Micheal Pacheco 0:01
All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast. As always, I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, Alan, I just realized I haven’t asked you how to pronounce your last name properly. Is that Haman?
Alan Heymann 0:13
It is okay,
Micheal Pacheco 0:15
awesome. Then I’m not going to start over, we’ll just run with us. I got it the first time. Alan Heyman Alan has a knack for coaching fellow introverts helping them find their superpowers in an extroverted world. Alan, I love that so far. So I want to circle back to that one for sure. Alan specializes in coaching. Through transitions. To date, Alan has coached leaders were born in 26 countries and work on five continents. His clients have spanned corporations, including fortune 50, corporations, non profit organizations, public utilities, federal county and municipal governments. Alan, welcome to the remarkable coach.
Alan Heymann 0:53
Michael, thank you so much. It’s great to be here with you and your audience today.
Micheal Pacheco 0:56
I appreciate you making time for us, man. To kick off the podcast, I always just like to invite our guests to tell us a little bit more about yourself in your own words, and why coaching?
Alan Heymann 1:09
Okay, well, it depends on how much time you have. So I’m a husband, I’m a dad. I’m a runner, a reader and somebody who likes to occasionally watch a movie or a little bit of TV these days. But professionally, I’ve been an executive and leadership coach for a little while self employed, as many of us are after 20 plus years of working for other people primarily in the fields of marketing and communications. And so my origin story with coaching is pretty similar, I think to a lot of people who discover something that they believe in, and that I was a customer or a client before I was a practitioner. And I hired my first coach, probably eight or nine years ago at this point, and was going through a pretty rough patch of of leadership waters in a position that I had held. And my coach helped me understand a really important distinction for me at that point in my career, which was the difference between my stuff, what I was carrying around every day, and we all have it, it’s different for everybody, we all have it. And the institutional stuff that was never going to change. It was like being mad at gravity. So understanding that distinction actually helped me onto a different career path and got me into a much better, more applicable place for what I like to do and for what, what suited me as a person. But I didn’t forget the lesson. And I didn’t forget the power of coaching and that transformation that it brought on for me. And the more I thought about it, and the more I investigated and explored a little bit, the more I realized this is something that I really wanted to do and come to find out coaching pulls together a bunch of the different threads of things that I’ve really enjoyed doing throughout almost my entire career. Whether it is telling stories, or helping other people tell their stories, which is something I did when I started my career as a journalist, or helping people with their communication skills or helping other people advance in their careers. All of these are things that I’ve been doing for a while before they came together in a single occupation. And it is fascinating it is it is never dull. It is one day is always different from the next and I might be working in nonprofits and government, which is the space I’m personally most familiar with. Or I might be working in software or even frozen foods. It just depends on the day.
Micheal Pacheco 3:27
Nice. Right on. That’s great. I want to I want to circle back to to something I read in your bio that caught my attention immediately coaching fellow introverts Tell me about that. As a lifelong introvert. I am personally curious.
Alan Heymann 3:45
So it’s a specialty but not an exclusive one. And I say this because I have been in a variety of different working environments throughout my adult life, and some of them quite comfortable, and some of them quite uncomfortable. And what has made me uncomfortable historically, is the extrovert expectation that if you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to be this kind of bombastic chest thumping, you know, alpha male type. And that’s not how everybody shows up. Nor is it how everybody should show up. So what I’ve done,
Micheal Pacheco 4:18
let me pause there for one second. Alan, could you define introvert and extrovert for us as as you understand it? Because I think there’s, I think there’s a general kind of sometimes a misunderstanding or there there are different definitions of what introvert might mean. Could you tell us tell us what does it mean for you in this? Absolutely.
Alan Heymann 4:34
And I start, you know, in response to that question in noting that there are connotations for both. Historically the connotation for introvert has been kind of a negative one or you know, somewhere below neutral, in that. You might think of us as shy you might think of us as socially unskilled, or maybe somewhat misanthropic. And that’s definitely true of some introverts. Not all of them. Probably not even most of them. So the definition that I like and if you get to some of the scholarship on this, from Susan Cain and her book quiet and others, it’s where do you get your energy from? So, you know, does being around a lot of people for a long period of time fill you up? Or does it deplete you, and it has nothing to do with what you enjoy. It has nothing to do with what you’re good at, it has to do with where your energy comes from. So I know for example, as somebody who’s got, you know, probably a bit more social skill than he did as a younger person through practice and through time. And as somebody who likes to have an audience, I was a television reporter, I enjoy speaking in front of groups of people, that I will have to budget my energy for these things. Because when I get off the stage, I’m going to be tired, I’m not going to want to shake every last hand in the room and hand out all of my business cards, I’m going to want to take it easy for the rest of the day and just kind of be by myself or be in a small group. And I know that through practice, and not everybody does. So I think the combination of helping folks understand what gives them energy and where to find it. And how to work through and above and around the expectations that society puts on them really informs a lot of the work that I do with extroverts, and sorry with introverts, and it’s not exclusive work. And that once in a while I will get chosen as a coach by somebody who wants the opposite of themselves, who you know, needs to dial it back. Some who can’t go to a meeting without sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Those are fun coaching assignments for me, probably because I don’t have them very often.
Micheal Pacheco 6:32
Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay, cool. That’s the that’s the same definition that I understand as well as is where do you draw your energy from? Whether like you said, it’s if it’s spending some time alone or spending time with with other people. So yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s an interesting one. I never like for myself, if I go to a party or something, I’ll have to ease into it. You know, I’ll start out I’ll start out with the dog or the record collection, and then work my way up to the people. And then I’ll have a great time. And then afterwards, yeah, it’ll be like, it’ll be a little bit, it’ll be exhausted. And it’ll just be time to, to spend some time alone and kind of reset a little bit.
Alan Heymann 7:13
Absolutely. And I’ve been to many a party where, you know, the introvert host, it’s, let’s say, behind the bar, because, you know, it’s a defined period of time for that brief interaction, you get to say a little bit hello to everybody, you don’t get trapped in conversations. And it can be a little bit less of a lift than let’s say, walking the entire room with a with a beverage in your hand.
Micheal Pacheco 7:33
Or Sure, yeah, there’s also I think, so I used to be I was a bartender for a number of years. And I think the bar also serves as this kind of a call it a mental and emotional barrier. You know what I mean? Like, it’s just, it’s a little bit of separation. So it’s, it’s, you’ve kind of got your safe space back here that you own? Yes. In a sense, anyways. Well, and
Alan Heymann 7:56
one thing to keep in mind about, you know, us, introvert folk, is that one of the highlights, not always again, but but one of the highlights is that we can have a tendency, especially in certain situations, to listen more than we talk. And I see that as a bartender, that must have been the case for you for quite a while. And in leadership, it is so useful, because you’re not always going to have the right idea for the first thing that comes out of your mouth. So my more reserved introverts for my internal processes, the ones where it takes them a while to kind of work through the idea. Being aware of that tendency, having those around you be aware of that tendency, and being in circumstances that cater to that tendency, and capitalize on it is the route to success versus, you know, getting dumped into that meeting where everybody is drinking from the same firehose of information, and having to edge their way into the conversation and respond on the fly. Those are not the best conditions for success for that, that style or that preference.
Micheal Pacheco 8:59
Nice. Nice. So tell us more about your clients. So you work with introverts, but not exclusively with introverts. And you’ve got it you’ve got, you know, kind of a seems like a wide variety of clients from from NGOs or MPOs, to actual government, municipalities and governments as well. Who is your ideal client?
Alan Heymann 9:19
Think my ideal client is somebody who very much wants to be here, and very much recognizes that it’s time for a change and coaching is the thing that is likely to help them bring it about. So that degree of readiness is not always present with all of my clients. But when it is, it’s it’s amazing because they’re they’re all set to go. They they’ve done whatever clearing they need to do of their mind and their schedule to make this work possible. And they’re here and they’re on time and they’re fully engaged to make it happen. And that could be pretty much any industry or environment as far as the change that they want. These are various things and I see them for really frequently. So one is that they’re preparing to jump into the next level of leadership. And they’d like to start engaging more like an executive before they become an executive. They perhaps even with like a major transition, they want to change careers or change cities or get ready for retirement. And the other one that I see fairly frequently is that you’ve got somebody who once upon a time, maybe not too long ago, had a strong brand as a doer, or an expert, or both. And they found themselves in leadership, they are in charge now of the doers and the experts, or both. And they still have things that they could probably stand to let go of, you know, it’s, it’s the leader of software engineers who can’t keep their hands out of the code. It’s the, you know, the architect who wants to be drawing things still, even though they’re actually leading a firm of architects. So letting go of that expertise that got us successful, and making way for others, is a real challenge across many, many different sectors. And I was quite surprised initially to see this because I was familiar with the way that it worked in the spaces I had worked in. But it almost doesn’t matter if you’re talking about, you know, physicians or engineers, or, or even to some extent, lawyers. Because, you know, and you know, this from having done this show for a while, the higher up you climb in leadership, the less you’re actually responsible for doing.
Micheal Pacheco 11:22
Yeah, interesting. I like I like what you said about a leader who, you know, someone who maybe is there going to be promoted, and they want to kind of level up before they get there. This idea, I think it’s very common in, in our society, right in the ideas is to have do and then you can be right, so if you have the right things, then you can do the right things that you need to do. And then you can, then you can be that person that you want to become, when in reality, if you flip that around to be do have, right be the executive, that you’re that you’re gonna become right. And then when you when you mentally become that executive, you can do the things that that executive would do. And then you have that position, you grow into that position, you get promoted into that position.
Alan Heymann 12:16
And you show up in that way, right? If it’s working the way that it should best case scenario, everybody around you a surprise that you haven’t been promoted yet, because they’ve already been thinking of you as that executive
Micheal Pacheco 12:28
zactly. Yeah, yeah, I love that you mentioned to your ideal clients is is kind of someone who sees, maybe they feel like, you know, they see that change is needed, and they’re they want to change, they’re engaged, what are some symptoms that a leader might look for? You know, maybe they’re not the most self aware person in the world? What are some symptoms that they might look for, to say, to realize, like, gosh, you know, I need to, I need to level up.
Alan Heymann 13:00
Sometimes people will tell them, and isn’t that a gift, if they can actually, you know, take in the information and handle the feedback, right? You know, it could be as simple as, hey, I think it’d be a great idea if you worked on building up your executive presence with with a coach, and we’re going to provide the resources to make that possible. And you can choose the one that works best for you. So I see that scenario a lot. I also, by the way, see the scenario where the boss suggests something or the coworker suggests something, and they think about it a little bit before they come into coaching. And it’s actually a somewhat different thing than what was suggested to them in the first place. So we don’t always end up in exactly the spot that we predict, we’re going to end up after the six months or 12 months, or whatever it is. But we always get where the person is going to want to go. It’s just they discover they want something else along the way. So that’s a sign, I think that feelings of discomfort are a pretty good sign too. And discomfort can be healthy. And that you can find yourself at your growth edge and feel like this is really uncomfortable. And I want to I want to push through it. I want to work through this with somebody who you know, maybe has the ability to help me think through it better than I could do it by myself. And we don’t want to mix up discomfort with a feeling of not being safe. Those are two very different things. So the discomfort is is a clue. And I think a lot of folks take it and run with it if they’re if they’re being somewhat self aware.
Micheal Pacheco 14:26
Like, where did you get your clients? How do you? How do you market your How do you market yourself and your services right now?
Alan Heymann 14:35
I think the question kind of brings a different answer depending on the year or perhaps even the month. I’ll say right off the bat that I do a fair amount of contract coaching work and this is work for coaching companies or for coaches with slightly bigger practices than mine, where they will have large institutional clients that need multiple coaches to work on a project together. So that has been remarkable for me in terms of expanding my at work in terms of exposing me to parts of the economy that I wasn’t familiar with before, as a nonprofit and government guy from here on the East Coast of the US. So I do a fair amount of that work I always have. And I imagine I’ll continue to do it for a while, in my private practice, which I think is probably the the nature of your question. It’s mostly word of mouth and referrals. So it’s people who I knew before I became a coach, people who they knew, it is clients that I’ve had before and people they know, I’ve coached multiple parents of past clients, I’ve coached clients a few times when they’ve changed positions and gone into different companies and kind of taken me with them. So there usually is some sort of a human connection with me, one or two or three jumps down the line, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, I have an email newsletter as well on my website, peaceful direction.com. And I do those things, not necessarily for the objective of bringing strangers into the practice or doing some sort of a, you know, a lead funnel. But more just to stay top of mind, because what I’ve also discovered is that, you may know that I’m a coach, you may be familiar with me as a person, even prior to my becoming a coach. And that little conversation that happens in your head, could be six months, a year, three years before, the moment that you actually realize you need some support, or someone you know, needs some support. My task is to stay present and stay relevant with these folks in my network during the interim period. And that’s where I find the things that I write and the things that I put out there into the universe to be quite helpful versus you know, receive a copy of my email newsletter, click the button, and now you’re a client kind of thing.
Micheal Pacheco 16:45
So you’re doing you’re doing some form of content marketing, as well, to keep to keep these these leads warm to keep a relationship kind of going.
Alan Heymann 16:55
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s right. And I think I draw a slight distinction there between that and let’s say, the, the straight up idea of making money on the internet, and then I don’t have, you know, courses that I sell many coaches do, they’re very successful at it. But that’s not something that I’m, I’m engaged in at this time. And, you know, this is kind of a running inner dialogue as well, because I’ve worked in marketing and communications for a while. So I know the tools, I know how things work, I know, generally, you know, the mind of the consumer pretty well. And I have somewhat of an uneasy relationship when it comes to sales, as in, you know, that if you’re looking at a pair of pants on a website, and you put it in the cart, and you close the window and go away and do something else, you make dinner, or you know, play with your kids, you’re gonna get an email saying, Hey, did you forget about those parents who were looking at? And that’s really smart, because people do, we can forget things, we get distracted. And that’s never been more true. At the same time, I feel like the audience that I have, is not necessarily looking for me to push them that hard into buying things. So what I struggle with at times is how many reminder emails is enough? If I’ve put the word out there that something is there and people want it? Will they just grab it? Or is it like the pair of pants where I’m fighting distractions, and I need to send six messages on the same topic to get some traction? Which is something that really does not make me very comfortable.
Unknown Speaker 18:23
Yeah. No, I
Micheal Pacheco 18:24
think that tracks man, I think that makes I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think a lot of I think there’s a lot of people out there who feel the same way. Yeah, I would honestly, I would include myself among that list of people as well. I think doing doing content marketing. So writing articles, you know, posting social media posts that were your it’s such a cheesy overused word at this point. But you’re you’re creating value, right? You’re you’re trying to help your ideal client. And if you can continue to do that on a consistent basis over a period of time, you’re you’re keeping this relationship with your followers. I also don’t like don’t love that term, but your social media followers, right, your leads your leads, essentially, right. And if you can continue to do this content, like we call it content marketing, and and be of value to them and help them out in some way. What I have found with art with our clients is that the sale becomes almost a non issue. Because what you’ve done is you’ve you’ve established a relationship with these, these people who are following you on social media, you’ve helped them they see your content over and over again, they’re watching it, hopefully, you know, ideally, they’re liking it, they’re commenting on it and so forth. And when if and when the time comes a year down the road, maybe three months down the road, maybe two years down the road, if and when the time comes where they are looking for a coach and they’ve been falling serving you this entire time, it’s not going to be a question, you’re not going to have to sell anybody. Because they’ve already they’ve already bought. Right. It’s just a matter of, of it’s at that point. It’s just timing, waiting for the right timing.
Alan Heymann 20:12
That’s right. No, I think you’re right. And I think my experience to date has kind of proven that to be the case as well. Yeah. And that feels pretty good. To me. It feels it feels authentic. It feels, you know, personal. And, you know, the honest truth of it is, I don’t need to attract hundreds and hundreds, or even dozens and dozens of new clients in a year. It’s a small practice. I’m one person, I have only but so much availability in the month. And I want to make sure that I’m relentlessly devoted to every client that I have, regardless of how they come in the door. Yeah.
Micheal Pacheco 20:45
Yeah, I like it. I like it spoken with integrity. Dig it, Alan. I also want to talk about partnerships. You mentioned partnerships. So you’ve got it sounds like maybe like a joint venture partnerships with you said, you know, other coaches with bigger practices than yours. And they’ll kind of contract or subcontract work to you. How do you for other coaches listening to listening to this program? who might be interested in doing something like that? What advice would you give to them on not only, you know, how do you find partnerships like that, but how do you engage in partnerships like that with long term success,
Alan Heymann 21:22
I think there’s a couple of ways you can go at it. And I’ve kind of done both. And it’s it’s sort of a question of scale. So I have found almost universally coaches to be very generous people. And we share prospective clients all the time, we share projects together. And even if I have a conversation with a prospective private client, I will still recommend that they go talk to two or three other coaches, because in this business, the fit is almost the most important thing. Assuming you’ve got people who are qualified, capable, certified, educated, etc, you pick the one that fits the best, it’s a gut move, rather than something that comes from your brain. And so what that means is that I am very much not the best coach for every single person I’m going to come across. And I will refer those other people to friends and colleagues of mine who I trust, who have integrity, who do you know, good work with all sorts of other different types of clients. And so referrals are a thing. And sometimes referrals happen for free, sometimes there’s a fee exchange, it depends on, you know, the business model. And one of those people that you refer out to might next week have a project that requires five coaches, and they’re only one person. And that’s where they create the bench of people they’re going to work with and bring in to do the project together. So for that, I don’t think you really have to do anything other than just be around, keep good track and make, you know, make yourself useful to the people you went to coaching school with. And go to your local ICF chapter gatherings. You know, the Metro DC chapter that we have here in this area where I live is one of the biggest in the country. And there are constantly events where you can go meet people in the breakout rooms on Zoom, you can go to, you know, talks by people who bring different parts of their practice. And those are all great places to meet coaches and coaches are going to help bring your business. And the other thing is there are really, really large coaching companies out there now. And there used to be a free a few. And now there are a lot. So do a little bit of research, figure out who’s hiring, what level of credential or education they’re looking for. And get yourself on the bench. Because these companies, a lot of them are venture capital funded, they’re growing explosively year over year, I’ve worked for a couple of them myself, they’re a great place to get your feet wet, to get some experience in a new area and to meet other great coaches who also typically have thriving private practices and exchange a lot of business on the side. So to me, it’s kind of like ideal networking for introverts to go back to that theme again, because, you know, if you’re active on LinkedIn, if you’re carefully taking down the name of every coach you’re ever in a breakout room with and staying in touch with that person, eventually, you will have a big enough network that will bring you business and you can bring business to it as well.
Micheal Pacheco 24:01
Nice, great advice. What is uh, Alan, What was a typical, what does a typical engagement with you look like?
Alan Heymann 24:09
So with a brand new client, I’m probably going to go either three to six months to start, and will typically meet a couple of times a month, I have unlimited access to me by email for all of my one on one clients. I have a group coaching program that I’m co hosting with my friend, Jennifer Hart that’s open access, and people can sign up to go to one or all of those events that are happening once a month, all my one on one clients also get access to that as part of their coaching package. And I have unlimited 15 minute catch up refills if they need those in between the big 60 minute session, so I like to be present and available whenever they need me, even when the calendar doesn’t completely cooperate. I’m going to be sharing a fair number of resources with my clients in between sessions. In that I’m a pretty voracious reader. And also as you know, I was a journalism major and a communications person which makes me an expert in nothing at all. So you I say all that to say, being right here, the generalist of generalists I tend to be experts are on those themes that come up over and over again and coaching, whether it’s you know, executive presence or delegation or introverts or whatever that is. And I refer them to my bookshelf or my TED talks, or my videos in my library, I’ve got a library on my website that people can grab for free. And a lot of my clients, if they want to deepen their understanding of an issue that comes up in coaching, it’s a good place for them to go, because of course, the coach isn’t supposed to be the expert anyway. That’s how we do it.
Micheal Pacheco 25:31
I like it. I like it. I view Are you familiar with like a phone app called Voxer?
Alan Heymann 25:37
I have heard of this, where it’s like you can make yourself available to people that way.
Micheal Pacheco 25:42
It’s kind of Yeah, it’s asynchronous. It’s an asynchronous walkie talkie, basically. So you can hit the button, and then you can record something and voice something and then send it to the other person, you can it does text as well. I’ve got a friend of mine, who is who is a coach and executive coach offers that to his clients. In addition, you mentioned email 24 hours a day, right? My this friend of mine also does Voxer. So if you know, for example, with a busy executive, right, they might not be sitting down at a computer to type out an email, or they might not want to type it out on their phone, but they can hop into the Voxer app, and hit that button and send it over. And again, it’s asynchronous, so then that coach can just check it and then get back to them at any point in time.
Alan Heymann 26:26
Yeah, yeah. This is the second coaching context for Voxer. I think that I’ve heard over the last two weeks. Yeah. Which is signaling to check it out. It sounds like it’s something that could be very useful. And of course, with the usual caveat of okay, we have another thing we need to check on a regular basis.
Micheal Pacheco 26:41
That’s, that’s, that’s the trick.
Alan Heymann 26:43
Counsel and check that out.
Micheal Pacheco 26:48
The other one would be like, if Voxer doesn’t end up working out would be like something like WeChat, which is a similar thing, right? Or not? WeChat and WhatsApp, which would be which would be similar, but which
Alan Heymann 26:57
is great for international clients as well.
Unknown Speaker 26:59
Yeah. Yeah.
Micheal Pacheco 27:01
Tell us about some big wins that you’ve had in your in your career so far?
Alan Heymann 27:05
Oh, wow. Well, let’s leave aside the 20 plus years before coming to coaching, just knowing the audience and say a couple of things. One, I was very pleased back in 2021, to write a book, I collected some analogies that were coming up in my coaching practice, either from my clients brains, or from my own. My wife, who’s an elementary school art teacher illustrated it, the title was, don’t just have the soup. So we put a collection out there in November 2021. And it’s, it’s been fun watching people, you know, send me their pictures of that in their hands, or quote back to it from coaching sessions. Yeah, and, um, I’m not done with the collecting analogy. So there might be more to report on that front. At some point in the future. That was a joy for for a couple of different reasons. One, you know, coaching reaches a certain number of people in a year, and that’s all you’ve got. And so you know, a book reaches a lot of folks, it’s a pretty low barrier investment. And come to find out there were a fair number of people who knew me and were following my career from before I was a coach, who were maybe looking for some kind of way to engage with my practice, but weren’t going to become clients. And there you go, there’s the book. So that’s been fun. And the other is just, you know, whenever there’s a triumph from a client that I get to hear about, and you don’t always hear the end of the story, that’s kind of an occupational hazard and coaching. But now and again, there’s there’s a real win, and you just, you feel so good on that person’s behalf, whether it’s, you know, the the executive director of a nonprofit who was merging her organization with another, and knew that she’d be out, you know, as part of the terms of the merger and was able to negotiate some higher severance as a result of the conversation that we had to an executive that I worked with, who negotiated up his employment contract as a result of a conversation to somebody who hired me because he was trying to find his first new job and 21 years and didn’t know what to do. And had somebody on the phone asking him if he was available two days after he turned in his laptop on on that job that he was seeking to resign from. So you’ll love it when it happens. And even if it’s as small as you know, I was really dreading that conversation with my underperforming employee, but I feel like it really went well. And we have a great understanding now. I love those moments. Those moments are
Micheal Pacheco 29:26
awesome. I love it. I love it. Very cool. I’m guessing your book is gotta be that orange one. That’s That’s right behind you there.
Alan Heymann 29:34
The one sitting on the book stand on the bookshelf. Yes, it is.
Micheal Pacheco 29:37
Nice. I love it. I love it. And people can get that on Amazon.
Alan Heymann 29:41
Yeah, they can or they can go to the soup book.com And it’ll have listings for you if they prefer other booksellers or
Micheal Pacheco 29:47
book.com. Just gonna take some notes here guys, for those of you listening to this, if you’re in your car, perhaps out jogging out for a jog or out for a run. We’ll have links to all this stuff on there on show notes. So you can come back and check up there. Excellent. Awesome. Alan, what? What three books, any three books, including yours? If you if you if you think it’s a good idea, what three books would you do you recommend your clients read?
Alan Heymann 30:18
Oh, well. So I will tell you in the interest of full disclosure, I have a book list on my website, and it probably has 50 books in it. So I would hesitate to say, you know, these three are the ones because you never know what somebody is going to show up with or the background and what they’re interested in. There’s a few books that I recommend on a fairly regular basis, mine being one of them. There’s a book called The leader, you want to be by Amy Jen Su, who’s a Georgetown coach like I am her book is fantastic. The memo by Minda Hearts is really, really good. And there’s a few others on that list as well. You asked me for three and that’s that’s the three that come to the top of my head.
Micheal Pacheco 30:58
That’s great, man. That’s great. I love it. Alan, is there. Is there anything else that you want to you would like to chat about that we haven’t had an opportunity yet to touch upon? Well, I’m
Alan Heymann 31:08
wondering, you know, in terms of the folks who come on your show to chat, yeah. Are there areas that you touch on with them that we haven’t gotten into yet this afternoon?
Micheal Pacheco 31:25
Not that I can think of, again. So I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about we talked a little bit before I hit record. And every conversation is a little bit different. And we you know, you take you take sometimes you take this side street and sometimes you take the one over there. But we did we got over pretty much. You know, my my big bullet points. I guess the one, the one here actually that I seem to have skipped over. We talked about your your remarkable wins. What about some remarkable failures? What about some times where you’ve maybe just royally screwed up and learned a lot from it?
Alan Heymann 32:00
Sure. Well, you know, you want to keep confidences for your clients. And that is that is something that I’m constantly mindful of one thing that I can think of just off the top of my head, and again, you don’t you don’t ruin anybody’s life, as you learn and go through this experience and unfortunate for that, and that I’m not, I’m not flying airplanes, I’m not performing open heart surgery here. This, the stakes are a little bit lower, the crises tend to be a little bit lower profile. But you definitely you always think as you go along, how might I have handled that situation differently. And I remember one of my very, very first clients like almost fresh out of coaching school, and you know this from from the other folks that have been on your show, as well. They you know, in coaching school, they hammer this into you do not give them advice, you are not there to advise the client, you are not there to substitute your judgment for that of the client. What I have learned is yes, that is true. And you want people to make their own discoveries make their own decisions come to their own conclusions based on what’s already inside. 100% true. At the same time, I am a human being I make observations, I have opinions. And if the thing is staring at you in the face over the course of the coaching session, you don’t want to be that person who like backs up and asks the few like powerful, challenging questions to get them to name the thing that is absolutely obvious that is hanging over the entire conversation. And I had one of those very early on where the person I was coaching, was st unfulfilled in the position that they were in and was trying to figure out what’s next. How do I even go about figuring that out? I’m early career not exactly sure what my passion is what I’m good at, etcetera, and happens to drop a nugget in a conversation that this person was a childhood friend of the offspring of a governor of a mid atlantic state. Not not something that most people say in conversation. But you know, this person had been out the governor had been out of office for a while, but still well connected, etc. And my client was talking about how like, they never had the thought to pick up the phone. And to you know, sort of put themselves out there and inconvenience the parent of their childhood friend, by saying I would like some help finding a job, please. I would like to, you know, have some some idea on a career direction. And I’m thinking to myself, Okay, this is probably the world’s biggest missed opportunity. And that I’ve worked in government. I’ve covered government as a reporter. And I know that governors of states have 10s of 1000s of employees on their payroll, and they their stock and trade is getting jobs for people and it’s not an inconvenience to them, it actually helps them as well. I didn’t say the thing. I regret not having said the thing because it was so obvious to me at the time, even though it’s giving advice to the client, which thou shalt not do. I feel like in that particular instance, it actually would have been helpful and I missed the opportunity. Yeah,
Micheal Pacheco 34:55
interesting. That’s a good one. I liked the I liked your your your thought process to get there? Because yeah, usually like that’s kind of like it’s almost the line of delineation between coaching and consulting. Right? As a coach, as a coach, you’re a guide. And as a consultant, you tell, yes, you’re not, but you’re not supposed to tell as a coach.
Unknown Speaker 35:17
That’s right. So
Alan Heymann 35:19
pulling on that thread just a little bit, because I’ve had plenty of career changers and job seekers come through this space. Since then, we talk a little bit about how the process works and how the process doesn’t. And I think what holds a lot of people back from getting something that they really want and would enjoy, is they feel like they’re inconveniencing others. As in if I call my friend Alan, who I haven’t spoken to in a couple of years, and asked him to introduce me to this person who works at the company where he used to work. That’s an inconvenience, I’m putting him out, I’m asking him to do something that’s just, you know, kind of beyond reach. It’s not. Because if you asked me for this, and I make the connection, and you land in that position, and you really go in and sort of crush it in that environment.
Unknown Speaker 36:01
It’s a credit to you. And it’s also a credit to me makes you look really good too. Yeah, absolutely.
Alan Heymann 36:06
So I would say, you know, by way of advice to anybody who’s listening again, not being the advice given coach, ask, people like to do things for each other. And there is an exchange of value that’s not obvious in that situation that I think I wish more people knew about. Hello.
Micheal Pacheco 36:22
That’s a great one on Is there anything that you do you have any any any any programs and ebook, you’ve been mentioned your book yet, anything else you would like to pitch? The stage is yours, my friend,
Alan Heymann 36:36
my uncomfortable relationship with a pair of pants notwithstanding, you know, I’d love for folks to check out my book, I think they would find it helpful and amusing and interesting. I do have my group coaching Essentials series that’s still going on, you can get there through my website at peaceful direction.com/essentials. It’s open access group coaching, there’s a different topic, a different theme every month. And we have a core group assembled of the people who started with the program, but there’s more people coming in and kind of cycling out. So join us check it out. If you’ve been thinking about coaching, or you have a particular interest in the theme that we’re talking about that month, it’s a real sort of low barrier of entry way to get in and to spend some time with some pretty fabulous people. So I’d say that and you know, certainly welcoming folks to stay in touch with me on LinkedIn, join my mailing list. Whatever I can do to be of service even if it’s you know, introducing folks to other coaches. That’s something that I’m always happy to do as well.
Micheal Pacheco 37:28
Awesome. That’s Alan ala N. Haman, Hey, Ma n n on linkedin.com. Peaceful direction.com is the website not that peaceful direction, just peaceful direction.com. And, guys, again, we’ll have all these links on the show notes. So please go and check those out at boxer dot agency. Allen, this has been a great conversation, man, I appreciate you making time for us. Is there anything else you want to mention before we kind of close out?
Alan Heymann 37:57
I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity, Michael to connect with you and your audience. And let’s do our best to stay in touch.
Micheal Pacheco 38:03
Beautiful. Thank you, brother. And thank you to all of our viewers and listeners for joining us again. We’ll see you guys next time. Cheers.
