Utilizing AI to Expand Your Reach

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Denise is a Clinical Psychologist turned Dream Life Coach and knows that she is making more of an impact now, as an online life and business coach than she did in the corporate world.

She has a 12 week overcoming self-sabotage course that helps clients align their Dream Life Pathway - gain clarity for what they want next, clear the cobwebs of the heart, and create the daily habits that will lead them to success. 

As we retrain your subconscious brain and reprogram limiting beliefs, the changes you experience in 90 day u turn will support you (and your family) for years to come. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome back, you guys. Question: What if we stopped asking how AI will replace us and started asking how it will supercharge us? Today on Coaching for Coaches, we are joined by Tim Harrison, founder and CEO of the Coaching Innovation Lab and a founding member of the ICF Global Task Force for AI and Coaching. Tim equips coaches to leverage AI effectively, authentically, and responsibly. Get ready to learn practical strategies to save hundreds of hours, increase your profits, and scale your impact without sacrificing the authentic human connection your clients deserve. Big welcome to Tim Harrison.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah. Well, I think this is a super interesting topic because, as coaches, one of the things we know AI cannot take away is human connection. And we know that human connection is truly the gateway for change, right? If we could just listen to a video and be better, we would already be living our dream life. So we need coaches, we need communities, we need uh space in our life to talk through life and to grow and to be challenged and be held accountable. Um, but AI can certainly help us catapult our experience. I'm excited to hear more about how to do that. So before we jump into the AI side of things, I'd love to hear a bit more about you and why you decided to step into coaching and then why you decided to kind of niche into AI.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah, totally. I mean, like many coaches and people listening to this, coaching is a calling, not just a career or a profession. And in some ways, I've always been a coach. I was always that person who was encouraging or saw potential in people, wanted to bring that out. But it wasn't until I got to college. So you can't tell because I'm on the screen or you're listening to me, but I'm actually six foot eight. And so as you can imagine, basketball is a big part of my life growing up. In high school, I was an underarmor all-American, Adidas All American. But when I got to college, I struggled. I wasn't getting the playing time that I thought I was gonna get. I dealt with some injuries and just some things in the locker room. And I was like, man, this isn't going the way that I had hoped. And fortunately, the school I went to, Rice University, had an executive coaching program. Whereas an undergrad, I can actually work with an executive leadership coach. And that for me was a game changer. Just like you, Denise, I also studied psychology. And I was fascinated with why people do what they do. But then going through that adversity in my own life, I started reading all these personal development books like Tony Robbins and things about mindset. And I saw this through line between what my coach was doing to me in these sessions with the research that I'm studying and what they're saying in these self-help books. And I'm like, man, it's not just like motivation, like put a smile on your face, and life is peaches and cream, you know, but it's like, no, this is neuroscience, and I might this changing my life. And as a result, I'm able to influence the people in the environment around me. And so that was a game changer. That was like the first realization. So then I end up pivoting from basketball and I go into strategy consulting. I get a my dream job in uh at Accenture Strategy. But then I graduate when the world changed. It was 2020, global pandemic, and then social justice crisis during that time. And I remember having this deep conviction that there was more than I wanted to contribute to the world than to just build for myself. I was so proud to get that job offer. It was like not an easy path to get there. But I was like, man, I want to do something that makes a difference. And I thought about my own experience with coaching, and I thought about my own experience with psychology and that through line. I was like, man, there's something here. And I came across a quote by a man named Howard Thurman, who's a mentor of Dr. King. And he said, Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And so I remember like hearing that and something just clicked into place. And I decided I was going to take a leap of faith. I turned down that, you know, security of that job offer during the pandemic. And I ended up starting a nonprofit organization bringing coaching to youth and underserved communities. And I got an opportunity to be certified as a coach myself. So I'm actually the youngest coach to receive my ACC credentials to the ICF. And so when I was 22, I was coaching executives who often had kids my age. And I was also running a nonprofit with a team of coaches who were actually coaching kids. And so that was just uh that's really how I got into this space.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

That's amazing. I love it when you're like, this is not just a nice thing to read. This is actually changing my brain. And when you recognize that we can shift our habits, we can change our automatic thinking, we can step into the life that we really want and the person that we want to be, but we can't do it alone. Because if we could, we'd be there already. So coaches truly do help collapse time and create an expansion within us. And I love that even at that young age, you put those two things together because I think there's a lot of people who in their 50s, 60s, 70s who haven't quite done it yet. So you're um starting off strong here. So why AI? Why did you decide to not just coach, and then you've you're coaching youth as well, uh, but you're also coaching executives. Why did you decide to hone in on the AI story?

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah, I think I've always been a curious person. It's probably how I got into coaching in general. But I was running the nonprofit, and what we would do is we would take executive level coaches and they would volunteer their time at work with these high school students who often didn't have like much support in or the resources in their school environment. And it was impactful. And I'm big on the research side of it too. So we'd run pilots and we knew there was impact, and it was great. But then it was like, man, I want to have a big impact. And we're just limited by certain things like private spaces in the school, or you know, school gets their funding cut and and we're not able to do that. And it's just like, you know what? This we felt stuck about two years in. I felt stuck. You know, my co-founder had left, and funding was up and down depending on what was going on in the world. And I was like, man, like this was my dream. And like it doesn't seem like this is happening the way that I wanted it to. I think our biggest uh partner got our funding got cut, or our their funding got cut and they discontinued our program. And I was like, man, so it's Christmas Eve 2022. I was back in San Diego where I grew up uh in my uh in my parents' house for Christmas, and it was there. I was sitting on my bed, I was scrolling on my phone, and I come across a powerful technology with a funny sounding name, ChatGPT. And I was like, whoa, what is this right here? And this was late 2022, so this is before most of the world found out about it. It came out November that same year, so this is just a month after, and immediately I was blown away. I was like, whoa, my curiosity got the best of me. I was like, doesn't know who I am, can answer this question or that question. I was like, okay, this is the future, right? And I'd heard about you know, AI is gonna change the world and everything, even when I was in college and stuff, but it was it's so abstract. Now it's like, oh, this thing is talking to me and it's smart and it's but it's not perfect. It makes some mistakes here and there. And so I remember the first thing I did was just put into practice. You know, I'm very big on not just learning something or reading about something, you gotta do it. You gotta put it into the world, you gotta, you know, let it bump against reality. And at the time, I think we were going for a grant with the nonprofit that used to take, you know, uh 15 hours. Did it in three hours. We won$50,000 for that nonprofit to like grow our program. Then I was also doing executive coaching and consulting for some organizations. I had a three-month project. I finished it in one month because I was using AI. I did it better than I would have done it on my own, but I got paid the same, which means that I tripled what I earned per hour on that project. So I was like, oh, okay, this isn't just a fancy tool, this makes an economic difference in my life. So it went from what can it do to what can I do with it. And then I started to think bigger. And as coaches, we understand that the power of the question is so key. So, what can it do? What can I do with it to what is now possible? I thought about some of the limitations with the nonprofit. We were capped at about 30 to 40 students, and there's all this fluctuation in the schools and funding and all that. And I was like, man, if we had a model that could scale, we could reach way more students. There's a 400 to one student to guidance, you know, counselor gap in education. So for every one guidance counselor, it's 400 students, especially in the neighborhoods like we were trying to uh have the impact in. But also, if we had a model that could scale, we can get more support. It's easier for the schools to take us on because we're not just impacting a few students. And I was like, man, if we can build an AI that could do some coaching that students can interact with, you know, it's not a human replacement, but a lot of times there's no one that they could talk to. So if this thing could ask them some questions, help them set some goals, that would be impactful. The problem was I had never written a line of code in my life. And we're this small nonprofit. We can't hire this big software development, you know, team to go build something out. So I was like, shoot, what do I do? I go to Chat GBT and I'm like, hey, uh, I run a nonprofit. I would like to build a system that can take students through a session, right? And but I don't know how to code, like, break it down to me, what are my options? And I remember going back and forth and I learned new things. And then I did that till 5 a.m. And at the end of that, I had a working app. I had never written a line of code before, and I had a working app and I even trained it how to coach. And so I used my skill as a coach to be able to prompt it. And I could tell when it went off the rails. But then I didn't know how to code at all. So it wrote all the code. So I realized, oh, this is like hybrid experience going on. And then as fate would have it, the next week I was scheduled to speak out of school on leadership and innovation. This was before like AI was even really a thing, it was just leadership and innovation, just happened to be. And I threw away my speech and I said, Hey, here's a QR code. All the students, 50 students in the room, scan this and go through a session instead, right? I did a little bit of an intro and talk about personal development. Okay, cool. Do your own session, like with your own life. And at the end of it, the students were like, Man, this was helpful. I like they didn't just tell me what to do. It asked me questions. Oh, it felt like a safe space to be able to uh talk about my dreams or my goals, or hey, it actually like pushed me to get more concrete. I was a little bit more abstract, and now I have like something I'm gonna do when I get home. And I was like, man, like that's good, that's good because that's that moved things forward. But then I had a bigger realization there are 50 students in that room. Each of them just had a 30-minute coaching session. That means I just delivered 25 hours of coaching in just 30 minutes. And the only reason it wasn't more than 25 hours, 50 hours, 100 hours, is because there weren't more students in the room. The effort on my part would have been the same, whether there was 50,000 students or just five. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a game changer because I was able to build something that multiplied my potential overnight without the skills of coding, without any payment or resources, and like with very little time. And so I was like, Oh, okay, the rules of the game have changed. And then I went all in on how we can use this tool as a vehicle to scale transformation. It's not about the AI. I'm I'm in the business of empowerment, but people need to be inspired and they need to be equipped. And there's never been a better tool at our fingertips than today.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Do you find when you talk about AI in corporate settings or with coaches who are building their own businesses, is their first response like, yeah, freaking out, this is new, I don't know, I don't get it, never using it, uh, like on a spectrum, right? Or is it, I want to learn, this is gonna be helpful. Where do you find that most people's knee-jerk reaction is?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

I think it it ranges. It ranges on the person. I have people who I've worked with who are in their 70s who are like AI wizards now, like after going through like a program with me. And then I have other people who come from tech who are very, you know, averse to it. I think part of it is temperament, part of it is how relevant do they feel it is, not necessarily the capability. And uh there's a lot of fear out there, but there's also a lot of excitement. You know, this is a unique time in history where we're stumbling upon very powerful technology and it's impacting every aspect of society. So I've gotten almost every response that you could think of. Here's what I do notice is that the people who are using it swear by it and see the benefit. And then a lot of the people who I know are more fearful aren't engaging with it. And so I think there's a level of familiarity that needs to happen. There are legitimate concerns, but I think the option is uh people who lean in and have a little bit of curiosity about it, tend to get be the ones who get the results, and the ones that are more fearful are the ones who probably aren't using it yet.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Right, right. The ones that are a bit fearful probably or they might love it once they really engaged. So, how can coaches use AI to speed up and just catapult? I feel like it helps us skip, not skip some steps, but collapse time and make things happen a lot faster, whether it's writing social emails, creating programs, um, copywriting, posts, even I mean, it sounds like you've created even apps utilizing AI. What are some ways that coaches can use AI today?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, and for the listener as well, so I spent the first five years of my career in the nonprofit. We sense a transition, and I now run a company called the Coaching Innovation Lab. And our aim is to empower coaches worldwide to leverage AI effectively, authentically, and responsibly so they can increase their profits and impact. After I had built the AI coach and did some other things in the industry, the ICF kind of caught wind of me, International Coaching Federation, and they put together a task force for AI and coaching to advise the institution on how coaching can move into the future. And through that, I've expanded, you know, a lot of what I do is not with students anymore, but I've helped professional coaches and implementing it in their business. And one of the things that I like to talk about is it's not just about using AI for the sake of AI. It's so catalog catalytic right now. It's such a headline and there's so much emotional charge about it. It's really not about the AI, it's about the human and it's about the person, and it's about what actually produces value. I've seen some things, there's plenty of things that I would never use AI for this. And there's some things that I would never do again because AI is like that. So there's one to kind of set the landscape that people often treat it like a binary, like I'm using it or I'm not using it. It really is something you have to engage and immerse yourself in. Nobody says I run an internet coaching business. It's like you run a coaching business and it's implied and it's assumed that you're using the internet. We're no longer in the early stages. Chat GPT has over a billion users a month, and that's just ChatGPT. There's so many other tools out there, like you know, chatbots, you have video editing tools, you have things that can create music, you have things that create images and videos and worlds and all that stuff. So we're now in the thick of it. This is no longer a future conversation. And if you're a coach, one of the things I in and just as a business owner in general, one of the things I talk about is you can't build your business predicting what the next five years are gonna look like, but you can build it around what's not gonna change in the next five years. What's not gonna change is you're gonna want more profits and have a bigger impact, right? And so if you reverse engineer that, how are you actually making money? How are you actually having an impact? And reverse engineer that. There's only two ways to increase profits earn more, spend less. That's it. Right now, there's a lot of ways you can earn more, you can charge more, you can offer more, you can do higher dosage, like more sessions or more, whatever it is, and then spend less, you know, stop spending or find something cheaper alternative. So there's actually only a finite amount of ways. And then within that, how do you then do something a little bit better, faster, cheaper, or just reinvent how you do it because of AI?

SPEAKER_01 15:57

I love it. I do think that it helps us to take our thoughts that are sometimes jumbled around. If we want to create a program, I work with people who are at the beginning stages of their coaching career and they're like, I have all of these ideas, but I don't really know what to do with it. And so putting it into AI is a helpful tool to kind of brain dump all of your thoughts and have it help you linearize it and create your program or to create, you know, your lesson structure. And I find that those that are stepping into AI are actually taking more action than those who are trying to figure it out on their own. Do you see that?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Yeah, definitely, definitely. There's uh there's memes online about AI psychosis where the promise of AI is that you're going to save all this time, but the people who use AI are using it just all the time, there's they're just becoming more ambitious. And I I don't I don't believe that we'll ever have a three, three-day, four-day work week. I think you just get more efficient and more productive. And you actually often what I see with people that I work with, when they realize what AI can do for them, they become more ambitious. They realize, oh, that program that I've been wanting to start for so long that just felt like this giant mountain, now only looks like a hill because I know I'm assisted. And so they often become more ambitious and they often end up doing more. They also often spend more time with people because they're not doing administration. I I've one person I went through my program, she automated her presentation process and her onboarding. And now she made a conscious business decision that she's gonna grab coffee with people more often to network. So because she's using AI, she's actually more in her human space. So that's why it's not, you know, is AI human? Is AI inauthentic or responsible? It's like, are you using it responsibly? Are you using it authentically? I think putting the onus and putting the responsibility back on the individual really is the most like human-centered thing to do. Um yeah, and so I like the use case that you mentioned about uh capturing your thoughts. A lot of coaches are visionary, right? You have big ideas, you're a good communicator, you're very people-driven, empathetic. And sometimes, maybe, and not everybody, but sometimes some of the detailed operational things are like more of a burden that comes with running a coaching business. Uh, you know, and so one of the things that I appreciate is I can map it to my own unique psychology. One of the things I focus on is people being in their zone of genius. AI is a tool that allows you to maximize your time spent in your zone of genius. Everybody has four zones. You have your zone of incompetence, your zone of competence, your zone of excellence, and then your zone of genius. Your zone of incompetence are the things that you're not really good at. Other people are probably better, right? Think maybe like in a coaching context, scheduling meetings, right? It's like, okay, you're you're okay at it. You know, it doesn't mean you're bad at it, but you can do it. It's it's just not that important, it's not relevant for you. Then you have your zone of competence. Maybe that's something you're decent at, probably average, right? Maybe it's taking notes, right? You're not a professional note taker, you probably take a lot of notes, maybe you're you're good or whatnot, right? Zone of excellence, so things that you do above average, right? This might be speaking, this might be presenting, this might be coaching, this might be training. And then you have your zone of genius, the thing that you do best, the thing that brings you energy, it has the biggest impact on your bottom line in your business. And that might be the coaching, that might be the speaking, that might just be you have a great perspective on you know, um, psychology when it comes to leadership and coaching. Like you're one of few people who are like, you really have a great live story right there. And those are the things that you do better than anybody else. And so, what you can do is you can look at each of those zones and think, well, where can I automate? Where can I augment? Where can I amplify myself? Or where can I adapt because of AI? For example, for scheduling, a lot of coaches are already using AI, uh, just not generative AI, with something like Calendly that books your calls. You send them a link, they click on it, it looks at what's available in your calendar, clicks it, automatically invites you both, adds a zoom link, and then boom, you're there. And that might be save you 20 minutes a meeting, but then you have, you know, 20 meetings a week, 10 meetings a week. That adds up. It's multiple work weeks throughout the year. Your zone of competence, let's say it's note-taking. Well, I have AI note takers hop on every call with me, right? And the thing I love about that is it allows me to actually be more present with the person in front of me. But then also I use a tool called Granola. And granola is an AI note taker, but it allows you to prompt the transcript during the conversation. So, Denise, if you and I are on this conversation, I can be like, Man, what did she say earlier? Or she asked me about this. If she told me about her background, what college did she go to? Boom, it'll pop back up. Or I can have pre-built templates and say, okay, hey, after every single session, I tend to send a follow-up with these ingredients, right? What was the big takeaway? Uh, what were her action items, whatever it was? Well, once I set that in advance, I could just press that button and it automatically drops my follow-up email. Right now, if you have all these sessions every week, you know, that's a lot of follow-ups that you're doing, chasing people and not prepping for the next one. Sometimes you're in back-to-backs. Well, that actually condenses maybe a 10-minute task, five-minute task to like 30 seconds. And that adds up. You have a little bit more ease. And then you have the amplification of the things that are in your zone of excellence. Maybe it's you have a methodology, maybe it's you have a certain perspective on things. And I use another tool called gamma, or I can use claw that can build out my presentations. Well, my zone of excellence is well, what's my methodology? What is my message? Who's my audience? And those are my inputs as a human being. I use my empathy. Hey, who's in who's gonna be in the audience? What are they afraid of? How can I address that? How can I drive them transformation? I just spend time and I write that out almost in a document, or just my raw words, or I'll just like speak it out loud and kind of brain dump. And then I'll throw in the AI and the AI will structure it. And then the AI will build the first pass on the slide deck. And then I have to go back over it because it's not they're not perfect yet. But then I go back over it, right? So that's an amplification of your zone of excellence. And then lastly, is your zone of genius. So this is the crime de la creme, and this is really where the real opportunity is is to adapt. You don't want to just do things a little bit more efficiently. That's like uh when the combustion engine came out during the industrial revolution. Everyone knew that this. Going to transform transportation. But if you look at some of the early mock-ups, what they showed was a carriage, like a horse carriage, but with an engine in the back. And it almost looks ridiculous looking at modern day eyes. Because it's like, well, obviously, it was a Model T. The Model T, the vehicle, the car, was the invention that the combustion engine enabled. But at the time, they're like, well, the horses could go faster. They can carry more weight. They'll last longer because they're not as you know tired, etc. And so I think in many ways, we're still in that AI-powered engine right now. And so how do you adapt around what you do to create new possibilities? And I'm happy to talk about some more of those in a bit.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Well, I love the analogy of putting the engine behind the horse because you're the at that time they were speaking the language they understand. You know, we often say we don't have a brain cell for that yet. Imagine telling someone riding a horse that it's going to take 30 minutes instead of three days, right? We don't even comprehend it. We don't understand it. And so right now we're potentially using AI for what we're already doing. Uh, we're helping it make us helping it us be maybe a bit more creative, a bit more linear, a bit more um like collapsing that time. But it also it sounds like you're saying AI can be even more expansive than what we already under currently understand because we don't necessarily even have a brain cell for it yet.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Right, right. But the good news here is that it's not the engineers who design the engine who are gonna figure that out. In this case, it's gonna be you because you're the master at your business and you already have an expertise. A lot of times people treat learning AI like studying a new subject in school. It's much more like reaching for a new tool that you have to learn some technique, but then you're gonna apply it to the skills that you already have. You're the one who's gonna be able to identify the Model T in your area because you have the expertise to do that. It's just gonna amplify your existing skills, it's gonna amplify your existing perspectives. And one of the things that is encouraging for coaches is that the way to use AI is similar to your skill set as a coach. You prompt, you ask the right question, right? You say it in the right way, right? As a coach, you're not always telling someone what to do, but you frame a question that gets them to think in a certain way. And that's a very similar skill set to using AI. It's one thing to say, hey, uh, you know, generate an image of a successful person, right? Or, hey, I'm gonna speak at this conference and here's who's in the audience. Versus I could say, well, hey, here's who's in the audience. This is the purpose of my talk, here's how I want to come across, here's a draft of what I wrote before. I want you to give me some feedback. That's one way to use A. Another way is make my presentation for me, right? And so it really is like the human who you are is how you prompt. Who you are is how you prompt. And so it still puts the emphasis on the on the person behind the, so to speak, wheel.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

So if somebody's listening and they are a new coach or they're brewing their coaching uh business and they want to start collapsing time by utilizing AI, what are some first places for them to start?

SPEAKER_00 25:15

First and foremost, take a piece of paper, write down what am I already gonna do over the next seven days or 14 days, and just write down every tiny task that you think you're gonna do. Right? That's your playground for using AI. Don't treat it as, oh hey, I have to go and spend this time off in the corner not advancing what I'm already doing. Think I need to reach for a new tool and do the things that I'm already doing. You can start with a basic chat bot, you know, Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, they're all within, I would say, five to ten percent ability, and it changes all the time. So don't worry about mastering every tool. One of those three, or like the four big chat bots right now, are great. And then I would tell AI, hey, here's what's on my list. Which of these things can you help me with? Keep in mind I'm a beginner, and you'll be so shocked, and you'll be like, oh wow, I didn't know that it could do all of this, and then try it because you'll you'll learn things. You'll be like, okay, that didn't work, but maybe that wasn't the AI. Maybe I didn't give it the right context. Or, oh wow, it did more than I thought it could do. Okay, now that's a possibility. There's no substitution for spending just like 10 hours with these tools, like over a few weeks. It gives you an intuition, it gives you a sense for what they can and can't do. If they do hallucinate, meaning they give a false response, you kind of learn what types of mistakes that it makes. It's not just that AI is sometimes inaccurate, there's very specific types of things. And if you know how to use it, you can better defend yourself against it. So that's all I'd say. Don't treat it like this whole new thing. What are you already going to be doing? And start small and work your way up.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

My husband uses his like voice message to to chat all the time where I think he's on the phone, but he's like brainstorming with chat.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

What I found is that it knows him so well now because he has used it and it's it knows his voice and it spits out things he would say. And so when he gets his answers back or his, you know, his article or his even like Facebook ad, he's brainstorming with AI now, uh, and it's creating images for him and even videos and little things. Uh it's getting like closer and closer to being like, uh, yep, that's exactly what I wanted. And I think it's because he's using it so often.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Yeah, the the there's a paradox when it comes to advanced technology. Oftentimes, the more advanced the tech is, the easier and more intuitive it is to use. I mean, think about the horse cares that we just talked about, which is easier, like raising horses, pulling the reins, having to get up on there and being there for hours, having a saddle, all that stuff. Or today, the leading edge cars drive themselves. You know, I just did a road trip to Austin and my car has some self-driving, and I didn't touch the wheel once. Like I put in the destination and then it turned and we got there. And like that's today. You know, the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed. And so that's way more easy to use, though. And so, in the same way, like he just talks to it very naturally, and it's good at meeting you where you are. But then at the same time, it's it's really up to you. Like, assume that you're gonna be the bottleneck, assume that you have to do strategic thinking up front. Like it's easy to use, but it rewards clear thinking, it rewards strategic thinking. There's no excuse to just be lazy, like this is not gonna work out for you. It never has in history. So a lot of times people think, oh, if I use AI, I'm I'm cheating or whatnot. But like, no, like it's still gonna be hard work, but would you rather your hard work go like 50 times as far? You know, I think so. Especially when you wanna you're in the business of transforming people's lives. You know, it's as a coach, you're in the game of transformation and change is hard. But we understand that because we sit across from people all the time who really want to change, but there's so many things that get in the way. You have to model that too. So if you're intimidated by this, this is an opportunity for you to practice what you preach. How do I evolve? How do I change? How do I adapt? Because I guarantee you, every single one of your clients in some way, shape, or form is being influenced by the same change that you're undergoing. And so that also becomes an advantage when you can bring that into what you're doing to enhance it. Uh, it's it's one way to differentiate yourself, but it's also um an opportunity to grow and to expand.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Amazing. So tell us about the coaching innovation lab. What do you what do you do? What programs do you offer? And I know we've got a link that'll be in the show notes uh specifically for anyone listening who's interested in learning more. So tell us about it.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

We help coaches increase their profits and impact with AI, and we really focus on doing so effectively, authentically, and responsibly. If you're uh good with words, you might have caught that that spells ear, because at the heart of coaching is listening. But effective, meaning how do you actually get real results? 95% of AI initiatives actually don't move the needle. You know, it's one thing to just plug in Chat GPT or COD on like obvious tasks. It's another thing to really look at your business and think, how am I creating value here? Where are my bottlenecks? And then actually mapping it to that. And so we help them do that. You really the focus is on you and your business and your goals more than it is about AI. Obviously, we talk about AI, but AI is only as good as the context that you put it in. Authentic. The other thing about AI is it's an extension of you. Like I said, who you are is how you prompt. That means your biases, your beliefs, and your brilliance, for better or for worse, are all inputs into the model. And so, how do you do so in a way that doesn't compromise your authenticity? As coaches, people often work with us because of who we are. It's very personal business. It's not like you know, I'm selling a product off the shelf. It's like, no, I'm bringing me, I'm bringing me to these sessions and my experience and my background and my passion. And so, how do you not lose that? So, a lot of it is how well do you communicate that? How well do you articulate that? How is that context then used in the model? And then lastly, EAR are as responsible. How do you use it responsibly? Some things are, you know, hey, let me always disclose when I'm using a note taker, right? There's one thing that are legal. But other things, it's a wild, wild west. There's no one saying that this is ethical or non-ethical or this is good or this is bad, but maybe that's not responsible for you. Understanding bias, for example, what you don't specify will be decided for you, right? So if I am putting something into the model and I'm being vague, the model's gonna make decisions for me. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. So, how do you get people aware of what's out there and what kinds of decisions you're making so that then they can choose what's responsible for themselves? So we have an eight-week program called the Impact Accelerator that takes them from awareness to results. We have coaches who are saving tens of thousands of dollars, getting hours back, spending more time in the zone of genius. And really, my favorite part of it is not just that they're getting savvy with AI, but they're like, man, so much more is possible. And I have people who are young and started coaching for a few years, and a lot of them are, you know, in their 60s or 70s, you know, who who like don't see them, they might still struggle, struggle with their laptop, but then they're like using AI. You know, it's such a funny paradox, right? So uh I do that. I do some advisory work and I do work with organizations as well, like some enterprise consulting helping them integrate AI. But the work I do for coaches is mostly in the impact accelerator for people who want to be part of this future and figure out how they can discover their Model T in their business and get their time back and spend more time doing what they love.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Amazing, amazing guys. If you're interested in learning more about how you can use AI in your business to catapult your results and truly get you in front of more people who need what you have and potentially even in a way that makes you sound better than you could create yourself. I think sometimes we put in our thoughts on Chat GPT and we come back and we go, that's exactly what I meant. And it just rewords it in a way that makes us um elevated. And so we can't be afraid of it. It's happening whether we like it or not. And it's uh as someone who's been through, you know, what is it, MySpace and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all of these things being rolled out. The earlier, the earlier you can adapt and learn this skill, the better, because it's not going away. It's only going to get louder. Uh, so I invite you guys to connect with Tim, go to coachinginnovationlab.com/slash coaching for coaches. I'll put the link below to learn all about his eight-week accelerator. Uh, because at the end of the day, we all need this information. And I think it's gonna support us getting in front of the right people, collapsing our time, living a life we love because we're utilizing it's really like another assistant in our business that's helping us, yet it's semi-free and can uh can do a lot of some of the heavy lifting for us. So, Tim, two last questions. As an entrepreneur, um, I'd love to know how you keep your energy and vision strong. What is one thing you do every day that you can't live without?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Right. I write, I write, I write. As much as AI can spit out words, there's something different about having a pen and paper in front of me or even typing sometimes, but I like writing by hand and just getting back to like what matters, what's going on, what am I thinking, how am I feeling? I think that's you have to sharpen the human too. Um, so that's definitely that's definitely uh can't live without. I also do, you know, spoken word poetry and whatnot. And uh I had two TED Talks come out uh recently. One of them is a spoken word, the other one is you know about AI and human potential. And so um just always writing something, always writing something.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

I love that. I'll definitely have to look that up. I can see you. I can I can hear you doing spoke spoken poetry. That sounds that sounds fun. Um, and then my final question is um if you could refer anybody listening who is like, all right, I've been wanting to become a coach or I want to grow in this area, but it feels sticky. I'm not sure. They're a bit insecure. Uh, what are some books, podcasts, um, you know, referrals that you would have for somebody who's ready to step into their dream life, but maybe needs a loving kick in the right direction?

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Well, if they're listening to this, they're already in the right place. The coaching, the coaching for coaches podcast, right? Of course. Um, what's a really good book? You know, right now I'm going through a book and I've reread multiple times. It's a book called The Science of Scaling by Benjamin Hardy. And the thing I love about it is he talks about this concept that uh doing something 10 times as big is not 10 times as hard. And sometimes doing something 10x is easier than doing something 2x. And the reason is because you have to find a new way to get there, right? If you're going to have an hour to go one mile, you're gonna walk. You have an hour to go 50 miles, you're gonna drive. If you have an hour to go 500 miles, you have to take a plane ticket. The paradox is it's way less effort on my body to fly 500 miles in one hour than it is to walk. I'll be sweating, especially in this Houston heat in the summertime. So sometimes our biggest limitation is not thinking big enough. And it breaks that paradigm. It's a very challenging book. But in the age of AI, there's so much more possible, and so I highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you, Tim, for your wisdom. Thank you for saying yes to that small uh that still small voice, that spark that hit you in your early 20s. Uh, you're on the right path. And I um absolutely believe you'll be impacting a lot of people on this journey. So, guys, check out Coaching Innovation Labslash coaching for coaches. You'll see all of the details in the show notes below. And thank you so much, Tim, for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Thanks for having me.