Why Reinvention Is the Secret to Sustainable Success with Andrea Morgan

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast our guest is Andrea Morgan, a leadership and career development expert who shares valuable insights on navigating professional growth, embracing change, and creating a career and life aligned with your strengths, values, and purpose. In this inspiring conversation, we explore the challenges and opportunities that come with career transitions, the importance of self-awareness and intentional decision-making, and how leaders and professionals can reinvent themselves while continuing to grow and make a meaningful impact. Andrea also shares practical lessons on leadership, personal development, resilience, confidence, and finding clarity when you're ready for your next chapter. Whether you're an executive, entrepreneur, coach, or professional considering a career change, this episode offers valuable perspectives and actionable ideas to help you move forward with greater purpose and confidence.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-devorah-morgan/
https://morganadvising.com/
Email: andrea@morganadvising.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I had an unlock with one of my clients and she said of all of the things that I've done in my professional career and um this has been like one of the most helpful things and immediately I was like really this is the this is your unlock and it made me feel like wow maybe the impact that I'm having could be really big right like maybe maybe this is what I meant to do and so I took a leap and I decided you know you can always you can always turn you know the tables around like it's not a one-way door right you can you can drive down that path and I never stop driving Welcome to Success Leaves Clues a podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way.

Davis Nguyen 0:44

My name is David Swain, and I'm a business coach and a founder of Purple Circle, 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 Circle, I started to scale up 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 lessons that took our guest years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is going to give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:21

Welcome to Six Stats Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Andrew Morgan, who's a Denver-based startup executive coach and the founder of Morgan Advising, where she works with early and growth stage founders and executives on leadership clarity, resilience, and performance grounded in neuroscience and behavioral science. Welcome to the show, Andrea.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Pedro Stein 1:52

Well, it's great to have you. You know, now I I gotta tell you something, Andrea. Uh I'm kind of a comic book nerd myself, you know. So I love the first editions, you know, the origin story. And so let's rewind a bit, you know, because every coach has that moment where they look at their life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? So when was that for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah. Um, gosh, uh like most coaches, I think I have a bit of a convoluted path to get there. But the through thread was I always was very interested in human behavior, in what drives people, what motivates people, and sort of this um biological basis of drive, right, of people. And that led me into you know a personal journey through optimizing health, optimizing thought, optimizing emotions. In school, I studied cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, and that was a big unlock for me in sort of the way that I see people and the way that I see interactions. I was sort of suddenly entered into the startup world, and I was surprised to see that many of the executives and many of the founders that I was in these rooms with, um, it was much less the the strategy that determined the success, and much more of whether or not the person driving the strategy could do that. And uh, and I realized that it no matter what level you look at, um, everyone is sort of dealing with people issues, right? Of growth issues, of interaction issues, and uh and it was fun to be able to sort of unlock that. So um so I started growing Morgan advising and and people trusted me with their journeys, and I learned person over person, sort of how how I could help. And now here I am, eight years later, and I I feel very fortunate to be part of these people's uh stories.

Pedro Stein 3:48

Interesting. Okay. Now let me dive in into a little bit of here, what I call usually the identity shift. When it like when you started your own business, right? Like myself, I'm a coach, right? And I am also, I also have uh a corporate background, and a lot of coaches do too. And sometimes it's almost like an identity shift when you're coming from a very structured world where you're like, well, work is just handed over to you, right? At least in my perspective, and then you start your own business, and then you're wearing all the hats. You're, you know, you're the marketer, you're you're doing business development, you're the sales, you're doing everything. So uh it's kind of a leap of faith in a way when you start your own journey in uh in the entrepreneurship, right? So my question to you is like, when did you felt the shift for Morgan advising that you realize, okay, this is not like a calling, this is not like I'm giving advice, this is a real business I'm building around coaching, you know?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yes, yes. The real business piece I think is very interesting because coaching often felt like a fake job to me for for a while, right? Uh and so I was working as chief of staff at a startup, aerospace startup called Boom Supersonic, and uh and I was coaching, I was coaching on the side, and uh and the coaching kind of felt like this maybe like side advice, this side help, right, that that I was doing. And I had an unlock with one of my clients, and she said, of all of the things that I've done in my professional career, and um this has been like one of the most helpful things. And immediately I was like, really? This is the this is your unlock. And it made me feel like wow, maybe the impact that I'm having could be really big, right? Like maybe, maybe this is what I meant to do. And so I took a leap and I decided, you know, you can always you can always turn, you know, the tables around, like that it's not a one-way door, right? You can you can drive down that path, and I never stopped driving. I absolutely found what I was put on earth to do.

Pedro Stein 5:53

I love that. I love how how honest you are about it because like at at least on my perspective, it was like this. I was in corporate banking, then at a consulting firm, NSR Young, here in Brazil. And I'm like, okay, you know, that real job mentality you have in that space. Oh, I have a real job. And then you're at a birthday party and someone asks you for 10 years, you're like, yeah, I do X, Y, and Z. I work at banking. I do other, and then you're in that in-between phase that you're in the testing water for coaching, testing waters for coaching, and you're like, dude, what am I? You know, it's almost like, what's happening with me, right? So I love the fact that you call it felt like a fake job because that hits home, at least for me. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Now I think, and I wonder if other coaches struggle with this too. That fake job makes you want to, or at least it made me want to search for credibility or credentials in it, right? It it made me want to feel like I needed some sort of certification or some sort of validation from the outside in order to make it feel more real. And and I think that the the internal shift for me was really powerful in being able to look inside and say, like, this is actually just what I make it, and it is completely validated based off of its impact.

Pedro Stein 7:09

Oh my god, you're gonna get me in a rabbit hole. I love it. Okay. The reason you're gonna because here's the thing, right? I think you kind of nailed it. Uh, because coaching, if you think about it, it's not a certified industry, regulated industry. It it doesn't require that. You can coach without being an ICF coach, for example, or PCC, MCC, whatever. I mean, it's a credibility industry. But sometimes we we kind of feel like sometimes we need the certification in order to justify the reason why we're doing what we're doing. But that's not mandatory, you know what I mean? Yep, absolutely. Okay, interesting. Nice. Okay, now I'm curious about one thing, you know. Um, after you started your business, I mean that's eight years ago, Morgan advising, right? Uh, there's an evolution of who you serve from the early days and who you serve now, potentially. I'm not saying that it is, but for me, in the coaching space, sometimes we're just trying to make it in the first years, and eventually we tend to attract a certain type of people that we realize, okay, I can help these people best. You know, this is my tribe. Uh so can you walk me through the evolution of who you serve and who you serve now?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

I don't have such a stark evolution, evolutionary change in who I've served. So I've I've always served venture-backed startup executives and startup founders. Uh I have, however, played around with different stages within that um and with different backgrounds, like first-time founders versus um people who maybe started off in large executive roles and are founding now. And evolving through who I am most impactful to, I am most impactful to people who are hyper hyper growing and challenging them themselves to always continue to grow forward. And I find that early stage venture back to startup executives who have never done this before are the most hungry for the information. They're the most driven to grow, improve themselves, and shift. They don't have as many uh adoptions of the stale conventional wisdom of corporate America, and so they're not like taking those things with them as much. I love a founder that you know was an individual contributing engineer, right, who's having to step into this, you know, CEO role and having to grow into that, right? I love that shift in job and that shift in self-identity and challenging yourself to sort of find your own authentic voice in that version of you.

Pedro Stein 9:46

Ah, interesting. I wonder why why the startups, I'm curious about that, Andrea. You know, uh you mentioned something that caught my attention at the start. You want to understand why people have their drives, their whys, you know, why they want to do X, Y, and Z. And the startups, uh, I'm just wondering why, why them? Why not uh other types of you know, founders? Why early stage venture-backed startups, XX?

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yeah, I actually asked myself that last uh last year. Um I have a friend who's in small business and uh and she said, Do you think your work is applicable to me? Do you think you could help me with you know the growth of my company? And at first I thought, how could it be? Right? Like it's I I work in such a isolated world of of you know pitch decks and you know, like uh a whole whole different world. And so I I tried, right? I I took on a coaching role with her and it was transferable. And I realized that I work on people, right, in leadership roles, but it's really I work on people, right? I create the the space for them to grow and build their confidence and their voice and their leadership and heal the parts of themselves that inhibit those things, and that it's actually quite transferable. The startup world is exciting to me because the progress goes so quickly, and so I get to be part of these sort of like rocket ships that are blasting forward, and and I think that that that disruption in in the world is enjoyable to me to be part of, but it the work is absolutely, it turns out, applicable across many different areas.

Pedro Stein 11:26

You know, on a side note here, my dad, uh he was a dean of a university here in Brazil, and they had this project, incubator project here, okay? And it was mainly startups, right? Tech side and all that. And he mentioned something that's one of the reasons I want to ask you. It's like he told me people in the startup world, they were so humble and they want to learn so much. It was so much easier talking with them comparing to his consulting firm that he ran privately, right? That that it was like almost like a breath of fresh air talking with people that are like the ones you're talking to, usually, and the ones he mentioned. Is that like is that a real? I don't want to label them as everyone who's like that, but is that a pattern you see happening? Like it's an easy conversation, they're coachable, and that caught your attention in any way.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah, they tend to be more relaxed in in who they are. They tend to be uh or or I guess then like a lot maybe in a large company executive, um, they tend to uh they tend to be more casual in the way that they approach their growth, which I think is is needed. A lot of this work requires you to be vulnerable. And if you are in a position where you can be, right? Um that's that's really the best way to do it. Uh I worked with a couple executives that were former Amazon executives or former um Yahoo executives, and there's an air of uh formality that they've learned that the startup executives don't have. And I enjoy working with with that.

Pedro Stein 13:02

Okay, yeah, I get you. I'm well, I'm using my executive hoodie here, so I'm I'm with those guys, obviously. Okay, well, oh no, I worked a student tie, but I I prefer to hootie, okay? No, moving forward, I'd love for us to do like a quick game of pretend, okay? I want to pretend I'm one of those cool guys, cool guys, chilled, you know, I'm one of your I'm your ideal kind of profile, you know, your avatar. Early stage, venture back, startup exec. Let's put it like that. So, first of all, how would I be able to find uh Morgan advising, you know, marketing-wise?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So I think that the first place that people go in the startup world, uh, it's a very community-based world. And so the first place that people go is through people they know, right? They're going to ask other founders, they're going to ask VCs that they know, right? They're going to ask their friends. And that has a lot to do with the fact that the community is very close-knit. So the majority of the people find me through referrals in that way. But I have had people that have just blindly found me on LinkedIn. And I always tell people when you find a coach, it's the coach client fit that matters. And so interview multiple. Do you know a discovery call, a trial session, right? With three. Two, three, and find out who do you feel like you can really push through your own internal spider webs with, right? That you're not trying to prove something to, that you're not trying to show a polished version to. Because if you feel like you need to put on that mask, then that's not the right coach for you.

Pedro Stein 14:42

Hmm, interesting. Okay. Now, still in the same game of pretend, okay? Let's say I was referred to work with Morgan advising. Someone told me, hey, you gotta meet Andrew. She's cool, she knows what she's doing. I'm like, okay, here we go. I reach out, right? I'm like, hey, Andrea, would love to know more. How does it look like to work with you and all of that? So we can speed up the sales process or not, okay, up to you. We can say there's alignment, but the real question I have for you is like, how does it look like to work with your business? Okay, a little pink behind curtain, and uh the outcomes I can expect.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah. So I tend to work, so I work entirely off of Zoom, so I can reach anybody from anywhere. Uh, and that gives me the benefit of getting to work with people all the way from Silicon Valley to Oregon. I have people, you know, talking to me. Uh, I usually do a weekly cadence of calls, and uh and we have sort of work in between that that you'll be doing. Um the outcomes are vast depending on what it is you're working on. We could be working on something tactical, which is, you know, how do I perform one-on-ones? How do I do a performance improvement plan for somebody who's failing? How do I fire a friend, right, who who helped me in this first early stage, right? I'm having I'm sideways on the vision with one of my co-founders, I'm sideways on roles, right? Um, right, those are all very tactical leadership things that we can work through. And then also we can work through um, you know, feeling like an imposter, right, in a in a sea of people that might feel like it knows they know what they're doing, right? We can work on um, you know, trust and how do you trust people to take on, you know, a role that you've had for a period of time, right? How do you delegate that out and how do you create that trust and environment with that? We can work all the way through to what are the biological problems that you have that are creating some sort of barrier in your life? Like how's your sleep, right? How are you regulating your blood sugar throughout the day? Are you eating? Do you have lunch, right? In in your day, because those can also impact the way that you're showing up emotionally, the way that you're showing up, you know, um cognitively, right? These are things that can impede you that are very easy fixes. Um, sleep is maybe a little bit more complicated, but most of the other ones we can really um tackle. And I I I tailor a lot of my work to what it is that you're working through. And startups go through uh sort of waves of of intensity, maybe, right? So maybe you're in the middle of a fundraise and we're working through, you know, sort of the tactics of, you know, how do I communicate with these investors or how do I, how much do I share with my team and the ups and downs? Or we could be working through things that are, you know, the emotional side of constant rejection, right? And how do you show up in a confident way when the entire fundraising process feels like a sea of rejection and you have an emotional response to that? So we work through sort of a tailored version of whatever it is that is holding you back to becoming your most authentic version of a leader for you.

Pedro Stein 18:00

Wow, okay. Oh, you know, I have intrusive thoughts, right? So when you mention how do I fire a friend, hey Andrew, how do I fire a friend, please enlighten me.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

This is tough, right? In the early stages of companies, um, I watch a lot of founders make the mistake of treating your initial team like it is a family, like you guys are, you know, the closest ever uh group of people. But families really don't break up. So over time as your company grows, that's not really how a family functions. And so shifting those relationships um to be more appropriate, right, in the workplace, like what is the closeness uh that is appropriate for it? Now, let's say you took a friend on, right, um, early and they're not scaling. Maybe they were great from zero to one, now you're in one to two, and they are not growing with you, right? How do you separate out the relationship, the friendship, or maybe preserve it, um, while also saying, hey, this is the not? And I say that you end up turning it into a sort of tour of duty approach, right? Which is thanking them for sort of this zero-to-one commitment, right? And the trust and you know, really connecting on the relational piece of what they have provided, and also shifting over to I think it's time for us to part ways this way, I want to preserve our friendship, right? And so I I think I think a large part of it is naming it and prioritizing it while also being okay saying, I think this portion of our of our relationship is closed or is closing.

Pedro Stein 19:36

Yeah, it makes sense. I I'm thinking about like I might be off here, but I'm thinking about performance reviews, right? Sometimes sending signals that something is off, people will connect the dots. You don't have to be like from zero to one hundred, and this is a relationship is over, right? We're not friends anymore.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

I cannot agree more. I do not think that firing should ever come as a surprise to anybody, right? Everybody should be should know where they stand, everybody should have the option to change, right? Unless they've crossed some sort of you know line, but should have the option to change and should understand that the door is maybe near before you exit it. A firing.

Pedro Stein 20:17

Yeah, you've got to send some signals. That makes sense. Okay. Now, um, your work seems like pretty hands-on, customized, you know, uh high touch, as you mentioned, not a cookie cutter. So I'm curious about one thing because I'm a coach as well. We already established that. And I see a lot of coaches out there. Sometimes they're burning, they're they're advocating against burnout but burning out themselves, right? Wearing all the hats. So, how do you think about capacity? So don't stretch yourself too thin. You know, you keep having your nights of sleep, eating properly, you know, everything you mention, but for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

So I think not just burnout, but across the board, you should be challenging yourself as a coach to grow in the same way that you challenge your clients to grow, right? You should be showing up to your business in the same way you challenge your clients to show up to their business, right? Like turn the table on yourself. Prioritize what matters the same way you would expect them to prioritize what matters. Right? Sort of the coach coach yourself through it and don't hold yourself to a different standard, right? You're not superhuman, right? You're not immune to the things that you're talking to people that you're you know, telling them they're not immune to. So for me, I uh preach a lot on, you know, sleep, right? Self-care, fun is not negotiable, right? You can't do hard things and also not be enjoying your life. And so I do that. So I I prioritize all of that. I also think that connecting with the passion and impact of your work regularly and understanding where where you're actually I would say like growing and learning and then applying it to it, I think is also really important. Um but putting yourself in the in the growth set and the growth mentality that you expect your clients to be in.

Pedro Stein 22:13

Gotta walk the talk, okay? Gotta practice what you preach. Got it. Now I'm curious about future, right? Uh you've been eight years in the game, and um where are you taking all this? You know, looking ahead, where do you see the business going? Are you thinking about scaling, hiring? Is there a next step you're excited about, Andrew?

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Yeah. So I think over the last years there's been an evolution in in me and my approach in in how I see this, and it's been influenced by all of the different people that I've had the honor to work with. And I think that in this next leg, I want to figure out how to articulate that and talk more about it so that the impact isn't so limited to my one-on-one coaching and that people who maybe aren't ready for coaching or can't afford coaching can sort of gain that, you know, that knowledge and and get a little bit of the benefits of coaching. I'd also like to expand beyond what I'm learning or sorry, what I'm using day to day. I have a lot of personal interest in the people that I'm working with, like what was done during human development, during, during their lives that created these extraordinary people who are incredibly ambitious and incredibly driven, right? What what was sort of the the push? Where does that come from? And and can we actually develop that in the next generation or develop that in uh in the the emerging, you know, the people in our society? Um is that repeatable or are these people just truly extraordinary?

Pedro Stein 23:41

Interesting. It sounds like you really you are really, really curious about what drives people to make certain types of decisions, right? The big ones. Interesting. Love that. Yeah, I'm curious too. Okay. Now, of course, whenever we're talking about you know, building something towards the next chapter, always something we're refining the present. So, what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Yeah. For me, I'm I'm definitely in a scaling time. I finally have the capacity to be able to grow, uh, grow my practice. So I'm I'm working on what that looks like in in a way that doesn't that doesn't burn me out, right? That still speaks to who I am, that still honors that that journey.

Pedro Stein 24:28

Okay. You know, I would love for us to step in into sci-fi territory right now, if you don't mind. Back to the comic book nerd, right? So we have a time machine in front of us. Um we're gonna have two stops, okay, Andrea. First stop, you can go back in time, eight years, when you started your business, right? Um, Morgan advising, and you can give yourself one piece of business advice you wish you knew back then that you know now, right? What would that be?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Don't compare yourself to others. Not in the way that you are, not in the stage in life that you're in, right? Stop looking out and start looking in.

Pedro Stein 25:11

You know, when you you say compare, I always think about social media, right? And how we sometimes, not that I do that often, but sometimes it happens I see people doing it's like comparing their inner selves to others, people's outer selves, like like their life's perfect, or oh, I have a for example, oh, there's a coach who's doing 20 million, right? And I'm not even close to that. And I'm like, oh my god, he's so successful, and I'm not, but you never know what's the overhead. It could be 19.9 million click funnels, you know. So it's I think comparison is the Tif of joy, right? At the end of the day, not sure if you agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

I completely agree with that. I think that comparison steals your confidence, right? Like I think I think that, and I think that confidence is the only thing that helps you build something authentic. And not this like artificial confidence that comes from, you know, uh achievement, right? But the confidence that comes from like really feeling grounded in the belief that you are going to be successful or the belief that you are are living completely in who you are. And I think that early on I I lived in my own version of imposter syndrome. And uh, especially in the startup world, not being like a founder, I felt like why would anybody listen to me, right? Why, why would this be a useful direction for me? And I think that I I would have appreciated, and who knows what whether or not I would have taken this advice, right? Or not, but I I I think that that person, that version of me would have benefited from the advice of really look inside, do the inner work, find your own confidence, and and don't pay any mind to where other people are or what they think of you.

Pedro Stein 27:04

Love it. Okay. Now, second stop, Andrea. Uh you can go back in time. And uh you might have several moments that pop up to your mind. I want to top of mine, okay? The one that really clicked. It's like it's like a moment in time between those eight years that you you you you were like, oh, this is why I'm doing this. You know, you felt so fulfilled when you started a journey that clicked for a moment. Not sure if it's a client testimony, I'm not sure if it's like something you were able to achieve by building your own practice, you know, freedom, whatever that looks like. But what moment would that be?

SPEAKER_01 27:41

So I think I've had a uh a lot of those moments over time are what kept me going in this, right? We're were sort of these moments where somebody said something. But just the other day I closed out a uh a long-term client. I'd been, we'd worked together for four and a half years, and uh and I said to him, you know, how do you feel on the coaching, right? How do you feel on this closeout? And he said, I I really feel like I could not have done this without you. And it made me feel so in the right seat, right? So valued for that contribution. Okay. And in moments I, you know, I think like everyone I question, right? I question, you know, my life or myself. Uh, but ultimately I know that I am doing the thing that it brings me the most purpose and brings me the most fulfillment when I hear things like that.

Pedro Stein 28:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

And that said, I do think he could have done it without me.

Pedro Stein 28:43

Well, I'm not sure. He told you the other way. Okay. Now I'm I'm very curious about one thing, okay? Specifically towards uh who you serve and and the startup world. Because whenever I'm talking, I'm thinking about startups, I'm thinking about new stuff, new ideas, you know, breakthrough ideas, risk. Those are the words that pop up to my mind. And whenever I'm talking about new stuff right now, I'm thinking about AI too, right? I know a lot of startups are doing that, not necessarily, but some are. So here's you, right? You're the person who helps the person behind the business idea. You're the one who's like helping leadership, right? You're helping them uh organize their whole body, like from sleeping to eating and all of that. So my question to you is how important is to look at that side of things, the one you serve, right? Comparing to what we're seeing people preaching about right now with the AI era, with you know, trying to replace people, uh, specifically in your industry, you know, um, is this still too relevant to ignore or are AI or is AI going to take over even in the startup world?

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Well, I think AI is absolutely uh infiltrating the startup world. Um, I don't think that similar to start smartphones or any other development of tech cars, right? Any other development of technology, um we can't stop it, but we can choose the relationship we have with it. And there is a lot of um AI fear, right? Uh fear that people won't adopt it quick enough, fear that it will replace different roles. And uh and I think both of those things will inevitably happen, right? We we absolutely will have people that don't adopt it well or don't adopt it quick enough. We will absolutely have jobs that uh that are no longer because AI is gonna take over. And I think the real challenge is figuring out how to keep going through the development of technology, this just being a new version of technology that is being developed in a way that you best can, right? Will your job be taken over? Probably. I thought about my job in coaching, right? Whether or not that will be taken over. And I think to some degree, potentially, right? It will also emerge new access to roles, right? The ability for somebody to take my ideas or or or use the things that I work on and replicate it through AI so that it can reach more people, right? The the fact that AI can um can listen to my sessions and then uh you know create takeaways and potentially in the future do additional coaching sessions based off of our initial session, right? I actually think that there's far more jobs that it will create and far more opportunities that it will create than it will limit. But the fear of what those are and that being unknown, I think is where people people don't usually like unknown. People do do, you know, relatively badly in uncertainty. And I think that this is an area of uncertainty that we all just need to embrace.

Pedro Stein 31:53

So it's almost like a hybrid approach. I had people like I talked in the space in the coaching space, but one of them uh he's he told me he was gonna replace coaches with a chatbot, basically, right? That's one. The second one was like, I'm gonna replace my entire team of 20 coaches with just AI. Um, I wonder the accountability. Well, first of all, the accountability, right? That's the one thing that I wonder if it's replaceable because sometimes showing up, right, and you're in front of them is one thing. It's different from like I can ignore um chat GPT notifications, but if Andrew is waiting for me, it's kind of a different vibe, at least for me. Maybe I'm off. The second thing is like he told me he was gonna gamify it, right? In a way. I'm not sure, man. I like that's that's the thing. Uh sometimes I think about the prompt of what we don't know what we don't know, right? You can call out your clients and stuff that they don't even realize they're doing wrong. And if you you have to insert data on Chat GPD to ask the right question sometimes. So if you're biased, you you're not gonna ask the right question. So, do you think that's totally doable to replace a coach like a hundred percent? I have my strong opinion on it, but I would love to do yours.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

So I think that the work coaches do is uniquely human. And I think there's a part of accountability that you're talking about, and there's also a part of human-to-human connection, right? That I think is not replaceable, at least not at the stage AI is right now. AI is incredibly validating. Um, it's difficult to get to get AI to challenge you in different ways, and it's difficult to get AI to I asked AI an ethical question recently, and it couldn't go both ways. It couldn't argue the other side. And the thing about a human is I don't have limitations like that, right? I can argue whatever side I want. And I think that there's a benefit for it being this role being uniquely human. I would love to see AI replace all my admin work. You know, I would like all of that to just disappear into the world of AI, right? Um, right, but yeah, I don't see it replacing the connection that I have with my clients, but I do hope that it impacts the reach.

Pedro Stein 34:12

Yeah, I saw this expert talking the other day. It was like the face-to-face uh interaction is gonna be like the last ones that's gonna be replaced, right? I think it's more about what you said, like the admin work, the low value tasks, the repetitive tasks. So yeah, and those we can get rid of it because I hate them too. I'm right there with you. Okay, okay, love that. Now, if someone listening and wants to connect with your follower work, and Andrea, we're gonna have all the links in the description, okay? But where can people find you best and connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

On LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to connect with me. Shoot me an email.

Pedro Stein 34:52

Okay. You know, there were a few moments from this conversation today that really stayed with me. Um I'm highlighting them as we speak right now. Okay. Uh, the first one is the origin story and how curious you are about what drives people, right? And I'm I'm I've been the entire episode thinking about it. Like, you got Timmy, he's five years old, and he knows he wants to be a firefighter. Come on, Timmy, how do you know that, right? I'm almost calling out Timmy here. Uh fun fact, uh, it's hard sometimes, right? When you realize some people out there have all figured out, and I haven't figured out sometimes some stuff. And I think most of us didn't, right? But what drive them to that certainty of sometimes making those decisions is something that really, you know, uh really gets me curious as well. So I'm right there with you. Um, love the fact how honest you were about that the coaching side was almost felt like a fake job. I love fake job. I love that term. It's like because it is what it is, right? It's not it feels like when you're so used to a boxed-in career, a way to go to do things and blah, blah, blah. And oh, that's my career, the letter, I'm gonna up here in the letter, I'm gonna be successful and all that. Following the plan, right? And then you wanna pull the plan and you're like, oh my god, this is there's light at the end of the tunnel. And to me, it felt like a fake job as well, too, for a certain period. I just haven't found the right words. But thank you for for giving me those, okay? Like that. Uh, I love the fact why you're so inclined to work with startups, too. Like the main reason, at least the one I picked up on, was that they are more relaxed. They're more, I want to say coachable. It didn't say coachable. You were like, they're more open, they want, they have this growth mindset. Uh at the end of the day, not so formal. And I hate formal, man. I worked with a formal scenario industry, blah, blah, blah, like consulting banking. It's boring. And I love to have real talk with real people, you know, so I'm right there with you as well on the startup guys. And uh last but not least, I would say is like, don't compare, right? I think comparison, it it is the the thief of joy, the thief of joy, right? If we compare ourselves, it's impossible to be happy because we are always having a new benchmark that it's sometimes unachievable, second, sometimes not even reality. It's just something we came up with as an idea of reality for someone else, and we don't even know. They might struggle, right? And we're not even aware of it. So this is just my long-winded way of saying, Andrea. I appreciate what you do, and I appreciate it being here and sharing so openly today. It was great having you on.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Thank you. It was great chatting.

Davis Nguyen 37:44

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 through 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, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you end your business.