service that you focus on those, those truly challenging identity transition moments. Yes.
Stephanie Bergot 19:10
And I love it clearly and, and identity shift. You have many in your career. Like for example you’ve been you start a gym, gym business, because you wanted to help people lose weight, for example. And then more people is coming and more people are coming more people are coming and one day you’re working 70 to 80 hours a week, helping people but still managing your business and now you need to have confidence in someone else that is going to help you accompany and train those people and one day you passed from the trainer that opened a gym to the intrapreneurs and the manager that take care of business administration and some stuff. So this is one identity shift And the athlete you were talking about. If we talk, for example, about an athlete that did for 40 years, Tom Brady is a good example is add so much time to prepare his retreat. So maybe as a start already, to think about what he’s going to do after. And in his case, he doesn’t need to worry about money. But if we talk about Olympic athletes, those are rarely well paid. Often, they’ve been struggling to pay their competition and the found ELPA here and there and sponsors and everything, but like the need to prepare, but it’s not often the case, because sometimes they want to, they wanted to last a bit longer. Sometimes they didn’t have the energy and the free thoughts to think about that. And sometimes, unfortunately, their body doesn’t follow. So it’s not their full choice to stop. It’s like, it doesn’t work anymore, you can go or you’re not anymore, the athletes chosen to go to the Olympic and then your career. And so it’s a big shift. And I love working on those. Because like that we can rebuild or find exactly what you want. Because if you’ve been spending 20 years of your time, focusing, I’ve been a gymnast for years and years and years, it was my my sports. And I chose gymnastic, I didn’t do any other sport at that time, because of the time I was spending in gymnastic is with 20 to 25 hours a week, I didn’t go to the class event because I was training at that time I wasn’t going any. So you focus your life for a long time on one special activity or sports or discipline. Sometimes it’s music even. And now you have plenty of time to think. And you don’t know what you’d love to experiment and you don’t love it know what you love to try because you haven’t tried because you’ve been focused. So you’re extraordinary at being good. And focusing. But you’re not that good at trying new stuff and experimenting and choosing and having a balanced life because athletes and entrepreneurs Ailee achiever doesn’t have very often a balanced life, we’re getting better at it. Because the world is changing is changing the mental health part is more talked about. So people are trying to be more conscious of we need balance in life. But honestly, they’re most of them are passionate people about what they do. And if we have to remove something they really love for any reason. They need to find some new stuff and to build new passion. And so yes, I love i We could talk about that for hours. I love those
Kevin Stafford 23:09
I could I could do I was just gonna I was thinking to myself, I was looking at the clock and I didn’t think I promised that I promised I would try not to do and almost certain that I would do and I’ve let us go for a little bit longer than we should. But I didn’t want to have you back for a part two or three because yeah, this really, I mean, it’s why it’s why we do what we do that that ability to move into those places where people need the most help and where we can draw from our own experiences and help people to transition and grow and evolve to and through and beyond whatever the next piece of the puzzle looks like it’s, I could I could have this conversation all day and I look forward to having this conversation on and off for the rest of my life quite frankly. So I’m before I let you go, I do need to get you out of your I’m sure. I do want to ask you Where can people find out more about you? Actually, let me ask us to to part find out more about you like a website or like you know, go to LinkedIn or whatever. Just like really learn more about who you are, what you do and why you do what you do. And then also where do you like to connect with people? Is there a particular social media platform or like a way that you like to meet potential new clients for the first time so where can people learn more about you and then connect with you and get to know you because they’re going to want to
Stephanie Bergot 24:15
thank you. The best way for now is Facebook or Instagram on their stephannie Bango, you’re gonna find Instagram and Facebook also capitalism, the batasia, which means potential catalyst. I’m working on my English website because it’s all in French but if you want to go and see it, it’s capitalism dipotassium.com And there’s the small translating button at the top but I’m working on having won both languages because almost half of my clients are English, but I find them to referral people are sending them to me and that’s why most people don’t get to my website but Facebook and Instagram is the best way to connect and to talk with me in French or in English, I would be pleased to welcome all of them and answer the question and I would be pleased if you want to have me again, I love talking about
Kevin Stafford 25:11
this I absolutely 100% Well, I often find myself feeling this way. But I have to tell you, I especially feel this way having talks to you, it’s we’re coming up to like the very edge of like, the books time and our calendars. And I’m just like, I’m trying to squeeze every last minute out of it. So thank you, I’m, I’m a little bit overwhelmed with gratitude for this conversation is really delightful. And it spoke to me not just in general, like I love coaching and what coaches do, but I really love. I love your focus and the way you choose to, to go about it and engage in the people that you choose to focus on serving. It’s really late. It’s it speaks to me. So thank you for sharing, and thank you for doing what you do.
Stephanie Bergot 25:47
Oh, thanks a lot for having me. I love talking about that. And I love sharing and as you told as you said it at the real beginning. And what I want is people to be at the right spot, being happy at what they do at the right spot. And that starts by knowing yourself and then do whatever you need to do to be exactly when you feel like it. Thanks a lot for having me today.
Kevin Stafford 26:09
It was my pleasure. I think that’s a perfect place to leave it. Audience. Get to reach out find and find out more about Stephanie she’s a delight. You have learned a little bit, reach out and learn more. And we here will talk to you again very soon.
