Simon and Katie are joined by Jillian Johnsrud a public speaker, podcaster, coach, and mentor to discuss how to get started in coaching and finding everyday courage.
Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present.
The red button is on. We’re live. We’re live on Facebook, with the outstandingly fabulous Katie Coombs. And the brilliantly wonderful Jillian johnsrud. All the way from Montana in America, which sounds like a big deal except you haven’t actually travelled anywhere, of course is through the wonders of modern technology. Julian, you’re in your office, aren’t you? Tell us about your office.
This is my new to me office slash old to me, camper that I travel with my five kiddos all around the country. But during shelter in place when my kids are home from school, and I don’t have an office, this is where I’m at now.
I think it’s fabulous. So just as people jump on the live stream, I’m just going to just check in make sure that it’s all good. It looks like we’re live. It’s fantastic. There’s a bunch of people watching already. We’ve got Russell Emma, humble Penny, Ken is watching Chad Hale, who I know you’ve met Chad is from California. So we’ve got a bunch of people joining us. I’m going to read out something from your website, Julian, because I think it’s new information to me. I mean, I kind of knew some of your story. But I’m just gonna read this because I think this is absolutely phenomenal. So your website talks about, you had $55,000 worth of debt when you were 19. From credit cards, student loans, medical debt, but you had some big dreams wanted to take mini retirements, you travelled, you paid off all of your debt travelled to 27 places different countries, you lived abroad for four years, took five mini retirements, adopted some children had some of your own children paid cash for your first home, and became financially independent at 32. Now, yeah, I know, yeah, I can tell by the look on Katie’s face, we’re both wondering what on earth we’ve been doing with our life for one of the things that you’ve achieved, which is phenomenal. And I know we’re gonna dive into that, and Jack’s gonna put a link to your website at the bottom. And it’ll be just a bit like, I, I don’t know what to start. I’m so excited. This is fantastic. So, Julian, you’re a coach. And you’re specialised in, in people’s financial planning, career transitions and helping them start and grow their own small business, if I got that, right, or is there a different aspect? Cool. Yeah,
that’s, I’m kind of I think, like a lot of people, I have a few different interests. And I like variety. And so I kind of picked those three areas where maybe conventional wisdom would say, just pick one thing, and go all in. I get bored, easy. So I like to mix it up.
And how long have you been doing the coaching thing? Jen, it’s I want to dive into this. So something that you mentioned on the email to me earlier on. And I know is of interest that lots of people watching. We wanted to dive in a little bit into the journey that you went through. What made you want to become a coach? And who gave you permission to do that, Julian?
Yeah. Oh, okay. So real honest moment, why I wanted to become a coach. And I say that because it’s a little bit embarrassing by sometimes we have these motivations. And that stem from our childhood, and I just say just go with it. Like, it can be like an itch that just feels really good to scratch. And so growing up, I actually became really inspired by Oprah. Like, I refer to her as anti Oprah, in my own mind. But just this idea that like we have agency that we can change, and we can grow, and we can take actions and make something different of our life. But growing up, there was a whole bunch of people in my life that I really, really cared about, that didn’t have that same belief that didn’t, you know, maybe as a kid, I wanted them to change but they didn’t want to change or I thought they could change but they didn’t believe they could change and I just had all of this pent pent up desire of like, I really want people to be able to grow and to change and see the agency and to take action. And it never really came to fruition. And so to some degree, my adult life is is letting that come to fruition to give other people the help and the gift that I really wish people from my childhood would have. Had someone gives them
a very nice, I’ve experienced some of your coaching firsthand. I’m sure we’ll dive into this at some point during the next hour, we had an emotional hour and a half or so chat about it was about a year ago, most of the day or I think, and I’m curious to know, and I think lots of people would be really interested to know from you. You know, did you go through a learning programme? Did you? Did you take a qualification? Or did you decide to go down your own path? You know, what was the those early days of when you were, you know, getting ready to start coaching? What did that look like and feel like for you.
So, I would say that, like a lot of coaches, it is we’re very internally motivated towards it. And we constantly seek it out. So I always loved to teaching, I always raised my hand to do that. I loved training people, I love to coaching people. So I became that person, at every job, I became the person who trained people who coached them. And eventually, that meant I managed people and I managed teams, and I was in charge of hiring. And then eventually, when I was, eventually when I was 22, I started at the job I was at, I did the PR, professional development plans for all of the employees. That was one of my tasks. And it was one of the first times that I my first kind of big aha moments, because I did these plans. The employees love them. They’re like, this is fantastic. The people at corporate were like, these are great plans, and worked in a corporate environment. This might not surprise you. But nobody even batted an eye, that 95% of them didn’t work. Like they were totally unconcerned that these were totally ineffective plans. They were like, it’s a great plan. So I started to realise how sometimes good plans fail. I wonder why that is? Like, if I’ve given you a fantastic plan, Why isn’t it coming to fruition? And in that job, I realised it was more than that. I was creating a plan based on this kind of corporate structure. But there was a huge disconnect with these individuals deep motivations, their deep values, their desires for their life, there was no, there was no check on that forum. To add any of this to the plan. It was just a corporate professional development plan. And so that was kind of my first oh, here’s why this isn’t working moment. And then I transitioned, I became a youth pastor. And I was like, perfect, okay, I’m going to take all of this that I’ve learned in the corporate environment, and now I’m going to work with like people and I get to add in like, things, they care about their values and their motivations. And this will be fantastic. And most of those plans fail, too. So this was like 24. But I realised, it’s great if you have that part. But you also have to be willing to address the challenges and the fears, and the hesitations and what’s actually holding people back and at 24, I just wasn’t equipped are ready, or emotionally intelligent enough to have those conversations.
Great stuff. I just as you were chatting, then it made me think of, I know, you get asked very regularly about about starting coaching businesses, and I’m just gonna invite people that are watching the live stream, we’ve got a whole bunch of people watching us that maybe they have a question. We’ve got people from Russia, as well as America, and Africa and across the UK, which is super cool. If you have any questions about about your own small business, about starting a coaching business, if you have any questions specifically about money, because if you missed the start of this that Jillian was financially independent at the the very senior age of 32. Maybe you have some questions about money, too. So please do stick any questions that you have in the thread we’re going to plough on for now because I know that Katie, I wanted to bring you in because in January of this year, I think it was on your birthday, Jillian, wasn’t it you launched the everyday courage podcast. And you had some phenomenal results when you launched in terms of rankings of podcasts. And you launched it in partnership with Chuza phi of course, where we’ve got the rebel entrepreneur podcast that we’ve just launched. And I know that Katie’s listened to your episodes and I was excited to go I get to chat to Gillian because I feel like I know her already. Kate, what stuff has dumped into your mind as you because you either you’ve actually conceived Julian as well as error voice, well,
I’m starstruck first of all, because I’ve been listening to Julian, in my headphones. And now I’m kind of on my screen. I’m next to her. And so he sounds really weird. It seems really, I’m kind of like I’m a bit shy. And I don’t know what to where to look, because it feels like I’m next to somebody really famous. But I do. There was one something I, there was part of your podcast, and I don’t know which episode it was. And I was sweeping the kitchen. And it was a random to him in January, and you were talking about rating different parts of your life and a mediocre, mediocre areas of your life. So when things are maybe eight or nine or 10, you tend not to take any action around them. Because it seems to be going quite well. And you’re aware of that. When things you know, whatever it is friendships, relationships, health, whatever part work, when it’s a one or two, then you’re aware that it’s going to be crap. And so maybe you’re paying attention to that thing, no need to do something. But you absolutely got me. And I was like, Yeah, I get that you got me when you went. And those things that may be a five or six out of 10 the mediocre things are things that you think are okay. That’s what I want you to think about. And I stood there in the middle of our kitchen for good 10 minutes, I sat down at the table. And I was thinking, Oh, God, there’s lots of bits of my life, which were a bit mediocre. You know, there’s lots of really good things I need to sort out but there’s quite a bit this mediocre, and I don’t think about them, because I think what’s all right, I’m doing all right. I do the grateful thing all the time. I need to be grateful for that. That’s really good and trying to find the good in things. And you ABS I’ve never even heard of thinking about your life like that before. You stopped me dead. From that moment. I was like, Wow, I’m gonna listen to this. This. I was gonna say this girl, which is really, really patronising but nearly came out. So I’ll just fess up to it. This person, Julian, and I’ve listened to a season one. I’m not going to the next bit. Yeah, but I’m still on Season One. And I I love your podcast, I left a review. And I’ve never ever put a review in a podcast before. And if I’m quite honest, I’ve very rarely listened to podcasts. Oh, yeah, you’ve changed it for me. So that’s why I’m all a bit sort of awestruck?
Oh, perfect. Did you finish sweeping the kitchen? Katie, that was what went through my mind.
Now I left it was fine. I kind of left it.
I think I completely understand where you’re coming from. I experienced one of those 10 minutes silence moments about this time last year, when I was sat in a room with Jillian. And we talked about splashing about in the pool as a metaphor for dealing with difficult things. And leaning in and like we’re going to get into some of this stuff, because I know Jillian wants to talk about that. And I’m going to deny most of what she’s about to say. But we’ve got a couple of questions that have come in. The first is that Kerry was interested in in what you coach, what’s your specialties, and I mentioned it at the start, but it’d be really nice to hear in your own words. Jillian, what you specialise in. And then just as a follow up to that, is that Oliver has put in the comment. He’s interested in the term he’s picked up the term grow the gap. He really wants you to elaborate on that. And what what you mean by that. So if you could talk to those two things for a couple of moments, that would be bad.
Yeah, so I tend to specialise in three basic areas. One is people’s personal finances, especially if people feel really overwhelmed. And kind of their relationship with money is a relationship filled with anxiety or fear or frustration. Every time they sit down to engage with their money. It’s not like, Oh, this is like my favourite way to spend a Friday night. I love doing this. it conjures up some other things. Because I feel like money can be fairly simple. It’s not. I’ve been helping my sixth grader with math. Oh, my gosh, sixth grade math is so much harder than personal finance, like I can’t figure it out. But oftentimes, our relationship with money is what creates all of that confusion and conflict. So I do that. And I also because I have made a lot of career transitions. I’ve taken a lot of mini retirements, I did retire early and kind of part of this fire movement, a financial independence, retire moving, retire early. I help a lot of people with job transitions. So if you’ve kind of feel stuck in a job, but you have kind of this dream and this goal, and you’ve been really good with your money and you want to leverage some of that financial freedom that you’ve created to be able to make a change. I kind of help people walk through that change. And I work in entrepreneurship. People were kind of wanting to take this thing they’re passionate about and turn it into income. So it’s oftentimes service providers. And so like therapy or massage therapists or other coaches or anyone who kind of runs a service based business. Okay, so those were the three things. And the other question was grow the gap. So in part of my money is somewhat simple, my six word financial planning advice is you have to guard the gap. And you have to grow the gap. And the gap is the difference between your expenses and your income. So you want to make that wider. For some people, their greatest area of opportunity is increasing their income. For other people, their greatest area of opportunity is decreasing their expenses. But you want to make you want to grow that space in between your income and your expenses. And then you want to guard that gap. And guarding oftentimes looks like starting to invest, maybe starting to invest in a business starting to invest in stocks or real estate or paying down your debt, or starting to save for that next big purchase. But anything that you’re doing to put towards kind of a long term or short term goal, or debt payoff, is guarding the gap versus being like, oh, my gosh, I like an extra 500 bucks a month now. Sweet. I’m gonna like, we’re gonna go on vacation that’s spending the gap, which sometimes can be fun, but trying to guard the gap.
Okay, yeah. Nice. I think I’m curious that you seem to have discovered the different way of thinking about money and behaving with money, that most people take a long time to either discover or never discover it at all, because we don’t get that kind of education. How come you discovered this at such a young age? Is is that was that a reaction against? Oh, my God, look at this debt I’ve built up and I’m not even 20 yet. You know, how did you discover the fire movement? Did you do it by accident yourself to begin with and then found fire later? Or was it the other way around?
Yeah, I am. As most things that I’ve learned. And I learned because I had to, I learned because how I grew up and where I grew up in this situation just wasn’t productive. To get me to my goals. It was unhelpful to get me where I wanted to go. And so it was figuring out why that was figuring out what was broken, what wasn’t working, what mindsets or ideas weren’t helpful. And then constantly testing that in my own life. But because I am by nature, a coach and a teacher and a helper, testing that with other people, you know, I remember my very first coaching client, I was 25, so 12 years ago, and she had a good income, and she had good savings. And like, I explained the concepts, and it just didn’t work. And I was like, no, wait a minute, like, I explained this very clearly, like, why is this not working? So most of the things I discovered was through failing a lot, thinking, Oh, this is easy. I’ll just explain it and it not working at all, and then going Hmm. Well, I wonder why that didn’t work. And just staying curious. And figuring out that most people’s financial mistakes comes from some of its lack of education. But I think that’s like 3% of it. Most of it is how we relate to money. Because our actions are driven by the thoughts that we think and the emotions that we feel, creates our habits, you know, which is actions repeated, but that’s what drives all of our actions. You feel hungry, you eat, you think, Oh, I’m late for work, and you hurry out the door. And if your thoughts and your emotions towards something like money, are not helpful for you to take the actions you need to take, you’re probably not going to do it. So we really have to kind of peel back that layer and figure out what those things are so that the education piece can actually take root.
Are you by me who thought
I was on then?
Do you write Did you write that down? That’s a really good. That’s a great point, isn’t it? Because Because we often talk about that a pop up, we could give you the best business education in the world. In fact, we believe that we do, but you’re not necessarily going to take the medicine you’re not necessarily going to follow those steps. If your thoughts and your actions are not congruent with that stuff. And actually, you know, fear is a fear is a key one, isn’t it? That prevents us from from taking the steps that we need to take and I think one of the things that’s really struck me about the fire movement recently is that how I used to think was if I wanted to, if I wanted or needed to make more money, I’ll just create the side hustle, you know, level up the business, get a bigger job, and that’s where the extra money was gonna come from. But without realising, of course, that it doesn’t matter how big the job was, or how successful the business was, I wasn’t guarding what you call guarding the money and the gap never seem to get any bigger. In fact, it just seemed to overlap more than the, you know, the more money that was spent. So I’m interested in, in that stuff for sure. So, you know, when someone comes to you, Julian, and I know that some of the people you work with are already in a good place financially. And but but if someone came to you in their in a, in a, in a pickle with money, and they’re in debt, where do you start with that you say to people, look, let’s have a look at the money? And will we need to dial back the debt before anything happens? Or? Or do you look at running things in tandem? And help people think about investing whilst they’ve got debt? You know, what, what do you think about that stuff?
So I actually, they’re going to come back to a really basic understanding of finance. So we can examine what are the other biases, thoughts and emotions that are around kind of nine basic steps. So they’re in groups of three. The first one is tracking, you have to track your income, you have to track your expenses, and you have to track your net worth. And just that action creates a lot of a story and a lot of emotion, oftentimes. So I tend to work with people who are fairly good earners. But sometimes their personal finances a mess. And kind of like you their solution has been, I’m just going to out earn this problem. I’m just going to earn more.
That’s my strategy. Yeah, for sure. Because typically,
higher earners feel really competent, and felt really successful in their work. And when we start tracking their income, and their network, and their expenses, they don’t feel that they that self talk, and that emotion is confusion. It’s frustration, it’s shame, it’s embarrassment. It’s like, How can I be so smart and so successful in this area of my life, and have made such a bleep and mess? Over here? I don’t even know what I’m spending. How can like a smart, competent person have dropped the ball so badly? How could it be in all this debt? And so if that’s your kind of thought, and your emotion, of course, you’re not gonna do that on a Friday night? Like, why would you lean towards that. And there’s a really important concept that this is true in entrepreneurship, or our money is we have to separate out discomfort from danger. Because kind of, like you talked about Simon, a lot of people experience fear and entrepreneurship, that discomfort, it is healthy and safe and normal to pivot away from danger. If you’re in danger, you should move away from it. But our brain reads those two, the same, it feels all this discomfort, and it thinks this is danger, I should pivot away from it, I shouldn’t engage with my finances, I shouldn’t call that client, I shouldn’t start this business. But recognising this discomfort. And occasionally, it’s really, really healthy to lean into discomfort. And so then we start to create different data points, because of your experience, like managing your money has always created all of this shame and frustration. We sit down and I just do it together. Okay, we’re gonna go through your expenses together. And then at the end of the column, like, how was that there? Like, it was okay. And that’s the first new data point, that now we can create a different story, that I can spend time with my money, I can track my expenses. And you know what, it’s okay. It was a little uncomfortable, but I got through it, and it wasn’t too bad. And the more of those data points you create, you can reshape that story and those emotions around it. Do you
do you? Do you have any tips or advice for people who want to become financially independent with children? Because I know you have five children? That’s correct. And the unpredictability of children as well, as well as events. I mean, somebody said to me years ago, that when you have children, you they destroy your life, and then they build you a new one. And you get used to the new one. And of course, you know, everyone has a different experience, but the richness of the love you have for your children and everything it brings in family life. But do you have any tips around having children because it’s sometimes it’s just unpredictable costs and unpredictable things happen and also the amount of time that they take in your life and how you prioritise your children’s well being of your own many times, obviously, because you know, everything is about helping them get started in life, you put yourself maybe second or third.
And it’s such a big question. I would say and this is true for kids or other things if you have things are more unpredictable, you have to have a larger gap, you just have to have more margin in your life. So what worked for you before, might not work any longer. The basic underlying theme is like what got us from point A to point B might not take us to point C, and we need to reevaluate that. So a lot of people can run lean and fast and loose in their 20s, they don’t have a spouse, they don’t have kids, they can like, spend down to their last dollar and then get paid the next day, and it’s okay. And that works for them for that season of life. It does not work when you have kids, you need a lot more margin. And, and that’s it’s true. Anytime you have anything that can have unpredictable expenses, like a house, or a lot of vehicles are gonna break down, you’re gonna have these unexpected expenses. And oftentimes, with clients, I’ll ask, you know, what, if they have all this debt? What was the challenge, like what what caused this to occur, and oftentimes, it’s like, unexpected expenses. And they think it was that thing. But if you peel back a layer, it was more that there wasn’t margin, or wasn’t planning for the fact that there’s going to be unexpected expenses. Because they were running at like, our expense, our fixed expenses hit all of our income. So anything unexpected becomes debt.
I’m going to rename my kids as when I introduce them to people, I’m going to say these my unexpected expenses or children actually, in our house, unexpected expenses. I love that. Yeah, there’s definitely some unexpected expenses, but some expected ones, too. When you talk about planning, Jillian, how long? How long do you encourage people to think forward? I guess there’s different tactics that you can use? Because I think one of the things that Alan said to me a while ago, which really stuck with me is that if you haven’t got a, an emergency fund, things tend to go wrong, I don’t know. But if you have got an emergency fund, whatever that number might look like, I’d be curious to know if you’ve got a rule of thumb on on what that emergency fund is? Yeah. So that’s it. I got it in there as a question about planning and about what the timeframe is, and what emergency funds might look like for you.
emergency funds there, again, I think, should be based on how many unexpected expenses can you have. So like, if you own a house, there can be a lot of big unexpected expenses where if you rent, not as much you might have to move might be an unexpected expense. But so that’s part of it. Part of it is how much of a gap Do you have, because if you have a really big gap, that is just a delightful buffer to cover up a multitude of unexpected expenses. And so some people can get by on a small emergency fund, which I would say is like in that maybe three months of kind of their basic costs. Some people and I know a lot of early retirees, we tend to keep one to three years worth of expenses in cash. Because we spend all of our income because we’re only pulling the income that we need typically. And there’s a lot of variables with the stock market and rental income and all of that. So that’s kind of typical sleep easy. And I think as an aunt, if you’re an entrepreneur, there again, you should have a little bit higher of an emergency fund especially if your business isn’t very diversified. There’s kind of one way you make money then that’s your the very similar risk of a nine to five employee that either you have a job or you don’t have a job
because at the moment for us, we’re burning through our emergency fund at a great rate. Now obviously lockdown as we’re calling it, though, I like Shelter in Place sounds much more exciting. Lockdown has we’ve realised and realise how much we’re spending on stuff that we didn’t need. So we do the spreadsheets and we go through it and then we kid ourselves a little bit you know and look away possibly, and then it which really made us focus because we’re not you know, we’re not even a petrol so we’ve got no we’re not driving anywhere. So we’re saving a fortune on petrol. So we’re reevaluating do we need two cars now? So it’s taking the just being on lockdown has made us rethink how cheaply we can live. And really how much we’re quite, you know, we’re very lucky. So we’ve kind of been enjoying this this phase, and how much fun we’re having by I’ve been in the park pain. I mean, I can hardly walk. I’ve been in the park, playing football for three hours and had just the time of our lives. I can barely hobble downstairs. Yeah, who would normally do that? You know, at 350 pounds at the cinema and we’ll all be there with popcorn watching something we don’t like. And actually we’ll just come with the ball was burst to be honest, and we still had a great time. And it didn’t cost anything. So it’s made his reevaluate and made life which was simple. And we are still burning cash because we’re not earning. But I don’t know what the point was. But anyway, there it is just just said stuff.
That is a great though it’s a great thing to be mindful of is that we have all been thrust into this unplanned unrequested experiment. And we’re creating all of these new data points that can reshape how we think and feel about our spending and how we’re spending our money and how we’re spending our time and what we actually enjoy. And what we’re now fully convinced that we don’t enjoy. So in this process, trying to stay really open and really curious, and take in all of that information. So you can decide what you want life to look like when things move forward to their new normal. Because we probably, you know, we never get to go back. We aren’t going to go back to normal, we just move forward. So what do you want that forward to look like?
Love that. I wonder if you’re we’ve had a couple of questions, Julian that I was going to dive into in a second. So folks, please post your questions. If you’ve got anything you’d like to ask Julian about starting and growing a incredibly successful coaching business, launching a podcast that makes the top 10 on on iTunes, I forget what the ranking was, but it was a phenomenal result. In the first week. Julian, what did it reach? What was there?
Yeah, in self help. And it was yeah, it was like seven and eight and 10. And it kind of bounced around there with some of my, my favourite podcaster. So it was fun. It felt like it felt like renting a vacation house. So you get like you go away on on holiday. And you’re like, Oh, I really like this. This is fantastic. What if one day we bought a house here? And then you go home? And you start scheming? How could we? How could we be there more often? How could we be there permanently? I very much liked that spot on on this show. So
excellent bragging rights for that. It’s phenomenal. So if you’ve got questions about podcasting questions about starting and growing a coaching business, questions about money and career transition, I’m going to ask a question about how to decide when you’ve got multiple ideas as to which direction to go in because I think we had a really rich conversation about that which I which I think we should share with everybody. Before we go there. Jillian, a question from Emma. Emma is in the early stages of launching her coaching business. And she’d love to know how you started up and found your audience and found your clients. I think there may be a niching question buried beneath that that which is quite tough for many coaches, isn’t it to choose where to focus in terms of where are those clients coming from? What was that process like for you in the early days? And how did you decide the direction to head in?
Yeah, I started, I originally started writing. And, and it was out of that blogging that I kind of started like this online coaching business. But like I said, it had always been, it always been kind of mixed in with my DNA. So I’d always done public, like public teaching and like talks, and I’ve done some coaching just in my community and my circle of friends. And I think that that’s how you kind of start one of my general, general life rules, is it confidence and clarity comes through doing. So if you don’t feel like you have a tonne of confidence, or if you don’t have a tonne of clarity around an idea, just start doing it. And in the process of doing it and testing it and scaling it. That’s how you figure everything out. That’s how you figure out what you like to teach. That’s what you figure out what works, what doesn’t work. That’s how you can iterate and make things better. So oftentimes, with new coaches who are like, just trying to get started, I just encourage find your first three. If even if they’re free clients, even if they’re discounted clients, just start with those first three, because you’re gonna learn you’re gonna learn about yourself about your strengths, about your skills, about your weaknesses, about the market about what’s most helpful for people. My general kind of go to phrase is I have an hour, maybe I can help. And I tried to say that when I first started, I tried to say it twice a day. Because I think you just have to do that 1000 times, call it 1000 seeds. I have an hour maybe I can help. I don’t know if I can But maybe, but I have an hour for free for you. So I call it a seat. And it’s very small and specific, it’s an hour, not I will coach you for a year. Not, you can have my entire Saturday, but I’m an hour. And because you don’t have that confidence and that clarity yet you say maybe I can help. I don’t know if I can help. And I help people do things. So far outside of my expertise. So far outside of my skill set, I’m not making any promises here, I said, I’ve got an hour, maybe I can help. And usually that gives you a few things. It tells you what people think you can help with. It tells you what they want help with. It tells you what you enjoy helping with. And at the end, you say what was most helpful, and then you figure out what actually was most helpful for that person. And those four pieces of information, shape your business going forward.
I think that’s lovely advice. It’s almost inoculates you against the fear of getting started, doesn’t it go, I don’t know if I can help this person or not. And lots and lots of coaches at different stages that I’ve been coached myself. And I know that that that fear of i, what happens if I get a client and it doesn’t go very well. And I don’t know how to help them. Then what do I do? You know, did you go through those emotions, Julian? Or did you did your process of maybe I can help I have an hour, maybe I can help did that. Did that protect you from those sort of fears?
It definitely helps. Because you’re not talking yourself up or making any hard promises. I think everyone struggles a little bit with imposter syndrome syndrome. And against that, I had to develop the mindset. And it’s what I encourage other people is that you don’t have to be the most expert expert. Because whenever someone thinks about being your coach, they go, Oh, but like, I’m not the best. I’m not the smartest, I’m not so and so or so. And so. And guess what none of us are. I’m not the most expert expert. Simon’s not the most expert expert, I bet you could name three people that you’re like, they’re smarter than me. They know more, they’re more accomplished, they have more experience.
Yeah, to them on this on this
was my line that was my line.
And so there’s two things here. One, it makes no sense for their only to be one person who can help other people in the world. And this is true for anything there. I mean, the world needs more than one graphic designer, the world needs more than one chef. Because they don’t have the bandwidth, and you can’t afford them. So like, it’s okay, if you’re not the most expert, expert. And but then the other side of that is, there’s things specifically about you, your story, your voice, your perspective, your experience, your circle of influence, that’s going to connect with people and resonate with people and be more effective than the person who’s actually the more expert expert, for sure.
For sure. I love this expression. I’m going to steal this as a wonderful breaking news. We are not the most experts, experts. And that’s okay, Jillian, you just reminded me actually that conversations with you are very, very dangerous. Because with each sentence that comes out of your mouth, there is less excuses for any of us to make this progress and get started and get things going, which I think is testimony to some of your skill. And we’ve got a couple more questions I wanted to dive in on one from Helen Lawson. Helen is a well being expert, and she’s doing well being stuff in the workplace. I know that this question is going to resonate with you. And I know that you would have been on your own journey with this. It’s to do with with pricing. She said how do you know your own value? When you’re charging for a service business, I still really struggle with this as a workplace well being trainer, and now branching into being a consultant. And she says I still feel a bit of a fraud using that term. So there’s that I think you’re the imposter syndrome that you talk to is is very real for Helen right now. But how do you know your own value? How do you know what you know how to charge and, and having the confidence to charge buoyant prices for the stuff that you do? What’s that journey been like for you?
Yeah, I, I actually flip kind of the conventional wisdom upside down on this because the conventional wisdom is like know your worth, know your value, charge what you’re worth. But I kind of feel like not all of my time is worth the same. I spend my time on a lot of different things. And I can’t charge everybody for all of those things like I’m a pretty mediocre gardener. I can’t charge the same for that skill set as I can for other things. So I think it’s much easier to charge them value of the transformation you’re creating for that specific person. So it’s less about me, because if it’s about me, we get stuck on like, am I worth that much? Like? Should someone pay me that much and more about what kind of transformation we’re recreating for other people, and what is it worth to them specifically. So it depends on your audience. And here’s the best part, you get to pick your audience, you might have an audience, you’re the same, you, you provide the exact same skill, if I provided some in my financial coaching, if I coached single moms who are on welfare, I give them my exact same training, I can’t charge the same amount. Because for them, it’s when they don’t have the they don’t have the money, but it’s less, there’s less ROI for them. Because I can, we can shift the needle a little bit, but I can’t do magical things, where I could take my exact same skill set. And I could help, like I said, typically help kind of high earners, if I’m doing real personal finance stuff, who feel a little stressed out by their money. I can do high IRR, i roi things for them, the amount of money they pay me, they will get back 510 100 fold in their net worth. And so it’s a no brainer for them. So I think you have to put it more on who you’re helping. And if you feel like Man, this client base I’m working with, it’s just not that valuable for valuable for them. Pick different customers, pick someone who it is, the amount of money you want to make is a fantastic deal for that person.
So you saying that in that you charge different rates for different people?
No, I’m saying I pick the people that I work with, based on the rate that makes sense in my business. Okay. Godin has a great one. I love Seth Godin. He is an expert expert. I am not Seth, we just read and study the expert experts. But he has this great kind of his book. This is marketing. It’s one of my favourite marketing books. But he goes into that idea in detail of like, how you get to pick your quadrant of the marketplace marketplaces are big, there’s lots of options. Pick the one that you feel competent, and pick the one that is exciting for you pick the one that pays you what you want to get paid. Pick the one that will gain the most traction, but you get to pick it. And if you don’t like your client base, like a different client base.
Yeah, nice. I think the thing that was going through my mind as you were chatting then was when you mentioned Seth Godin reminded me of the Icarus deception. And let’s just talk for a moment, we’ve got a couple of questions, I’m going to get to the questions in a moment, someone’s asking a question about the blog, and about how you made money from that and what that was like. But just before we go there, Julian, when you’re when you’ve got lots and lots of ideas, and there’s a whole bunch of very creative people watching, and they get paralysed. They, when I say they, I mean me, as well as others, we get paralysed when it’s when we’re trying to choose an idea, or figure out which direction to go in. And I think we, you know, I’ve got this history of, you know, going into a creative project with loads of energy, a burn like phosphorus three days later, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be a burnout, go back onto something else. And for years, I’ve been going around this cycle of dipping into creative projects. Meanwhile, running the day job and you know, running pop up and before pop up, you know, the sort of the jobs that I was doing before. How do you help people and maybe it’d be useful to dive back to that conversation that we had, what was the thing that was going on, when you were coaching me this time last year, figuring out where to lean? And you’re talking about leaning in as your as your expression? Could you talk to that? Maybe for a few minutes? Julian? Yeah, so
there’s a few different things there. Um, but kind of dialling back into what the basic structure of coaching is. It’s typically, and I always recommend some type of coaching, if you want to get outside of your comfort zone, or outside of your expertise. Like, for that purpose, you need a person and you did a process. And so, and those are two different things. Both of them can be in coaching, but coaching can be one or the other, not necessarily both. So in our conversation, it was wasn’t a process. I didn’t say, okay, Simon, here’s the game plan. Here’s how you have to set up your marketing, here’s like all the steps you need to take and like, there was no process, it was the person. And as the person, the job is to stay really curious, it’s to pay really close attention is to ask questions that the other person might not ask themselves, and to slowly notice patterns, and to notice motivations, to understand their motivations, and to understand what’s holding them back. And that person side of coaching is more about this premise. And this belief that people are smart, and they’re creative, and they’re resourceful and they’re capable, and it’s in them. It’s maybe discombobulated, it’s maybe kind of all mixed together and covered, but it’s in them. And our job is to kind of help I call it certain Dig, dig through some of the clutter, sort things out, so that they can find their clarity, and their confidence. And so that’s the person side, if you need a person in a process, you need a person who can do that. So if you find yourself in patterns that are unhelpful for your goals, you might need a person to help you sort that out. And they don’t have to be don’t have to be the most expert expert. There’s a lot of different people, it could be a super smart friend, it could be like a really emotionally intelligent coworker, or spouse or therapist or coach or like mentor, like, there’s lots of different people who possess that skill set and have worked on that skill set. But you need someone outside to kind of see that, because we’ll just hold a spin our wheels will run around in circles all day long, and never get anywhere.
Could I ask you have you had training? Is there a type of training or certification for coaches? How does that whole area work?
Yeah, there’s a lot of different programmes out there. I encourage people, I always have a bias towards simplicity. And I always have a bias towards action. So there again, in that 1000 seeds, I’m an hour, maybe I can help start with your first three clients start with your first 10 clients. And then once you realise what you need, go get the thing that you need. Oftentimes, preparation is another form of procrastination. I see a lot of people procrastinate either through perfection, or through preparation, man, they will spend years preparing, because they’re scared to start. But if you just start, you’ll figure out, ah, this is this is the book I need to read. This is the class I need to take this is the course I need to take this is a person I need to work with. That becomes clearer if you’re on the journey, doing the work. So my bias is always word simplicity. It’s always toward towards action. I would say get started and then. And then the teacher will appear you’ll find the person or the course or the book that you’re like, yep, that’s exactly what I need.
Yeah, I love that. Because of course, you don’t really know necessarily what you need until you get going to you and it’s that sort of that vicious cycle. Jillian, before we go on to the blog question. The other thing that was on my mind When we chatted and I think this was this was some of the presenting that you were doing at the Chautauqua conference last year, which which really resonated with me you have a word dysregulation, which Henry from the pop up team uses regularly now blessing that. Yeah, this is a really nice way we didn’t understand it to start with, but you had a lovely metaphor of splashing around in the deep end of the pool. And I know that was we got into some of that conversation in our session as well. Could you just talk to that what what do you mean by dysregulation and and how do we guard ourselves against it because it was a really lovely metaphor.
One of my pictures here and a drawer of pictures I have Okay, so dysregulation Oh, I’m out of focus. There we go. Um, this is something that we adopted from foster care. 15 years ago, 15 years ago, it became a mom. We adopted from foster care. We adopted a teenager who had a lot of emotional struggles and a lot of educational struggles and health struggles. So we jumped in the deep end, but in your training for being a foster parent, we talked a lot about dysregulation And if you think about kind of this nice calm baseline, and on the top, there’s a volcano. And on the bottom, there’s an iceberg. When we are in stressful situations, if we are in conflict fearful situations, we have a typical response where we move up kind of that volcano, and that might feel like anger or agitation or anxiety, or fear or nervousness, or we move down like an iceberg. And we withdraw and we get quiet and we start bingeing Netflix, and we avoid, and we kind of shut down. And you’ll see this all the time in couples, whenever they fight, they have very predictable ways that they either move up the scale in Volcano land, or they move down the scale and iceberg way around. And oftentimes icebergs marry volcanoes. And that pattern is very predictable, someone starts raising their voice, the other thing is really quiet. And the quiet person, if you push them hard enough, they’re like, I’m done, and they walk out of the room. So knowing that this is like our normal response, this is our natural kind of healthy response. And this is where we kind of separate discomfort from danger. Because that can feel very uncomfortable to be in that spot. And so that’s why use the illustration. It’s like jumping in the deep end of a pool, when you aren’t really good at swimming and thrashing about like, it’s that kind of discomfort, that my general rule of thumb is take your your top high level goals, your high level priorities, and lean into that discomfort, those actions that are really move that forward three times a week for 30 minutes. That’s all you need, you should not live in dysregulation all the time. That’s very unhealthy. That gives you stress and anxiety and heart disease and you die young. So if you’re in a job where you’re constantly dysregulated, it’s probably not a great fit. If you’re in a relationship where you’re constantly dysregulated. That’s not super healthy. If your friends and family constantly dysregulated you need to spend less time with those people. But if it’s a priority, if it’s something you care about three times a week, 30 minutes, feel that discomfort. But then here’s the key, you need a toolbox of things that bring you back to centre. Because that story, and that emotion and that data point. If you you’re like, Okay, Joanne said to go do the hard, scary thing. And I’m going to feel anxious and dysregulated. But it’s going to be okay, I just have to do it for 30 minutes. And you get super elevated and nervous and you can’t bring yourself back down. Then that data point creates a story that goes, this sucks. That was horrible advice. I never doing that again,
when the hell she
said, so we need these tools. And we need to use them frequently. And we need to have security that they work so you can go do the hard, scary thing. And then you’re like, okay, and my tools are I did it for 30 minutes. Now I’m going to go for a walk, I’m going to call a friend, and I’m going to eat a brownie. I’m going to make a cup of tea. And then I’m going to take a hot bath. And you go that was hard, but you know what it was okay. And I made progress.
Yes, very nice. That’s super, super nice. Katie, how do you? What’s your toolkit for getting out of the deep end of the pool? After you’ve been dysregulated? What do you do to relax after the terror of a pop up business school?
Oh, you’re muted?
Oh, you’re muted. Katie, that was an exciting bit. I do that all the time. Oh, great. You know,
I said as well, you know, I said, I said, I tend to be quiet, quiet, and I was muted. And I like quiet. So I I’ve labelled myself as an introvert I don’t really know if I am. But I decided that that’s the label I’m going to go with and under the banner of shyness. And it’s kind of where I operate from. But I know also I can speak and I can talk in front of people. And then when I get into flow, I can feel a lot better. And I feel better about myself and more confident. But it is exhausting. So afterwards, I literally do have to go and lie down. So after pop up business school, we tend to go out for dinner and I need to have a I always to say so. And it’s like an hour where I’m not speaking to anybody or listening to anybody. I just want to lie down and just be quiet. at home with my family again. I go for a walk. And when we have problems with children or I’ve been having an argument or you’ll get hysterical, which happens quite a bit we tend to go out for a walk. And even if we’re just quiet we just go to walk in the woods and say let’s listen to the birds that were only talking we’re going to listen to the birds and versus you know when pause the face a bit stomp stuff After a couple of minutes, we just listened to the sense of the leaves rustling and the birds and we can all come down a little bit. But that’s really, that’s as much as I’ve got really very nice, man, I
love it. Love it.
My general guideline is to, to know those things that dysregulate you they’re high leverage, but they dis regulate you and plan your schedule accordingly. So for one to four hours, after you do that hardest regulating thing, you need to engage in activities that bring you back to centre. Because then that does build that confidence of like, I did the hard thing. When I went for a walk, and I spent some time alone and I was fine versus I get that hard thing. And then it blew up my day. Like, I can never do that, again. Because all of those meetings, all of that difficult work I had planned afterwards was shocked. So just plan it smartly.
Then I can’t believe that an hour has gone by we’ve just got a few minutes left that we could carry on this conversation for at least another two or three hours quite easily for sure. I wanted to make sure that we answered a couple of the questions that came in. It’s a little out of flow, actually, because we’ve gone down this route. But that was my fault. So Steve, Steven Murray asked the question a little earlier about the blogging side of things, and about how that growth of the blog worked for you in terms of monetization? And what was that journey? Like? How did you monetize? And how quickly did that? Did that happen for you from when you first started writing?
Yeah, I so I, when I started writing, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about building a business, I was thinking about writing, I wanted a place to test some ideas and to develop that craft. And I’ve never, I’ve done very little by the way of affiliates or ads, because that wasn’t my intention. Like for each of us, we really have to know that core motivation that pushes us forward. And for me, it was helping people change their lives. Like that’s what drives me. That’s what excites me. That’s what keeps me moving forward. So ads on my site wasn’t exactly that. But it’s, it’s a great platform. If you’re not sure what you want to write about. confidence and clarity comes in doing, just start writing, you’ll figure it out, if you’re not sure who you want to write to just start writing, and you’ll figure it out. And you’ll figure out other things that you enjoy other things that you don’t enjoy. So one of the very first things that I started is I started taking off freelance writing clients, because I really liked the writing. And I liked the SEO, and I liked sales copy. And I just I found all of that really interesting and exciting. So I started doing freelance writing. And I kind of liked the design of it. So I started doing a little bit of web design. And all of this is like paid practice. Other people are praying, paying you to grow that skill set, and to grow your competence. So I don’t do either of those now. But I still use them in my own business. And then I started coaching. And I put that offer on my site, because I had an audience there. I had an audience of people who had heard from me, who there again, you don’t have to be the most expert expert, but they liked my ideas. They liked my perspective, there were areas of my story that made sense to them, and that they were on they could see we were on similar paths. So I found my first like online clients that way. And, and one of the best benefits of creating things online is that it welcomes you into a community of people who do similar things. And I firmly believe that everyone who’s super successful in one area knows other people who are successful in that same area. Entrepreneurs, no other entrepreneurs, authors, no other authors, bodybuilders, no other body builders. So starting that creating process, like welcomes you into this larger community of people who are doing what you want to do. And, and like I said, you need people, you need people and you need a process. You might find that person once you jump into that community.
Very nice. Jillian, this has been super inspiring. I want to read out a message from Helen who was the well being consultant who asked that question earlier on. She’s posted a lovely message and then I’m going to ask you where people should start if they wanted to check out more of your work, where you know, is there an article they should read? Which podcast episode should they go to? We’ll come to that in a second. I’m going to read you this message first because it’s awesome. So Helen has said Jillian is brilliant number one How does she look so fabulous was five kids? Number two? Can she read us a bedtime story? Such a reassuring and calming presence found this really impactful up there with year of yes by Rhonda rimes. Thanks for all of it. So I think that kind of sums up beautifully. The inspiration that you’ve shared with us tonight, so thank you so much for for your time. Thank you, Katie for being amazing as ever. Yeah, where should we go Julian to check out some more stuff which which podcast episode might you point people to or which which page on your website should they go to to find out a little more do you think?
So if you like podcasts, go to my podcast, if you’d like Instagram, go to my Instagram, or on my site, I have two kind of free video courses. One’s about intentional living, and the others about kind of that grow the gap, guard the gap. So if you want to figure out your money, stuff, I would do that one. If you just want kind of general life planning, having a little bit more focus and clarity, I would do that 10 day course. And each day seemed like a little email and a free video and a little worksheet and you can just run with it. So I’m Julian johnsrud. Everywhere on Twitter, on Instagram, you can search Apple podcast, my name and you’ll find my podcast, or my website. Or you could just shoot me an email.
There you go. Or we can send a pigeon or something like that. We’ve got all of the methods to reach
the pigeon. johnsrud in Montana.
I love it. So we’re gonna post this video on the pop up Business School Survival Guide, as we do with all of the live streams that we’ve done. It’s been absolutely brilliant. Next week, folks, we’ve got the amazing Scott is coming from who Katie knows as well. We’ve been working with Scott from a branding agency based in Scotland called Hanson. Scott is going to come on on Tuesday, next week, and help us with branding and marketing for small businesses. And this guy has got lots of experience. He’s an absolute genius. And he’s been helping the pop up business school figure out the direction of our brand. And that’s very real for us at the moment. So I’m sure we’ll dive into that too. So if you need help with your brand, with putting yourself out there with some of the creative elements, and how you should portray yourself to the world. We will see you on Tuesday next week at 9pm. with Scott from Hampton, it remains for me to say thank you very much Jillian for your time. Thank you, Katie. You’re both amazing. I feel inspired. I feel a little teary again, not for the first time, Julian and stay safe, both of you and we’ll catch up very soon.
Yeah, I think you guys Bye bye. Thanks
for watching everybody. Bye