Career Coaching Secrets

Beyond the Accident: Michael O'Brien's Path to Resilience & Coaching

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen Doda interviews Michael O'Brien, an executive coach, speaker, and meditation teacher. Michael, founder of Peloton Executive Coaching and Pause Breathe Reflect, shares how a severe cycling accident inspired his coaching career. He specializes in coaching high-level corporate leaders, many in healthcare, with 90% of clients being company-sponsored. Michael leverages his "Whole Again" podcast, LinkedIn, and personal recovery story for client acquisition. He's focused on growing his Pause Breathe Reflect app, which offers short, frequent meditation practices. Key lessons learned include the importance of coaches having coaches, masterminds, and focused social media efforts. His main challenge remains business development, countered by delivering exceptional client results and time-blocking Mondays for admin.

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Michael OBrien:

reacting too much, everything becomes transactional. And coaching is not a transactional thing. It's a practice. It's a profession of connection. And so by slowing down, we can build stronger connections and therefore make a bigger impact for our clients, for our partners.

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. Before Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or just building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today's guest is Michael O'Brien, an executive coach, keynote speaker, meditation teacher, and the host of Whole Again Podcast. He's also a devoted husband, proud girl dad, endurance cyclist, and someone who's quite literally... Rebuild His Life, One Mindful Breath, and Pedal Stroke at a Time. Michael is the founder of Peloton Executive Pooching and the chief ripple officer at Pause Breath Reflect, where he helps leaders cultivate resilience, navigate stress, and lead with presence and intention. But his journey didn't start there. In 2001, Michael was head on the SUV while on a cycling ride. Michael, welcome to the podcast. I'm It's an honor to have you here with us.

Michael OBrien:

Rajen, it's so good to see you. I'm looking forward to this. I think it's going to be a really worthwhile and meaningful conversation. So can't wait to start.

Rexhen Doda:

Happy to have you on. So Michael, tell me a little bit more, and I know I touched a little bit on the beginning, but tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become an executive coach.

Michael OBrien:

Well, it's always sort of a little weird to listen to your bio being read, so it's really cool. You did a great job. So the thing that got me into coaching was that cycling accident you talked about. There was a moment... when I was in the ICU, the intensive care unit, when I told my wife that she needed to go find this guy named David. And I don't remember any of this because I was pretty heavily medicated. And when I came out of the ICU about four, four and a half days after the initial trauma, she asked me like, who is this guy, David? You kept on telling me to go find him, that he was going to show us the way. I was like, you know, like, talking about because you just kept on repeating and repeating it. Well, I was the type of guy back in my corporate life that I didn't necessarily talk about work when I came home. I went through work, was stressful enough. I didn't want to repeat all the stories. I really wanted to play with my kids and hang out with her. And so she would have no idea that any type of David even exists. Well, David was a guy that we hired as a coach for our company, my team in particular, because we were working with a different company and a different team. So he was the coach of both teams. We were trying to have basically a partnership. We weren't merging, but a partnership, these two companies. And he was this guy that was, quote unquote, our coach. And up until that point, I didn't know that professional coaching was even a career. I had no idea. I was still relatively young in my career, I was late 20s, early 30s, early 33 at the time of the accident. So I was like, this guy, this guy, what he's saying is pretty cool. This is some good stuff. You know, I knew about Tony Robbins, but he was a high level kind of guy. I didn't know there was people in corporate America like this. So I knew by saying his name in the ICU that That was a seed. I knew that was a seed that was going to be planted and watered and fertilized. And then one day, I would follow in David's footsteps and become a coach myself. It was really more of a question of when, not if. And so that was the moment. Because I thought, if I'm going to mumble or speak about other people, why him? He must have left a mark on me. And so that mark was... worth being curious about and worth exploring.

Rexhen Doda:

Thanks for sharing that story. How does your journey look like from the point that you started this coaching business and you moved into coaching to where you are at today? It's been like more than 10 years already.

Michael OBrien:

Yeah, come July will be 11 years. So in the beginning, our corporation, the corporation I was at was going through another global change I was going to be fine. I was actually going to be moved into a different executive position, same amount of compensation, about the same size team, all that jazz. But I thought, okay, if we believe that the universe speaks to us, I thought, well, the universe is saying, hey, Michael, it's now time. It's now time. So this is 13 years after my accident. Now time to get into coaching. And when I started, I had this desire, which I think a lot of coaches have. I want to be able to help people. I want to be able to support people. But I knew nothing about actually how to run a coaching business. I was clueless. I was not on social media. I had a network and not necessarily a great business plan, but I decided to dive right in and I was going to figure it out. So I had a lot of figuring out to do. And over time, I went from being very general with what I did to being much more specific. I added speaking to the list of services I provide, you mentioned in my bio. I later became officially a meditation teacher because I found meditation through my recovery. So I furthered that study over 20 years to finally become teacher and it came out with an app. And so now today, almost 11 years later, I can look back at that guy who started and I can say that I'm a little bit smarter, hopefully a little bit more savvy and a greater understanding of as far as like what works for me and what doesn't. In the beginning, I grabbed on to almost everything and anything because I thought it was the secret puzzle piece. Now, I think I'm much more cautious, but also a little bit more discriminating as far as what things I do, because I want to make sure I remain focused on the efforts that I want to put out into the world.

Rexhen Doda:

And when it comes to your coaching, I'm guessing over time it has changed, but who do you work with today and what kind of transformation you're helping them achieve?

Michael OBrien:

So the main people I work with today are leaders from a director level, a vice president level, up to presidents of their companies. So a higher level leader. And a lot of them come to me, not because I went through this horrific cycling accident, but mainly because I've walked a mile in their shoes because I was a former corporate executive. I had a team of 1,000 people. I had a P&L of $4 billion. So they know, I know the pressure of being at that level. And that's what attracts them to my coaching to begin with. And then the other things just add to that story. So I generally coach people at that level. Now I do set aside room in my calendar for people who are self-paying, who might be individual contributors, individual contributors or leaders within their company, but they're not going to get company sponsored coaching. So I'd say 90% of the coaching is all company sponsored. And then I have 10% that is self-paying. These are people who really want to get better. They're willing to invest in themselves. And that's the mixture I have. Generally speaking, because I came from healthcare, a lot of the leaders I coach are within the healthcare space. Although I've coached people in transportation and consumer products and finance and a whole bunch of other industries. But a lot of it is still grounded in healthcare. Given my story, given my past experience, it's an easy link. And it's coaching I really enjoy doing because it can help people live healthier lives, which our health is everything. We trade almost anything for

Rexhen Doda:

it. Absolutely. And Just for my own clarification, you mentioned that most of the executives that you help with, in this case, is the company paying for them and some, like a smaller part, are self-paying for it, right?

Michael OBrien:

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of the coaching clients I work with, the company will either reach out to me directly, generally someone from maybe HR or we'll say hey we have someone we'd like you to coach sometimes the leader within the company knows about me or discovers me and they'll reach out directly and but they'll work through their company system to get coaching reimbursed

Rexhen Doda:

interesting thanks for sharing that and what is um Apart from people finding you on their own, what is the main way of you connecting with potential clients? What marketing channel is working best

Michael OBrien:

for you? Podcasts like this, clearly. I have done a fair amount of podcasting. You mentioned I have my podcast called Whole Again, which is really more focused on helping people heal and grow and build more resilience when they've gone through injury or illness or trauma like I went through. So it speaks to resilience, which I coach a lot of people on. How do you stay resilient in these really chaotic times? People find me through LinkedIn since I tend to do leadership coaching. LinkedIn probably is my social media platform of choice. So they find out about me through those mechanisms. And even though I had that crazy cycling accident story, I am still riding and racing my bike. I've made quite a recovery. And so sometimes people will find out about me through that channel, like endurance athletes and my books and stuff like that.

Rexhen Doda:

And also that's where the name of your business comes from, like Peloton Executive Coaching. Is it from Peloton Bikes?

Michael OBrien:

Well, it's all through Peloton Bikes. So it's really interesting. We... We did have a little chat, the two companies. But when I was in the hospital, the doctors would come by in the morning with all the fellows and the interns and the nursing staff, and they would come in and do rounds to check in on all the patients. And so this was 2001, well before Peloton Cycling is a known entity. And when they left one morning, I went to my wife and I said, oh, they're like my medical Peloton.

Davis Nguyen:

They're helping

Michael OBrien:

me get down the road healthier and faster. For those that don't know, a peloton is a French term that means a group of cyclists in a bike race. So like the Tour de France, all those cyclists together as a group, they form what is known as a peloton. And they help each other. Even though they're competing against one another, they're still helping each other block the wind, point out obstacles. So they go faster together. And so that concept of who's in your Peloton, that I like to say, is really around who's on your personal board of directors, who might be in your squad or your tribe, as some people will say. So for me, it's a great analogy for culture and for teamwork. Obviously, it ties into my love for cycling. And so that's how I use it, as a metaphor for culture and teamwork dynamics.

Rexhen Doda:

Thanks for sharing that. I wasn't aware of the term itself. So when you think about it, Peloton bikes themselves, their brand is so big that I know them before I know the term.

Michael OBrien:

People who have a Peloton bike, which we have a Peloton bike at home here, they don't even know what the word Peloton means. So the Peloton bike company We'll use it as a virtual, you know, people riding their bikes in their basements or wherever by themselves, but they're riding together when there's a live class or recorded class. So they're forming a Peloton. But a Peloton is, I think, a great analogy for, you know, competition, for teamwork, and just the whole notion that we go far together. Like we can go faster when there's drafting and there's cooperation. collaboration. And so I try to bring that concept to people, to leaders, to companies, basically asking the question, who are you riding with in life? And are you bringing out the best in them? And are they bringing out the best in you?

Rexhen Doda:

Well, it's a great concept to also bring into our community because we all have coaches in our community. And within the coaches, culture there's not really competition is more of like collaboration between all of the other coaches so i really like that um and you talked a little bit about you getting um basically known from your podcast is there a specific strategy that you go about when when it comes to like bringing guests to your podcast or like that you have had to grow your podcast over time

Michael OBrien:

so My podcast has actually taken on different chapters since I started it. I started it before the pandemic. And a lot of people told me, like, you should do a podcast. And I was like, I don't know about that. So I went in it somewhat reluctantly and without a great deal of clarity. I had the name. I thought the name was great because I used the Japanese art form and philosophy, Kintsugi, to talk about how we're all perfectly imperfect and how Our scars are really symbols of our strength and resilience. So it started off as a monologue type of podcast. Then I had guests come on that told their stories of recovery and connection and resilience. Now I've moved back to more of a monologue type of approach just to help people who are going through something, going through recovery. So with that example of the podcast, getting even more specific is also part of how I think of been able to help my coaching business. I think a lot of coaches, when they start off, they're just too general with the type of work that they do. And I think it's really beneficial to get really focused so that people out there know the type of coaching you do. So when I started my podcast, I was really general. And today, I'm much more focused. And the same could be said about coaching. In coaching, I was like, I'll help anyone, right? Because you want clients. And you'll take anyone who will want to work with you. Today, I'm much more specific and more discerning as far as, is this a good fit? What do they wish to be coached on? How can I best support that person? And if I feel I can't, then I decide it's probably best for both parties to offer a recommendation or a referral to a different coach.

Rexhen Doda:

Totally. Thanks for sharing at least the journey throughout how the strategy has changed, especially with the podcast. Because we don't talk about podcasts a lot in our podcast when it comes to that being used as a strategy, even for lead generation moving forward or even as a brand recognition or getting people to know you mostly. So thanks for sharing that. When it comes like on the future, do you have any goals that you're working towards for the next one to three years?

Michael OBrien:

Yeah, I have plenty. I probably have too many. But, you know, the work I do with Pause, Breathe, Reflect, with my approach to meditation, so I'm formally trained as a meditation teacher on a 45-minute-per-day practice. But I know that's really tough to do consistently for a lot of people who are quite busy nowadays because there's so much to do. So my practice of pause, breathe, reflect is shorter, almost like micro doses of meditation, shorter practices of two, three, five minutes that I encourage people to do frequently throughout the day. So if you don't have 10 minutes in the morning, I bet you have five times throughout the day where you might have 10 minutes. It just is a way to like, you know, create some space, slow things down so you can be thoughtful in your very next moment. So I created, during the pandemic, I was doing live practices. I was hosting four live practices on Zoom every day to help people get through that crazy time that we all experience. And then I decided, well, let's put out an app so people can do the practice whenever. And so give them more choice, more flexibility. So we've worked on this app, and over the next one to three years, I really hope my plan is to have the app community grow because we are people thirsty for belonging. I do live practices through the app. Also, there are recorded practices on the app, of course. So I want to provide a place where people can feel like they belong, they feel safe, and really help them navigate the challenges that we currently deal with. So that's the goal. And we have a really cool update coming that we've been able to, with this update, help people reduce their phone screen time and pickups by 30 to 50%. So in a lot of ways, we're trying to help people improve their digital health as a way to improve their physical and emotional health. And we wrap it all up in a really relatable, practical mindfulness practice. So that's my goal is that I can help people change their relationship with their phone and have them step into a practice of pausing, breathing, and reflecting every day so we can all be more thoughtful as we continue to live in times that are really challenging us. And it's easy to feel overwhelmed, but I want to help people navigate that with a little bit more grace.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, thank you. And what is the app called, if you don't mind me asking? yeah the app is called

Michael OBrien:

pause breathe reflect so and it's it's really an invitation to like you know when things are going way too fast just hey let's hit pause we're not going to stop completely because i deal with a lot of type a personalities so we hit pause we take a a few deep breaths you know like let go of some stress and that creates some space and in that space We can reflect on what we're grateful for. We can reflect on how we want to show up in the next moment. So it's a contemplative practice and it doesn't take a lot of time to do. And I try to make it really practical for people, especially those that might shy away from meditation as they might know it. I try to make it, yeah, really relatable. And so far it's going great. We got great reviews and a great community. And of course we'd love to expand the community to other people that also want to experience the benefits of it.

Rexhen Doda:

Wow. Thanks for sharing. I really like the fact that you can, like, even if you don't have, you said 10 minutes in the morning, you can have five moments of two minutes, which everybody does. And just like pause, breathe and reflect. And yeah, and think about what you're grateful for, that could shift the whole next moment that you have in your life. Absolutely.

Michael OBrien:

Once in the morning, 10 a.m., around noon, 8 p.m., around dinner, maybe even at bedtime for a six. And again, a couple minutes, that's all it takes. We're rushing through our lives. We're not really noticing our breath. And when we're rushing, it's hard to be thoughtful. We're just reacting too much. Everything becomes transactional. And coaching is not a transactional thing. It's a practice. It's a profession of connection. And so by slowing down, we can build stronger connections and therefore make a bigger impact for our clients, for our partners.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. When it comes to investments, what resources or support has been most valuable in you growing your coaching business over the last 10 years?

Michael OBrien:

Well, I do think that any coach should have a coach. So if we're out there talking about the benefits of coaching, one question I always love to ask people, well, do you have a coach? So for me, hiring a coach was a great investment. Also being in masterminds, which I didn't even know the term in my corporate life because this wasn't part of corporate vocabulary. So being part of a mastermind of other coaches that were maybe coaching in different areas and we could trade perspectives and best practices and ideas. I would say those two have been really valuable. Some of the things that have been less valuable are like do-it-yourself courses, like the video stuff, because I'm the type of person that I want to make a connection. I want to have a little bit more back and forth, talking it out. So that's why having a coach and having Mastermind have been beneficial to me. Other people can learn through a whole bunch of YouTube videos or a video course. That's just not my style. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just not the way I prefer to

Rexhen Doda:

learn. Yeah. Well, there's nothing like the human connection, even like the podcast that we're having today is much different than, let's say, just watching a video. This conversation is much more helpful, I think. I wanted to ask you, is there something that You wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business, like an unexpected lesson learned?

Michael OBrien:

Yeah, I would say it really has to do with social media. I wasn't on social media really when I started as a coach. I had quit Facebook years ago after watching The Social Dilemma. But a lot of the coaching communities all had Facebook groups and I sort of got pulled back into it. social media, and I got pulled into the vortex of the black hole, if you will, of like, you need social media to market your business. And I thought I had to be on all the platforms. And I wasn't necessarily thinking about, okay, that person I really want to work with, where are they hanging out? They're not hanging out on all the platforms. So I was trying to like splatter the wall with a whole bunch of spaghetti and You know, the content creation piece of it, certainly I know many coaches, they get a VA or have other people do it for them. But for me, again, this is just my own thing where I want to make the connection. And if I'm going to respond to someone, I want to make sure they know it's coming from me and not coming from a VA that's pretending to be me. And so that was sort of like my first principle. That was one of my values. Again, a lot of coaches do it differently, and I think it's awesome for them. But for me, if I could have maybe not gone so hog wild on going to social media and all this content creation, it probably would have given me, in the early years, a chance to focus more on just the platforms that matter most to the people I'm trying to meet and trying to reach.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to challenges, What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in scaling your coaching business or that you're still facing today?

Michael OBrien:

Yeah, I think for any coach out there, I think it's the business development piece. I've met so many coaches through my travels where they, again, they come into coaching with such a place in their heart of compassion, kindness, and they want to support and they want to help people live better lives. based on what they're coaching. But so many coaches struggle with the business development piece of it, finding new clients. And that's also part of my challenge. I have leaders that might be at one company and the company goes through seismic change and that leader is no longer there. And then the leader goes to a new place and that new place might have a different philosophy when it comes to coaching. So I have found over the years that sometimes that churn that's just natural in the corporate environment, or you have a leader who decides to retire, or they decide to just leave corporate America and start their own business. So then you find yourself trying to replace that revenue stream. And so you gotta do the business development piece of it. You gotta do the networking. And for a lot of folks, including me, That's not something I would prefer to do. I do it because it's a necessary part of business, but it's not something that I love doing. And so I deal with that. That's a natural part of it. And what I normally try to do to counterbalance that or counteract that is really focus in on trying to produce fantastic results for the people I do coach because word of mouth has also been quite helpful for me in terms of scaling and growing the business.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. I was just going to ask that actually is when it comes to balancing, delivering these great client results and managing business growth on the other side, how do you handle that? Do you like just block time to work on your business and other times to coach? Yes.

Michael OBrien:

Yeah. Well, a lot of people don't. Yeah. So I got to a point when the very beginning I had a coaching appointments every day of the week, Monday through Friday. And then I got to the point where I was like, okay, so I'm gonna block Mondays off. We're sitting down here on a Monday. And this is my day of admin, of business development, of just managing the business, doing a podcast interview like this. So I try to like make Monday that day for me. And then I use a Tuesday through Friday for my coaching calls. It means that my calendar might be a little bit more packed on those days. But what I found is it gives me a dedicated day to do the stuff that's necessary to run a successful business. For the first few years, I was trying to do it in between all my calls. And gosh, it was so easy to procrastinate and do something else. And when you're trying to do a lot of it in the beginning, you... you can get unfocused pretty quickly. And that lack of focus, I think impacts your productivity.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, totally agree with that. And I like that you have set like the Monday for like business and the rest of it for the coaching as well. Is there any aspects of like running your coaching business right now that would quote unquote figuratively keep you up at night? Is there any worries?

Michael OBrien:

I would say there are probably no worries.

Rexhen Doda:

It's,

Michael OBrien:

If I do have a worry, it's probably more about how do I make something work? So I mentioned just a minute ago about our app and a new update that we have that's really fantastic. So what keeps me up at night is I'm thinking about how do we make the most of this opportunity? Like am I doing, sometimes am I doing enough? Are there different ways to go about it? I don't have venture capital money behind me. So this is a little bit of like a small team, a David and Goliath story where we're David. So I really started to think about that, but it's not necessarily coming from a place of like worry that we're going to fail. It's more about really compassion because I see it as a way for people to improve their digital health. That's so important nowadays. How are we doing all that we can to make sure that people know about us?

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you for sharing it. And is there any final advice you'd give to other, in this case, mostly are going to be career coaches who watch this, but there's also executive coaches. So any advice you'd give to them that are looking to scale their impact?

Michael OBrien:

Well, I always recommend to people to pause, breathe, reflect, and create some space to be thoughtful. I think that's important. regardless of what you do professionally. But my big thing is really around asking other people what they think you do. Is it clear enough? Is it focused enough? So we get really close to the work that we do. We know it. We know what we do. But when we go out and ask people, hey, what do you think I do? And you get them to play back. Sometimes you learn a lot that They don't necessarily know what you do with a lot of clarity. So my big, again, you can get that through a mastermind or just talking to a group of friends who will be objectively honest with you. But I think that's helpful to get some feedback from the marketplace. And do they know what you stand for and what your story is, if you will, what your brand story is and how you help other people? I think that could be really wonderful for folks, whether they're just starting out or they've been doing it for a while.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Michael. And again, thank you for coming to the podcast. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can find you at Michael O'Brien on LinkedIn. They can also find you through your websites. So michaelobrianshift.com and PauseBreatheReflect.com, which is also the app. So they can find you through there. Is there any other way people can connect with you apart from those?

Michael OBrien:

No, those are the best ways. And they can find that app in the App Store, Apple's App Store, and also on Google Play.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Michael. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast. Yeah, thanks for

Michael OBrien:

having me. This was great.

Davis Nguyen:

Thank you.