From Special Forces to Success: How David Fox Built a High-Performance Coaching Business

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues, host Pedro sits down with David Fox, a high-performance coach whose journey spans training elite Special Forces medics, serving in search and rescue, overcoming a rare cancer diagnosis, and building a thriving coaching business alongside his wife.

David shares how resilience is not something you're born with but a skill that can be intentionally developed. The conversation dives deep into leadership, overcoming imposter syndrome, building a coaching business from the ground up, pricing and value in the coaching industry, client accountability, and the mindset shifts required for sustainable success.

Pedro and David also explore what it takes to transform pressure into clarity, setbacks into momentum, and ambition into meaningful results. Whether you're a business owner, executive, coach, or someone looking to level up your personal and professional life, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and actionable insights.

Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-francis-fox/
Website: https://www.andfox.com/

Transcript

David Fox 0:00

Agreed. That's a great question. And I literally said that recently to my wife. So my wife is also a coach. She was actually my first client and she loved what she experienced. She said, I want to do this too. So she got certified. And we do this together. And I recently said to her, it was literally just this last week, we have just landed a very large corporate client, something we've been working on for a while, and we just got the go-head. And I was like, wow, we're like a real business now. And she says, We've been in real business for two years. I said, I know, but but that engagement was such a uh such testimony to our abilities, but all the hard work we put in. Some folks, Matt, when they you know open up their business, they have a list of clients right out the door. That's rare. Most folks have to build their business over time. And ours was no different. So we're seeing that traction. We're seeing um everything that we invested in the first year pay off now. And that's super exciting. That's that's amazing. And now it does feel like a business. It doesn't feel like a hobby. It's a real business.

Davis Nguyen 0:59

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swain, and I'm a business coach and the founder of Purple Swirkle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Swirkle, I started to schedule several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses, and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're gonna learn the lessons of our years to work, and you'll be able to learn that in. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is gonna give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:43

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by David Fox, whose extraordinary journey from training elite warriors to saving lives in search and rescue to overcoming one of the rarest forms of cancer has taught him that resilience isn't a trait you are born with, but a skill you can deliberately build. David helps resilienced focused leaders transform pressure into clarity, setbacks into strength, and ambition into sustainable success using a science-backed framework from the High Performance Institute combined with hard-won lessons from life's most challenging battles. David's coaching approach helps clients gain the clarity to navigate complex situations, the energy and confidence to sustain growth, and the resilience to turn adversity into momentum. His work focuses on developing leadership skills grounded in empathy and accountability while creating alignment across career, health, relationships, and energy, proving that coaching accelerates growth by unlocking your best potential. Welcome to the show, David.

David Fox 2:57

Thank you, Pedro. Oh my gosh. When you read all that, I got excited about myself. Jeez, I want I want I want to coach myself. That sounded amazing.

Pedro Stein 3:05

Dude, I want to work with you, and I'm just kidding. Now, here it comes, David. Well, first of all, you're the one to blame, right? I blame the people that show up here for their own intro. And you're the one, okay? Just plain like I'll start with that. And by the way, man, I'm kind of a comic book nerd myself, okay? And I love, love, love the first edition, you know, the origin story. So let's rewind a bit because every coach has that moment when they look at their life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? So when was that for you, David?

David Fox 3:37

So it was, gee, so about about for about the last 10 years, a little more than that, I was a instructor, a product instructor for special forces medics. And I had my little lane, my sleeve of what I was training them on, instructing them on. And you can imagine, these are the most elite warriors in the world, and they had access to every asset, every support opportunity you could imagine. You know, not just the folks that were training them in their medical skills, but physios and mindset coaches and nutritionists and resiliency coaches and all of those different things. And I said, wow, look at how these folks are performing. I want that. Because I was feeling a little stuck, maybe a little lost, a little unmoored, didn't have as good physical stamina, mental and emotional stamina as I wanted. And I thought, I want that. So I tried to find the closest thing in the civilian world. I was a client first. And then uh I love what it did for me. As well as you mentioned, you know, I did go through a period of uh health crisis. It was a really rare cancer. And going through that, navigating that, I went back to what I was coached on. I went to the principles that I that I had as a client. And it it made me navigate that with confidence and with positivity and with some discipline that I didn't know that like I really had. And on the other side, I said, Man, I want to go, I want to do that for a living. I want to be a coach. I want to do what I just felt, I want to be able to bring to others. And so I got certified, and then two years later, here we are today.

Pedro Stein 5:16

Okay. Wow, interesting story. I I the part that really um I won't I feel like the need to highlight is the fact that you first you expose yourself, right? You were like, you didn't wake up a day and say, I'm gonna be a coach. It was like you were kind of inspired by the guys you were training, right? Now I want to understand one thing, okay? Because that is a shift that helped that happens eventually from I'm helping people in the coaching space in the early days to I'm building a real business around this, right? Sometimes we're trying to help everyone at the start, but I want to understand like, uh, how did that click for you? You know, was it the first invoice? Was it the first print client? Then you realize, okay, this is really a business, you know?

David Fox 5:59

Agreed. That's a great question. And I literally said that recently to my wife. So my wife is also a coach, she was actually my first client, and she loved what she experienced. She said, I want to do this too. So she got certified, and we do this together. And I recently said to her, it was literally just this last week, we have just landed a very large corporate client, something we'd been working on for a while, and we just got the go-ahead. And I was like, Wow, we're like a real business now. And she says, We've been a real business for two years. I said, I know, but but that engagement was such a uh such testimony to our abilities, but all the hard work we put in. Some folks, Matt, when they you know open up their business, they have a list of clients right out the door. That's rare. Most folks have to build their business over time, and ours was no different. So we're seeing that traction, we're seeing um everything that we invested in the first year pay off now. And that's super exciting. That's that's amazing. And now it does feel like a business, it doesn't feel like a hobby, it's a real business.

Pedro Stein 7:04

You know, I have a question also for you, which is something that happens. I mean, you've been two years in the game, right? As a coach in your own business. Um, so there is an identity shift also when you're at like take, you know, you're you're in a birthday party and someone asks you, hey, what do you do for a living? And you're in that transition period, you're like, oh, I'm a coach, but it's not immediate that you say you're a coach, but you're still kind of testing the waters, you know what I mean? So, how did that look like for you? Did the identity shift, was that like smooth sales, or was it like something like you're kind of I'm not sure about it already? You know what I mean?

David Fox 7:42

Sure. No, it's a great question, Pedro. I think for me, and my my inst my situation may have been different from others. I wasn't taking a hard turn to become a coach. It wasn't like I was, let's say, a lawyer, and then all of a sudden I'm gonna be a high performance coach, or I was, you know, maybe in financial services, and even that's even closer to do this. Uh, I was folks knew that I was an instructor for um Special Forces Medics, as well as I'm also on a search and rescue team. And so the the idea of me becoming a high performance coach wasn't that different. It felt like a natural extension. It kind of, I think in most people's minds it was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Of course you would do that. So I may have had it easier in those conversations than perhaps some other coaches who where it's not so obvious what you were doing before, how that leads to where you are today. So I think I was fortunate in that regard.

Pedro Stein 8:32

Uh yes, it was already coaching adjacent, right? It was something in the ballpark already. Okay.

David Fox 8:37

Now and they understood that like what I was doing as an instructor for special forces medics was in resiliency and um helping them stay in the fight physically and um and emotionally. And so it it just was a natural extension. It felt like, oh yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, you're just doing something that makes sense.

Pedro Stein 8:59

And that makes sense. It really does make sense. Now, after you got rolling, and I love this question because it's like in the early days, coaches are trying to help everyone, you know. You mentioned yourself, there are most folks are building their business from scratch. So who were the people that kept showing up? You know, the ones you realize, okay, this is my tribe. You know what I mean, David?

David Fox 9:22

Yeah, I do. Um it was surprising who did. Uh if if we made a list and said these are the folks that we think would be the first hand raisers, they really weren't. It was it was it came from all different areas. Folks who you thought were on paper would look really successful, had it all together. Um but then you realize, you know what, everyone has something that they're working on, something that they're struggling with, something that they believe is holding them back. Um and then you also have a group that says, Everything's pretty good, but I want to get to another level, I just don't know how to get there. And I'm gonna instead of stumbling it through, let me have a guide who can help me get there faster. So we were surprised to who who raised their hands and and who didn't. Um Yeah, it it was I would have lost a bet.

Pedro Stein 10:17

And if you had a summarizer for me real quick, so who do you serve?

David Fox 10:23

So it's typically uh mid or late career professionals, so senior executives, senior leaders, uh professionals, they could be lawyers, doctors, TV on air personalities, financial advisors, uh folks like that. Folks who have have already some success and have either arrived where they are today, Pedro, and they're like, Is this it? This isn't what I thought it was going to be. The story that I told myself when I was young going through college of what I would experience later in life, this doesn't feel right. Um help me figure this out now. That's kind of the direct hit of the person who we coach.

Pedro Stein 10:59

Sounds like there's a pattern there, which is hitting a ceiling, and that ceiling is not like something they imagined. Something like that.

David Fox 11:09

I think that's a really way of fair way of saying it. I I think folks you know, they they realize at some point, most people will realize at some point, that what got them to where they are today is not what's going to get them to where they want to go tomorrow. The habits or the skills or things that got you here. You're going to have to grow or evolve to get to the next level of wherever you want that to be, however you define it. And when that realization happens is when folks are the most open to hiring a coach.

Pedro Stein 11:38

Okay. Now, I want to do a quick exercise with you. Okay, David. I want to pretend I'm your potential client, your ideal client profile, the ICP, right? I'm one of those senior leaders. I hit a silly, I'm like, dude, I think I need help, you know, there's that. Now, marketing-wise, how would I be able to find you?

David Fox 12:03

So we and we learned this the hard way. Um when we first opened our doors, we kind of just announced, like, hey, we got this coaching pro company, and here's the things we could do. And it was like crickets, right? Like people are like, hey, great for you. That's wonderful. We didn't explain to them what the value would be in being a client. So the thing that how you would find us is uh we have a pretty growing but pretty robust uh content library. You know, we have a YouTube channel. We so folks have we have a 30-minute, we call them Fox Talk. So it's 30 minutes of coaching, real value. We do not sell from it. It's not 15 minutes of a promise of some payoff and then 15 minutes of selling you to pay for it to get the answer. It's not that. It's 30 minutes of real instruction and coaching. It's the value that we put out there so folks can experience it first. That's the biggest way. And and of course, then we promote that heavily in our posts and LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is really just for credibility to get people to see us to experience a little bit of what we do and to intrigue them enough to dive deeper into our marketing materials.

Pedro Stein 13:14

Okay. So continuing uh my exercise here, okay, David, I'm still that senior leader. Um, I watch your YouTube channel. I looked at your content on LinkedIn, okay. And I'm like, you know what? This sounds cool. You know, I gotta talk to those guys. So let's speed up the sales process. Let's say there's alignment, okay? Um, you can help me, I know you can help me, and uh, it's all good. So, and I understand you may have different offers, so you can pick the main one, okay? So please walk me through how does it look like to work with your company and what are the potential outcomes I can expect out of it.

David Fox 13:55

Excellent. So Pedro, I think that you know we start with as low stakes as possible. So it's it's a 30-minute introduction call. Literally, we try and make the the the lift or the obstacle to pick up that phone and call as as tiny as possible. Because once someone gets on the phone and we have that opportunity to talk, um, we usually are able to then continue them down through the pipeline into the funnel. But it starts with uh an assessment tool that we have, which is called uh performance radar. It's something proprietary that we created that looks across a person's life. 34 attributes of your life, Pedro, that you're going to answer behavior questions, not feelings, but behavior, what's your actual behavior been in these 34 attributes of your life over the last period? It takes about 40 minutes to complete this assessment. But it's amazing the results that you see. It's visual, you get to see where your skills are, what your behaviors are, but you also at the same time see how important that is to you. You rate how important that might be, whether it's you need greater influence in your career or with your family members, or maybe your decision making under pressure or in ambigu ambiguous situations is not what you wish it was. Or maybe you don't have that mental, physical, and emotional stamina that you mentioned earlier, Pedreon, where we go around the whole horn. So it's family, it's career, it's community, it's yourself. And so that is an amazing tool for us to start. You pick where you want to go, you pick what your fire is that you want to attack first. Yes, we have a curriculum. We're gonna touch on focus and clarity and energy and influence and productivity and courage. We're gonna touch on all of those. But if you come to me with your fire, Pedro, is I've got imposter syndrome and I need to overcome this because I I it's holding me back. That's my ceiling. That's what we're gonna attack first. I'm not gonna talk to you about your sleeping patterns and your nutrition if you have imposter syndrome. So you're gonna direct where we're going to start, and we're gonna stick on that, Pedro, until we solve it. And once we solve it, and that could be three sessions, six sessions, twelve, who knows? Once we solve it, then we'll expand into other areas of your life that are adjacent, that probably are still affecting that as well. Um, or just other areas in your life that you want to attack next.

Pedro Stein 16:16

Okay. But here's the kicker, right? Fake Pedro, your your your client in this scenario, is giving you a hard time. It's like, okay, I have imposter syndrome and all that. And um go to one session, kind of, you know, do the assessment and all of that. I I feel that in. Go to one, two sessions. I'm thinking, you know what? I'm not sure about this. Or I start ghosting you, you know. So you're you're feeling that I'm distancing myself because I was uh high-ticket sales closer for a landscape business coach for almost three years, David. And uh, I also am a coach, right? So sometimes you can see people distancing from the work. Sure. And sometimes it feels like some people are just romanticizing the fact that they want to solve something, they can so they can sleep better, you know. So, how would you navigate Pedro, the fake Pedro, if you feel like his like, is he really putting in the work? You know what I mean?

David Fox 17:18

Yeah, so Pedro, I'm gonna go back to when we started in our engagement. Um, because I have my hooks in you. You told me what was important to you. You said that this was what you needed to address, and if you didn't address it, here was the bad outcomes that were going to happen. So if you're not addressing it, we're gonna find out why you're not. Is it because there's loss? Do you have fear of losing something, your identity of what you used to be? Is it fear that the process is just going to be too painful for you? Is it fear that the the juice won't be worth the squeeze, that you'll do all this work, and in the end the payout won't be for that? What is it for you? And I'm gonna push you on it, and we're gonna dig into it because whatever that is, we're gonna uh we're gonna get out of the way or address it or unlock it, so you can get to where you said you needed to be. I'm gonna go back to your words. It's not about what I want. You hired me to help you get from X to Y. And right now you're stuck somewhere in between, and we're gonna we're gonna get after it so that you don't just languish right where you are. I'm gonna push you.

Pedro Stein 18:17

Okay, you're doubling it down. I love it. You're like, Pedro, you paid me. Let's make it happen, man. Okay, I like that. Uh the account, that's the accountability bit, right? And it's so important. Um, now I'm curious about another thing, which is like you mentioned there are frameworks, you mentioned uh one-on-one component. Is there a one-to-many component? Is that is there like a cohort or um how does that look like like structure-wise for your business?

David Fox 18:46

Sure. So you're right, we do have one-on-one coaching. That's our most prevalent offer. Um we to be honest, we tried uh group coaching, so one to many, one to five, ten, and we didn't get many takers so far. Um for whatever reason, that just didn't hit for us. It's possible, it's possible that it's our ideal client that perhaps they don't want to be in a group. They want just one-on-one coaching. If you're a senior executive, if you're a senior leader, I don't know that it seems for at least our the folks we talk to, they want to keep that private. They're not interested in a group session, even though I think they could benefit from that. It's just not what they want. Um, so we really haven't been able to find traction there for us. The other component that we did is cohort coaching. So that's really for corporations that hire us and we're taking a team or a cohort together. I look at that differently as group coaching. In the end, it kind of is, but it wasn't individuals that came together from different parts of the world. It's we're we're taking a team through a curriculum to solve a very specific issue for them. So that's kind of how we make the distinction.

Pedro Stein 19:54

Okay, so cohort. I am also curious about that. So let's pretend I'm Pedro, I'm a leader in that team. I'm telling you first of all, and I'm I have two questions for that, but I'm gonna go with the first one. I'm like, hey David, I need help. My team is not producing, uh, I don't know what's happening here. Can you help me out? And you're like, yeah, potentially, yeah, I can help with that. Um, you go to my company, you you're starting to cohort, start interviewing people, talking to people, and you're and you got to the realization that Pedro is the problem, the leadership is the problem. But I'm a paying client, David. How do you navigate that conversation with me?

David Fox 20:34

Oh, that's excellent. I love this hypothetical. So, from the work we were doing with the staff and the team, we learned that Pedro is really the problem. Um, you know what? We owe it to Pedro. We owe it to our craft to sit down and tell him that. Say, Pedro, uh after a couple weeks of working with your team, we're finding some themes. And I think that to get the success that you want in your team, because we're going back to remember how we just did it with the individual, to get the success that you want with your team, we're gonna need to open the aperture of this coaching engagement a little bigger. I I really think your team would benefit and you will benefit if we bring you into the coaching as well. So we can coach you in different ways so that you're ready to hit the we're making changes with your team. I'm afraid that there's gonna be a disconnect between you and the team. So I think we should really do some work with you so that you're positioned perfectly to be able to cat to capitalize on the work we're doing with your team. That's probably how I position it.

Pedro Stein 21:35

Okay, I like that. Now I have I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna write that down too. I have another one, okay? Here's the the the next one. Okay, I have two boys, David. One is three, the other is seven. And sometimes I'm making decisions on their behalf. I'm like, you gotta do this, right? And they're like, okay, dad, right? So I'm still Pedro on this scenario. I hire Jew for a cohort and you're connecting with a team and all that, and you realize there is a misconnection. Let's put it like that. Some guys are like, dude, they brought this guy. Who's David, right? I why do I have to do this? But they kind of put up with it because they're being paid, you know, the employees to put up with it. But you feel like there is a disconnection, right? You're like, oh, there's resistance for me to implement what I what I'm here to implement. So how do you navigate that?

David Fox 22:32

Excellent question. Excellent question. So Pedro, I think that you know there's there's two, there's a difference between influence and persuasion. Influence is a bit of a long more longer term process, right? That's role modeling behavior or challenging people or teaching them how to think. In the situation that you've just described, I don't think influence would work. I think you're gonna have to be far more direct and be persuasive. And so one of the models that we coach is a formula for how to be persuasive. It's acknowledgement plus ambition times effect equals persuasion. And here's what I mean. So you first you have to acknowledge your kids or acknowledge that person that I get it, that you might think that this is remedial or you're not really sure why. You know, you address what their real situation is. Most people skip that part and go right in for the ask. They'd go around and be like, hey, I need you to be more uh engaged. They'll start there, and the person's gonna be defensive. So we'll start with the acknowledgement. What's their world? What's their reality? So they feel seen and heard, and now they're they're feeling like you're on their side, right? And then you go with the ambition, the ambition of what would they like to see? Do they want to advance in their career? Do they want to have whatever it is, right? We're gonna talk about their ambition, and then we're going to add the last part, which is gonna be an emotional component, an emotional story, somehow d dive into that so that if you don't have all three pieces, if you don't acknowledge where they are, if you don't tap into your shared ambitions and then finish it with an emotional story or plea, it doesn't, it just kind of falls flat. When you do all those three things, it's much easier to be persuasive.

Pedro Stein 24:12

Okay, I like that. Now I want to shift gears for a second. I want to change to a topic that I feel it's so interesting to talk with another coach, which is pricing. Okay. But not the not hard numbers, more about the mindset behind it. Because pricing, as you already know, it's a very self-worth path in the service industry, especially in coaching, right? Um, so what I'm curious is like, and you mentioned imposter syndrome and all that. Sometimes it's like, am I charging enough? Am I charging too much? You know? Uh so how do you think about it today? The topic, right? Pricing. And weren't there any lessons along the way that shaped how you landed where you were?

David Fox 24:50

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And it is it is the biggest question we ever have, even in our support groups with of other coaches. Probably the number one taught the two topics are getting clients and how much to charge. Um I think that the value of your coaching is what someone's willing to pay for it. You could think it's worth 10 grand, but if the market can only thinks it's worth three grand, it's only worth three grand. That's a hard lesson because the transformation or the impact that we make on clients is can be profound and it can unlock all levels of value for them. So how much you know, how much would you pay to have a better relationship with your wife and kids? You probably pay a lot if you actually knew it was going to work. But I would say when we started Pedro, we had one number and we thought that was what it was worth. And that's what other coaches were telling us to do. Like, hey, that's the number that the the market bears. And we found that we had some takers, but a lot of folks there was they just didn't know if it was going to be worth it. How would they? It's a lot of money. Um and so this past year we did some changes on our end so that we could deliver it, let's say, at half the cost. A little bit less, about let's say 70% the cost of what we originally were were pitching it at. And we've had far more takers. And I think the reason is it's kind of gotten to that psychological threshold of it's not that expensive. It's more that I mean, still have to go talk with my spouse probably, because it's an ex a dollar amount that isn't just something I can sign up with on my own. You know, it's not a couple hundred dollars, it's a couple thousand dollars at least. So there's this like mental hurdle of that's only a couple grand, it's three grand or four grand, that's okay. If it's six or seven, just gets it to another strata. And there's a lot less people who are who can come up with seventy five hundred dollars for something they haven't done before. Far more people would be at three grand or four grand to just give you kind of round numbers. Does that does that make sense for you, Pedro? Is that what you experience too?

Pedro Stein 26:54

I think. Well, I was in sales, right? So we have two types of anchors here, uh, value or price anchor, right? Yeah, if and it usually they're tied up with a transformation. The value anchor is like you mentioned, oh, it's gonna improve my relationship with my kids and my wife. That's one that it's harder to pin down on a number, okay? Sure, but the price anchor, depending on the coaching practice you're serving, like for example, uh corporate, right? B2B, for example. Um, if you're doing something that will increase X, Y, and Z percentage on an X, Y, and Z KPI, you could have a success fee title, or using that as a anchor to your selling point, you know. But sometimes sometimes it's about uh having that validation first, you know, and sometimes it's even through you know, uh pro bono or not, or even start with a lower ticket so you can actually have those testimonials, so you can tie that down that testimonial with a lower ticket. Like, okay, I can do it for you, but on contract, I if we reach X, Y, and Z, I want uh the video testimonial of you saying I help with X, Y, and Z. So I can use that for my next one, and I'm gonna charge them a full price because now I have more you know a validation in the background. To me personally, I tie to I tie, used to tie with uh transformation. I've seen people in career coaching doing that, uh getting a percentage of the first or second salary if they help land a job. So I know where you're coming from. I don't usually use as benchmark the market, but it's totally fine to do so. Sure. I um it's one metric, it's just a personal thing, at least on my end, I usually tend to tie down with the transformation. Did that make sense?

David Fox 28:47

It does. It does. And you actually um gave me an idea. We haven't set it up this way, but perhaps for some of the corporate engagements, maybe even for individuals, we could have it tied or a portion of it tied to success, where that radar that we talked about, the performance radar, that assessment that we give, we give multiple times. If it was, let's say, uh an eight-week engagement, you'll have it on week zero, then maybe week four, and then week eight. So you can track how your behavior has changed. You see it visually over this time. And so perhaps we could, it's an interesting thought, put 10, 20, something tied to their growing, that they can see the movement, that they could see the from to. And if we don't get to the two, maybe part of our fee is contingent on that. Not sure if I love it, but it's really interesting. Uh definitely something I'm gonna play with.

Pedro Stein 29:34

Yeah, I I always think about the exchange, right? Like, for example, pro bono. If I'm thinking about adding a lane on pro bono, which I'm not a fan of, I would use two things a testimonial. I I demand a testimonial before I start my my work. And I would I would also use as a pilot, you know. So I'm unsure about the offer still. I'm launching it, I'm testing waters. I was pro I could use pro bono to do so. Like, oh, this this clicks. It's just about finding people who pays now. You know what I mean?

David Fox 30:08

Agreed.

Pedro Stein 30:09

Okay, agreed.

David Fox 30:10

We also went, Pedro, we asked that same, we did that same strategy. We had beta clients when we first went out and asked them for the testimonials. It's excellent. We also asked, and part of the arrangement's going to be you're gonna tell, assuming you're having a fantastic experience, tell 10 people about us. That you're gonna send out a note to 10 people. And I thought that was pretty good. If you have six clients, 60 people now. I think that the folks that for whatever reason we had picked this beta clients, I don't know that they did an exceptional job in that in that area. Honestly, I was a little bit of a letdown. I was really excited for that part, and I think it kind of landed flat, unfortunately.

Pedro Stein 30:45

Yeah, sometimes, like, that's the thing. I don't love Pro Bono. It's because it lacks commitment, skin in the game. And sometimes they know show, sometimes they don't put the work. And the thing is, it always brings me back, and I mentioned this in the on episodes that we recorded. It's just like I always remember remember about a meme, right? There's a fridge on the sidewalk, and that fridge is saying take it free, okay? Stays there for a week, nobody picks it up. Then someone puts a price tag, $50, vanishes the other day, you know? So it's the perception of value, and I think that's the trick, right? If people sometimes they they they they say they think about, hey, this is free, this is worthless, you know? That's the mentality, unfortunately, which is not also true, but it happens, and sometimes it backfires on coaches. They're thinking, oh, if no one's picking and picking this or choosing this, even if it's free, nobody will ever pay for it, which is backwards. That's not true, you know, and sometimes in their minds a coach, you know what I mean?

David Fox 31:48

100%. This isn't my saying, but I love it. Someone's someone once taught me that when people pay, they pay attention. I thought, okay, that's right. I get it, I understand it.

Pedro Stein 31:59

Yeah, they're buying your energy. That's the thing. Now, um, shifting gears again. I'm curious about where you're taking all this, you know, David. Looking ahead, where do you see the business going? Are you thinking about scaling, hiring? Is there a next step you're excited about, man?

David Fox 32:14

Yeah, we uh we're we have bright eyes for the future um in a couple ways. First, as I think I mentioned, we have a bunch of new tools and methodologies and things that are going to be launching in the next week. Some literally today after this podcast ends, and some over the course of the next week, uh maybe week and a half. So we're really excited that those new tools and methodology, those components for how we engage with our clients, both to attract them and then also to get the results that they want, will all be launching soon. So probably for the next couple of months, it's just digesting that, just executing on all that. Um, the next thing for us is how do we embrace, truly embrace the technology that's around us to be better coaches and to deliver a better client coach experience? Um there are things that there are just some natural hurdles and some some downside between the we have a session, time goes by, we have another session. Well, what happens in between there? How do we engage with our client? You mentioned about being accountability earlier. How do we make sure they're doing the homework or the things that they promised they would do, the commitments that they made, so that they don't show up at the next session like, yeah, I didn't do anything. I know I said I was gonna do that stuff, but I didn't actually really do it. Um, so we're we're using technology to solve for that. And then the third thing would be exactly that, Pedro's the scale is to we're we're two coaches now. Um, we'd love to be able to bring more coaches inside our practice. That's probably a year out, I would expect. Um, but that's definitely on our radar of something we'd love to see.

Pedro Stein 33:47

Nice. I'm excited just by hearing it. Okay. Now, David, um, whenever we're aiming towards the next chapter, new things, right? There's always something we're refining in the present, right? Working under the hood. So, what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

David Fox 34:04

How people understand what we do. Because high performance coaching, just people don't understand. We found that most people don't understand what that is. What is a high performance coach? Some people think we're like helping you run faster. So like, no, we're not like just making you a better athlete or something. This is more holistic. This is about your career. Is executive coaching right? No, not exactly. Is life coaching no? So the definition doesn't really fit exactly what we're trying to do. And so we're we're in the space of how do we more quickly, more effectively communicate what we do and why someone should care. That's the big challenge. That's what we're doing. And that's why it's a whole revamp of all of our marketing materials, our website, just so that it tells the story better than it used to. And that that came from us just living with it for more than a year and realizing that geez, um, it's missing the mark. People aren't walking away with what we want them to walk away with. Let's let's fix this. So that's the big challenge we've been working on for the last geez, six months. And today we get to see the reality of it come out. I'm excited. Oh, I'm excited too.

Pedro Stein 35:13

Now, last question for you, okay. Um let's say we had a time machine, because you know, I'm a comic book nerd, I already established that. And and you have the opportunity to go back two years when you started this, the coach and practice. What ad advice would you give to yourself, okay, that you know right now that you didn't do back in the day?

David Fox 35:35

Oh gosh. I think the biggest mistake we made was not we were asking for the business before we provided value. I think we needed to provide some value first, be helpful first, and then I can ask for the sale. And like I think when we first launched, it was just like, hey, ta-da, this is a great program, and these are all the things they could do, but it was just kind of static. No one felt it. You know, you need to go to Costco and you know you give the little samples, the little people give you the little samples to taste, and then you buy the cookies or the pasta, whatever. We needed to adopt that kind of strategy, which is put some value out there for free that gets people to understand who you are, what you're about, to to feel your energy and get them interested, and then you can start to talk to them about being a client. Provide some help first, and then you could help, then you can ask them to be a client. We did it the opposite way, and we struggled for a bit. We struggled more than we needed to. We would have had a greater track would have a greater traction, I think, if we'd adopted that model. In fact, that's not, I think, I know that we would have had greater traction had we done value, help people first, then you can ask for the sale.

Pedro Stein 36:46

I love that, man, because that's the thing, right? Uh, first of all, people buy your energy. But second, is like sometimes we we don't do that because as coaches, we're afraid they're gonna solve by themselves and not gonna need us. That's one point, right? But I see it like as a as a big puzzle. They just got a piece, they don't know where to put it, right? So they need the guidance. So it's totally fair that you throw out some value out there. I I at the start I was in the same spot. I was like, I think people will not meet me, and they're just gonna, you know, uh content vampires and they're just gonna leave and all that, and I'm gonna put it in the work for free. And, you know, I don't know a hobby, I'm running a business, but I love that man. Great reminder, okay. And they're quick story.

David Fox 37:33

Of course. So there's a guy named I'm gonna say his name wrong, forgive me, uh, Vin Jian or Jiang. So he runs a thing called the Stage Academy, and so he helps people become better um communicators. And there was one of the things we did start to offer recently was keynotes, and so we wanted to be better presenters, my wife and I. So I'd seen his stuff on Instagram and whatever for probably about a good year, just snippets to him, teaching people how to be better conversationalists or different things. So I was aware of him, but I didn't have a need for him until we decided we wanted to start developing a keynote practice for our business. And at that time, he happened to have an offer that was, you know, a Black Friday offer for his stage academy program. And so I was aware of him before I had the need. But as soon as I had the need, I knew who to turn to. So for a year went by that I was in his universe, that I wasn't buying anything until I had a specific need that I could then hire him for. So that was a lesson for me as well. You might be doing this stuff and you don't see the payoff yet, but you're just building the foundation so that when someone's ready for you, when they want to move, they know who to turn to. So that's how we try and strategize and structure our communication, our videos, our outgoing marketing pieces, all of those things with that kind of a mindset.

Pedro Stein 38:51

I love that. Okay. And if someone listening wants to connect with you or follow your work, David, and we're gonna have all the links in the description, but where can people find you and connect with you? The best way to do so.

David Fox 39:04

I think the best way truly is just our website. It's the it's the portal to everything. It's an dfox.com and fox.com. And from there you can get to our YouTube page, and you can get uh we have a whole volume or whole library of of articles that teach you about different things. It's all the value that we're that we're providing you. So there is a ton of content that's really valuable that you can get access to. You can learn about our methodology, you can learn about us. I think that's truly the best place to start. There's a lot of resources there for you.

Pedro Stein 39:38

Okay. You know, there were a few things you said today that really stayed with me, you know. Um, for example, when we were talking about the origin story, David, and you're like, oh, you were with the special forces guys, they were like best of the best, and you're like, I want that, you know, I want a piece of that. I want to be a part of something or having that type of mentality one day. So that really stood out to me, you know, being uh inspired by coaching, not necessarily just waking up a day and say, Hey, I'm gonna do this, you know, it's more, it's there's more into it, you know, really important reminder. Um, there's also one thing that you mentioned about the ICP, right? Like when you mentioned that, oh, people on paper were successful, right? And you didn't expect them to reach reaching out. So the thing is, and I see a lot of that on social media, which is like we more often than not, we compare our internal self with someone else's external self, and we're like, oh my god, I'm unhappy, and they're happy. And at the end of the day, we're all human and they go through the same obstacles, same struggles on different levels, but they do so, right? Um, the last one I would say is the assessment. Real interesting, the 34 attributes behavior questions. It's more about behavior, like the behavior part, which is like not necessarily uh a feeling, it's more about how do you react, you know. Real important. So this is just my long-winded way of saying, you know, that I appreciate what you do and I appreciate you being here and sharing so openly today, David. It was great having you on.

David Fox 41:14

Pedro, you're the best. Can I leave you with one thing? Sure. This is a universal belief in the special forces community, and it and we preach it all the time. You don't when you're called upon to act, you're not gonna magically rise to the occasion. Rather, you're going to fall to your level of training and coaching and preparation. So the question is, what level are you gonna fall to?

Pedro Stein 41:39

Like a decision. You choose. You have ownership.

David Fox 41:44

You're not gonna magically rise. Where are you? You're gonna fall to the level of your coaching, training, and preparation. So, where do you want it to be? Where are you today? We'll help you bridge that gap. That's that's truly what it's all about.

Pedro Stein 41:54

Oh, that was great. Appreciate you, man.

David Fox 41:57

Thank you, Pedro. This has been fantastic. Thank you.

Davis Nguyen 42:00

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business to six, seven, and eight figure years all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business, as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for.