Becoming Fearless
Welcome to Becoming Fearless, the personal growth podcast for YOU if you are ready to overcome fear and step into your greatness.
Our purpose is to help you overcome your limits and have loads of fun along the way, unlocking your fullest potential in life, business, health and relationships every single day.
I'm your host Charlotte Carter, a high performance coach and entrepreneur, with over 20 years experience. I've supported many highly driven talented people like you who dream big and are ready to take action to overcome what’s holding them back.
Each week my guests and I will be sharing hacks and habits on how to build self belief, courage and confidence to master your mindset and navigate your emotions - so that you reach your human potential in a way that feels light, fun and easeful and help you become fearless.
Let’s go!
Becoming Fearless
49. The Whole Self Journey with Tess Cope
In this episode of Becoming Fearless, I interview Tess Cope, a leadership coach and founder of the Transformation Agency.
Tess shares her journey from turning to running as a coping mechanism during a turbulent youth in Ireland, to starting her own business and helping leaders create positive working environments. She discusses the importance of surrounding yourself with people who inspire and challenge you, the power of reframing limiting beliefs, and the value of learning from failures. Tess also talks about her three main areas of focus in her business: one-on-one coaching, team facilitation, and helping leaders shape their organisational culture.
Learn about the challenges and growth strategies for scaling companies and the benefits of co-creating organizational values. This episode is a goldmine for leaders aiming to build cohesive, purposeful teams while expanding their potential and empathy.
CONNECT WITH TESS
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tesscope
Website: www.thetransformationagency.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_virtual_team_coach
Tess's book recommendation: The New Dynamics Of Winning by Denis Waitley
CONNECT WITH CHARLOTTE
Website: https://www.idaretoleap.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charlotte_highperformancecoach
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idaretoleap
Join my Becoming Fearless Community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thebecomingfearlesscommunity
Sign up to receive my weekly newsletter, packed full of high performance hacks, positive vibes and fearless energy:
https://www.idaretoleap.com/newsletter
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Welcome to Becoming Fearless, the personal growth podcast for you if you are ready to overcome fear and step into your greatness. Our purpose is to help you overcome your limits, have loads of fun along the way, unlocking your fullest potential in life, business, health and relationships every single day. I'm your host, charlotte Carter, a high performance coach and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience. I'm your host, charlotte Carter, a high-performance coach and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience. I've supported many highly driven, talented people like you who dream big and are ready to take action to overcome what's holding them back. Each week, my guests and I will be sharing hacks and habits on how to build self-belief, courage and confidence, to master your mindset and navigate your emotions so that you can reach your human potential in a way that feels light, fun and easeful and helps you become fearless. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of Becoming Fearless. I am delighted to bring this guest episode to your ears today with a really remarkable woman who I think I probably met a couple of years ago. I've seen her on stage a number of times. She's been in my energy, been in my awareness, watched her really grow in various ways and be more present, in my view, in the online space, because she has a wild track record of huge success, and bringing it out into the world in different guises is what I've seen in the last couple of years. So, tess, would you like to introduce yourself as to who you are and what you do now, and then we'll dive deep into your journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course well, first of all, thank you for having me, as we were just saying, in a little me, as we were just saying, in a little catch-up and warm-up. I love doing these things because it allows me to feel like in flow and for it to feel natural, and that's a really nice segue to kind of talk a little bit around who I am. So my roots are in Ireland and one of the things that we're really good at in Ireland is having great conversations, typically with a glass of something, but not always I have got a cup of tea to my right. So, yeah, my roots and my family are still in Ireland.
Speaker 3:But I moved to England for a variety of reasons, including I wanted to build my career and, yeah, 15 years ago I up, uh, the organization, the transformation agency and, generally speaking, working with leaders in various sizes of organizations and I feel deeply passionate about helping them build a working environment that gets the best out of people. So that's a bit of a high level of me and and what I do and what sets me on fire and Tess talks about that like as though it's quite um natural, should we say.
Speaker 2:And Tess is like one of the biggest leaders in the world in this field. We're not I don't bring on people who are, you know, messing about people have a massive um incentive to make a real difference in the world. So let's take the listeners on a little bit of a journey. Wherever you want to start. Where do you want to start, tess? Do you want to start that pre-15 years? Do you want to start when you were younger? Where do you feel like you want to start on this journey today?
Speaker 3:um, actually, I'm very genuinely happy to start wherever you'd like to start and I'll follow. So I'm uh, from my running days, I'm pretty good at running fast behind wherever it needs to go. So, yeah, feel free to feel free to come in on that wherever you feel drawn.
Speaker 2:I'm drawn to talk about the running because that's a big passion of mine, something that got me started on setting up my business five years ago, so it's the catalyst for change for me, for certain. So let's start, then, because I know I have a lot of sports people listening, a lot of sports professionals listening, so let's talk about you and your running days. How did that start? What did you achieve? How did you feel? Let's go with that angle first of all.
Speaker 3:Yeah sure, did that start? Um, what did you achieve? How did you feel? Let's go with that angle first of all. Yeah, sure, um. So I wasn't particularly um, sporty or intentional around sports during school days. I mean, I did a lot of bits and pieces but absolutely nothing, you know, I wasn't um, apart from the annual sports day. That really I really wasn't sucked into that arena.
Speaker 3:My real start, I would say, in taking it seriously and I did take it seriously for a long time and I take health seriously still was when I still lived in Northern Ireland, was when I still lived in Northern Ireland. You know it's a tough environment to have been brought up in at the time when I had my formative years. We called it the troubles at the time so quite intense, quite tense, and one of my coping mechanisms, if you like, when I realized I'm not looking after myself and my body is actually reacting to the conditions, and one of my reactions then was emotional eating, which is, you know, it's not great for anyone and certainly somebody of my physical size. I'm not super tall, so therefore if I'm overeating, it kind of gets noticeable really quickly and that has a dent on yourself. For me, that has a dent on my self-esteem, thought I need to do something about this, but I'm not quite sure what. And at that point in time we had like a the equivalent of your coach to 5k, which is very high profile these days. Um, it was specifically for women. Um, and we you know it was a jogging club, as we called it then, and I thought, oh, that might be worthwhile doing. And so off I trotted with my best buddy, who's still my best buddy actually. We've been best friends since we've been 11, so that's a gorgeous relationship. And anyway, off we trotted and we were kind of running around this football field thinking what the heck have we done?
Speaker 3:That said, only after a couple of weeks um, or at least in hindsight, I think it was a few weeks, but it certainly wasn't very long um, the coach that had set up this particular jogging club was also the coach for the local athletics club. His name was Paddy and he came over and he said um, you know, I think I think you have something worthwhile doing a bit more work on if you're up for doing the work, and, of course, that that feeling of somebody actually saying you've got potential when you have no idea that it's there anywhere. There's something really special and I think as coaches and as confidants, we sometimes don't realize the impact we have when we let people know where their potential is. That was huge for me. Oh, yes, absolutely Let me follow that trail, and part of my upbringing is a really strong work ethic. You know that was distilled in me from my father. It's like you work hard and if you put the work in you'll get the results. Now we know that's not always true in reality, but it serves me well in general. So, yeah, I'm really up for doing a bit more work and within I think about three months I was then running in the jogging club and running in the athletics club. So my level of training significantly increased. I was doing more work and within that three-month period he had me running not just for the club but for the county in the cross-country championships which, by the way, I hated, but it was a starting place to get into competitions and as a team we came home with a silver medal. So this is a whole Ireland cross-country thing and it was like, oh, wow, that's what this competition thing is about. And so that's. You know where the seeds came from and I moved through and, you know, fast forward a number of years later I was really privileged to not only have achieved a lot in what I would call my running career, I was running for the county.
Speaker 3:Then I moved to England. I was running for the Cambridge here as a region, here running for the East of England, here winning championships being in a training squad with Paula Radcliffe was pretty special and helping her qualify for different champs. So you know, I got to rub shoulders with a lot of the high profile people and then that starts, I think, influencing your mindset and the way you start thinking. You know, I remember being on the track and Linford Christie's sprinting up and down beside me, it's like, and Sally Gunnell would have been on the other side of the track.
Speaker 3:So you know really high profile people you know in various championships and I ended up also running for the country, as in Northern Ireland, and qualifying for our Commonwealth Games team and touring Canada and various bits and pieces. All to say, that started from that one conversation with that coach who said I think there's something here worth investing in and that belief, really kind of that. It sowed the seed for that belief which gradually built and built and built and it's both seeded, my discipline, my approach not just to running, but my approach more broadly, and it served me super well. I'm not doing that kind of running now. Unfortunately I had to have a foot operation which meant I stopped competing internationally, but I'm always attending to my health and my well-being and doing some fitness, but not at the same level anymore.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that little trail of life in total circa 20 years, was a great experience thanks so much for sharing that and for the depth and for all the success that it brought you and all the connections. And I think something that I talk about a lot is this expansion piece and you've touched on it in that answer in the fact that when you are, when you surround yourself with people who are further ahead or, um, slightly in a different energy than you are, or just different I like to call it, because I don't necessarily like to talk about people being ahead, because I trust people being in the right place in their journey but when people are different, expansive, then self-belief grows, mindset, mindset changes and you get this whole anything's possible type of energy. Don't you? And I think this achievement piece for you, listening to you explaining all of that it must have sowed the seeds for when you first set up your business 15 years ago. Were you running when you set it up or would you have stopped?
Speaker 3:No, I'd stopped by then. But I think it's important to add in the layer so absolutely that progression, that belief, the people around me and especially the coaching and I moved through a couple of coaches in that period of time, including I was absolutely privileged to the back end of my running career. I was being coached by the GB coach for middle distance and he coached Steve Ovette, and so I was also in like training sessions with people that were blowing my mind, but it allowed me 1%, 1%, 1% each time because I was hanging in there and not measuring myself against them and that's important to distinguish what you just said. But the other thing that I really took that absolutely has helped me in my business career as well from that period is, you know, along that path there was many races where I did not win. There was more races I didn't win than those that I did. There were some races I had been expected to reach PB, a personal best time. You know that that's really important in running, as it is in other sports. There were many, you know.
Speaker 3:I remember many trips back from the NEC the, the indoor arena there, where I was berating myself the whole way home and I had to find a way to pick myself back up and go right. Come on, what's the learning? What are we going to do differently? And most of the time it's up here, as we know. So that is the case in business as well. There will be many client conversations that I have oh, that didn't quite go where I wanted it to go, or what would I do differently next time around. So so the the where we haven't pulled through are equally valuable. I would say.
Speaker 2:I totally agree and I mean and in some cases I think it's they're more powerful, aren't they? For some people, that reflection piece gives them insight that they just wouldn't have seen or felt or been aware of at all, and it's some people it takes them on a complete different trajectory of what they're going to do with their life. Um, and I will always say embrace those feelings of if you feel like you failed, it's really all about the fear.
Speaker 2:If you feel like you're not good enough, you feel like you haven't achieved, to feel like you haven't um delivered. However it lands for you, it would bear your nuggets of um advice and guidance really to help you on the, on the next path, so that you don't repeat it otherwise. I think that's a place where some people they repeat the things if they haven't necessarily learned the lesson. Yeah, one of my favorite quotes.
Speaker 3:Sorry, sorry to interrupt you. I was gonna say one of my favorite quotes that I hold, uh, on my own radar very close by but I also speak to my clients about this ongoing um is from a guy called joseph campbell. I don't know if you know any of his work and it speaks to exactly this where we stumble, there lies our treasure, and so that is incentivizing and encouraging us to kind of don't don't try and go right. Okay, dust myself off and off we go. It's like there's a moment there to gather something and harvest what's the insight, and then then we're ready to go.
Speaker 2:I love that quote. I really love it. I love the word treasure yes it's very powerful word, isn't it a very powerful word? And I think it's those moments of gold, really, that you find in those moments where you feel like you might have lost it all on whatever level. So let's talk a little bit about your business that you do now, tess. What is it that you do now and how you set up? Let's go 15 years ago what made you? Set up where were? You in life. What made you make the changes then?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so by nature I am a long-range planner and thinker, so I need to have and probably helpfully distilled through my running career. You know we would have sat at the start of the season with my coach and we'd figured out you know, where do we want to be by the end of the season? What championships do we want to aim for? And so is the case in my work context. Whether that was when I was leading teams myself, we would look at the year ahead and go right, what do we want to? What do we want to do? What do we want to create? How do we want to be in the organization? And so is the case with my business. A long way of explaining it wasn't, it wasn't a rash decision to set up. When I did um, I moved from working inside organizations and sales marketing operations over to the learning and development arena and then later on HR. And when I made that move, it was all just something clicked. It's like oh, I didn't even know how brilliant this people agenda and being of service to people and setting them up for success I had. No, of course, I knew it existed, but I didn't know how much it would fulfill me. That was the light bulb was like oh my goodness, how did I not know this was so good for my being, for my soul, for my heart. And within a year of moving into that part of the organization, I knew this staying on this trail would be my you know end game, and so I decided, within that first year and I was blessed to have coaching as part of the role, I laid out a map of not necessarily when I would set up the business, but more about what did I need to have under my belt so that I would feel ready, and so that was a mixture of experience, qualifications, accreditations, exposure to kind of different layers in the organization and, importantly, having different sectors under my belt. And so then I very intentionally, but without putting too much pressure on myself, moved through those various criteria, and so I knew that when I did launch the business some, you know, 15 years ago it would be in the arena of the things that I really enjoy and care about, so how to set people up for success through one-on-one coaching. Probably 60% of our work is in that one-on-one space, and and I will continue to really double tick in there, because that's honestly where I get a lot of fulfillment, from which I imagine you can deeply resonate with. Yeah, so, um. So that's kind of like bucket number one primary, the three buckets in total.
Speaker 3:Bucket number two is working with teams. Um, and as I've moved through my 15 years, the level that we're working at tends to be gradually being more senior. So we're often working with exec teams. Now In the early days it would have been teams further into the organization. But moving through to the exec team, I find to be important because if the executive team and the layer just underneath that aren't really thinking about how they operate and the role model that they're doing, the chances for everyone else to be working in harmony and cohesively actually is diluted. We use this phrase in in the systemic work that I do, as above, so below, which is pretty self-explanatory. If this dysfunction and you know, is a bit fragmented and fraught in the layers of leaders, the same is going to be, the same experience for people on the front line, so to speak. So the bucket number two is working with teams, and the difference is we've been working more senior as we've moved through the time.
Speaker 3:And then the third bucket is helping leaders and businesses really think quite hard around what kind of culture they want to have. My experience of working in that arena is that leaders believe they're really clear on the culture and they are intentional. But when you ask the workforce depending on the scale of course, you can have a very different picture played back, and so the diagnostics that I offer, which are global, researched, robust, really give that very honest truth telling moment back to the leadership team and go this is what we wanted to have in our culture, but this is our current reality and hopefully there is some synergy, obviously, but more often than not there are some gaps to attend to. So giving that a little bit of a concrete moment in time to then double click. So that's, and so I think the the buckets haven't massively changed. It's about working at the different levels in the organization that has progressed with the belief that if we can get the leaders in the business working really well, we create a positive environment for everyone else. So that's, you know you will.
Speaker 3:You'll have heard me say, um, you know, on stage and in other places um, I'm passionate about helping leaders create a positive and brackets and safe working environment for their people, because life's too short to be in a working environment that's miserable and feeling, you know, intense, intense for all the wrong reasons. So that's a little bit around how the how the business has evolved. Um, delighted to say, you know don't get me wrong 15 years. There's gonna be a few little roller coasters in that time. Covid was one of them. Yeah, oh boy, that was a real moment we could dive into that. That's helpful.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, in the last year and we'll be into 2025 now I'm starting to think about how can we take that expertise and that offering to businesses that are at an earlier stage and not necessarily at the same scale, where they've got, typically in large organizations, they've got, you know, they've got budgets, they've got investment that they can actually dedicate smaller organizations. You know your classic seven and eight figure business owners. They need, they really need to handle this because they're probably in the growing pains around culture and team. They haven't necessarily got zillions to invest, but it is an important investment and if you can get proactive on that stuff, it really sets the organization up for success and, ultimately, performance. So that's a little round of the journey and kind of where we are in in that transition phase thank you so much, tess, for explaining that and I have got so many questions to ask you.
Speaker 2:But first of all we will talk. We will talk about the seven, eight figure um side of the business that you're growing a bit more now. Um, in a minute, but I just want to talk. I want to take listeners a little bit on a journey around this inner knowing that you talked about at the beginning of that and how you explain these three buckets um, this inner knowing about the whole people side of how it made you feel and I'd just like you to touch a little bit on those three buckets and what the knowing is on those three buckets.
Speaker 2:Because what happens in high performance and one of the things that I work with a lot of people on is they have all these massive ideas and there's a permission piece of being able to have, you know, three buckets, for example, because each bucket gives them something very different, something very unique, something inside of them becomes alive and there's a whole permission piece that actually you know you can have 20 buckets, you can have 200 or you can have one. It's finding what I call your rhythm of life and finding what serves you. So can you just talk a little bit about those three buckets and what is the inner knowing piece around each bucket for you. You know. Why do they? Why do they? Why do you keep doing them? What? What's the big buzz for?
Speaker 3:you and the big kick, I suppose well, I'll start with the one that um rightly and intentionally absorbs the biggest chunk of time, which is the one-on-one leadership coaching. Yeah, and I can honestly say with my hand on my heart, it is the part of the work that we and I do that gives me the most joy. Nothing gives me more inner pride than seeing someone fly, and especially I mean the. The way in which we're working with coaching clients is we are going really deep. My first book, harness, is the coaching framework that we utilize and that the h of harness, is about honoring history, really understanding what's behind the person, including difficulty, including trauma, both personal and organizational. So we've taken them on a really deep journey, which means that when you see them gradually climbing, getting results to come out of that, it's just uh, wow, my heart sings. And to see them gradually climbing, getting resource to come out of that, it's just wow, my heart sings. And to see them taking off and living everything that's possible for them which, of course, won't be exclusive to their work setting, but it includes the work setting, and I've had the gorgeous experience just in the last few weeks of three clients that have just moved through the journey of getting into their next level and being seen, and their visibility is transformed from where they were 18 months ago. And I'm reminded right here, right now, because, of course, there three of them, you know simultaneously, which amplifies the joy in me and I just think how blessed am I to have be able to support, guide, to hold space, to create the container for them to do their work, um, and and for me, I think there's also an element of um. You know where I'm at in my own journey. I see very much it's about having people grow Um, and so you know, we're all at different stages and I'm in a let me call it a stage where I feel like I'm on the age of you might call it being an elder.
Speaker 3:In the work you know I'm, I'm really kind of holding the. This work matters. So anything that you're seeing with me on social media I'm really trying to drive home that message. This is not sticky plaster stuff. This is really important, and so a lot of what I'm putting out in the social media space at the minute is really trying to kind of get people to take the potential of this work seriously, because it's phenomenal what's possible when you do so. That's hopefully sharing a little bit around what's important for me and how I hold it and I think, therefore, how we show up in that space as coaches. Because if we've not created a safe container, if we've not created the conditions for somebody to drop in into that deep introspection place, then we are diluting the potential of what's possible from the process. So, um, after that's, that's kind of give you enough of a flavour of bucket number one, which is pretty primary. Bucket number two, the team facilitation piece.
Speaker 3:For me personally this is me it's a very different energy. So, while some of the methodology will be the same meaning we go beyond the symptom and try and figure out where's the symptom coming from. If there's, you know, if there's friction between areas, we kind of go let's not make it all about the individuals, what's in the system here. That means that's how people are showing up. So that methodology is consistent with what we do in the one-on-one we look underneath, we get to the root cause, we look at history, etc. So the methodology is similar, but of course we're working with a collective. So the energy is very different when we're working with a group and of course you're quite often needing to keep an eye on many things simultaneously.
Speaker 3:For me personally, if I just talk pure energy, the adrenaline rush is significant in those situations. It's a pretty typically it's a pretty intensive, you know, period of time. It may be a day, it may be two days and then I might not see this team for another quarter or six months. So a lot of work needs to happen in quite a concertinaed amount of time and so I need to be really on my A game agility, noticing, deepening, asking different questions. Can I go and hang on a second guys? Can we just check what's going on here and be courageous to hit the pause button? And when you're working with a senior team, that's easy to say, not so easy to do. So it really lifts me up into. I need to be toe-to-toe to these people and hold my space for the sake of them and for the sake of those that they impact, for all the reasons I said earlier so energetically.
Speaker 3:It's a pure adrenaline rush, but it also is a great kind of sharpening. You know that sharpening the soul, that of you know, um, coffee, it very much are moments when the soul gets sharpened because it happens in a very tight period of time versus the one-on-one which is typically over, for me at least and for you know my team it's a year. Typically we're working with someone, so we've got time to go really deep and go at their pace. With a team, the brief is we've got a day or two days at most. We've got a lot to get done. So it's a very different vibe. Um, does that make sense? I can see you do lots of knowledge. You can relate to that yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I think one of the things um that's really distinct is that's like high intensity, high energy, fast impact, fast switching, uh, reframes and um yes but it's very fast, paced and sharp, isn't it? And the one-to-one is is. It's very similar to my work. The one-to-one is just a whole different, a whole different journey, isn't it?
Speaker 3:and then my third bucket, which is the cultural piece. That asks me and the team to go very broad. So, if you like, there's a bit of a funnel going on. So we're starting one on one, we go team and then we have to go really wide when we start thinking about culture, because within the cultural work, we are engaging every employee in the process and, in addition to playing back the diagnostic that I mentioned earlier, ie the mirror moment, there is often follow-up work needed and so we are working across a really broad palette of people, people numbers, sometimes across geographies, and really trying to kind of widen out the, the horizon that we're scaling, because an organizational culture, of course, is heavily influenced by the leaders, but it's also influenced by the market, the sector, the environment, and so being able to kind of take in that wider, so energetically um, what, what comes?
Speaker 3:I I listen to my body a lot when I can then try and get the words to match, so the way my body would describe it, I'm literally zooming back. I'm having to take in a wider stance and kind of scan a little bit wider and going what else is here that's influencing this culture? Yes, of course the ceo. Yes, of course, the leadership community, but what else is activating?
Speaker 3:So, for example, I was working with a client organization this is about 18 months ago now and when I helped them zoom back and look at the wider picture, there was this all of a sudden realization my goodness, our whole sector is transforming in front of our eyes and we are not transforming at the same rate. We are going to die, or at least a big part of the business is going to die, if we don't radically do something different. And so that's what I mean by a big zoom out and encouraging the executive team, as is normally the case with culture. What else is here? What do we need to attend to? So some might call that a more strategic lens. I tend to prefer the language where zooming out and looking wider, so it's a very different kind of feel in each of those spaces yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:I really love the way you've explained that Tess and I really just want the listeners to just think for a moment about how Tess has created a business and an opportunity in a lifestyle very much that allows her all of these different ways of feeling, all these different ways of utilizing her energy, all these different ways of impacting people and harnessing her unique skill, her superpower, everything that makes Tess unique and not capping it.
Speaker 2:This is one of the things that I want to get across with talking with Tess is that there's no pausing your potential, there's no limiting your success, there's no limiting enjoyment, happiness, pleasure or any of the things that you can do, because you can work micro, you can work macro, you can work one-to-one, you can work with masses of people, you can do in person, you can do purely online, you can do any variation and you can give yourself permission to change this at any moment in time. So let's come back to what I said we were going to come back to, which was about this um, scaling a business and the people that are scaling up to you know million or multi-million or that kind of thing. What would you say? Those people's struggles are um in your eyes or their stretches, or all the things or the hurdles for them yeah, um, I'm gonna, if I may, I'm just going to take this in two different directions.
Speaker 3:Going to just want to say something that I think will be useful for your listeners in what you've just summarized there about not limiting your potential. One of the things that I realized in my journey as I built the business is I used to have this block about the role of a CEO, meaning my ability, my confidence to go to CEOs, to work with CEOs, to have conversations with CEOs, to reach out to CEOs, because I had in my head and I thankfully this is like probably 10 or more years ago now, but it was true for me at the time which did have a limit to my reach, my ability, and I realized that, relatively speaking, what I used to think is I'm here and CEOs are up there, so it's looking up, I'm small, they're big're big metaphorically. And when I did a piece of work on that, as I said already, you know I was very blessed to have a lot of coaching and I still firmly believe, which I think is really important if you're coaching, you need, you need to role model and be open to coaching yourself. Um, so I did a lot of work on reframing that and understanding what that was about and then being able to work with it in a way that serves me and sets me up.
Speaker 3:So in now, the way I see it which may be helpful for some people listening is because it's a radical reframe. Rather than them up there and me here is like the CEO's at the center, trying to draw all the parts of the organization together. So they're sitting trying to pull all these pieces, and so therefore, it really still makes sense for me to go to the CEO, but to have empathy for the challenges that they have trying to make all these books of the wheel come together. It's a complete reframe in terms of energy and how it set me up to be very comfortable to go. I can get how hard that is and I'd love to help you. There's a whole different me that is in that conversation.
Speaker 2:I love that and what? Listening to you talk about that there's a whole different visual as well, isn't it? There's a whole. It's very all inclusive. It's very targeted. The whole visual that you've just given is clearer for somebody like me. Listening to you explaining that, I'm like, oh yeah, I could do that, because maybe I put CEOs on a bit of a pedestal. And now I'm like, no, actually, actually, this reframe is really powerful for me and a lot of the people that will be listening because because of exactly that.
Speaker 3:So thank you so much for that, yeah it's a pleasure because it's a really good segue then into me talking about so in the, in this broadening our audience, so bringing the expertise still the same three buckets, but across to a wider group of people. This, the, these, um, folks that are in this journey of building their business from a seven figure business and and beyond, wherever their destiny and aspirations might be. They're from the conversations I'm having and I'm doing research with them at the moment, because I do believe really getting to understand what they're sitting in is important to fine-tune your offer, because that's the phase I'm in at the minute. It's like I know I want to help these folks. I know what, we've got the material to help them, but we need to meet them where they're at, and so I've been having conversations. So, for example, one of those was just yesterday and I've got another one this afternoon. These are CEOs and organizations that are ramping up and they're in the growing pains of ramping up. So that would include everything from they have set up the business, because it's something either they're passionate about or they're really good at, and therefore it's hard.
Speaker 3:I think we can all relate to this, including myself. It's hard to let go of stuff, it's hard to delegate because, consciously or otherwise, we could fall into the trap of going. But they're not going to do like me. So we're holding on to the work and not setting our folks up, their teams up, to be able to actually have the right level of autonomy and freedom and motivation and therefore pride in the end result. So that's a classic growing pain holding on to the work versus handing it over, so that whole kind of getting the quality right. Then there's the fear of another pain I'm hearing. There's the fear or the concern maybe a more appropriate word of they're not going to be as focused on the end game as me, me being the CEO, because I'm the one that has all the gain and they're employed in terms of doing the work. So they're not. So we have, they have this narrative we're not possibly going to be dialed into the end result and actually that's not true.
Speaker 3:If you can build together and co-create with your team a sense of purpose and something that you can all be proud about and you put in time to celebrate together, you know that fundamental need, predominantly when we're working in organizations of any scale, is a sense of belonging. So how can you nurture that, rather than it be exclusively about rewarding people. For a number, it's much more than that. Another pain point would be assuming the culture will look after itself, and actually that is absolutely not helpful. Spending time being intentional, crafting it, working it through ideally with your team.
Speaker 3:Back to the diagnostic I mentioned earlier, involving the team and saying how do we want it to be around here, do we want this to feel? How do we want our ways of working to be so innate and unconscious and intuitive that we don't have to question them anymore? And, importantly, how do we bring people into the business that fit in the culture that we're looking for? So getting on the proactive side of that and thinking more holistically are the areas that I think are likely to be the arena that I think those CEOs in those relatively early stage, but not at the start but you know they've already got a team and they're in scaling mode. They're probably two hands on and not doing the zooming out piece I mentioned earlier. Yeah, that's, I think that's the ballpark that we're in.
Speaker 2:I'm still fine-tuning it, as you can hear is it um, is it giving you a lot of joy doing this little research on this after?
Speaker 3:having. Oh, I love, yeah, yeah, I can tell, yeah you love this piece, don't you?
Speaker 3:yeah so. So one of the things that I did and this may be a helpful um sharing for some of your listeners so one of the best things that I did during Covid, when my business fell off a cliff, literally because it was at that point mostly face-to-face, it literally went to. You know pretty much Leroy is after sitting with the shock of that for a week or so and enjoying the sunshine because we had gorgeous weather for the first time ever, we had an extended summer. That was a bit surreal, but after you know, a week or two of kind of going okay, that was a bit surreal, but after you know, a week or two of kind of going okay.
Speaker 3:Now let's find the treasure, as we said earlier, and that's when I thought, you know, I wanted to write and get a book published for what seemed like a long time. I know what I will do. I will go out to my network, including my clients, and offer my coaching support free, because they needed help. It's not like they didn't need the help and the support and the safety of being able to just download the pressure. So I offered my services free. And what's really important from a systemic point of view is this is it needed to feel like there was a mutual exchange. It needed to feel like there was a mutual exchange. So the exchange for me was can I use this opportunity with you to do some research on a book that I want to birth at some point through this process? And that's when I got my research for my first book, which is the coaching framework harness.
Speaker 3:But those conversations from a pure human connection sense, sense of belonging, they filled up my cup and some. So I knew I was giving value. I knew I was getting value, and I'm one of those people that when I say I'm going to do something, I make it public. Oh boy, my integrity is such that I absolutely know I need to deliver this blinking book. And so that research fed me, nurtured me, gave something back and produced my first book. And with that comes a level of credibility which is a wonderful value add in the business owner journey. So yeah, so here I am now doing the research, with CEOs in particular, and I'm really noticing how, because it's a. It's not a sales call, it's pure research. Let me understand your world whilst I figure out how we may at some point be able to help further down the line.
Speaker 2:So it's a very rich and honest conversation how wonderful, how wonderful to be in those kind of conversations. So we could talk for so long, tess, but let's just wrap up. Um, let's talk. Let's just first of all let people know a little bit about how they can work with you, how they can reach out. We will have all your details and your books and everything, but just give people a bird's eye view of what sort of things you can offer people now and, um, how they can get in touch with you uh, well, get in touch with me.
Speaker 3:so, um, obviously, via linkedin is the main social media platform that I use. I'm very active on there at the minute. I'm very active on there At the minute. I'm very intentionally on there every single day, so that's a very intentional piece. Right now. I'm also on Facebook.
Speaker 3:I know we're connected on Facebook and I set up a new Instagram account just a few weeks ago linked to this new audience, and the handle for that is the underscore virtual underscore team, underscore coach the virtual team coach. So I'm going to be starting to be putting out content around this early part of the business journey where you might need some help on culture and team. So if anyone wants to get those snippets, like on a daily basis, they'll be coming very soon, so that's a good place In terms of reaching out. If somebody wants to work with us, then all my contact details are on the website. All my contact details are on my LinkedIn profile, so I'm pretty easy to get hold of and, yeah, very fortunate to have people doing all the right things in the background. That means that when you put the transformation or my name into google, I come up first, so I know I'm easy to find.
Speaker 2:so so good, so so good, um, and all of those details will be listed below the podcast. So if you're listening, you just go below and you can go and follow Tess on all of those social media platforms and then reach out if it feels appropriate for you. And the final question to wrap this up, tess, that I ask every single guest that I have is about a book that you have read or, like we were saying earlier, um followed on your kindle. Um that has made a difference in your life, that has helped you either overcome fear or overcome change, or it's just been impactful in some way so the book that I would call out that I still have and I at least dip into rereading parts of it on many occasions.
Speaker 3:It's quite an old book.
Speaker 3:It's called the new dynamics of winning and it's by a chap called Dennis Waitley w-a-i-t-l-e-y and um, what Dennis Waitley is infamous for is in his original work, is working with Olympians and athletes and in.
Speaker 3:So you can imagine why, when I first started reading this, why it was super relevant for me. But in particular, he talks about the power of visualization and how your body can't distinguish between, if you've seen something as vividly, your body thinks it's done it already and so you can do a bit of inner programming to get yourself ready for whatever that performance is, business and otherwise, um, and yeah, so. So that has that at the point that I first read that. That was a real discovery for me and it's always a great reminder for me. So before I'm doing a big keynote or something I might bring myself back to that really helpful, visualize it and and he gives us, you know, a lot of very practical, applicable tips in in that arena. So, yeah, it's still very close to my heart and I I encourage lots of people to read it actually so I would still have that as my top, my top tip brilliant.
Speaker 2:It sounds like a great one, and I haven't read that, so I'm definitely going to put that on my list to read. Thank you so so much for everything you've shared on this episode, tess. I really, really appreciate it, and I know that my listeners are going to get so much value from listening to you and listening to your words of wisdom, so thank you so so much.
Speaker 3:An absolute pleasure, a privilege to be here. Thank you for offering and inviting me in you are so welcome, so take care everyone.
Speaker 2:Have a great day, and if anything comes up when you listen to this episode, please do reach out to either myself or to Tess and we will be able to help you in some way navigate whatever it is that's come up for you. So take care and I will see you on the next episode. Thank you for tuning into this week's episode.
Speaker 1:I hope see you on the next episode. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode. I hope that you're feeling energised, fearless and inspired to take action today to stand in your greatness. I share even more tools and resources on my I Dare to Leap email newsletter. By signing up, you not only get early access to the I Dare to Leap products and services, but you also get brand new podcast episodes delivered straight to your inbox every Monday, meaning you'll never miss your weekly dose of becoming fearless energy. Sign up now at wwwidaretoleapcom forward slash newsletter or click the link in the show notes below.
