Career Coaching Secrets

James Pickles: Why authenticity and connection are key in coaching.

• Davis Nguyen

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In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews James Pickles, an executive coach and former sales director. After experiencing burnout, James now helps high performers sustainably thrive, focusing on well-being over relentless achievement.

James's journey to coaching was unplanned, stemming from a commitment to openly share his burnout story. This led to requests for talks, workshops, and individual coaching, where he realized his passion. He emphasizes that coaching isn't therapy or mentorship, but a process of helping clients unlock their own solutions for today and tomorrow, believing everyone is inherently "whole and capable."

He works with high-pressure professionals, often those in their late 30s to mid-50s with families, who resonate with his past experiences. His typical engagement involves six sessions over three months, with the key work happening between sessions as clients apply new habits.

James prefers in-person networking over purely digital marketing, moving online connections to real-world meetings for deeper relationships. He explicitly states he doesn't aim for million-dollar revenues, instead prioritizing a sustainable "enough" income that allows for well-being and life experiences. His primary focus is on talks and workshops, which often lead to one-on-one coaching clients.

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James Pickles:

Typically, when people are asking for advice or solutions really early in a conversation, it isn't because they haven't got them. It's because they're afraid of making the wrong choice. They want to shortcut straight to the right answer or whatever it is. And seldom there's a right answer. Like what we're going to try and do is just find the least wrong answer that we can with the information we've got available. And it's no good me inserting my answer to their problem because that was the answer that worked for me at that time. And what they need is the answer that's going to work for them.

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 $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business. business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regan, and today's guest is James Pickles. He is a certified executive coach, a keynote speaker, and former sales director turned well-being advocate. After burning out in a high-pressure sales role, James rebuilt his career around helping high performers thrive sustainably through real-talk workshops and coaching. He empowers leaders and teams to manage stress positively, stay resilient, and achieve results without sacrificing their health or identity. And for me, it's a pleasure to have him on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, James. Thanks for having me, Rogen. It's nice to be here. It's nice to have you on. I want to know how you got started into this. Where does that inspiration come from? Obviously, in the intro, I touched upon it a little bit, but I want to know from you, what is the story? How does it start? Why start a coaching business and become a coach?

James Pickles:

Yeah, the clue is in the bio a little bit because Because there's a burnout chapter. Perhaps so. like to pretend it was some clever pivot that I came up with just before during COVID and that it was a well-thought-out plan, that would be disingenuous because that's not true. I didn't know that I wanted to be a coach or that I could earn a living from it. I didn't know that I wanted to turn into a speaker or that I could get paid to do so. It was as a consequence of a number of conversations that I was having at that time, conversations that I would never have had before had I not made a conscious decision during my recovery from burnout which was some dark times I committed to myself that from that point on that I would speak more openly more often to more people and that kind of was the opposite of what I'd been doing before I wasn't speaking openly to very many people and I hardly ever did it it was as a consequence of that That silence that led me to burning out in the first place. So it wasn't really a plan. It was just a kind of words to live by. It became a bit of a mantra. And so as a consequence of speaking more openly more often, I began telling the story about my experiences and people responded positively. amazingly positively to it and began to ask me to help either with a talk or a workshop or maybe, oh, could I talk to their friend or wife or husband who also in secret is having a really hard time. So I just began having conversations with people. And along the way, the therapist that I was working with, which is quite unusual for a therapist, but she made a suggestion and her suggestion was, why don't you go ahead and study coaching? Because she thought I'd find it interesting and challenging and enlightening of myself. And I appeared to be interested in it. So she made that suggestion. And gosh, she was right. It was really hard, but really enlightening. That began me on the journey in a small way back in, where are we now? Back in 2020. So

Rexhen Doda:

it's been about five years since you started the coaching journey. business on on the side

James Pickles:

yeah

Rexhen Doda:

yeah right now you're doing it full time right yes cool when you're going through that coaching journey what's the most rewarding part

James Pickles:

it's it's the moment where the lights come on it's the aha moment when you're speaking to somebody who feels like they are lost and that they don't have choices that the barriers are too high that they can't speak up that there isn't a route forward for them they feel lost they feel blocked and it's the moment that that they realize that that doesn't have to be that way, that they could make different choices. Not only that they could conceptually make a different choice, but they know what choice to start with and that they feel sufficiently encouraged or empowered or just to use plain language, brave enough to try. So it's the moment when you see that and the moment after that is when they do it. And the moment after that is when it begins to work. And suddenly you're talking to a completely different person whose whole life is about to change. And the best bit is that it's them doing it. I haven't told them to do anything. This is not my job. A coach doesn't tell people what to do. I've just helped them unlock their own

Rexhen Doda:

door. That's correct. So there's also like a fine line between a coach and the therapist, right? So there's a difference there. And when it comes to sparking that change to someone, how does that work for anyone who's like listening and listening is feels that way feels burned out if they wanted to work with you how does that journey look like how does your program work let's say that is it a program or is it actually just one-on-one conversations it varies a little

James Pickles:

bit but typically well firstly it's always with a conversation like no no coaching journey with anybody starts without a conversation a proper conversation it requires

Rexhen Doda:

a

James Pickles:

A couple of things requires honesty, requires trust and requires rapport. And in my experience, there's not going to be a healthy, constructive coaching relationship that exists without honesty, rapport and trust. And it's really hard to build those things digitally. So everything starts with a conversation there. There might be other things that you do prior to a conversation to initiate it, but largely it's about conversation. And the point that you make, Regin, is interesting about the overlap, the potential crossover or overlap between coaching and therapy, because sometimes they do feel quite similar and they're not. They're not the same. The coach isn't a therapist. The therapist isn't a coach. They fulfill different roles. To call yourself a therapist, you need to go through a lot of training and the professional standards are there. The safeguarding is there. The supervision is there. Therapy is quite a hard road to tread, actually. to go ahead and train it. And inversely, there is no barrier to entry to being a coach, legally speaking. Anyone at any point can call themselves a coach and be one to some standard the next day. You don't have to be qualified. So as a consequence, there are a ton of coaches out there. Some are brilliant. Some are adequate. Some are rubbish because they haven't trained. They haven't learned. Anyway, I'm waffling on. So what's the difference? And I see it as my job to know the difference between coaching and therapy, not the person on the other end of the screen, because how are they supposed to know? And I do know because I have trained. I've had therapy, which was helpful, not just for me to recover, but also to really understand what therapy is and what it does. And I've also trained and I'm certified in coaching and we touch on it. So simplistically, my explanation that I give to people is that how to tell the difference? Well, coaching lives in today and tomorrow. Therapy lives in yesterday. And if we're spending a lot of time in a conversation thinking about things that happened in the past and how we felt about them, we're probably having a therapeutic conversation. If we're talking about how we'll use those experiences to inform our perception and choices from today onwards, we're probably having a coaching conversation. It's true that you can have a little bit of both in a conversation, but the emphasis for a coach must exist in today and tomorrow and moving forward. And the last, there are kind of three overlapping circles in the Venn diagram. would be that of mentor. So at what point is a coach mentoring somebody? At what point is a mentor coaching somebody? Again, because I like simple. You can mentor someone on a subject with which you have direct lived experience. You can't mentor somebody on a thing that you've never done. You can coach them on it, but you can't mentor them. And again, I need to be able to tell the difference from that. And if I am asked or required to lean into more of a mentoring responsibility, which is fine, it's in service of the client, but we must do so overtly and deliberately. We can't just fall into it by accident because we're not establishing the right parameters.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you. Thank you for the breakdown. I've always been a little bit confused. very clear on what's the difference between therapy a therapist and coach obviously very big difference but always been curious about the mentor and a coach because many times you do see coaches that offer also mentoring but mentoring like you said is like a lived experience let's say based on your sales experience just as an example you would mentor someone in sales does that make sense

James Pickles:

yeah

Rexhen Doda:

because i've done it i've

James Pickles:

trod that path i've got lived experience models price that I can bring. I know what's worked for me and what hasn't, but it's an important distinction. Just because I've done it before doesn't mean I then suddenly turn into a teacher because that's not mentoring either. I'm not there to lecture them or preach or teach. I'm just saying what I can bring to the table here. are relevant pertinent examples anecdotal examples that look similar to the scenario that you have been in and i can talk you through the environment that i was in the decisions that i took and what the outcomes were i'll just keep explaining it to you and what the what the recipient can then do is draw what's relevant to them and their situation from that if they so ask for advice they can say what would you do in this situation that's fair enough because i've done it before That's mentoring. If I'm just going, I don't really know, I haven't had that experience before, but I'm going to make it up. I'm not saying that's without value, but tread carefully.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, so careful when it comes to like giving advice from a coach's perspective. Generally, you're not telling people what to do. You're trying to unlock those thoughts in the person because they they should have the solutions already they're just not aware of them and you kind of like there's potential questions maybe that could spark those thoughts that's like an easy way to it's like a simple way to explain is like certain questions that you can ask someone might make them think oh i never thought about that that way never thought about so yeah

James Pickles:

yeah that's right because they Most likely, they're coming at the issue with their particular perspective and the innate biases that they hold based on their experience. What we're trying to do is get them to step back, step out of the situation, to think more neutrally, more objectively, and away from that kind of binary right, wrong, yes, no thinking. Typically, when people are asking for advice or solutions really early in a conversation, it isn't because they haven't got them. It's because they're afraid of making the wrong choice. they want to shortcut straight to the right answer or whatever it is. And seldom there's a right answer. Like what we're going to try and do is just find the least wrong answer that we can with the information we've got available. And it's no good me inserting my answer to their problem because that was the answer that worked for me at that time. And what they need is the answer that's going to work for them since they're the one that's going to have to execute it. Like the coaching premise, you go back and you read and learn all the various models of stalwarts of the industry. Go back to co-active coaching, which you've probably come across before. The whole premise of that is that people are whole and capable already. They've got the answers. We're just going to unlock them.

Rexhen Doda:

So the knowledge is there. We just need to make it visible. Maybe not

James Pickles:

knowledge

Rexhen Doda:

exactly because

James Pickles:

they might never have done the thing that they're wrestling with, but they have the ingredients. They have the skills and the aptitude and the courage. All the ingredients are there. What they need is help unlocking the different ingredients to try a few things until they've reached the right solution that works for them. So it's more about helping them be a bit more courageous in utilising what they've got to get to where they want to go, rather than trying to borrow somebody else's shortcuts, which may work in the short term, but that's not a long term solution. It's like if you've got a headache, and you have headaches repeatedly, and all you do is pop painkillers, it's not going to prevent you from getting headaches ever again. It just takes the sensation of pain away in the moment. It doesn't deal with the root cause. And giving advice often is alleviating symptoms of things in the short term, rather than helping them understand what the root cause is as to why those things pop up over and over again.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. That's a very good explanation of this. When it comes to the people that you're working with right now, do they fall into a specific category? Is there like an ideal client that you typically work with and how does the transformation look like for them once they've worked with you? How is the program like? Is it a certain length that they work with you? How would you describe that?

James Pickles:

Yeah, so typically what we'll do is we'll work together over two or three months initially, and that translates into probably six sessions. And initially, the sessions are quite close together as we begin to build the rapport and the understanding and the trust, et cetera, et cetera. So the first one or two sessions usually are about a week apart, and a session might last between kind of 50 minutes to an hour and a half, give or take, kind of depends on the situation. And how I explain to people is the work might sound a bit counterintuitive, but the work happens between the sessions, not in them. The sessions are there to understand the problem, think more objectively about it, come up with potential solutions that people can try. And I emphasize the word potential because we don't know what the solution is yet because we need to try some things. And it's very unlikely that we'll come up with the like magic formula that's going to totally resolve whatever it is that they're wrestling with straight away. It's incredibly unlikely. What we're probably going to do is try a couple of things and then use the following session to just to simply evaluate how did it go? And the second session pretty much always starts the same. Hey, how are you? Some pleasantries followed by what was it? that you decided to try in our last session. What was the scenario? What did you decide to try? And they go, oh, it was this, it was this. And then I say, how'd it go? It's not a quiz. You can't win it. It's just, what did you intend? What did you do? What happened? And there's always a gap between intend, did, and outcome. Because no plan survives. Like I've done tons of team sport, right? So I played lots and lots of rugby and racket sports and things. And I was a captain of a rugby team for a long time. And it was my job to come up with a strategy for the game, which I would spend lots of time on and research the opposition and all of that stuff. And the number of times that the strategy survived past five minutes was precisely

Rexhen Doda:

none.

James Pickles:

Like there's an approximation of what we're going to do, but until we're actually doing it, don't know if it's going to be appropriate. And sometimes it totally isn't because the team that we thought were coming is composed of completely different people from what we expected. So you just got to map it out on the fly. So as a, as a, like a metaphor or analogy, it's quite a good one because whilst we're sitting in a nice, calm, safe room, we can come up with all kinds of scenarios and second guess them. But until you're actually in it, you don't really know how you're going to respond. So yeah, We take all the pressure out of whether or not it was successful. We don't know that yet. What we're going to do is just evaluate what was the scenario? What did you try and how did it work? And then we're just going to pick out the bits that did work, discard the ones that didn't iterate. So we're just going to build on whatever positive outcome happened. And because a bit of momentum comes because they're like, I thought I couldn't do anything differently. Turns out I could. Did I do all the things? No. Did I do a couple? Yes. Did I come up with a couple of things we hadn't actually discussed in the session, but I was on a bit of a roll to try something else? Yeah. Terrific. Well, well done you. And how do we iterate that? How do we what's plus one? What does plus one look like in terms of incremental gains? And then they gradually build up this kind of new habits. That's what it is, really. We're going to make different choices and establish new habits. And habit forming, according to what research you read, takes approximately 90 days of repetition, conscious repetition to stick before it becomes automatatic, just meaning happens without you even thinking about it. So you need to do it loads of times before it sticks, before it becomes your default. And that needs time as well. So there's almost no point in us having a session every single week very unlike therapy in which you definitely would have a session every single week probably at the same time and on the same day coaching work like that we're going to build out the time the better i do my job the less you need me it's the weirdest profession which we almost intentionally make ourselves redundant as quickly as possible because i you should be able to execute all of this without my help that's the goal isn't it that you don't need me anymore because it's all it's all you so it's quite a really verbose way of answering as simple question i do six sessions takes about three months could have just said that and then we re-evaluate where we've got to and then decide to what extent we want to carry on with another six typical clients for me quite often look like people like

Rexhen Doda:

me

James Pickles:

because they've met me my experiences resonate with where they are and they feel comfortable that here's somebody that will understand them So quite often they look, I'm a middle-aged man now, I'm 51 years old. So quite often it will be people who are in their late 30s to kind of mid-50s, roughly. Gender balance is really equal, funnily enough. It's not all men, it's not all women, a mixture of both. But it's usually people that have got quite high pressure jobs, that are quite senior. They've usually got children, which means they're spinning a lot of plates. And that was the position that I was in as well. So people with targets, often people in sales positions or client facing roles, often people roughly in middle age, often people who are under a lot of pressure and are worried that they're not wearing it very well. And they're worried about what the outcomes will be for

Rexhen Doda:

them. Thank you. Thank you for the details on this. And so I would say kind of like, or what I found mostly from the interviews is that generally the ideal client of a coach is them before coaching kind of. So you in your sales position would have been the perfect client for who you are today kind of. I

James Pickles:

would have, but with one quite important exception. Often when I do talks and workshops about the experience of burning out and all the rest of it, one of the most frequent questions is if a time machine had been invented and I could hop in it, and go back in time, what advice would I give my younger self that could have prevented the dreadful experience from happening? It's a great question. And I think that the answer is absolutely nothing that young me would be prepared to listen to. Because I didn't think that was a problem. I see. So you would say

Rexhen Doda:

you were not ready to be coached

James Pickles:

at that time. No. Completely closed to the idea. Even if somebody suggested it, I probably would have said no. Mm-hmm. I might even have done so quite forcibly because I didn't have any role models or observed experience of other people that I respected having gone through that process. So I didn't have anybody to learn from. And I didn't think that there was a problem. And I wasn't prepared to engage with the idea that there was. So it sits squarely in the category of how welcome unsolicited advice is. And in my experience, it isn't. It's not at all welcome. People pretend that it is. They're like, oh, yeah, thanks so much for that completely unsolicited advice you've just given me. I shall pretend to listen to it, politely wait for you to bugger off, and then I'll just carry on doing exactly what I was doing before. Because I wasn't open to it, didn't ask for it, didn't invite it. you gave it to me anyway

Rexhen Doda:

it also could sound like criticism instead of advice yeah depends on how you take it

James Pickles:

yeah exactly right like there's a concept that i explore a lot it's the difference between supporting someone and solving support versus solve and what nearly all managers me included in the past what nearly all people do is listen only long enough to establish like the main points of the challenge they then interrupt before the person's even finished And they insert their solution into that problem without being asked to do so. And they go, well, I was just trying to help. Well, what if I didn't ask for your help? And you're giving it to me anyway. I didn't ask for it. What I wanted was support. But you're giving me a solution. I haven't asked for a solution. And people are really unclear as to what their job is in that moment. And they default to solve because we're human beings are so successful because we've become really really good at short-cutting and identifying threat so we are pattern recognition engines geared to look for tigers in the undergrowth or what have you and jump really quickly to what the solution is and at work we do the same listen a little bit put the solution in move on because we're all really busy so any any sentence any sentence that starts with why don't you just why don't you just have you thought about is probably somebody inserting an unsolicited solution into a problem.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And for the coaches listening, I want to move a little bit the conversation on to marketing. How do people, where do you find people or how do people find you right now? What marketing channel works best for you?

James Pickles:

Well, here's what they don't teach you in coaching school, really. They teach you how great coaching is and how everybody loves it and how it can solve so many problems and how delighted people are going to be to be coached. And in my experience, that's mostly horseshit. That's not what happens. You think, oh, I'm a coach now. That's going to be great. People are going to be banging on my door asking to be coached. No, they're not. No, they're not. Nearly everyone that I've met doesn't end up being a client. And if you think about it, the probability... of me meeting somebody for the first time and me being exactly the right coach for them and that they're ready to be coached by me on that is actually very small, but far more likely that I'm not the right coach for them at that moment. It's much more likely. It's much more likely that they're not ready to be coached. So it's a question of timing as well as me versus them, not versus. What's the word I'm looking for? Our compatibility in all probability isn't there. So you need to have a conversation and find that out. So your question was, you know, a version of do they find me or do I find them was a bit of both. But mostly I have to go out and put myself into scenarios where I might meet people who are interested. And for me, and it's a bias that I have, I'd much rather be out in the real world speaking to actual human beings in 3D. Like I do stuff like this because you and I live thousands of miles apart. So this is how we have to do it. But it's absolutely my least favorite way of speaking and meeting people by miles. I'd much rather... get on the inconvenience of travel. I'd far rather do that and spend time with human beings and get to know them a little bit, even though it's a bit of a hassle. That would have been interesting, actually, to have this podcast in person. They're good fun in person. I enjoy them a bit more. Well, it's more authentic because we're sitting in the same room. Absolutely.

Rexhen Doda:

But, you know, it means to an end. So you basically like to be more in the real world versus... like marketing yourself on linkedin or social media or anything like that does any of those channels work for you

James Pickles:

yeah yeah so i'm on linkedin a lot my voice on linkedin is the same as this voice now so how i how i write how i speak on linkedin is exactly the same but back to the i'm going to be more open more often so my previous linkedin voice would have been Pretty corporate bullshit, let's be honest. Farming out marketing messages that somebody else had written, pretending that they're mine and pretending that I'm very interested in them. And that was sometimes true, but mostly it wasn't. I don't write like that anymore. And when I meet people on LinkedIn virtually, my first question is, where are you physically located? Not in a creepy stalker way. I'm just like, where are you? in the world. And I live in Southwest London. And my universe is very London-centric by virtue of the industry that I worked in. And LinkedIn, of course, is an echo chamber like all social media. So it's more likely that I'm going to have a collection of people that are a bit like me. And most of them are going to be in London. So I find out where they are. And my people go, hey, should we have a virtual coffee? I'm like, yeah. But what if we had a real one? Where are you? And unless it's flipping miles away, I'd be like, great, let's meet in the middle. Let's go and have an actual coffee like actual humans and have a conversation. It takes longer, costs more, and it's more hassle, but the depth of relationship and the speed with which we get to it is exponentially better. It's more likely to stick

Rexhen Doda:

than just a call on Zoom.

James Pickles:

Yeah. I mean, if it can't happen, it can't happen. But it definitely won't happen if I don't ask. So that's my choice. So I use LinkedIn and social media in order to connect with people for the first time. But then what I really care about is where are you? How can we meet? Cool.

Rexhen Doda:

Do you have any goals right now with your coaching business that you're working towards for the next one to three years? How do you see the coaching business for you changing you on air? like continue to expand? Do you want to keep it where it is? Do you have any certain specific goals that you'd like to share?

James Pickles:

Well, you mentioned earlier on people wanting to scale to a million, did you say? Like a million dollars a year or something. And I look at that and think, good for you. That is 100% not what I want. I don't want to be earning... whatever the GB pound equivalent of a million dollars is. I don't even know what the exchange rate is anymore. I spent a lot of time chasing after large sums of money and the cost of earning those large sums of money was almost so high that it killed me. So I'm no longer interested in the pursuit of riches. I had to recalibrate for lots of reasons, really recalibrate what enough looked like. Bearing in mind my entire professional career before that, before burnout before this, was predicated on the idea that however much I had, it wasn't enough and that I should always strive for more. And the extent to which that is the fault of the rampantly consumer-led life that we live now, we're constantly bombarded of messages to consume more and more and more stuff that's really bad for us and the planet and our health and our well-being. Definitely a victim of More is more. And now I think, no, it isn't. It's really important to know what enough looks like for you and strive for that. Because if you've got enough, literally, well, that's enough then, isn't it? So why would I need more than enough? That's just greedy. So determine what enough is and work towards that. So again, I'm finding yet another way to not answer a simple question. I'll answer it now. What do I want to do? For me, enough would probably be about 20% more than I'm currently doing. which would still be way less than I used to earn. So I want to scale up a bit. I'd like a little bit more consistency and the spread of what I do for money now between coaching and doing talks and workshops. I really enjoy the talks and the workshops, the interactivity of it, because it's about being with people and I like being with people. I'm a team sport kind of a guy. I'm perfectly happy to be one-to-one with somebody, but really I like being in team environments. So I'll have ideally probably two team engagements a month. And from that, I will almost certainly meet two or three or four people that would like some one-to-one coaching off the back of the themes that we developed. So actually, the coaching business is secondary to the talk and the workshop business.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. So only a small scale is what you have in mind. Obviously, peace of mind is more important. And for many people, it's actually very hard to determine what that enough is. is and the reason why is because it's also that enough can change over time depending on how the world goes sometimes it could be enough what's in what was enough 10 years ago is not enough today

James Pickles:

you know it's not a fixed number yeah

Rexhen Doda:

because prices go up

James Pickles:

they always never go down They always go up. So enough is relative to whatever the retail price index is. Enough is relative to inflation. It's like it's the buffer. We've got to have enough to pay all of your bills. Like there's several flavors of enough, right? I need to earn enough. Otherwise, I can't pay the bills. So therefore, that's not enough. Because if there's an unexpected expenditure, the car breaks down, the boiler breaks, whatever, a bill comes in, you weren't expecting. You need enough money to pay for that. And then the layer above that is, do I occasionally like seeing different countries? Yeah, I do. Do I like travel? Yes. Do I want to be exposed to different cultures, different people that are completely different from me? Yeah, I really do. Not in like some isolationist state. Can't imagine anything worse than a room full of people that look and sound exactly like me. So boring. I'd want to be around all kinds of other people because they're interesting and I'll learn from them and they'll have opinions that are different from mine. We already live in a horrible echo chamber created by Silicon Valley social media. I don't need more people with the same views as me. I need more people with different views from me. Otherwise, I'll just become this dullard, expanding the same views over and over again. No thanks. So anyway, waffling on. So you need a little bit for travel and for fun and for unexpected stuff. And if you've got kids, I do. Some people don't. Maybe you need to give them a hand buying the things that they want or enabling the life that they want. But beyond that, you don't need anything else. You don't. And the cost of having it is probably higher than the value of it. And that's why I went so wrong. The cost of having it was so much bigger than the value of having it. And once you're on that track, it's really hard to get off and you'll never, ever be satisfied. So I cast my happiness and satisfaction into the distant future. And that's where it stayed all the time to the detriment of ever feeling satisfied with today. And today's all we've got. don't know what's happening tomorrow. Without getting too metaphysical, the end point, the end of all of our journeys is either being cremated or buried. It's us being dead. That's the end point. Everything else is just how much we enjoy the journey between today and then. So I need to make sure we can enjoy today sufficiently because that day of me being dead could be tomorrow. We don't know. So let's make sure we're having some fun today. Thanks very much.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. I think a lot of coaches are going to resonate with that. For the ones that are resonating with this. Have there been any investments that you've made in the coaching business? I know this is not like the main thing for you right now, but have there been any investments that you feel like, oh, that was actually a good investment? I'm after good investments for my research. What would have been some good investment? Could be investments in yourself. It could be investments in coaching programs. Obviously, you did some training before becoming a coach. That's also an investment you mentioned. It could be communities that you take part of. What are some good investments that you'd like to share for anyone?

James Pickles:

Yeah, it's a really good question, right? And the difference in terms of things that I've invested in, the only thing that I'm in control of is how I spend my time. That's it. It's the only thing I'm in control of. I'm not in control of anything else. How I spend my time. And what I didn't spend my time on very much before was in the relationships of the people around me. I didn't invest in or be aware of my support structure, which is largely people. I didn't invest in them. I didn't invest my time in it. It was just a thing that I took for granted. And if you've heard of the expression, work hard, play hard. So most people have. And break that down into three. It means that you're really clear on your work ethic. Most people can describe their work ethic. And if you push them, most people can describe their work hard, play hard. The harder I work, the harder I'll play. And that's supposed to give balance. But for me, there's a third, there's a triangle. And the third side of the triangle is rest ethic. Work hard, play hard, rest hard. And you need to invest decisive attention. You need to prioritize each of those things. So what have I invested in? I've invested in my permission to myself to invest time intentionally on the support structure of the people that are around me. I can't do this alone. And if I could do it alone, I wouldn't because I'd be so lonely. So I invest time in those relationships and invest time in those people. I sometimes also invest in a laptop or technology. And as I've said before, I invest heavily in the money that it takes for me to travel to where people are. I invest in going to face-to-face events and conferences. Ideally, totally off topic from the industry that I used to work in. Ideally, sometimes about coaching, but often not. Because again, I'm trying to invest my time and resources into finding people that have different experiences and perspectives from

Rexhen Doda:

me.

James Pickles:

So if I go to a conference full of middle-aged white people, I'm in the wrong place. I'm not interested in that. I'm going to find opportunities and events with people that look and sound totally different from me and invest my time and care and attention in them. So no pithy technology that you can get. I mean, with the exception of things like Canva. Actually, there is one exception invested in a virtual assistant who happens to be an actual person rather than AI avatar. But investing time and money and other people that have skills and expertise that I could acquire, but I probably won't simply because, again, I've got somebody out there that's better than me at stuff with different ideas than I have. So I invest money in paying them to help me create stuff because their input makes it better. than if I did it by myself.

Rexhen Doda:

And also your hours are limited. If you were to put that many hours on yourself versus delegate that would go back to that position where you were in initially, where it's like you're blocked with your time back to burnout potentially. If you're taking everything on your own self.

James Pickles:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really, I was really crap at asking for help before. Never did it really. pretend that was fine. So I'm better at asking for help and paying people for their expertise. It's a happy coincidence that the hourly rate that I charge is usually quite a lot less than the hourly rate that they charge. So that works. But even if it wasn't, you know, invest in other people's opinions and expertise. They'll make you better.

Rexhen Doda:

What would you say is a challenge right now for you that you're trying to solve in your coaching business?

James Pickles:

Isolation. I work for myself. I don't have any colleagues. My biggest challenge, my biggest existential and commercial challenge for my business is to continuing to work by myself and alone. It doesn't suit me. It did suit me for a couple of years. Doesn't suit me. That's my challenge here. Having colleagues, again, having coworkers, having people to bounce ideas off, having people to exchange energy with and expertise, and having a physical location to do it. There isn't a little room at the back of my garden

Rexhen Doda:

by myself. Sorry for interrupting. How I found from the interviews that I've done, how some coaches have sold that is they've either gotten other coaches to help them out in their coaching business as subcontractors, or they've started working as a subcontractor for a company that will do all the marketing and sales and you just do the coaching and then you'd have many other colleagues as coaches. But you wouldn't necessarily be a full time person working for them. We would basically just do the coaching as a contractor. That's one of the ways that I've found for some coaches that I've interviewed.

James Pickles:

So that model is exactly what I'm pursuing at the moment. Cool. Great. So I would describe that as an associate model. Finding opportunities for me to be an associate of somebody else. And on Friday, I've got a chemistry call with a new coaching client where I'm operating under someone else's. So I'm effectively, yeah, I'm a subcontractor of them. The person that I'll meet has no idea that I'm not an employee. They will have that idea because I'll tell them. But until then, they don't know. So I'm

Rexhen Doda:

actively pursuing success. Some of that. Thank you. Thanks so much, James. My final question is, and I generally ask this question as a closing question to every guest that comes into the show. So it does have the word scaling it. So how would you what advice would you give to other coaches who are looking to scale their impact? from your perspective coaches that are coaches like you would say coaches that are not looking to make a huge amount of scale but just like scale to a point that is comfortable when you say scale their impact i don't really understand the question how many people like in terms of people how many people's lives you're touching with your coaching changing their lives kind of

James Pickles:

yeah okay well um assuming that they are asking for my advice in the first place you are so we'll we'll go with it. My completely biased opinion would be find stages to speak upon, find conferences to speak at, do some podcasts. I don't mind a podcast. I've done, I don't know, 10, something like that. It's one channel. I mean, weirdly, I don't even like podcasts, as in I don't consume them. I don't listen to podcasts. I have, but I found podcasts I was too susceptible to that valuable time that I carve out for myself for reflection, for my subconscious to do its work. If I'm plugging podcasts into it all the time, I'm not allowing that space. I made a conscious decision to stop listening to podcasts, which is overstimulating myself all the time, which I hasten to add, Regan. It doesn't mean I don't like podcasts as a concept. I think they're brilliant, and I'm really pleased to be on yours. But I almost certainly won't listen to it later. But find... Find a stage. Find your stage or stages to speak upon. Don't worry. Worry less about whether it's the right stage for you, as in theatre stage. Just find one and have a go at it because the audience will be more than one. It'll be, it might be five, ten. Last week I was at a pharmaceutical conference and I was a keynote speaker at it and I presented some concepts and ideas that were tangible and practical that people could walk away and deploy immediately. So I could spread some of the benefit of the experiences and models that I have found that I've helped people with in one-to-one coaching. I could distribute them to 65 people at once. A part of the question that I think is really important for scale of any sort, be it financial or breadth, going back to my earlier comments, is be really, really clear on what enough is and don't fall into the trap of doing way more than that because you couldn't be bothered to figure out what enough was in the first place.

Rexhen Doda:

Slippery slope. Thank you. Thank you so much, James. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can go into LinkedIn, James Pickles. They'll be able to find you there. Apart from LinkedIn, there's also the website jamespicklescoaching.co.uk where they can also go. Is there any other way people could reach out to you and connect with you?

James Pickles:

No, you'll find me on No other social channels at all. Definitely not X or Twitter. That nutcase is not having any of my business. Yeah, I only use one social media. I'm not interested in the rest. They're largely awful, in my opinion, and I don't want to waste my precious energy on them. So yeah, find the website, find me on LinkedIn, drop me a message, have a conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming, James.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle.com.