Career Coaching Secrets
Career Coaching Secrets is a podcast spotlighting the stories, strategies, and transformations created by today’s top career, leadership, and executive coaches.
Each episode dives into the real-world journeys behind coaching businesses—how they started, scaled, and succeeded—along with lessons learned, client success stories, and practical takeaways for aspiring or established coaches.
Whether you’re helping professionals pivot careers, grow as leaders, or step into entrepreneurship, this show offers an inside look at what it takes to build a purpose-driven, profitable coaching practice.
Career Coaching Secrets
The Life-Driven Coach: Why Douglas Pflug Puts Impact Over Profit
In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Douglas Pflug, a retired police officer, leadership coach, and PTSD advocate. Doug shares his story of overcoming childhood adversity and a personal battle with PTSD, which led him to create his coaching business. He helps people find their "granite," or inner strength, to navigate chaos.
Doug's coaching is "life-driven" and focused on helping a diverse range of clients become self-sufficient. His most effective marketing is through his books and by self-sharing his authentic story. All proceeds from his books and coaching are donated to a charity that provides service dogs to those in need.
He advises coaches to build their credibility on authenticity and lived experience, not just certifications.
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About three years ago, I was struggling big time. You know, as a police officer, I had some horrific calls for service. I won't go into those because people don't need to know that. But I really started to doubt my worth and if I was making a difference. And I went into a spiral, into a pit of darkness and depression to the point that I contemplated taking my life in 2007. And, you know, I was able to, my counselors and the psychologists went back to those same core values that my parents taught me when I was little. And that helped me form what we've talked about was my granite. Two, three years ago, I was struggling
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 $100 million 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 Douglas Flug, a nationally recognized leadership coach, keynote speaker, PTSD advocate, and retired police surgeon with over 35 years of frontline service and elite athletic coaching. Doug is the founder of Iron Will 360 Leadership, where he equips executives, athletes, and public service professionals with the tools to rise, lead, and thrive not only in the matter the adversity. As a former police instructor and strengths coach to national level athletes, Doug brings a unique blend of tactical discipline, emotional intelligence, and live resilience to every room he enters. He's the author of Finding Your Granite and Iron Will 360 Leadership Moving Forward, offering practical framework to navigating trauma, leadership pressure, and transformative growth. His upcoming book, which is going to be on the beginning of October. A blueprint to level five unicorn leadership dives deep into cultivating rare, high-impact leadership in today's fast-changing world. There's also a new book that's coming up potentially next June. It's called I Will, and Doug will share more about that in a little bit. Before I get to that, I also wanted to share that Doug's lived experience with PTSD and his life-saving partnership with Zoe, which I got to see earlier, his service dog, bring heart vulnerability and urgency to conversations about mental health, trauma-informed leadership and the power of showing up with courage. And it's a pleasure for me to have him on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Doug.
Douglas Pflug:Thank you so much. I truly am very happy to be here. And I hope that by the end of the podcast that you and I will save some lives of people that are listening. That would be
Rexhen Doda:awesome, actually. I never think of my podcast to have that much power, but thank you for coming up with such a great goal. I wanted to ask you how this all got started. What inspired you to become a coach, start your own coaching business? And you certainly have a different background from the other coaches that I've interviewed. So I'm always interested in listening to your story.
Douglas Pflug:I think it kind of boils down to the old thing that I was born for this. You know, two days into my life, my parents were told that I had a severe blockage and I went under massive surgery and the doctors told my parents in 1966 that I might not survive I did and then about two and a half three years later I was once again told or my parents were told that I had a blood disease that they didn't know at the time and again they were told to say goodbye and you know I remember back in the early years of being in the hospital an awful lot of time and spending a lot of time by myself and as life went on and the medications and stuff like that. I was bullied a lot in grade six, seven, and eight. And I even had a teacher call me a piece of welfare trash that was never going to amount to anything. So, you know, very early on in my life, I had such horrific experiences you know, dramatic impacts in my life that were negative. And for some reason, I was able to have and be very resilient. My parents were very good people. They were hard working blue collar folks, but they taught me the basics of life and your core values. And I never realized how much they taught me at that point to later on in years. Then I redefined that. I went to high school and I started to grow and physically, socially and spiritually. And I was playing a lot of sports. And then I started to become an advocate for people that were bullied physically because I was bigger than most of the kids in school and I go back to I think it was 1985 when one of my best friends that used to walk home with me after football wrestling or track practice because kids would pick on him and I remember the last time I spoke with them we were standing at the corner he was telling me about a summer and then a week later I found out that he blew up in the Air India crash he and his sister were both murdered in that plane where everyone was lost and at that point I realized that you know I had some really horrific things that happened early on in my life I was able to navigate through those and find light and darkness. And that really spurred my desire to either be a teacher or be a police officer. And then I ended up going to university. I played football at university level. I wrestled at a national level. And then I became my lifelong dream of being a police officer. And as a coach, it's kind of funny that as police officers, you go into generally everybody's life on the worst day. So there's so much life coaching on every single call for service that you go to that I started to build up a repertoire. I template to help people and then once I started training the professional athletes I was able to use those same templates and themes but for just different outcomes so my goal to be a coach was never really solidified until several years ago but I've been doing it my entire life and you know like I like to say is I provide people a roadmap out of chaos and that roadmap is the one that I lived and hopefully they can find a similar roadmap from my assistants with them to help them accomplish their goals wow that's a
Rexhen Doda:very interesting story thanks for sharing that and Zoe where does Zoe come Come into the story.
Douglas Pflug:About three years ago, I was struggling big time. You know, as a police officer, I had some horrific calls for service. I won't go into those because people don't need to know that. But I really started to doubt my worth and if I was making a difference. And I went into a spiral and a pit of darkness and depression to the point that I contemplated taking my life in 2007. And, you know, I was able to, my counselors and the psychologists went back to those same core values that my parents taught me when I was little. And that helped me form what we've talked about was my granite. Two, three years ago, I was struggling big time, had some life situations that were going on. I wasn't happy. I went to the doctor and I said, I'm struggling. I need help. And first and foremost, my family doctor said, thank you. I'm so glad that you did that. Because when it comes to PTSD or mental health, people look at me, I'm 6'1", 245 pounds, athletic build. And they think, well, this looks fine, but they don't realize that this is fine. It's what up here is not fine. And I was diagnosed with PTSD. And for me, it wasn't an excuse, but it was actually an understanding of why I had nightmares. Why I had anxiety. And it gave me a reason, as Simon Sinek talks about, understanding the why. And once you know why, you can know how and what to do to help you. Part of the coping strategy, I take medicine, I take sleeping pills every night, and then the doctor suggested that maybe a service doc could help you, that when you go to situations and you're anxious, what Zoe's trained to do is she's just tiny, but she actually licks my shins when she can feel me getting excited, whether positive or negative. So sometimes she'll be licking away when I'm just telling a story right now where I'm happy, but her thing is that she'll lick my shins my leg just to kind of make me understand. Daddy, slow down a little bit. And as I say, she's a 12-pound Boston Terrier Red. She's got a heart of gold, and she has helped me out in some tremendous adverse situations. And again, that's a learned opportunity and a path that I've gone on that I really want to help police, fire, ambulance, military, whoever. So all the book money that I raise and the revenue from my books, I give to a charity where I can help buy service dogs for people who can't afford them because I don't want people to suffer in silence. And I know that they were suffering or I could have prevented that or if they die by suicide if it's a matter of getting them a furry friend that's where all my goal is right now to advocate for PTSD open up the conversation so people will talk and let's find some solutions and we'll help people and as the second book talks about move forward I'm really honored to have that opportunity one of my coaching roles I was with the Guelph Storm Hockey Club which is in the Canadian Hockey League and for your listeners that might not be familiar with that that's where all of the people basically or the young men get draft to attend the National Hockey League. Amazing young man that I dealt with 15, 20 years ago is Ryan Callahan. He was the captain of the Guelph Storm. He went on to be the captain of the New York Rangers. And he's just an incredibly dynamic young man. And I told them about what I was going through and how I wanted to create something almost like a 12-step program that people use for Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous. But, you know, I find sometimes where coaches will be out there, they're born from multi-million dollar families. They don't have a story. They don't know the true grit that a lot of people go through. So this book is called I Will. And it's based on my mantra. I can, I must, and I will. So I want to help people go through a 12-step program, dealing with some of the adversities that I went through and the roadmaps that I learned. So hopefully I can provide some calm in their chaos or some light in their darkness. This fourth book that's coming out, I'm really excited about it. Having an incredible person like Ryan Callahan write the Ford. Right now he's an ESPN analyst. Just to have that star power behind it is twofold. It makes me incredibly honored that I met this young man when he was 15 and here he is into his 30s now and he still respects me enough from the coaching I did with him at that time realizing my mission and he didn't charge me a penny to join on to this where a lot of celebrities would charge a fee he's kind of like we're talking if he can save a life from his words then he wants to do that so in the end when the book comes out I'm really excited I'll be cross marketing that through my website rise up and excel.ca but collectively all four books are designed to help people that are stuck so they can come back and go I must and eventually say, I will. And once I hear them say, I will, that's the payment that I want at this point in my life.
Rexhen Doda:Wow. There's so much impact in that. It just shows how much value there is in coaching people and just like having that come back to you and being able to help more people through that. That is such an amazing story. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. Now, I wanted to ask you, so for anyone who's listening and wants to understand if they fit into this program?
Douglas Pflug:Ultimately, you know, when I speak with people, I give them 30 or 40 minutes where we can chat together because I'm a very outgoing personality. And if that doesn't fit with you, you know, we'll agree to disagree and kind of move on. I've trained elite men, elite women. I've trained down and out men and women. My demographic is pretty much anyone who wants some assistance. I don't want to turn anyone away. I want to be able to, and I've helped a lot of people from a lot of different fears of influence, which I think that adds to the credibility that I'm actually not just specifically going, professional male athletes 21 to 22 I've coached so many people across so many spectrums that in itself gives me the credibility more importantly the authenticity to go out there and help people because not only do I bring my 58 years of experience my pluses and my failures and quite frankly some of the biggest periods of growth that I found in my life was the flip side of my biggest failures so if I can bring that and collectively at the end of the day for me it's I just want to help as many people as I can while still obviously respecting that I need some time to sleep once in a But, um, For people that want to reach out, please do so. But just let them know, and I want people to know that I'm not profit-driven. As we talked in the intro, I'm life-driven. And for me, the legacy is about knowing that I matter, that once I'm passed away one day, that people say I am because he invested in me. And that's kind of where I'm at right now, which is totally conventionally different from so many people because I see a lot of coaches now, it's all profit, profit. How do I monetize? How do I monetize? How do I monetize? If you focus so much on that end, I think you really lose a lot of your authentic And people pick
Rexhen Doda:that up. are already there. It's just like the revenue to me is not that important as the mission. Maybe the revenue could help the mission at some point, but yeah, I really like that you're not revenue driven. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for saying that. And now for anyone who's listening, how does the program work or how, if someone wants to start working with you, is there a certain length of the program? Is there customized for each person or is there some program that they basically follow?
Douglas Pflug:I customize everything because I want to give people that that not every situation is the same so like I said after the first 30 minutes sometimes people will come to a conversation with pre-existing we'll say baggage and my personality will not be something that they want or I might Remind them of someone that they want to deal with. So that's why, you know, first 30 minutes we'll chat. It's 100% free, like we talked about. And then we'll discuss navigating moving forward. And the big thing for me is, and I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek, the first one or two sessions, and generally I will charge $125. for the one hour session. Then that money gets donated to charity moving forward because I don't want to give something for free because if people don't unfortunately pay for it, then they don't see value and they'll miss appointments and they'll always put you off. We'll sit down the first hour and I want to understand your why. And it's where I was talking about Iron Will 360. If you look at a ball, if you throw a ball against a wall, regardless of what surface it hits, that energy goes into the wall, but it's going to have energy going back to some direction. It doesn't just hit the wall and flatten. That's how I like to train people is whether it's for physical fitness, mental fitness, or spirituality, it's like that ball. It's got energy. So let's be able to, once the ball hits a subject, we can pivot and move other places. So we're going to talk about understanding your why. If I know why you're calling me, why you're not happy, why you're stuck, why this and that, then I find it quite easy because of my life experience and training that I'm going to learn how and what to do to help you. And then we're going to stop, go through those steps. You know, I do a lot of the one hour counseling. I'll send people some homework to do, some core values, homework they have to do. Videos that I found might specifically help that person because sometimes it's not the person speaking the message or it's the person speaking the message versus the message of sound. But again, if I can get some professional videos out there that support what I'm saying, then it gives me some more credibility. And the last lady I had, she signed up for 10 sessions. And after seven, I said, so-and-so, you know what? What's that? I said, I'm going to be sending you the money back for the three sessions. Well, why? Did I get you angry? Did I piss you off? I said, no, you don't need me anymore. And that's the one thing that I've seen, whether it's personal training or coaching, they'll sign you up for the 10 sessions and they'll use the 10 sessions whether they need to or not. And again, that really challenges the credibility that I've done that with numerous people. I don't think we need to work together anymore. Well, why? You've accomplished exactly what you said at the beginning. If I keep milking you for another $100, $150, whatever, I'm actually failing you because you had the set goals that you wanted to achieve. We achieved those at 0.7. And for me to exploit that extra bit of cash, my name and my honor is far more valuable than $350.
Rexhen Doda:Thank you. Thank you so much for explaining that. For anyone who's listening, I think this will be helpful and maybe even shorten the that 30, 40-minute call that they have with you because they already have some questions answered right in this podcast. When it comes to the clients that you're working with, and this would be a question for other coaches who are listening, in terms of marketing, what is working well for you right now?
Douglas Pflug:Honestly, the book was huge. The first book I sold over 700 copies, but for people nowadays, and I know people don't like books, but you can also get it on the e-form, but it kind of gives you credibility and it gets people. The first book is basically autobiographical. So people can learn instead of me. And I hate, introductions and I hate saying oh this is what I've done I've always been of the mindset don't tell me what you've done show me the first book when people read through it or any of the books there's going to be an introduction there where they get to really learn who I am what makes me tick from where I'm coming from if they like what they read and that's what I'd say to a lot of the young coaches you've got to find your angle or your value because yesterday literally I was um with my publishing company. They said, we've got this lady. She's a professor of leadership in Europe. She wants to write a book. Here's the book. What do you think? It was crap. You know, just because this person had a PhD, there was no angle. There was no consistency. It sounded like 500 other books you can get. You know, Who wants to buy, you know, her book sounded like Brene Brown's book, which is fantastic. But this is like, you know, Brene Brown would be like the best hockey player in the world. And this is someone who's just learning how to skate. You have to find your story or your why. And then moving forward, because if someone says, Doug, why do you want to coach? I want to see people's life. We say that pretty quick. Well, that's what I want to do. New coaches need to know why they want to be a coach, and then they're going to know how and what to do to market that. I do a lot of social media. A lot of times, speaking fee is free. All I'll ask is, you know, traditionally someone would pay $5,000 for a speaking fee. I would like you to buy enough books to cover that $5,000 so that when I get my royalty check, I can give it to charity. And again, it's a buy-in, so you just don't show up and they say, oh, we've canceled you. There's a money exchange there. But that money, once it comes in, goes back out through the proper channels. But the other thing is be real, be authentic. And if some people don't know, General Hillier was a Canadian general in the military. One of his favorite things that he said that I do all the time is self-share. A great way to get credibility with those you coach is to let them know that, you know, if they're going through a divorce, you know, I don't know your exact situation, but when I went through my divorce, this is what happened and this is what I did. you earn so much credibility. And more importantly, you'll earn trust with that person because you're not talking at them, you're speaking with them. And that's the huge thing that when you're talking with people, it's participatory and you're listening just as much as you're sending back. And if you're coaching someone, if you keep interrupting them, they're gonna go, he's not listening to me. Absolutely.
Rexhen Doda:And thank you for sharing that. Book is not only builds that credibility, but also you have the opportunity to impact the lives of people that maybe don't have the budget to work with you directly. Also, it's because you cannot work with everybody. Like you said, you have to go to sleep at some point. So you cannot work with everybody at the same time with a book could do more than you can. It's a scalable impact when you think about it. So, yeah, thanks for sharing that. And right
Douglas Pflug:now, I'm glad that you brought that up because the finding your granite book at the end of each chapter, there's homework that you have to do. So, you know, you go, you buy your used version from Amazon. Amazon or whatever, you spend 20 bucks, but then you get to go through the homework exactly that I would do with some of my clients and the homework that I did to become mentally whole again. So it's tremendous value with respect to that. So thank you for bringing that up.
Rexhen Doda:Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I didn't know about the homeworks, but that makes it as good as like getting to be coached almost directly with you, which is awesome. Right now, what would you say is a goal for you For the next one to three years with your coaching business, how do you see this moving forward? Is there any specific goals you're working towards?
Douglas Pflug:I'm really working towards the PTSD advocacy. There's still a lot of people in my home province of Ontario, Canada that don't get it. They see me walking with Arizona and I've actually had people say, anyone can buy a service dog vest from Amazon. If you see me walking and my leg is gone, you're going to go, that person is disabled. But when you have PTSD, because unfortunately, some people try to feign it. They self-diagnose. They use that as an excuse for not going to work or these types of things. I really want to educate people on PTSD is not an excuse for anyone's behavior, but it's an understanding to me on my behavior. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman was a fear-based trainer in the States, and he talked about it, and he said that when he did his one book, it was called On Killing, but it wasn't about killing people. It was understanding the psychological trauma that happens to you before it happens. So I'm so proud of policing in Ontario now because they actually do four 90-minute sessions telling recruits, and that's where I just finished it, teaching and retiring from, if you go through a call for service, you might have night sweats. You might have nightmares. You might be repulsed by a similar smell. So you're telling these young people what might happen if they go through psychological trauma. So if they wake up in the middle of the night and they're screaming or they're having a nightmare, they're going to, oh, maybe that's a trigger that I need to go and get some counseling for. So the whole advocacy work is important. In Canada, we can afford Arizona, but I've got two buddies that, one has Officer Riggs Officer Riggs was $15,000 that he had to come up with and fundraise himself for that. And then I just had a buddy, his dog PTSD, the dog Lincoln, passed away last week. But that was a $25,000 dog. You know, we're so into helping people. But if you can get a furry friend or a kind ear to help people so that they can finally admit to themselves that they need some help and take that next step, it goes from I can... I must and I will. And that's kind of what I want to do with the next three years is really increase the advocacy, get out there speaking more, pump the book sales. And it is important that there's sales and money's coming in because then that'll allow me to give back and pay it forward some of the help that I had. You know, when I grew up, we were pretty poor. So I had some people that would help me out and some coaches that took a special interest. And my legacy, you know, I'm 59 in September. My legacy moving forward is helping as many people as I can get out of that funk where fear paralyzes them. I wanna get people for fear motivates them to, I can, I must, and
Rexhen Doda:I will. Thank you, thanks so much. And one question that just naturally came to me as you were explaining that, when it comes to these dogs, generally when they're ready to be working with someone, what age would the dog be? I was just thinking like, would naturally want the dog to be with us forever, right? But when you have the dog, after their training,
Douglas Pflug:what age would they be? We got Arizona right when she was eight to 10 weeks old and we've trained her ourselves and we paid for all of the training to go to. And you know, it's nice because my wife is a retired law enforcement as well. So she would do the training with the dog with us. So theoretically, It's almost like one dog takes care of both ex-police officers, which is kind of cool. But around the two-year mark, that's when she's disciplined enough and they kind of get out of the puppy stage that they're still working with her. And it's a lifelong process because, you know, every once in a while she'll see that butterfly and she'll want to take off. But then we just have to, you know, we'll walk up if we see other dogs, leave it, leave it. And it's a constant training. But, you know, after about two to three years and that whole puppy plainness goes away, that's when they can come and It's pretty amazing. She's so small, she sleeps with us. But sometimes when I'm having a nightmare or a night tremor, I'll wake up and she's literally sitting on my chest or she's licking me. So I wake her up out of her sleep so that she can kind of help me out. So it's amazing. And I would just hope people would be empathetic and be a little more understanding that if you see someone in a mall with a wheelchair or walker, that's an obvious disability. But when you see someone with a dog, don't unnaturally go, oh, they're faking. They just bought the vest on Amazon. And instead, if you even want to talk, just say, may I ask you about the dog? You know, I have some really neat parents I've seen lately where they'll tell their children, that's a service dog. You're not allowed to come up. And then at that point, because they showed me that respect, I'll say, would you like to meet Arizona? And I'll say, kiss. And then Arizona will come up and kiss them. But it's that whole understanding and that empathy that if everyone sees a disability, they're going to be a little more but just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Rexhen Doda:Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks so much for giving all that context. And when it comes to investments, and this goes back to my research, have there been any investments? Obviously, you've worked on three books and this last one that's coming out. What are some investments that you've made in the coaching business that you feel like actually were very good investments, either on yourself or in the business? And maybe what are some bad investments? Because I'm going after both. For me,
Douglas Pflug:the biggest investment was my time and my experience. I was the media officer for the Guelph Police Service from 2008 to 2010, basically. And I was fortunate enough because I was a pool of officers that We devised a social media strategy for Ontario policing. So I was, we were way ahead of the curve with respect to that. So I've got that benefit. So if you're going to be a coach, you have to have your socials. You know, I have Twitter, Instagram, a bit of TikTok, the website, some YouTube. For young coaches, don't invest in 20 different platforms because you're going to miss the boat. Invest in three or four other platforms with your memberships and stuff. I self-published my website through GoDaddy. That's, you know, there's a huge investment there. about $500 a year. But if you're going to invest your time and your money, just go three or four platforms so you can get the message out and figure out which the top ones are. Everyone's on TikTok right now, but there's some negative with TikTok. Instagram's really taken off, but make sure what you invest in is something that you're going to have the maximum viewership from. You're constantly through Facebook Messenger or whatever, getting all these different types of coaching. Become a coach. $500. Really be careful with that because unfortunately, there's really no governing body that says a coach, a coach. There's so many people's kind of scamming and monetizing being a life coach right now is a very popular fad like 20 years ago when it was to be a personal trainer you know when I came in was a strength and conditioning coach that was based on my entire life of being an elite athlete and being coached by elite people yet people would go to the YMCA on a weekend and spend $50 and then I'm personal trainers too but they would have no real life experience towards that what's Very dissatisfactory to me right now is there's just so many of these channels coming up saying you can be a coach for 50 bucks, but you have to have credibility, authenticity, and life experience. You just can't say, well, I've got this certification from ABC123. I'm going to charge you $400 or $500 an hour. But that's happening right now, and I think that's fraudulent.
Rexhen Doda:Yeah, it is a little bit fraudulent. sad that there's not yet regulation around this it is an industry that's growing unfortunately this is more of a problem for the clients that are signing up they have so many options but they don't know who to trust it just comes down to maybe doing some research on the person that you're working with because it's always up to you unfortunately there's no regulation and Maybe that's going to be better in the future, but yeah, there's always looking to where this person lived the experience, just like you said, comes from. Is there certain certifications that are actual certifications that, for example, a lot of coaches that I've interviewed have gone through the ICF, not saying that that is immediately what qualifies you, but it's like also a way to filter out the people that just changed the... image on their LinkedIn, just saying on the, uh, the cover images that say they're a coach that would filter some of those out. Uh, and yeah, just, just look for coaches that, um, have some, um, absolutely lived experience, but also, uh, a lot of coaches that have had success with previous clients. You will also potentially find either. endorsements, testimonials, or things like that. They have had either on the website and things. Yeah. So you'll be able to find who the good coaches are. But if you want to weigh in on this, I think you might have an extra opinion on this. Is there any way that you could filter these coaches out so that you find the right one for anyone's listening? Ask
Douglas Pflug:for real life testimonials. What's their story? Have you ever, you know, in the business nowadays, they use behavioral interviewing with the star principle. Tell us a time you went through an adverse situation. What was it? What did you do? What was the outcome? If you're, you know, looking for a coach, ask them, what was one of your biggest failures in life and how did you move forward? And tell me about that, you know, because you can then ask them questions, different pieces. And it comes from my police interviewing. Okay, that's fine that you said this. Go back to this point. Because when you look at the way the mind and the memory remembers things, it's only going to be able to remember the truth chronologically. But, you know, if you're going to be investing a lot of money in your coaches, make sure what they're telling you is the truth. Research them, look for Google testimonials, you know, get a good agent. And I was fortunate to come to the plate with a lot of these skills just through my pre-employment when I was doing that. But it's important that people invest their time. I remember the one time, and that's why when you and I had our introductory conversation, I basically said, I'm not buying anything, so if that's where we're going, we're not going to waste time because I went through a call with someone about six months ago, and at the end, they wanted to put my podcast up, and I was just like, are you crazy? I asked you at the beginning, and you said there was no buy-in, and then actually that angered me a lot. And then the other thing for coaches that I get seven to ten times a week, don't do all this cold call stuff on LinkedIn. Doug, we looked at your website. Or I'll get a friend request on LinkedIn. Then it'll be like, oh, I looked at your website. Maybe one day we can collaborate. And I just got three more today. I've got this business and I'd like to sell you this optimization, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, you pissed me off. Excuse the expression. Don't waste my time. So, you know, when you've got young coaches going out there, authenticity is huge. Have your story. Know it. Donate your time. You know, I always talk that I donate my time to Special Olympics. I would want a coach or an assistant to young coaches. What do you give of yourself for free? Then your monetization of that is in the fact that you've got the credibility to say that you did that. You know, if people find out you've been a Special Olympics coach for 20 years, Bam, it's credibility. If they found out that you go and you do at the soup kitchen. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money down the road. And nowadays, when everything is fake news everywhere, young coaches have to create a market, a name for themselves that's based on their experience. But again, you've got to monetize it by spending your time now and then moving forward. And the other thing, one of my coaching things that I talk to people, you know, a lot of young guys or girls who want to be police officers will say, I coached soccer. What sports did you play in school? Soccer. Did you coach outside of your comfort zone, like say hockey, and then did you learn something from that? Well, no, I've always done what I know. Again, how can you say that you're going to coach someone when you only stay in your comfort zone? Because you're going to be asking people to go outside their comfort zone and trust you, but if you've never gone outside your comfort zone again, you're not going to have any credibility to help that person. So that's what I'm saying. Young coaches, when you're getting up there and you want to be out there, make sure you dot your I's, you cross your T's, and you dot your J's because people are going to call you on that because it is saturated right now. So make sure that, you know, this is my story. This is who I was. And that's how one of my things that I work with people. Who you were no longer exists, but who you were creates who you are today. Who you are today is going to be who you were tomorrow. but it's going to help you propel yourself to be who you want to be moving forward. Make sure as a young coach, you know your story of who I was, who I am today, and who do I want to be moving forward, much like you've asked me. That's where you're going to get the credibility and people are going to trust you because they want to know your story and see if they can match up with that to help them with their story.
Rexhen Doda:Thank you so much, Doug. I wanted to also ask you while we're still on the time, what is a challenge right now for you that you're trying to solve for next in the coaching business? is there any bottlenecks that you see
Douglas Pflug:for me there are small bottlenecks in exposure and getting out there but luckily i've got pretty vibrant platforms and that's where i could see a young coach utilizing a company that they find out that has great reviews great authenticity just to help them i'm retired right now so i can spend this morning i spent about four hours on the computer i can do that because i have the time but if you're a young person or you know a new coach and you still have your you know you eventually want to navigate to your coaching as your primary job. Time sometimes is, there's just not enough of it. So that's the only bottleneck that I found when I was working is that I want to help so many people, but there's only so many hours of the day. I like with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one time they said, you know, Arnold, how many hours a day do you work? And he said, 14. And they said, well, what do you mean? When do you sleep? He goes, I sleep for six hours and then I do the rest. And they said, but what if you're tired? He goes, I force myself to get up. You sleep less and you work more. And obviously, he's working very hard and doing what he's done. But you want to make sure that you're not depriving yourself. My mantra for leadership is lead with your best self. So I would ask every young coach to lead with their best self. Model the behavior they ask of others. Always create an environment where other people can succeed. But first and foremost, you got to take care of you before you take care of others. In those steps of making sure your heart, your body, and your mind are sound, that's when you can do the other three. You can't do it the other way around.
Rexhen Doda:Thank you. Thank you so much, Douglas. And just to close it up, this has been great, by the way, but what is, if any, final advice that you would like to give to coaches, just like yourself, that are trying to scale their impact? Is there any advice for those coaches?
Douglas Pflug:It's going to go boil down to my four core values. And I challenge anyone that listens and watches this, send me your core values after you hear this. For me, I look at it, sometimes in life, you're going to be in relationships that don't work. You know, at the end of this podcast, someone might say, I don't like them. And that's fine. You're not going to win every relationship in life. We're not meant to win every relationship. But if you can take a step back and say, I treated that person with their core values. So mine are honor. I try to treat everyone, do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. And I live that. Integrity, it's what I do when no one watches. I'm really getting tired of social media influencers saying, look how great I am. I just gave this homeless person a Big Mac and then they put it on video. Someone with integrity wouldn't do that. Accountability to me is about I'm accountable to you. I'm accountable to anyone that I talk to that I want to make proud of myself. And then the last one is passion, which you're getting from our conversation. So at the end of the day, if someone doesn't like me, it is. What do I learn for it and how I move forward from that? Did I treat you with honor, integrity, passion, and accountability? And that's my granite. So that's the first book, Finding Your Granite, My Four Cornerstones of Personal Leadership. is based on those same four core values that my parents taught me when I was young that saved me once upon a time and I move forward. Thank
Rexhen Doda:you. Thank you so much, Douglas. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can go into your LinkedIn, Douglas Flug. They'll be able to find your LinkedIn account. There's also the website riseupandexcel.ca. Is that the correct one? Yes, sir. Is there any other way that people can connect with you and reach out to you?
Douglas Pflug:I'm on Instagram and it's Ironwell, the number 360. So Ironwell360. I do have Twitter. It's at Ironwell360. And then I think the TikTok is Ironwell360, aka Douglas Flug or something along those lines. But I'm not great with TikTok. So I generally focus on the website, the LinkedIn and the Instagram and the Twitter because those are the four that I'm most comfortable with. And I think that I'm getting a good... And I use Facebook as well. I use those five platforms that I get the message out. And again, another thing for young coaches is word of mouth. And once you help people, that's sometimes the best thing because all the things we talked about credibility, if someone comes to you and says, I worked with Doug Fluke, the credibility is already there. You don't have to build that because they obviously respect that person enough that they're giving that advice. Thank
Rexhen Doda:you so much. And it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming.
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.