Micheal Pacheco 0:07
All right. Hey everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of remarkable coach podcast as always, I am your host Michael Pacheco today with me. I have Martin Niner. Love that. Thank you, Michael. That’s a great name. Martin here. Martin is an accomplished executive, serial entrepreneur, ICF, certified professional coach with extensive sales, marketing operations and leadership development expertise in a broad range of fortune 100 to startup businesses, including aerospace, military manufacturing, construction, it and environmental chemicals. Martin Yeah,
Marten Niner 0:43
I did all that.
Micheal Pacheco 0:44
Welcome to the remarkable coach. What don’t you do?
Marten Niner 0:49
Oh, I don’t know. There’s not much that I that I don’t do I live life to its fullest. And just say, yes, it’s more fun. It’s kind of my catchphrase. So just try to say yes to as many opportunities as I can, and have as much fun as I can.
Micheal Pacheco 1:03
I love it. Brother. I like to start out this podcast by inviting our guests to just tell us a little bit more about yourself, in your own words, and kind of what brought you into coaching?
Marten Niner 1:15
Well, about eight years ago, well, first of all, I’ve spent the last about 3035 years of my career, being a serial entrepreneur started 10 companies in all those different areas that you mentioned, plus a couple other ones. But about eight years ago, I was just overwhelmed. I had taken on too much was in the middle of a divorce. That wasn’t going great. I had a company that wasn’t going great. And I was really struggling, wasn’t taking care of myself wasn’t eating wasn’t sleeping. And so thank goodness, I was smart enough to hire some coaches, and I met them through just a bizarre chain of events. But it just kind of told me that it was meant to be, and so started coaching with them. The ladies that cognitiva Consulting is where I still coach with them today, Dr. Maria scavo and her partner, Laura Hahn. And man, they just changed my life around. In about six months, I was still going through divorce, but it was much more amicable. And I had a much better handle the situation, the business was still struggling, but I had a better handle on my own brain, and you know, the worries and the fears and all that. And so I’ve been with them for the last eight years. But about four years ago, I had an opportunity where I sold a business, and they asked me to join them as a coach. And so I went out and I got my certification. And I’ve been working with them for a little over two years or four years now. And it’s just been phenomenal. I’m just on a huge learning curve, which has just been great. And I get while I’m learning all this, I get to help tons of people as well, and companies and it’s just been a lot of fun.
Micheal Pacheco 3:06
Yeah, I love it. I love it, it’s it’s always somehow more impactful when the coach has him or herself, like a powerful experience with the coach, right. And it sounds like that was like you from like, from day one.
Marten Niner 3:23
Oh, I was a hot mess. And I had really wanted a mentor or mentors, most of my career, but just had never found the right person or people. And then these ladies just came in at the right time, they had the right message. They’re brilliant. And so you know, I went from a very miserable person to a very happy person in a very short period of time. And, man, if I can help do that for other people who just can’t, it’s better than any business that I’ve started. That’s for sure.
Micheal Pacheco 3:54
That’s awesome., obviously, I want to talk a lot in this podcast about you and what you do and how you do it. Before we do that, would you would you be open to just talking a little bit more about maybe some of the details about your transformation that you saw, like how coaching like how did you go from being a hot mess?
Marten Niner 4:17
Right? Right,
Micheal Pacheco 4:19
Into feeling great, because I mean, I asked because I think for me, like I certainly resonate with that a lot. I was in a similar situation myself not that long ago. You know, and I got myself a coach and and for me, my story was around being a dad and becoming a father for the first time. And it was something that was that was very scary for me. My father abandoned me and my mother when I was very young. So there was a there’s a lot of childhood story around that. And I think that our a lot of our you know, everybody listening to this has something where they can resonate with this. So I’m curious to know if you would be open to sharing a little bit more about yours. Sorry.
Marten Niner 5:00
Oh, absolutely. I think, you know, when I came to coaching, I was still haunted by the specters of my youth, I had a lot of traumas that were driving certain behaviors, and I didn’t even realize that, you know, I was still traumatized. And I’m using trauma in a much larger sense, not like, you know, medical trauma. But, but these, you know, childhood traumas that we that we endure, and then it shapes kind of who we are and what our fears are, you know, very similar to you, you know, I was living in fear and victimhood. And so to make that transition, the Dr. Murray and Laura, they kind of showed me the difference between force and power. There’s a great book by Dr. David Hawkins, that goes into it, it’s tough read, but I was a manager, I was forcing my way through life. And we call it advocating. So I was, you know, trying to advocate for what I wanted, how I wanted it when I wanted it. And then I was upset, because I didn’t get it. So I’d set all these unrealistic expectations and have lots of judgments around them. And then under the word of ridiculous, not, not at the time, but upon further reflection with the coaches, I found out how ridiculous that was, and was able to make the transition from that force, managing advocacy into power, or to what we call power, Dr. Hawkins calls Power of Living in your power, living in inquiry, living, you know, questioning what’s going on, rather than trying to insert my opinion on what’s going on trying to find more information. So becoming, instead of a manager, becoming a leader, instead of, you know, becoming an advocate for what I wanted, start to be started to inquire and understand more about what other people needed to go on. And then this, this happened both on the on my personal life and in my business life. And so you need both, but I was all the way over here. And so they helped bring me probably more little, maybe more to center toward toward being living in power, living in uncertainty. You know, when when I used to walk into the room, I was very certain about what was going to happen. I told the team, okay, this is what I want done. You do this, you do this, I want it done by this, rather than sitting with them and saying, Okay, what do you guys need, you know, that servant leadership model was completely foreign to me, until I went into coaching and suddenly realized, you know, I’ve been doing it wrong the entire time, which is part of the reason why I was so miserable. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. And now I love the fact that I don’t know what I don’t know, I go through every day not knowing what’s going to happen next. And so it’s just a it’s a subtle shift. But it’s a it’s a big shift.
Micheal Pacheco 7:57
Yeah, I love that. So it’s, I’m guessing it’s safe to assume then that you take that like, you know, the, the dichotomy of, of entitlement right versus this childlike curiosity? Or would you call like living in power? You take this on to your, into your coaching as well? Can you talk a little bit about about what you do? And how, how you help the people that you coach?
Marten Niner 8:26
Sure, sure. Well, I’m there basically, to hold them through their experience. You know, we recommend a lot of reading, really feeding the mind. Michael singer, don’t know if you’ve read Untethered Soul, or surrender experiment. But those are usually the first two books that we recommend. So we have a language to talk about this roommate in our heads that everybody’s dealing with. And then once we have that language, we really dive into what that roommate is saying, and what that self talk and you know, all the craziness that goes on, in between our ears. And you know, I was, I didn’t realize it was going on until they kind of stopped me and said, Hey, did you realize that you have a voice in your head that’s both that argues with itself and doesn’t really know what the truth is, but just tries to convince you that it is, which Michael singer calls your roommate, and you know, if you took that being outside of yourself, and just sat them next to you, and they said all the things out loud that you say in your head, you wouldn’t think that’s a crazy person. Right? And so it’s getting, it’s getting in touch with our crazy person. And we do a lot of work or what we call the ego defenses because that’s, that’s that mechanism. You’re You’re that stream of thoughts that stream stream of consciousness we we call the ego defense system, because that’s really what it’s there to do is protect you that’s why you’re going through these possibilities and arguing and and Looking at the worst case scenarios, because it’s, it’s, it’s designed to protect us, unfortunately, in today’s society and culture, it’s overactive way overactive. And it when there’s a lot of fear there, there’s a lot of anxiety. Because of the those ego defenses, and unfortunately, today, most people are living in, we call it the stool of the ego, it’s the three legs of the stool are, I’m not safe, I’m not loved, I’m, I’m not good enough. And if if someone is sitting in, you know, an unwelcome or an uncomfortable emotion, emotional state, they’re usually in one or more of those places. And so in, in our coaching, we spent a lot of time diving into that and unpacking that, and finding out where it came from. A lot of times, it’s based in our youth, and experiences that we don’t even remember happened, until we really start dialing down into what’s going on in our minds, there’s techniques on using the body to find where those memories are stored. Because there’s a great book called body bears the burden that talks about how we have these Michael singer calls him samskaras, these, these memories, that we that are integrated into our bodies and our minds of these things that happened in the past. And those fears, those worries, those anxieties will influence our actions and our thoughts of today. And so getting below that, and getting underneath that is really important. At least that has been for my coaching.
Micheal Pacheco 11:45
Yeah, I love that. That’s great. The surrender experiment is a book that, that I have read before. And I feel like it is a life that that I’ve lived for a while, which is great, right? And my wife’s actually reading it right now. We just had untoasted, we just had our first child, march 1, so she’s going on six months, five and a half months old now. And my wife’s having she’s, she’s got to go back to work this coming Monday. And she’s struggling with that. And so yeah, I think you should, I think you should, you should read this book, I think it would help. She’s, so she took me up on that, which is nice. But I love I love the idea of accepting that you’re not completely in charge and that you’re a passenger. Sometimes
Marten Niner 12:37
I would argue that we’re a passenger all the time. So with my coaches, my coaches talk about imagining a life of floating from one beautiful moment to the next. And really control is an illusion, but it causes so much sorrow, so much sadness, so much pain, when we think we control so can control someone else control our business control a forecast, you know, the year out. In I’ve, I’ve done my share of forecasts in the past. And now I look at look at them, like, you know, how arrogant was I, but I thought that I could figure out what the business was going to do in a year. And you know, soon as the first month happened, we’re completely off the forecast because some crazy interesting thing happened. So it’s really about being able to live in the unknown and being debt and living in curiosity. And what what you find is that when you’re not dealing with all of this chatter, you have so much more information coming to you about other people about situation just the universe is much more open, and you just get a bigger sense of what the truth is. And so when you’re living in truth, and gratefulness, then all of the anxiety and fear just evaporate. But it takes it takes a lot of time. You know, typical coaching. Agreement is usually anywhere between three to three months to two years, and most of my clients, I’ve been coaching for most of the last four years. And seeing amazing improvement, seeing them go through the pandemic, with confidence and having fun and not ruining their work life balance. And really navigating some difficult, difficult things, you know, these people run large manufacturing companies, or they’re in charge of, you know, 300 to 600 people. And so that’s a lot. That’s a lot of randomness. That’s a lot of things that are not in your control, even though you you sometimes think that you’re in control, and so to see those people sit down with their, with their team. And it’s kind of the classic example I talked about earlier when I would sit down and say, Okay, here’s the problem team. This is what I want to do about it. What do you think? And then you know, everybody just tells you what you want to hear and move on, versus becoming a leader that goes into the team and says, Okay, this is the problem. What do you guys think we should do? And then just sit there and listen and get all the information and ask questions. And then, you know, the servant leadership model is make sure that they have everything they need to be able to complete the task. And, and that’s so it’s so much more powerful, it’s so much more efficient, you don’t get two months down the road and a project and wonder why everybody’s not doing what you wanted them to do this because they weren’t on board. But when you do it in a powerful way, when you do it in a leadership way, at least, you know, servant leader, servant leadership way, then everybody’s on board, because everybody got to say what their concerns were. And you know, at some point, during the project, something goes awry, they’re not afraid to bring it up. Because it was everyone’s idea versus the manager or the you know, the person in charge, so to speak, coming in and being ticked that it’s not happening the way that they think or, you know, the you didn’t, you didn’t think that XYZ was going to happen in three months and lose your mind over it.
Micheal Pacheco 16:10
I love it when I this is, this is gonna sound silly, and certainly nerdy to some. But when I think about really great leadership frequently, one of the I’ll say characters, one of the characters that comes to mind for me is Captain John Luke Picard from, from Star Trek. This is a man who is not afraid to make difficult decisions, but always consults his, his people as because he doesn’t have all the answers. And he knows that if if he thought that he had to be the expert at engineering and at navigation, and at, you know, everything else. There’s no way he could make those decisions, because he’d spent all this time learning and becoming a master of all these different things, right. But he’s the leader. So he’s got to he’s got to reach out and talk to his, his people. And so yeah, I was I always think of him when I think about like, really great leadership and servant leadership to go back to what you’re, you’re speaking of.
Marten Niner 17:16
I am a huge Star Trek nerd. So you’re speaking my language,
Micheal Pacheco 17:21
beauty. I love it. Martin, tell us tell us more about who your clients are, who do you work
Marten Niner 17:28
with. So I because I’ve had such a broad range of experiences, I’m really worked with a broad broad range of clients. I’ve got several who work in different subsidiaries of a large company, to manufacturing company. So they’re dealing with engineers, they’re dealing with HR, they’re dealing with creative types, like I said, they have anywhere from, say 25 to 600, direct reports that they are leading. And so that’s, that’s one part of the of my business. And then I have another part of the business where that’s just my own consulting, where I’m doing business development and leadership development, and for startups and smaller companies. So probably 10 and smaller. You know, most of my companies, I grew from zero to about 8 million, before we did something with them. And so that’s kind of the sweet spot as far as business that I know. But from a leadership standpoint, I’ve also worked with large companies, I’ve sold into large companies, I’ve ran sales teams as an outsider, you know, putting my product through a distribution network, and so had to become friends with and lead 200 sales reps and get them to look at my product as being more important than, than other folks. And so, so I’ve actually got to really see and enjoy both sides of that business culture that we’re seeing, you know, that the employee, large corporate bureaucracy, bureaucracy versus that small, nimble entrepreneur.
Micheal Pacheco 19:04
Nice. And how do you, how do you get your clients? How do you market your services?
Marten Niner 19:11
Um, it’s really through a referral. My coaches have been doing this for 40 years and 20 years respectively. So they have a, you know, quite a long client history, they get referred quite a bit so I get some leads that way. I’m also in a mastermind group where we share information and so understanding more about other people’s businesses and so I’ve gotten some, some referrals from that. I work with a bookkeeping company. That’s a client of mine. And that bookkeeping client has referred me to several of their clients that this bookkeeper could see you needed some help. And so yeah, it’s just been you know, very, you know, floating from one beautiful moment to the next and just Organic, seeing very organic and seeing the opportunities as they hit me. And just saying yes to Him and seeing what happens. And you know, not everything works out. But every time I’ve learned something, I’ve been able to share something. And it’s, it’s, it’s been a lot of fun.
Micheal Pacheco 20:15
For sure. You mentioned earlier that your your coaching agreements can can sometimes vary quite, quite broadly from three months to I think you said two years. What is a typical engagement with you look like? Is there a typical one,
Marten Niner 20:30
I don’t really think there is a typical one. No, on the on the cognitive side, we’ll get referred, you know, someone that’s a leader in an organization that’s struggling. And we’ll have, we usually do dual coaching, where there’s two coaches, we find that we can get a lot more information across. And by having those two different thought processes. And you know, one person can observe and listen, and the other person can engage. And so we find a lot of power in that. So, you know, from individuals, we, that’s what we’ve seen, we also do on the cognitive side, we do you know, 360 degree peer review, we do personality profiles, and 16, PF. And then we do cognitive testing, as well, for individuals and teams, for teams to see how well all the personalities jive, and what kind of personality types are missing? Or, or maybe there’s too many of a certain personality type. And so you know, how do we balance that team. And so we’ve tried to use all that data. So we can find out where the team or wherever the individual is, and meet them where they’re at, and then begin coaching from there. Because, you know, you, we don’t have kind of a standard, hey, this is where you step in here, A plus B equals C, because everybody’s in a different place. And so we’ve tried to find out where they’re at and start from there.
Micheal Pacheco 21:54
Yes, there’s got to be at least a dozen popular personality tests out in the in the in the world right now. And probably dozens more that are less popular, which ones do you like and why.
Marten Niner 22:09
So we liked the 16 pF, it’s one of the first personality profiles that were was created, it was back in the 50s. It was adopted by the military, I took the 16 pF, before I went into the military back in the 80s. And it was a little bit different than it is now. But it takes basically 16 core personality traits, and it’s one of the most researched personality profiles that’s out there. Now, and a lot of the you know, the popular personality profiles are some derivation of the 16 PF. And so I became certified earlier this year, and that and have still been been working with the with the Cognoa to do it just hadn’t become certified until this year, and really enjoyed the actually enjoyed the certification process because I honestly, you know, it was one of the I didn’t know what I didn’t know, was not looking forward to it. I’m like, I’m too old to go to school, too old. And then I ended up loving it.
Micheal Pacheco 23:15
You’re a coach, man, you should you should know better than that.
Marten Niner 23:18
Of course, of course. And you know, that’s part of the coaching process is you know, we all even the best coaches have those moments have those days has those, those ego defenses come up and say those ridiculous things, and it’s, we call them opportunities to practice our awareness. And so that, you know, that opportunity presented itself to me, I realized how ridiculous it was dived into the course material and loved it. And but that that thought still came, it didn’t linger, but it was still there. And so that’s part of, you know, what we we like to say is that we teach what we need to learn and learn what we need to teach. So the reason I’m doing this is because I want to be better at it. I want to learn more about it for myself. And by teaching it by explaining it by sharing it with you and, and other people. I’m just deepening that within myself.
Micheal Pacheco 24:07
For sure. For sure. Yeah, I want to You reminded me there. I want to circle back to the to the ego topic real quick. Are you familiar? There’s a there’s a spiritual guru will say named audience. Shanti are you have you heard of this guy before?
Marten Niner 24:23
Absolutely. We read quite a bit of it. Yes.
Micheal Pacheco 24:27
There you go. I was just gonna recommend he’s got there’s one video. I’ve got a few of his books myself there. He’s great. I’ve got one of them signed, actually, which is kind of cool, too. Oh, that is cool. Yeah. But there’s one video in particular I think you can find on YouTube that I really like of his called surrender or suffer.
Marten Niner 24:44
I think I’ve seen it.
Micheal Pacheco 24:46
And it’s exactly what it sounds like. And it’s just yeah. Well, we’ll add this. For those listening and watching. We’ll add that I’ll put that video in the show notes. We’ll get the some of the books that you mentioned as well in the show notes. So if you guys want to And, you know, come back and kind of check out some of these resources, I’d recommend that it’s a great video. It’s not long, I don’t know, what is it eight minutes, maybe seven minutes, something like
Marten Niner 25:07
that. Yeah, very easy to digest. And, you know, I find that this work becomes very spiritual. I think that the interior journey is really what our spiritual journey is. And so, you know, my coaches have have asked me to read a lot of different spiritual texts doubted Ching, ie Shanti, that a lot of Indian references. So there’s, there’s so much there, when you can take a step back from the dogma, and really look at what they’re saying, from a different light. It’s, it’s really fascinating to me, the things that you and I are talking about, they’ve been talking about for 1000s of years and writing about, and we’re just like, it’s like, every so often we’d like rediscover these secrets. You know, they’re not that secret.
Micheal Pacheco 25:59
Yeah, I feel like I feel like a lot of this stuff maybe got lost during you know, like, the Age of Enlightenment, right? Or, or in the industrial era, whenever when things started getting, you know, quote, scientific, some of this stuff got kind of maybe set aside a little bit and, and it definitely,
Marten Niner 26:16
during the 70s, and 80s, you know, the whole thing was taking auras, for example, sure, it was considered woowoo science, or, you know, not even pseudo science, or that, you know, you had, you know, an aura of energy about you. Well, okay, Fast forward to about 1015 years ago, now they have a device that can see that your electromagnetic field extends anywhere from three to six to up to 15 feet away from you. So we’re really this physical being in this energetic body. And it was woowoo back in the 80s. And now it’s science.
Micheal Pacheco 26:51
Yeah. 30, not even 30 years later.
Marten Niner 26:55
Yeah, and that’s really, you know, another piece of I think that would really change my, my direction, as far as you know, going from that miserable path to the happy path, is that we talk about that, you know, there’s what you know, that, you know, that’s small thing, and then there’s what you know, that you don’t know, and that’s a little bit bigger thing. And then what you don’t know, what you don’t know, is massive. And I looked at, you know, the half the things that I learned, if not more of that I learned in physics and science in high school, that’s completely been debunked. And they’re teaching completely new things, different things nowadays. So what I thought I knew I didn’t, I didn’t really know. And so to be able to live in that. I don’t know what I don’t know, and then be curious and continue that journey of learning. That’s, that’s the path that we recommend, you know, if I have someone that comes to me, that one’s coaching, but says, you know, I’m not a reader. Okay, well, will you listen to Audible? Oh, no, I won’t do that. Oh, well, when you’re ready to do that, let me know. Because you have to be that type of person who’s seeking something different?
Micheal Pacheco 27:59
Sure. Yeah. I mean, the thing here is, if you’re going into coaching from the coach ease side, you have to be prepared to do the work, right? It’s not that I think that’s the that’s the delineation, right between a coach and a consultant, a consultant is going to tell you what to do. It’s going to spell it out for you and tell you what to do. And a coach is going to say, you know, is going to be more of a guide than then a teller?
Marten Niner 28:24
I think so the coach goes on the journey with you, and hold you, we call it holding. So when someone’s going through, you know, an emotional response to something, we’re there to hold them through that, so they can get through it and get to the other side, rather than pushing it down. Most people will get to that emotion and go, Yep, no, I’m not feeling that today. Versus we’ve we’ve got to get through the emotion, or feeling or whatever it is memory in order to get to the other side. And then once that’s released, it’s released forever. So every step after that, is this that much lighter, beautiful.
Micheal Pacheco 29:02
Yeah, I had. So I of course have coaches as well. I’ve got a couple of them. And I’m part of a coaching group and we had a we had a call today’s Tuesday, so this must have been it was last Thursday. So just not too long ago, a few days ago. And it was we had we he walked us through some some body work being present in your body and that sort of thing. And he one of the other guys on the call was going through some stuff. And so the coach was working with him and we’re all watching and supporting and holding space for this for these to to do their work. And what really struck me as powerful as the coach, the coach said, what you need to do is set aside some time to just sob not to cry to sob wife, ugly, ugly cry, you really got an ugly cry. Because once you get that energy out, you’ll be able to begin working on fixing what it is you want to fix. Yeah, but you gotta get
Marten Niner 30:18
the last eight years than I had my entire life. So I get it. I’ve never cried before that was, yeah, no military you don’t cry. No crying in baseball, no, there’s no crying in baseball. But thank goodness I, I was able to rid myself of that false belief and embrace. And now I have a much better relationship with my emotions. And I know when I’m in a bad mood and I know what to do to fix that bad mood. Because we all get in and we all you know, wake up on the wrong side of the bed or like but now I know my body because I’m listening. And I’ve gone through that, that spiritual release, if you will, and it’s, there’s more, there’s just nothing better.
Micheal Pacheco 31:06
Now. I love it. I love it, Martin, what sort of things did you first did you? What sort of things did you struggle with when you first started coaching?
Marten Niner 31:15
Patience, okay, just having patience to be to allow things to happen, you know, because I was kind of like, I was going, going, going for 50 some odd years or 49 years. And then we saw that one business and I had nothing to do except for maybe eight clients when I started. But a lot of free time. And so, you know, and I wanted to get out there and jump and you know, get started getting clients and that on my coaches like, No, you need to learn how to be we’re human beings, we’re not human doings. So learn how to get in touch with your power, so you can really be a good coach. And so that’s I spent a lot of time reading, I’ve read over 100 books in the last four years. All on different subjects relating to this, some of it, you know, psychology in the body. So it was spiritual text, some of its, you know, stuff like, you know, Michael singer, Dr. Hawkins, map of consciousness is a great book by him of, you know, really trying to understand what consciousness is because I guess, really, what we’re teaching is awareness, right, of being aware. And so with our model is that you’ve got your ego defenses, and we’ve all got a bunch of them. And you think of that as like our software, right? They’re their little apps that run, when we get, you know, when we see something we don’t like, oh, their anger app, you know, kicks up, right? It’s like that, I don’t know, if you saw that Pixar movie Inside Out where they did not, it’s you will, because you have a kid, and it’s fantastic. I have four kids who are grown now, but watch tons of those. But anyway. So you’ve got these, you know, these these voices, right, that you’re dealing with. And so we help people get out of that into their observing ego, which is the highest function of the ego. And then that’s the, that’s the part of your brain that’s listening to the argument, and making decisions, right, so that’s the highest function, but then there’s, there’s another part of it, it’s a larger part of what we call awareness. And it’s something that’s always there, but you have to step into it, you can’t bring it into yourself, you have to step into awareness. In order to do that, you’ve got to learn how to be you’ve got to learn how to slow down and you’ve got to learn how to observe you know, what’s going on inside of you and around you. And really be able to sit very calmly with yourself. And so it took me you know, good three years two to three years of of that before, now I’m very comfortable with I’ve got nothing to do, I’m very comfortable, if I do have something to do usually make a list and I’ll sit you know, just meditate on the list. And whatever the most important thing pops up. That’s, I’ll go and get that done. And it’s just such a more gentle way of being then before I read out a list and just rush through it from top to bottom. And you know, what didn’t get done, got put to the next one. And on top of the next list. And so I’ve just learned a different way. So it’s a lot slower, a lot more gentle. We take gentle morning, so you don’t have time in the morning to kind of collect our thoughts and, and meditate a little bit to you know, really be centered for the rest of the day. And so now I have the time to do those things. And now I wouldn’t I couldn’t give them up because if I jumped back into you know, a 40 hour workweek i I’d be I’d struggle.
Micheal Pacheco 34:49
Yeah, there’s so you’re you mentioned you mentioned mornings taking slow taking time in the mornings meditating. There is a neuroscience Interest named Andrew Huberman, and I watched, he’s got a great YouTube channel, I think it’s called neuro lab, something like that. And he, I watched a video from him just the other day. And he’s was talking about the REM level of sleep where your brain is processing stuff that you learned, or that you were thinking about, or the stuff that you had, you know, putting your back in your mental back pocket the day before. And if you wake up in the morning, and hop on this guy right away, and start scrolling, you’re, you’re distracting the part of your mind in the morning that processes all of the stuff that you figured out with your subconscious overnight. So by slowing down and taking your morning slowly by meditating by by just sitting in a chair and thinking, My going from thinking, yeah, we’re not thinking by going for a walk. Yes. You’re, you’re able then to consciously process all the stuff that your subconscious was working on the night before. I have. Yeah, I’ve noticed a huge difference in the last few years, since I, you know, changed and kind of created a morning routine. And it’s just, yeah, anytime I speak to someone who’s flustered or they seem anxious, or they’ve got they don’t, they never have enough time. That’s a big one.
Marten Niner 36:34
That was me. That was me before coaching never had time, I was always going go and go and had four kids, two to three companies going at any one time. And was just go go go. And, and now we call it slowing down to speed up now that I’ve slowed down, slow down, and I’m so much more effective at getting what I want done done. And the things that really need to get done, get done, the things that didn’t really need to get done, kind of fall by the wayside. And I’m like, Oh, I really didn’t need to do that. Or somebody else takes care of it for me. And so then I’m really able to, to focus on what’s important to me, you know, my family, my friends, my music, my coaching, learning, gardening, all those things now that I get to do that I would have never had time for before.
Micheal Pacheco 37:27
Nice. Love it. Love it. Martin, tell us about some remarkable wins that you’ve had in your in your coaching career.
Marten Niner 37:35
Remarkable wins. Oh, man seems like it’s all the time. But one gentleman call him GE, he runs a fabrication plant back East. And when he came to me, probably three years ago, you know, this guy was sleeping four hours a night that was constantly working, was worried about he was going to have heart attack and a lot of stress and anxiety. Very similar to the way I was eight years ago. And you know, within probably six months to a year of working with him. He changed that he started to sleep longer he him and his wife started taking vacations and he wouldn’t take his laptop and his and he turned off of his phone. He allowed his people to you know, run the plant while he wasn’t there. During the pandemic, he and his wife took tons of walks and he started working out. And I talked to him last week. And we you know, we were scheduled for an hour and a half, about 45 minutes in he just kind of given us an update. And he’s like, You know what? I’m feeling great. So, you know, if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna go get some milk, go take a walk, and you guys have a wonderful rest of your day. Well, you know, we’ll talk to you next month. And so, you know, to see someone go from that, you know, tortured human is extremely, you know, very successful. Human, same job, same problems, probably more problems during the pandemic, because, you know, supply chain issues and all that stuff in the, you know, battling that today. But but he’s not taking it personally. He’s not letting it you know, he can turn it off when he gets home. Or, you know, maybe not 100% But far better than he did three years ago. That’s the that’s the biggest wind lately that that’s come to mind.
Micheal Pacheco 39:38
I love it. I love it. That’s a great one. Martin, I’ve got a quote here. The most powerful person in the room is the most aware person in the room. Tell us about that.
Marten Niner 39:51
Well, that goes back to what I was talking about earlier about that power versus force. So you know, to kind of dissect that sentence you have to think okay, well what does awareness mean and what Does power mean? Right? So how are you the most powerful person in the room. And so from our perspective as as leaders, and that’s really what we’re trying to coaches as amazing leaders within organizations, is that if we can move from that force that advocacy into inquiry, then that’s up, you get so much more information about what’s going on in the situation, which makes you more powerful information is power. And so if we’re, if you’re stuck in your ego, which we call our force, then you only have a limited amount, and usually, your your forces met with equal and opposite force. So if anyone out there is in a relationship, any relationship where you’re you argue with the spouse, or there’s a co worker that drives you crazy, or relative, that’s, that gets your blood going, more than likely, you’re dealing with them force on force. And when you can move into power, when you can move into inquiry, when you can move into that state of being and start to be curious about, well, why are they the way they are? What, what makes them think in that manner. And you really, and we, it’s not our it’s another doctor who coined this term, I apologize, I don’t remember who it is. But he termed coined the term of Cole C, O, A L. And that means curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love. And not like romantic love, just, you know, love for humankind. And so if you can approach those situations with those four attributes, then you are going to be much more powerful in that conversation in that relationship in that transaction, whatever is happening, whether it’s personal, or business, you know, if you’re sitting across the aisle from a co worker, who is one of those, you know, that just gets your blood going, it’s more likely because you want them to think so one way and they want you to think another way, and you’re just, you’re just beating each other up, versus if you could shift and say, Okay, what is this person really trying to tell me? What are they trying to communicate? What is the basis, and you may find out that they really have a good point. Or you may find out that they really don’t know what they’re talking about. But the only way you’re going to find out is to ask really good questions.
Micheal Pacheco 42:26
Nice. I’m curious, Martin, if you so I know you get most of your clients right now through referrals, if you were to market yourself. What would you would you market yourself as a business coach, or a life coach? Or something else?
Marten Niner 42:48
Probably, it’s definitely it’s both right. But it’s really about life. Because the and I guess I would coined it as an awareness coach. Because you’re going a little further about, you know, the aware person is the most powerful, that being in touch with that aware part that we talked about earlier, you get your ego defenses, you got your observing ego, and then you’ve have your awareness, when you can sit in that awareness. That’s when we are our most powerful that and that and time goes by very quickly, you know, when we’re working on a hobby, when we’re working on music, and you’re just in that flow. That’s a way a meditative way to get to awareness. And so what we’re also teaching is how to capture that in our everyday life, not just when we’re doing those little things that we love, or you know, those things that get us into that into that flow. But how do you how are How can you be in the flow all the time?
Micheal Pacheco 43:47
Nice. I like that. You, you’ve coined? Well, let me put it this way. You’ve mentioned some specific terms, as since as we’ve been talking here, and I see we’re kind of coming up on time here. So I’ll, I’ll try and keep this brief. But you’ve mentioned like living in inquiry, being in your power, you guys refer you refer to ego as force? Is that? Is that something that are you are you creating your own vocabulary intentionally? Or is that just a way that did that naturally come as a way that you guys would talk about your coaching what you do, or is this something that’s intentionally done to create maybe a brand for your coaching or, or tell us about that?
Marten Niner 44:35
Well, it’s it’s really from my work with cog Nova. And it’s, it’s creating a language around what’s going on in our heads and this in this journey that we’re on. And the language a lot of times will fail us when we’re talking about these things, because power and force just for example, probably mean completely different things to you than they do to me. And so we do spend some time with in coaching of defining these terms. You know, the power versus force that we’re talking about came from Dr. Hawkins. And so when we have someone read Dr. Hawkins, or when we have someone read, Michael singer, now we have a common understanding of this language, and we have a language that we can really start really diving deep. But you have to have those definitions of those words. And so you’ve got, and you have to agree on what they what they mean. So you can have deep meaningful conversation, because if I just started talking about power versus force, and I didn’t go into advocacy, inquiry, and, and all those other things, then, you know, somebody might just think that I’m talking about Star Wars and the force, right? Because there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of it, we call it, you know, it’s a cliche, it’s one word, or one concept contains a lot of information. Because it’s related to something, you know, as iconic as a Star Wars. Star Wars.
Micheal Pacheco 46:03
Yeah, I mean, the, I was gonna say the English language, but really any language at all is, is, by definition, you know, humans created, it’s an it’s an organic thing, language is an entity itself, and constantly changing based on little tweaks in how people are using it in pop culture in in one on one conversations, like, it’s just, it’s always moving, it’s organic. So I can see like, how important it would be to establish a language with the, the people that you’re working with, and make sure that you know, as just establish the syntax, so you can all talk about the same thing and understand what you’re talking about.
Marten Niner 46:46
Absolutely. And, you know, this is not something we normally talk about, most people don’t share their innermost thoughts and feelings and failures, you know, with what they would consider a failure. And so, you know, we establish a very deep trust very quickly with our clients. And so we’re able to really talk about things that they’ve never talked about to anybody. And so you have to have a language around that. And you have to have an understanding about how to get through it. And so, I think it’s a, you know, it’s been important for me in my growth, to spend a lot of time on that language and really understanding, you know, what my coaches mean, when they’re coaching me and when I’m coaching other folks.
Micheal Pacheco 47:30
Yeah. Nice. You’ve mentioned you mentioned Michael singer, surrender experiment. A couple other books, what are, what are the top, you know, let’s save arbitrarily the top three books that you would recommend somebody read who is listening to this podcast watching it on YouTube, and they’re resonating with what you’re talking about.
Marten Niner 47:54
So Untethered Soul, by Michael singer surrenders, experiment by Michael singer. And then after that, there’s just so many good ones. It’s, it really depends on on what’s going on. You know, there’s some great parenting books, you know, for people that are struggling with their kids. There’s people that are there’s a stop walking on eggshells is a great book for people who are dealing with narcissists or narcissist, you know, syndromes. The the parenting book is the whole brain child. And that’s a phenomenal book for for parents. And then more on the spiritual side, I would say, Dr. David Hawkins, he is it’s called the works of Dr. David Hawkins. And it’s, he passed away I believe in 2015. So it’s kind of some of his papers and talks and some information out of some of his books that have kind of been condensed into, into one book that covers a lot of neat things. And so those were those, that’s what I would like, just off the cuff. Sure and recommend.
Micheal Pacheco 49:03
Sure. That’s no, that’s those are. Those are great. I’ll throw I’ll throw one in that that I really liked that you may or may not be familiar with. It’s, it’s by Frederick Dotson parallel universes of self.
Marten Niner 49:15
Oh, no, I haven’t read that one. It’s just real.
Micheal Pacheco 49:18
I’ll read you a little snippet from it. It says the purpose of this book is to bring the Parallel Worlds Theory as known to physics and science fiction into application in your personal reality and everyday life, you can create your reality by becoming the parallel world version of yourself for whom experience the experience you want is already real. So it’s, it’s a little bit of the the secret kind of thing, you know, so it’s a little bit of that, but it it’s a fascinating book, especially sounds like you mentioned you like Star Trek, so you got to be an Star Wars. You’re a little bit of a sci fi nerd. I would I would recommend it for you to check out when you get a chance. It’s just besides being spiritual. It’s also a little bit geeky. So it’s it’s my thing is right. I think it’s right up your
Marten Niner 50:07
alley is right up my
Micheal Pacheco 50:14
love. Yeah, this has been fantastic man. Is there anything else that you would like to chat about that we haven’t had an opportunity to touch upon yet?
Marten Niner 50:22
I don’t, I don’t know why we’ve covered a lot of a lot of things. I’ve just really appreciate the opportunity to, you know, share a little bit of knowledge with the folks that watch this and other coaches. You know, I really, I don’t see coaches as competition. I think everybody on this planet needs a coach. Whether they’re small, old, man, woman, we all need help. I don’t think I could have gotten to where I’m at today without a mentorship and that’s one thing. I think that you also read in a lot of these older, older works that most everyone I think the Buddha is the only one who got it without any help. And maybe Buddha and Jesus everybody else needed help needed a guide needed a mentor.
Micheal Pacheco 51:16
Well, yeah, that’s great, man. Awesome, Martin. Where can our listeners and viewers connect with you online social media.
Marten Niner 51:27
LinkedIn, Martin knight or MA RT e n with an e ni N er, I’m the only one on there with that name. Website is yes, it’s more fun.com. And that’s probably the easiest way to get in contact with me.
Micheal Pacheco 51:44
Awesome. My nine. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you making the time for us. It’s been a blast.
Marten Niner 51:50
My pleasure. Thank you. I really appreciate you.
Micheal Pacheco 51:52
And thank you to our viewers and listeners for joining us. We’ll see you guys again next time. Cheers. Cheers. Stop recording.
