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Want to perform at your best, step up as a leader, and unlock your full potential — in business and in life?

In this wildly inspiring conversation, I’m joined by high-performance coach and best-selling author Todd Herman. With a career spent coaching elite athletes, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Todd is sharing the mindset shifts and performance strategies that separate high achievers from the rest of the pack — including how to overcome self-doubt, lead with confidence, and hit your biggest goals faster.

Press play to discover: the powerful technique professional athletes use that can radically elevate your business game, what makes a truly great coach (and how to become one), how the ‘Alter Ego Effect’ can help you show up as your most empowered self, how to move past fear and doubt when building your business, what women entrepreneurs often get wrong (and how to shift it), the best way to become an epic leader, and how to achieve more in 90 days than most people do in a whole year.

If you’re ready to get out of your own way, play at a higher level, and finally achieve the goals that matter most, then press play now — this one’s for you.

About Todd Herman

Todd Herman has been entrenched in the world of elite performers — working with the highest achievers in sports and business — for over two decades.

Creator of the multi-award-winning Leadership & Skills Development Program, 90 Day Year, author of the WSJ bestselling book, ‘The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life’, and recipient of Inc. 500’s Fastest Growing Companies Award, as well as the ‘Rama Award for Wisdom and Leadership’, Todd’s professional programs are delivered annually to over 200,000 professionals in 73 countries. Named by the Boston Herald as a “Training Superstar”, Todd has been featured on NFL Films, The Today Show, Sky News, Wall Street Journal, Inc Magazine, CBS and Fox Sports among others.

In this episode we chat about:

• The pivotal moment that sparked his journey as a top-level performance coach (2:37)
• The powerful mindset technique used by elite athletes that will instantly elevate your business performance (5:28)
• The unexpected traits that make someone a truly great coach (hint: it’s not what you think!) (8:12)
• How adopting a ‘secret identity’ can help you overcome fear and unlock your full potential (14:07)
• The mindset reframe that melts self-doubt and helps you gain momentum (18:50)
• The invisible blocks that hold so many women back — and how to finally move past them (23:39)
• How to step into a leadership role with confidence (even if it doesn’t feel natural yet!) (30:32)
• His go-to coaching tools for helping clients move through blocks and get next-level results (35:47)
• The surprising habits and beliefs he credits for his success (42:23)
• The one book he believes every student should read (46:27)

Episode resources:

• SheLaunch (join here)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Todd Herman (Instagram)
• Todd Herman (website)
• The Alter Ego Effect : The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life by Todd Herman (book)
• Co-Active Coaching: The proven framework for transformative conversations at work and in life by Karen Kimsey-House, Henry Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandhal, and Laura Whitworth (book)
• The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman (book)

Prefer To Read?

The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] The Melissa Amini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready? Beautiful. Beautiful. Hey, beautiful. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode and you are gonna love it if you are an entrepreneur, if you are a coach, if you are a consultant or a service-based business, you are going to love this episode. You’re gonna wanna take notes because Todd is.

One of the OGs in the coaching space, and he has so much wisdom to share. [00:01:00] And if you’ve never heard of him, he has been entrenched in the world of elite performers working with the highest achievers in sports and business for over two decades. He is the creator of the multi-award winning leadership and skill development program 90 day year.

Author of the bestselling book, the Alter Ego Effect, the Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life, and he is the recipient of the Inc’s 500 Fastest Growing Company Award, as well as the Rama Award for wisdom and Leadership. How amazing is that? Now, Todd’s professional programs are delivered annually to over 200,000 professionals in 73 countries.

He was named by the Boston Herald as a training superstar, and he has been featured on NFL Films, the Today Show, sky News, wall Street Journal, ink Magazine, CBS, and Fox Sports, amongst many others. Now, for everything that we mention in today’s episode, you can check out in the show notes that’s over@melissaambrosini.com [00:02:00] slash 6 4 7.

Now without further ado, let’s bring on the incredible Todd Herman.

Todd, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here. But before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning? 

Todd: I had two eggs and a piece of sourdough toast. My son and I, we do eggs in the morning together every morning. 

Melissa: How old’s your son? 

Todd: I’ve got a 7-year-old boy, and then I have a 11-year-old girl and a 10-year-old girl.

Melissa: Wow. So beautiful. Now, tell us your story, like how did you get to where you are today? How did this all unfold for you? 

Todd: That’s a loaded question. That’s that’s a big.

In the coaching world in 1997 is when I started my peak performance and mental game coaching and training company. And it was very accidental. I was, [00:03:00] I played college football in here in North America and then when I got done playing, I was volunteering at a high school working with like many people who were in sports too.

You volunteered at a high school level or something like that. And I started spending way more time talking to the kids about like their mental game. ’cause that was like, my strength was, was that, ’cause I wasn’t like this physical specimen of an athlete. I wasn’t six four or 245 pounds a solid muscle or something like that.

I had two older, their brothers, I grew up on a farm and ranch. And so they, I learned mental toughness just outta necessity I think more than anything else. And I just was giving them my strategies that I was using to play in more of a zone like state, which was something that I was able to consistently do.

And then one of the parents came up to me and said, Hey, like would you mind mentoring my son? I said, yeah, sure. And then she just was this awkward pause and she was like waiting for me to tell her what the price was and I wasn’t even thinking about charging anything. And she said, okay, well how much would you, would you wanna charge?

And I said, how about [00:04:00] $75 for a package of three sessions? And that was my price for three years, from 97 to 2000. I learned early on that when you’re cheap, you get a lot of clients. And I say that kind of now 30 years into this and charging like extremely high fees for the types of people that I work with.

And then having like a big training company and selling lots of books and and whatnot. But I say that because a lot of people who might be listening now that are just starting out, they wanna race to some sort of level of whether it’s authority or notoriety or sort of status. And you’re really just starving yourself of a lot of incredible skill development and.

That you can only get by being on the field of play, like actually working with clients if you were someone who was in the world of coaching. And really it goes into any domain. Anyways, that’s how I started with the peak athlete, and then I kept on working with better and better quality athletes, tons of [00:05:00] Olympians, tons of professional athletes all around the world, and I ended up finding licensing.

So I licensed my training into sports organizations all across the globe and Real Madrid. Ended up buying my company in 2014. I worked with Kobe Bryant along the way. My book, the Alter Ego Effect, talks a bit about that, and I built many other kind of coaching and training companies, but I’ve always been inside of this market of coaching, training, and working with people.

Melissa: I love that. Awesome. So you’ve worked with elite athletes, top business leaders, so many amazing people. What are the key mindset or performance principles from sport that can elevate how entrepreneurs approach business? 

Todd: Well, there’s, there’s quite a few. I think one myth that people get wrong is that they’re always supposed to be that the best of the best somehow don’t have doubt or don’t have worry.

And that if you’re someone who might have to challenge or you’re challenged by that on a weekly basis or something that’s somehow, [00:06:00] that’s something that’s wrong with you, they just have a way stronger work ethic than other people will. They’ll continue to keep on fighting or showing up and doing the work and being consistent because the consistency and the discipline as they know will always at least get them as close to being their best that they can.

But some of the principles that we apply, one of the things that many people today, I think struggle with even more so than when I started out, like I, it was a bit of a gift in 1997 and 98, 99 when I was trying to grow this thing and build this business. There wasn’t a lot of. So-called experts out there.

Coaching wasn’t even an industry yet back then. People take it for granted that it’s been around. It hasn’t. It was not, especially my world of mental game coaching was, I mean, I had to fight and clon scrape to, to sell anyone on the, on the concept. But lever that most people will pull today is that of adding so many things [00:07:00] onto their plate, their project list, their things that they’re gonna focus on.

And it drives the entrepreneur nowadays, even more so into overwhelm the anxiety zone or the really massive stress zone. And that’s because they’re really pushing their own capabilities past. What they can actually do. And so that’s a principle of sport that we’re always looking for because when you can actually have the challenge of something and their capability meet, that’s when you can find the flow in whatever it’s that you’re trying to do.

So someone listens to you and they’re like, oh, I wanna have a podcast like Melissa, or I wanna have a book like Melissa and I wanna have a community like Melissa. And so they start doing all of these things thinking that that’s what they need to do in order for them to have some semblance of success.

And they end up getting none of them. Or if they do, they end up producing something that is nowhere near what their palette actually is, what it is that they want. So that’s like one of the principles is [00:08:00] making sure that we’re matching challenge and capability with someone. And you can do that with a team.

You can do that with your strategy inside your business. You can do that with your family. It’s a fundamental principle that runs across all areas of life. 

Melissa: What do you think makes a really good coach? Because I have lots of people listening who are in the coaching space. And in the entrepreneurial world, like what do you think makes a really good coach?

Todd: One is like a really deep burning desire for your people to be successful. It’s this new thing, I think in the last seven to eight years of a trend of people using coaching as a vehicle to maybe build up their own status in some ways. ’cause right now I run a platform called Upco, which is a coaching platform for coaches.

And so we’ve got tens of thousands of data points on the 6,000 plus coaches and coaching organizations that are on the, on the, on the platform. And what I know right now is that in the world of experts, the expertise [00:09:00] world, training courses, coaching workshops, on and on and on, the number one high is converting offer.

That’s out. There is a coaching offer. People are struggling to sell courses right now and just ’cause there’s so many of them. But when we go to and I look at now what, what is it about the coaches that are winning right now? That’s the fundamental attitude that they have is they really want to see their clients be successful.

And when you really, that attitude drives a lot of other decisions that happen inside your business. The quality of the types of sessions that you end up doing with a client, the quality of the type of support that you put around them, like whether it’s access or structure or systems, your desire to wake up and wanna improve things every single day.

Whether it’s a process here or a type of question that you ask, people are still surprised. Even at, you know, my level and the kind of level that I get to play at, I still watch and I have for over 20 years, whether it’s watch or listen to over three hours of my [00:10:00] coaching or group coaching or speeches every single week.

Because for me, that’s just looking at my game film. If, if I truly, ’cause this is one of my goals is to be the greatest coach that ever lived, now I’m never gonna get that award right. That’s just, that just helps to drive me. To make the decisions that I want to make each day or the types of types of content or information I’m gonna consume.

I have to make sure that I bring into this vessel the best of the best stuff. And if I just have these sessions and I don’t go back and watch and I’m like, okay, I was talking to Melissa and there was some little subtle shift that you had in your chair just now. And I’m like, you know what? I didn’t notice that she just had a, she responded physiologically in the moment right there.

You know what, let me ping her. And so I’ll imagine this. You have a coaching session with someone to this person that’s listening. Imagine someone actually followed up with you 24 or 48 hours later and said, you know what? I was just reflecting on our conversation and there was something [00:11:00] that pinged for me in a moment when we were talking about you presenting this idea to your husband and we didn’t discuss it, but I just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t some, something that was there that I missed, that I could help you with.

And the number of people that will come back to you with like, oh my God, you absolutely I, so I still haven’t even talked to him about it or whatever. The thing is, I haven’t written that first paragraph of chapter three of my book yet, and it’s because of X. Great. That’s being in service. And then when you think about that, it’s like, for me, I tell people it’s so easy to win.

It’s this little 5%, 10% extra that’s there. So if I tell that to another coach and they go, oh, I could never do that. Or someone that calls themselves and like, I could never rewatch, and I’m like, well then you, you don’t really have a desire to be a pro at coaching. ’cause that’s what pros do. They leave the field and they go into the game film and they watch what they [00:12:00] just did.

That’s where your best content and your best personal development is gonna come from is rewatching what you’ve already done. 

Melissa: So true. My brother is a professional rugby union player, and he’s played for all different teams in Australia and in Italy. He doesn’t do it anymore. He’s now a rugby coach and mindset coach, and he would watch back every game.

And when I was a professional dancer, I did the same thing. I would watch back my performances, but I don’t watch back my coaching calls and didn’t even occur to me. But yes, absolutely. This is something that if I wanna get better, this is something that I should do. I listen to every one of my own podcast episodes again, and I pick up things, even just the certain way that like, oh, I missed that.

I could’ve lent in more to that question when that person opened up a little bit more. Why didn’t I do that? Things like that. So I listen to every single podcast episode and I watch my talks. But I don’t go back and listen to my coaching calls [00:13:00] because my company she launched, we help female coaches and consultants get to six and seven figures in their business without burning out.

So we do a lot of business and we also do a lot of mindset. But I coach in there every week. This is great for me. Thank you for that tip. 

Todd: Yeah. And then even there, like, I mean, rewatching, like let’s say you’re doing a two hour group coaching call, like rewatching the whole thing is one thing, but then when you know that you had, oh, you know what, when I had that conversation with Katie, that was a really good conversation.

Let me dig into that one. And then if you know that you had one that just didn’t go the way that you would’ve wanted it to go, or you felt like there was not really any substance there, whether it was them, it was the way that they presented their challenge or their question to you, then you can dig into that one.

So it’s not like you’re gonna rewatch the whole thing, but there’s little, there’s, there’s pockets of these things that you can watch. And then I know that you, you speak as well, so like rewatching your speeches. And the cadence of it and the delivery of things. All of that stuff just makes you a [00:14:00] more powerful communicator to get these ideas that you really care about out to people.

Melissa: Yeah, 100%. Now, your concept, the alter ego effect, it has helped people unlock new levels of potential. Can you explain to us how adopting a secret identity can be a game changer for entrepreneurs, especially when facing like high pressure situations or self-doubt, which you mentioned before. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, I said before about how when I had started, I started working with higher and higher caliber athletes.

And because I didn’t stick in say, one sport like your your brothers, I wasn’t just a mental game guy in rugby or ice hockey or golf or something like that. I operated across tons of sports. There was this golden thread that revealed itself amongst the best of the best athletes that I was working with or coming in contact with.

And when I say best at us to people who are the most consistent at getting there. Talent and skill out onto the field. And they would mention things like, I’ve got this persona, [00:15:00] I’ve got this character, I’ve got this secret identity, I’ve got this alter ego that I use. And for me, I was like, oh, that’s really cool.

’cause I, I had the exact same thing. I, I used one when I played football. And so at first it wasn’t, I didn’t really do much with it. And then it was just, I was preparing an athlete for the Athens games in 2004 in Greece. This was in 2003 when I was working with her. And she had mentioned her alter ego that she uses when she gets into the pool.

And I was like, all of a sudden these dominoes dropped. And I was like, wait, this is a real thing. And so then I built up this, I really started indexing my, my coaching and my company towards identity-based performance. So using identity as a tool to help someone transform and get the results that they want.

And the alter ego method came out of that. And so in talking to entrepreneurs. The athlete, they have this one hat that they go and they wear and then when they go, when they go out there and compete, it’s, it’s a, it’s a very deliberate act that you’re going [00:16:00] to do in entrepreneurship. This, there’s, there’s the podcast interviewer version of, and Melissa right now.

Then there’s the promoter and marketer version of you, and then there’s the manager and leader and CEO version of you and the visionary that needs, like, there’s all these different hats you have to wear and we, we start to index towards these natural things. For me, it was coaching. I loved coaching. I was actually very good at it very early on.

Not because I had the skills, but because I learned early on that you can beat people that are better than you by simply out caring everyone else. ’cause there’s a lot of people that put on the label, but they don’t really have in the context of coaching, like what I call like the heart of a coach. So, but I resisted against promotion and marketing myself.

And anytime your business has your name on it. Automatically, that’s what people say, like coaching is the easiest business to get into. I’m like, yeah, but unlike selling a widget like a teacup or a teabag or something [00:17:00] like that, your face is on the label. And so while it’s from a business system standpoint, easy to go and start a coaching business, selling yourself is quite difficult for people who are very service orientated.

And so I leveraged this idea that I used when I played sports and I built an alter ego for myself who was super Richard and he was the promoter of Todd’s stuff. He’s the one who got on the on the calls to try and book me, me for workshops and getting in front of people to share my message because I was using speaking as my number one method.

And I was very deliberate about practicing the art of being that version of myself. And so there’s nothing false in it. We, we’ve, most people have practiced themselves into a version of how they show up right now that isn’t, that is not based in actual fact, like other people shape you. Other people give you ideas when you were younger, when you never even were [00:18:00] aware of what these ideas would mean.

And so are are attributes and traits, the things that sit inside of us that we can access, whether it’s patience, whether it’s drive, whether it’s being more confident, whether it’s being more articulate. They’re all there. Most of us just don’t have a very good vessel, meaning our identity as a means to get those things out.

And so the alter ego method was the tool that I would use to help people do that. People talk about your best self or use your future, you to pull yourself into it. And those are all lovely ideas, but there’s no meat on the bone, like meaning. There’s nothing that’s actionable or tactical. And because our brain is very creative.

Using Alter Ego is really leveraging our main superpower, which is our creative imagination to beat the resistance that’s within. 

Melissa: I love this so much. I’m gonna make every single one of my She Launch girls listen to that because there’s some women that I see [00:19:00] they really get in their own way, and maybe this is a female and male thing, but like I feel like men, they can adopt that a lot easier than women.

I don’t know, just from my own experience, I can see a lot of women, especially when they are in the earliest stages of their business, they. Doubt themselves so much they make it about them instead of about their client and serving their client. And even things like I’ve heard some women say, I’m scared to put myself out there, like, I don’t wanna do an Instagram reel, or I don’t wanna put my face out there.

So I can see how creating an alter ego like Beyonce has one Sasha Fierce. Like I can see how creating an alter ego for these women would be so transformational. Then it takes the pressure off it being about them, and it’s about I’m here to serve my clients and get them the transformation that they’re actually paying for.

Todd: And and mean. There’s so many layers of it, and I [00:20:00] go through it in the book, like the layers that ends up happening for people and why the subtitle of the books is The Power Secret Identities to Transform Your Life because it’s so counterintuitive. Like I’ve had people say like, man, I have a hard enough time even knowing who I am now.

I gotta go and create something else. And what I see is like who you are or who questions are actually very trapping questions. It’s actually not the right question. It comes from the spiritual traditions, leadership traditions, and personal development traditions. Asking like, Hey, who are you? Even when we’re building out, like say our brand, like who are we or who am I?

And that’s a very loaded question. The better question to ask yourself is what are you, because what is substance? It’s something I feel like I can hold in my hand. So what am I? Well, if I had one of your ladies in front of me, I would say like, well, no, what are you, like, what do you want to be about? Like if I’m interacting with you, what would be those experiences or that feeling that I would like to have you would like [00:21:00] me to walk away with?

And you might say, oh, I’d like to, what, what I would like to be is more patient, or, I would like to be patient. I would like to be able to stand in my capabilities or stand in my skills. So that’s, that’s really an honoring thing. Like recognizing what, what you’ve got. I wanna be more, or I want to have resilience, or I want to have, I was just talking to one of my pro athletes, one of his, his anchoring word is smooth because he’s just in a position in the type, so smooth is, and even when he said it, he, we were already talking about a bunch of other attributes and traits and qualities, but it was when he said smooth that I could just see in him that, that one, I’m like, oh, that’s the one.

And I’m like, and that’s when I see you. When you’re at your best, smooth is the word. And so that’s like his one anchoring thing. So just going back to like what you were saying, it’s actually not just a female male thing. Males just don’t articulate it as much, that [00:22:00] challenge or that struggle because guys just aren’t as emotive around their feelings or communicative about their feelings about those things.

But what I will say is women do have more of a tendency to not step into more ego in the way that they will show up in the, like having a man say, you know what? Yeah, I’m gonna go after that. ’cause it is a more masculine trait. Women will have more of a tendency, and this is just born out of like not even my experience.

There’s just tens of thousands of different data points or studies that have been done on this. Women will index a little bit more to. Wanting to have the skill first before they say that they can do it. And there’s a healthy balance because we don’t want lunacy out there, people promising something they can never deliver, but there may be waiting for way too many things to be right before they actually get going.

And even to the person who’s struggling with putting a reel [00:23:00] up, my advice, I was like, great, don’t, please don’t post a reel. What I want you to do, do 20 and post them into a Dropbox account that only you have access to and no one’s ever gonna watch. Just practice these things, practice them, and then all of a sudden you’ll feel more comfortable with it.

Whether you’re past the point of like wanting other people to see it, who cares? Like that’s, that’s gonna be the case for everybody. Everyone has that. Not just you, but practice it. 

Melissa: Yeah. So important, whether it’s podcasting, coaching, speaking, practicing, and then rewatching it. That is how we learn and grow.

So I love that so much. 

Todd: So just to stick with that, I’m gonna ask you the question back now, like beyond, ’cause people talk about mindset and they anchor a lot of different challenges that people are going through because I, I’ve built one of the largest mental game coaching companies in the world. And what I would always tell people, and I still say on podcasts and everyone else is the last place I wanna make an issue for [00:24:00] someone is their mindset or really their beliefs.

Because we are well honed and trained that when someone says, oh, that’s a belief issue, because beliefs, that’s like in the, that’s in the dark part of our brain, that’s in the unconscious poor. Like, how do I get rid of that? Whereas the reality is sometimes it’s like, whoa, I’ll challenge people constantly saying like, I don’t think, I don’t think you don’t believe in yourself, or I don’t believe you’re not worthy.

How I know that’s true is how could you even be on the Zoom call with us right now? That would be impossible. So you do have some levels. Maybe it’s not to the level that you want, but I think it’s actually, you’re just missing this behavioral thing. So I wanna make it something different. So just for anyone that’s out there that is coaching or even just leading other people or parenting, one of the things that I would love to encourage people to do is when someone stacks a heavy load on their shoulders, be the one who takes it off.[00:25:00] 

Say, Hey, wait before you stack that on your shoulders, I don’t know that that’s actually true. And if you have authority or you have credibility in their, in their mind, that alone can remove the obstacle from someone. It’s such a gift that you can give somebody when you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Before you call it a belief issue, before we anchor it underneath this umbrella of mindset, let’s make sure we’re not calling something an absolute.

That isn’t an absolute. 

Melissa: Yeah, I love that. What a gift. So beautiful. 

Todd: So, so I wanna ask you the question, sorry it’s your podcast, but you were talking about for your women in your group or the people that are in your programming, like what are some of those, you talked about doubt. Like what are some of the other specific things that they say?

Because this becomes a more meaningful conversation if we can index it towards, ’cause people aren’t really coming here to listen to me. They’re coming here to listen to more about how you investigate other ideas with other people. So let’s make it more meaningful for them. Like what are some of the other things that they say to you that might be [00:26:00] getting in their way, or what you think that is getting in their way that really should be in their way?

Melissa: I can’t possibly charge that amount. I am not qualified enough. Don’t know enough, so much fear around people not joining their program. So yeah, fear around that. They’re probably like the three biggest ones that I see with beginner entrepreneurs. Not so much with the ones that are already making high six figures, seven figures.

They’ve got different doubts. Yeah. But the newer ones, it’s like no one’s gonna show up. Who am I to charge X amount and I’m not qualified enough. And it’s crazy because these ones that are like qualified, like someone I work with, she’s amazing. She is a nurse, a lactation consultant. She’s got literally like [00:27:00] 10 credentials and she’s like, I’m not qualified enough to create a program on this.

And I’m like, really? Like you are the most qualified person, like. I’ve met on these topics. So they’re probably the biggest things. 

Todd: Yeah. So even on the, so going, going to one of those around whether it’s people charging or whether or not enough people are gonna, are gonna come and join the program or the group or whatever.

One of the things that’s useful that I try to tell entrepreneurs, ’cause entrepreneur, we’re talking about alter egos and we’re talking about identity entrepreneur is a label. Okay. So a lot of people will say like, I’m an entrepreneur, okay. And I’m like, I dunno if I’d want that. What I, what I want is, I love having entrepreneurial skillsets and, and the reason is because Melissa.

There’s a lot of really good people who had, who had incredible businesses. One gentleman in [00:28:00] Canada had one retailer of the year in 2019, and then Covid comes along and his business went out of business within like six weeks because of no one could go shopping. And you know what it was like in Australia as well.

And so my point is, is well here’s someone, if their entire identity is about being an entrepreneur and they lose this multi, multi eight figure business in just a matter of months, they’ve lost their entire identity. But if they, if they actually index more towards, no, I’m entrepreneurial and I’m gonna do this for the good chunk of my life.

Like this is really my career. People don’t think of the word career and being an entrepreneur, do they? 

Melissa: No, 

Todd: they don’t. But if you did, it’s a really great gift. Because when you think of a career, there’s skills, there’s things that you’re gonna be promoting yourself into or hopefully getting promotions into, but you’re gonna be building skills as you go.

There’s no great demand when you start out a career of like running the entire [00:29:00] company yet. But in entrepreneurship, you are, you’re running the company. But if you take an entrepreneur and say, Hey, like, wait a second, Melissa, you’re gonna have a long career in this world of being an entrepreneur. And so what are the entrepreneurial traits and attributes and qualities that you want to build this year?

What I’m doing, going back to the whole pricing thing or someone joining your group, is I want to expand the time horizon that these people are placing on themselves. ’cause most of them are on a pace or a speed that they think they need to have it right now. It’s the impatience that’s getting in their way and they’re placing a demand on themselves that they really shouldn’t place on themselves.

Yeah. It’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Imagine like let’s build towards this vision. Three years from now, you have hundreds of people inside of your community or your group, or you got thousands like whatever, depending on the business model. And we’re, we’re gonna build towards that. The first stepping stone to doing this is gonna be, let’s build a lot of demand for your one-on-one [00:30:00] services and one simple way, like if you lack the sales and promotional skills, then don’t throw your pricing so high or keep your pricing really high and only work with a, a, a, a few people that are high caliber.

So just in there I would wanna expand sometimes people’s time horizons and, and so that they don’t feel this pressure to have to be perfect or to have to posture with being something that they might have a hard time seeing themselves as right now. 

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. How can we step into more of a leadership role because.

Some people don’t even see themselves as a leader when they’re a coach, but they are, you’re a leader, so how can we really embrace that leadership mindset? And do you have any tips on some of the mindset hacks? 

Todd: So, one, a question that I would want people to ask themselves, if they’re a solo individual or [00:31:00] they’re freelance or something like that, any one of those names that people will put on themselves is, what is it about?

So the question is, what is it about the way that I’m leading my current life that demonstrates leadership qualities? Okay, so one might be, well, I, I, I plan, I plan my weeks, or I plan my days. One, I have goals for myself. Another one is I actually invest in myself. Like I buy the books. I. Show up for like, I have my own coach, or I have my own mentor, or I can’t afford, I, I couldn’t afford people when I first started out.

Well, a, I didn’t even know there was a world of like, coaching and mentoring. I fell accidentally into having one. Jim Rohn was my first real mentor, and I just, only because I sat next to him at an event that I went to with my uncle and pretty lucky to sit next to Jim early on. And, and I used to have to send him my, my, my speeches and he would review them and tell me [00:32:00] how terrible I was.

It’d give me, um, uh, lots of great tips. But I would say first place is to find what it is about the way that you’re currently leading your life and what are those qualities that you have. ’cause what you’re gonna want to do, the best leaders, the people who lead the best companies, their companies, in order for them to get really high quality traction, are a very solid reflection of the leader.

And so if your planning your weeks. The very first thing that you’d wanna do for your executive assistant is teach them how to plan their weeks. So all the things that you do, just simply keep on trickling them down into your people. Then it becomes the SOP or the way that we do things. And so like if, ’cause I don’t run, like I’m not more of the spiritual type, let’s say like using like some people, and I think even you would use it like words, like [00:33:00] manifesting.

So, but if that’s something that you use, then that can be a part of the DNA and the culture of your business. You don’t need to run it like Todd does. And so if it’s like, you know what, I have this kind of interesting way that I plan and manifest my week. And so when people come in, that’s the first thing.

You teach your executive assistant, here’s the plan and manifest your week. Now all of a sudden you’re building a culture that’s a really solid reflection of how you want to live in your world. I 

Melissa: love that so much. I’m definitely gonna do that. We’ve just hired someone new, so I’m definitely gonna do that.

That’s such a beautiful thing. I think whenever I have hired someone, I forget that they can’t read my mind, and I forget this with my husband as well. I’m like, what? You can’t read my mind. You don’t know that. I just wanted you to do that. 

Todd: Absolutely. It’s one of the first skills that I would encourage anyone that’s in like any of our programming, and this has nothing to do, [00:34:00] Melissa, it’s people like to create this huge divide between the person that’s making five KA month, or 10 K or 15 K, and some of my clients that have got billion dollar value companies.

There are principles that everyone is, if you master these things, the amount of friction that you have in your business starts to go way down. One of them is end in mind thinking, meaning like if you’re A-A-C-E-O of a company. You have a project that you’d like to start, or if you have a business unit or you’ve got a product, the best way to get people to understand what’s in your head is to tell them, this is what I want.

This is what success looks like at the end. Define what success looks like at the end. So then they go, oh, okay. Easy example. Designing your homepage on your website. Okay, so your job then is to go out and get some inspiration. Like, Hey, like I like how Melissa does this. And then I like, I like the header area [00:35:00] that Todd Herman has here, but I don’t like that it’s a little bit too dark, so I don’t want that, but like, I like the structure of this, and here’s another one.

So you bring this inspiration thing and say like, this is what I want it to look like. And they go, oh, okay. Now the how and the what. You don’t need to know all of the hows that the graphic designer does in order to change the photo. So it doesn’t look as dark as Todd’s or something like that. They just know what it needs to look like.

So encourage everybody that when you know what success looks like and you’re good at articulating or showing it to other people, that’s, that’s, that’s such a mastery level of skill that you can be passing to your team. And a lot of, a lot of incredible leaders that have had a lot of success still don’t master.

Melissa: Hmm, interesting. What are some other tips to make us better coaches? Like, I wanna be the best coach that I can be. What else can we do besides really caring about them? [00:36:00] Getting the transformation, getting the results, which I do like, what else can we do? 

Todd: So I alluded to it before we were talking about, um, uh, someone saying, I think this is a real belief issue for me.

These are very like, popular vernaculars that people, so like, they become just popular things that people say. So the idea that’s there as well is. Don’t always accept the problem that people give to you. Okay. So you and I think of it like we’re sitting, we’re we’re sitting at a table and you throw something on the table and that’s your problem.

I don’t need to accept it and put it on my dish and then look at trying to cut it up and solve it or eat it and consume it myself. I want to question the promise, like, well, what do you mean by that? So clarifying questions like, how do you know that that’s really the thing that’s getting in your way? So I want to question that they even have the level of understanding or appreciation that that’s really the main thing.

So I wanna question those [00:37:00] things. ’cause often when you dissect those things, you’ll find the root of a challenge or you’ll actually make the thing disappear. And sometimes people will say, especially if it’s in a group programming thing, or even in one-on-ones as well, they just. They wanna get value from you.

And so sometimes they’ll just, they didn’t really know what to come to the call with, and so they’ll invent something just to have something, some, some, some content to talk to you about. And, and so I’ll go like, by the way, and, and listen, this is not just for people who are quote newbies. This is for like, I’ve got one of the top wealth managers in all of America as my client.

He’s, he owns a mountain for crying out loud and many other things. And we, we just had this conversation probably like a month and a half ago, and I’m like, by the way, if you don’t have anything, then great. Don’t invent it. Don’t, don’t invent anything, right? Like we can, we can, we, we don’t have to solve problems all the time or solve issues.

[00:38:00] We can do, we can hone other skills that you’re doing. So there’s a, like I do, like, it’s not just coaching, there’s mentoring and there’s training. And because I’m trying to help people with other skill sets. And so a very easy one, I was like, Hey, just open up your calendar, share it on Zoom. Let’s just take a look at an audit.

The activities that are on your calendar, and then all of a sudden it’s just relax and you’re like, okay, yeah. So let’s look. Thank God. So just as a skill for a que or a Coach Quest, don’t accept the problem that people are giving you all the time. Just question it saying like, oh, that’s interesting. How do you know that that’s true?

Or like, how long has that been troubling you? Or How long has that been challenging you? Or how long have you wanted to overcome that? And then sometimes it’s even questioning their motivation. Like, is this something that’s important that you solve today or that you really wanna work on? Because if they’re looking at and comparing, ’cause comparisonitis is, is, is, is a terrible affliction, right?

So they go, yeah, you know what? Like I see Melissa doing that, and I’m like, I don’t know that you need to [00:39:00] do that. You’ve got other skills that Melissa doesn’t have, and Melissa would love to have those skills. So I don’t know if you need to build the business model the exact same way, or I don’t need you to be doing that strategy the exact same way.

I think there’s another way that you can be doing it. And so. I’m trying to index their actions towards the core of how, how they’re built, what are the attributes that they actually have. So that’s, that’s just another, I mean, that’s just one, I mean, the ability to ask good questions and a book that helped to transform my coaching skills is, you know, a long time, kind of top three, top five book in the world of coaching.

Cove Coaching is a, is an incredible resource for people. The original version of Cove Coaching in the back of the book had, I don’t know, 20 pages of different types of questions that you could ask people in different types of clarifying questions and in inquiry type questions, challenging questions and encouraging questions.

So there’s, what I would do is I would go to that, [00:40:00] that, that book, and this takes me back to like the late ni, late nineties, early two thousands, and I would find one question each week that I would just work on integrating in my conversation, and not even just in my coaching, just with friends. So being very good at asking questions and being very patient 

Melissa: and a good listener.

Todd: Yeah. So that’s where the, the, the patients in listening. Okay. So Melissa, you had said earlier that some people have a hard time charging the rates that they, that you’d be suggesting or that people are gonna value their, their stuff. So if it’s true that someone is struggling with giving value to other people, what they will have a tendency to do is they will rush things.

And how that shows up in coaching or leading anybody is you will rush to the outcome or rush to solve that for a client too quickly without being patient. That’s [00:41:00] where the questioning, the original thing that they presented you with value isn’t just in solving something value is in also providing perspective on something or even just.

Having the conversation. Most people do not have someone who just listens to them. They don’t have that. And that’s one of the great gifts that we can do as coaches or mentors to other people, is give them that, that space and that time or that energy. And one of the ways that I know that you are listening to me is you repeat the words that I just said back to me and you ask me a question to follow up on it, or you understand me and you say, eh, Todd, I don’t know that that’s true about you.

Like I get that that’s what you’re experiencing. But that is when I’ve seen you at your best, that doesn’t ever show up. [00:42:00] So that I can create this anchor of divide between the best version of my client and the one that’s now asking this question through when insecurity or a doubt, or something that’s there.

Melissa: I love this so much and I can just like hear all of my girls getting so much out of this. So thank you so much. This has just been so beautiful. I wanna know what you attribute all your success to. 

Todd: Well, I would say I got very fortunate, very when I was young to, I have to absolute world-class parents and so I won the lottery on moms and dads and I grew up on a big farm and ranch in, in Canada and it was, I was a fish out of water.

I was the third boy who never got to do very much of the, the fun work on the farm, like driving the tractors. My older brothers got to do that, so I, I would, if I was out there laboring on the farm, it would be doing the unfun stuff and so, but it gave me a good [00:43:00] work ethic. My parents gave me some really good nuggets of wisdom when I was young.

One being, this is one of the really important ones. My dad, we were working in the corrals one day as we were sorting the cattle and we stopped to take a break and he said two things on two separate occasions. One, he pointed out a piece of manure and he said, Todd, you see that piece of cow shit over there?

And I said, yeah. And my, my brother Ryan and I looked at each other funny and he said, Todd, you can pay, take a piece of cow shit and wrap it in a red ribbon, but it’s still a piece of cow shit. And he knew I’m a big extrovert. I love being around people. And he knew that I was never gonna be taking over the farm or working on the farm in the future.

He knew that I was probably gonna be traveling the world and doing that kind of thing. But he knew that I would probably be susceptible to the, the shiny objects of other people, their status and stuff like that. And all he was trying to message to me was like, you gotta look past the red ribbon of people and see like, is there [00:44:00] actual substance that’s there?

That was one thing. And then the second thing was when I was actually leaving to go to university, my parents both said to me, whatever you go and do, we probably won’t have the, you know, be able to give you advice because you’re gonna do stuff that we don’t know. Farmers and ranchers, we know that. But whatever you go and do, find whoever’s the best and go and learn from those people.

Tuck yourself under the wing of the best. That was actually what they had said is tuck yourself under the wing of the best. And that always stuck with me. And I think the deeper message that’s there is if you are someone who tucks yourself under the wing of the best, that is a real vote to your internal sense of what you are or who you are about, that you are worthy of being around the best.

And I didn’t get it back then, but like. 15 [00:45:00] years in my career, I was like, oh, wow. Like being tucked underneath Jim Rohn’s wing, making sure that I did not get myself around people who were all about putting labels on themselves or ribbons, but didn’t actually do the work like I was around people who did the work, whatever that meant.

Those were two and really, really important things for me. So when you think, when you ask the question around like, what was important a part, an important part of my success, it’s other people a hundred percent. Like it’s so much being around just really good human beings and good smart people and trying to get around the best to learn from those people and be a good vessel for being coachable as well.

And it being okay to say, Hey, like the current version of me is not built for the next version of me. That’s not an indictment on my identity. That’s just I need to shape this new version of me so that I can go and achieve that next thing. [00:46:00] It’s not about indicting and judging, oh, I don’t have the thing, or I’m not good enough, or I’m not smart enough.

Those are all very unhelpful when it comes to helping me become better. So that version of Todd, let’s close that chapter. Let’s sign it now, let’s move on to the next version of this, of this person so that we can continue to go and pursue what we’re trying to pursue. 

Melissa: Beautiful. I love that. Such great advice.

This kind of leads to my next question, which is, if you had a magic wand and you could put one book in the school curriculum of every high school, what book would you choose? Because some of these mentors we might not physically be able to be in the room with, but we can read their books, we can devour their work, we can watch their talks and things like that.

So besides your book, let’s pretend that is in the curriculum because it’s amazing and it should be. What is one other book you would choose? 

Todd: It would be an interview book of [00:47:00] questions to go back and find out where you come from learning from and finding the stories of, and again, there’s some people who don’t have that ability because of whatever they’re, whether they were adopted or something like that.

However, my, my point for people is I, I want people to dig into the content of their own world. Like if you read five leadership books and that’s all you ever do is consume everyone else’s book, but you don’t ever stop and you ask yourself, what do I believe about leadership? What do, what do I value in leadership?

And if you don’t ask those questions of yourself, you’ll never know what you even have gaps in when it comes to a knowledge gap. So the book that I would wanna have inside of a school would be a book of interview questions to go back and ask. Mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, and you keep on [00:48:00] going down and you find out stories of like what they went through because then you won’t feel like, even if it’s not your own family, but you won’t feel like your experiences that you’re going through are so unique.

Like the, we get, we sometimes we get into this a bit of a special snowflake syndrome that your, your ex, a lot of your experiences are very unique, but fundamentally what underlies them is very, very similar. So I like to encourage people to read lots of autobiographies. I read over 700 autobiographies of people.

I find them a lot more. Useful than sometimes the nonfiction books that are out there because you get to read this story of, say Tina Faye, for example. That’s a great autobiography. And whether it’s Tina Faye’s autobiography, or it’s Benjamin Franklin’s, which I’ve reread over 80 times and on and on and on, you read the same story.

It’s a hero’s journey [00:49:00] story. Sometimes it’s fish out of water. I grew up where I didn’t want to grow up or I didn’t have the people around me, or I wanted to pursue dance, but I really wasn’t in a city or a town that had a lot of good dance instructors. And so my parents, they struggled and scraped and saved and they sent me off to here or whatever the case is, and then they finally find their thing.

Sometimes people find it early, so no long answer to the question of what book, but I would really encourage people to dig into the content of their own lives. 

Melissa: It’s interesting ’cause as, as I get older, the more questions I have. Like all of my grandparents have passed and I only grew up with one my nana and she was Italian and spoke very little English and I wish there was like, I just wish I sat with her and asked more questions and recorded it and really dove deep into it.

But I ask my parents a lot of questions now. It’s interesting because they kind of like, oh I don’t remember. They kind of like brush it off and I’m like, oh, come on. Like, especially having my daughter three and a half years ago, [00:50:00] I sat down and I was like, can you please tell me my birth story? Like, I wanna know the whole story.

Like, like how did you feel when you found out you were pregnant with me? And like I asked my dad as well and I just think we are never gonna get this time back. And it tells us a lot about why we are the way that we are and it’s beautiful. 

Todd: So on that, I think one of the ways that we go about it that ends up not getting us the result that we would like or we’d like to dive into more of the deeper conversations is we go straight for the deep question as opposed to like, this is the art of conversation.

I have other friends, and this is actually very much a epidemic in the world of like coaching or people that are in the service world is like, you know what, I, I, I can’t do small talk. I don’t like going to, whether it’s a dinner party and I just like to have deeper conversations. And I’m like, yeah, but if you find out who someone’s favorite sports team is, that creates a little bit, that creates a little bit of a [00:51:00] bond, and then it opens up the opportunity to have like, uh, a deeper conversation.

So one of the questions I love to ask at dinner parties or when I’m out and I’m speaking at events and or just at wherever it is, what’s the most random or weird trend or fad? You got involved with when you were in high school? 

Melissa: Oh, I love that question. 

Todd: It’s such because we can, all your parents would be able to go back and like, I’ll tell you mine, I wore back in the early nineties because of the rise of rap, there was this trend of wearing a pacifier around your neck.

Melissa: What 

Todd: this is by, for people that are listening, like I don’t tell this story to build any credibility with me whatsoever. This is, so there was, there was a big trend like in 91, 92 and, and so I wore a pacifier around my neck. It started off with, it’s like a silver pacifier. Okay. I think it was LL Cool J is the one who actually started it.

And so [00:52:00] me, ’cause I’m a very practical minded person, I’m like, well this is just, it’s not useful, it’s just an object that’s there. So I substituted that one out for a real pacifier. And so I was sitting in my biology class and I’ll never forget Mr. Grad coming up to me ’cause I was like, GNA on this soother.

And he said to me, he’s like, Todd. You might wanna take that soother outta your mouth so that the future version of you doesn’t come back and kick your ass for doing this. And then I recognized what I was doing and I was like, yeah, you’re right. This is so stupid of me to do. So anyway, that’s it. Like, I don’t know.

What was the thing that you did when you were in high school? What did you wear or have that was like such a trend or fad? 

Melissa: I mean how, I’ve got like 10 We, one of them was we wore our hair with like a big quiff and I would lick my hair back and then I had this like big quiff and then I went through a phase where I had a hairpiece, like a wig, and all the girls were wearing this wig in their hair.

And I’d go to school with this like ponytail wig thing. Pointy toe [00:53:00] shoes, like really pointy shoes. Oh, another one. Like a line of glitter eyeshadow. Oh, blue mascara. Another one. 

Todd: Yeah, big time. Big time. You would’ve, based on that stuff, you would’ve fit in as such a good eighties girl too, then like. The leg warmers that were big that my sister wore and the big hair scrunchies, which all this stuff ends up coming back.

But yeah, my point is, is asking these random questions that have like, they’re so surface level that kind of just builds like levity and humor in things is I think an incredible way of digging into and finding out some, ’cause not everything has to be about deep, like painful things. It can be just like super funny things that we all did.

Like I’ve asked my, my parents all those questions and their answers were, 

Melissa: yeah, 

Todd: same thing. Just funny stuff. 

Melissa: I love it. We’ve got some conversation cards that we have for dinner parties and, and they’re just so much fun, so lighthearted, [00:54:00] we end up crying with laughter, absolutely crying with laughter and yeah, I think it’s, it’s such a nice icebreaker.

So tell me now, I’d love to hear about how you move through your day. Talk us through like what time do you get up, what are your rituals, your routines? I love hearing about the little success habits that people do that really help them thrive. 

Todd: So I’m up at, around, I don’t have like a hard alarm clock or anything like that, but I’m up around five 15 and I immediately get outside and I go for a walk, whether I’m, you know, at our place in New York City or here where I’m at in, uh, British Columbia, Canada, outside.

So getting, trying to get fresh air as fast as possible because I know the demands of my, my day is gonna sometimes put me. Either on the end of an iPhone or behind a, a [00:55:00] computer for a good chunk of it sometimes. And so I need to get outside as fast as possible. Coffee. And then I, I don’t have like a lot of people structure their routines, like super disciplined with it.

My most important thing is having one important communication that has gone out into the world to whether it’s a client or a friend that’s encouraging in nature as fast as possible. So I’ll typically do that when I’m out for a walk is, Hey Melissa, just saw you won a podcast award for your show.

Congratulations. I know how much work goes into these things and the discipline it takes to even get recognized. So high five to you and wish you a ton more success. Send that out to people. So honoring, recognizing that’s probably one of the biggest like. You call it a habit hack or something like that.

That’s just, that’s me. Like I, people are a big part of my, [00:56:00] the importance of, of my, of my world. And then, and then sit bending. I have an app that I use that I really like called Read Wise. I dunno if you know it. 

Melissa: I think I’ve heard of it. 

Todd: Yeah. So any, any highlights that you ever do inside of a Kindle book, read wise, aggregates them all.

And when you log into it, it’ll show you like five popular highlights of your day, or five not of your day. Five popular highlights from books that you’ve read, like random ones. It can be, because I’ve got such random books that I’m gonna consume. So I love doing that because what happens is I’ll swipe through them and then it’ll give me an idea.

I’m like, oh, like. I’m gonna go back to that part of that book and reread it again. So, like, for me, Robert Fritz, I really like Robert Fritz, and so he has a book, the Path of Least Resistance. I was just, that was one of my ones today, so I went back and re consumed it and like, I don’t know, for me it’s just, there’s serendipity in that.

[00:57:00] So reading something, but that’s just my, that’s just my, my kind of trick that I now have to going back into consuming something that I’ve read and then always doing breakfast. Anytime I’m home, I do travel, but anytime I’m home doing breakfast with the kids. 

Melissa: Beautiful. And then how does the rest of your day unfold?

Todd: So Mondays is always structured around leadership and team meetings with my different companies. So like my up coach team over in Turkey, I’ve got two co-founders, so that’s where our calls would be. And then my leadership meetings with my other companies happen for the rest of Monday. And then there’s a little bit of time for any of my like ultra private clients ’cause they’ve got access to my calendar if they, if they need to.

So the afternoons would be typically for some coaching and then Tuesdays is themed out as very much like, uh, content or creation days. [00:58:00] Wednesday is more themed out as stuff like this. So it’s Wednesday for you? It’s late later Tuesday for me. But Wednesdays is typically if I’m gonna do any sort of like media stuff or try to do podcast things on that, on that day.

Thursdays is a delivery day. When I’m gonna do more of my, you know, coaching or, or mentoring stuff. And then Friday for me is themed out as just a domino catch day, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, like whatever. I couldn’t, we couldn’t get done. I’ve got mostly Friday free to, to catch those things.

Plus Fridays for me, and Wednesdays are days that I would prefer to do travel on. Like, I try to protect Mondays and Thursdays that I’ll never travel on those two days. So my assistants know that. And so when I’m, when I am booked to do, uh, a speaking gig somewhere, it’s not gonna disrupt my world too much because I do have days that are meant [00:59:00] handle travel demands and things.

Does that help at all? 

Melissa: Yeah, I love it. I love how you structure your week. That’s so awesome. I’m in a different phase of my life. I’m about to give birth to my second child, so it’s, oh, I just always find it so fascinating how people run their businesses and how they run their lives. I think it’s, we’re all so different and it’s, you gotta do what works for you and makes you thrive.

So thank you for sharing. 

Todd: So, and question for you, when you look at your calendar, what’s an activity that you see on your week that you, that you love doing? 

Melissa: My coaching calls Monday mornings with my, she launched girls, my favorite highlight of my work week and interviews, podcast interviews. So they’re like my highlight of my work week, those two things.

Todd: Yeah. And so then when you think about how you create content, do you create content very differently than, like, when I, when I come [01:00:00] across someone like you who says, okay, coaching. Some, some people are gonna say like, oh, when I get to do content. Okay, so that’s interesting. What I would say to someone like you is the more that your content looks like, your coaching calls, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be, that’s, that’s like a point of differentiation or a positioning thing that’s gonna be hard to beat My best content that I’ve ever put out.

People would, it’s either clips of coaching or it’s structured in a way where Coach Todd can come out 

Melissa: really good. Thank you. Because I needed to hear that. Yeah. My content is not like that. My, I don’t share a lot of my coaching stuff, but I definitely can and should. 

Todd: Yeah. If you want, if you, when you start doing like more of the game film stuff, you’ll go back and you go like, oh, I’m not gonna share the private thing about that client, but that’s a really good coaching clip.

That’s, or that’s a really good piece of content because people use the word like authenticity and authentic a lot. [01:01:00] But if you pull content outta real conversations, I’ll bet it would be some of the most resonant content that you’d be able to put out there. 

Melissa: Yeah, 100%. 

Todd: And my wife says it to me all the time, she’s like, my favorite version of your voice is Coach Todd.

The tonality drops a lot. And so she told me that several years ago. And so I started creating content more in that vein as well. And she’s right, like it’s just so easy for me to do it then. 

Melissa: Yeah. I love that. So good. And then I’m not having to like, create all this new content. I, it’s there, it’s all just sitting there in the, in the portal for, for my clients, but like, yeah.

Why am I not, I mean, Layla Mozzi does that a lot. Anytime she’s being interviewed, she has a full camera set up on her that she then pulls clips from that. 

Todd: Yep. Absolutely. And that’s just something that, so someone else hears that and they’re like, well, I don’t have all the people that insert whoever [01:02:00] has to follow you.

Yeah. But you can, you, there’s other ways to go about getting there without the the three camera shoot as well. 

Melissa: Totally. Absolutely. I don’t want that to be a barrier for anybody, but yeah, put some natural lighting. Sit in front of a window, have your computer like in front of a window and get natural lighting on your face.

Like that’s all you need. And that’s it. 

Todd: It’s all these little steps that you take and when you start to tweak these things that whether it’s gone and whether someone takes it and gets, gets it repurposed or whether it’s just improving on your processes, just that mindset of constant, just slight little tweaks all of a sudden, like a year from now you’d be like, oh my God.

Like I would’ve never expected my, I. Business to be like that, or I have this retire repository of good stuff that I can go and use going forward. Like my team is n they, they could, I wouldn’t have to create [01:03:00] one real type video for the next seven years if I was sick, because they just have just such a wealth of, of stuff that they can go and chop up and repurpose or look whatever the case is.

Melissa: A hundred percent. Like in my podcast alone, like I’m at 600 and something episodes. There’s so much gold in there. So much gold. I haven’t even turned all of my videos into YouTube videos yet, which I’m like, it’s on my to-do list. It’s just has. I just haven’t had the space to even go there. But yeah, I’m the same.

I would have years and years of content just sitting there and collecting dust. Well, my client’s getting a lot out of it from the calls, but sharing it, you’ve inspired me. Thank you so much. Before we wrap up, I’ve got three rapid fire questions for you. Are you ready? 

Todd: Oh boy. Here we go. 

Melissa: What is one thing that we can do today for our health, physical health, mental health?

What is one thing we can all do? 

Todd: I think the, one of the [01:04:00] best things that you can do is find someone in your world that has done something good and recognize them for it. Whether it’s, hey, noticed this, like I was telling you before about you winning the podcast, look for, look for ways to encourage and serve other people.

The feedback loop that you get. I’ve had a practice for almost 30 years now of writing a handwritten note every single day to somebody, and I have a very, very specific process that I have. I’ve got a wax seal and a wax thing, and I drip it on and, and it’s all handwritten. It’s just one, one page and it’s on my stationary and, but it’s always about.

Either showing gratitude for someone for writing the book that they wrote, and just giving them something very specific that resonated with me. So, Melissa, on page 72 of your book, about time, that one [01:05:00] idea about looking at my calendar in a different way just hit me right when I needed it. So thank you for sharing that specificity in your compliments.

Huge. The most common response I’ve gotten from people, whether it’s the letter or whether it’s the text messages or emails, typically text message that I would try to send to people is, you have no idea how much I needed to hear that today. 

Melissa: Hmm. Yeah. You 

Todd: know, like ambitious people or people striving to do something that’s new in their world can feel lonely.

For many people, it’s not just to the average listener, it’s, it’s a common experience for a lot of people who are achievers. And so the feedback loop that that closes, it’s so encouraging for the rest of your day. Pulls you out of your own world. And, and so that’s, I think, one of the, one of the best things that we can do for our mental health and physical health.

It gets you moving. 

Melissa: Yeah. I love that so much. It’s so beautiful and doesn’t have to take [01:06:00] long and it’s such a beautiful thing to do. And yeah, you don’t have to sit there and write a letter and do the wax. You could send a voice message whilst you’re walking. Just something so simple that really makes such a difference in someone’s life.

I love that. Okay, next one is, what is one thing we can do for more wealth in our life? 

Todd: Ah, expose yourself to more wealthy ideas. I what, when I sold one of my, my leadership, leadership business and performance business to Chevron, so a big oil company back in 2007, I knew that even in the deal making process, I had probably left a bunch of money on the table.

I was just never, I described myself as not being good with money and all that. And so when I moved to New York City. I spent 90 days, this is when Eventbrite was brand new and meetup.com were still very new on the internet. And I, every, every day or every Sunday, I would look at events that were happening in the world of finance.

And I would go to [01:07:00] two events in that week. And I learned actually early on that Bloomberg, their head office in midtown Manhattan, they held workshops every single day. So I went there twice a week and I would just go to like workshops on like mutual funds. These are not topics that like, I’m not fascinated by that world.

My best mates in New York City who were all Aussie, by the way, ’cause I played Australian rose roles, my most of my entire wedding party and my officiant were all Australian. And are Australian. They’re my, my, my best, best boys 

Melissa: and good people. 

Todd: Yeah, good people. So anyways, I carved off all the hard edges that were creating friction in my financial world.

And so we building wealth. It’s hard to build wealth when you don’t have a good financial skills. So just expose yourself more to financial skills. Tactically. If you’re someone who’s already on social media, do a search for people that are sharing financial ideas. Start following a few of those people.

Change up your own algorithm. That’s con, that’s [01:08:00] infiltrating your world. Watch those things. Force yourself to watch those things and it’ll give you some new ideas and maybe help break some of the ideas that some people have around their own quote, money mindset. Money mindset is just skills and knowledge and so find ways to improve that.

Melissa: Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. Such great advice. And the last one is, what is one thing we can do for more love in our life? 

Todd: Ah, well read the five Love languages. I, my I. My, my preference for a love language and my wife’s preference for a love language are two very different things. And so having a really practicing the act of being loving to other people, that’s, that’s something that I’ve had to really work at because I’ve been very focused for a long time on my career and, and things.

And so you can get a [01:09:00] little bit wrapped up in your own, uh, ego, if I’m being honest about it. And so I have, and I will forever, I don’t need the reminder, but I have reminders that go off to remind me of doing three very specific, loving gestures that my wife appreciates to help make sure that I fuel that tank.

’cause that is the most important thing that I can, I can do is fuel that tank. ’cause it’s gonna serve my kids the most as well. One of them being a head rub. My wife loves a head rub. And for me it’s turned into like the greatest practice of relaxation. ’cause now I know that she’s feeling it and so it calms me down too.

Anyways, just it’s, it’s like I think being loving is just another practice. Going back to what we would talk about at the very beginning about practicing the character traits that we want to be. That’s what I talk about in the Alter Ego Effect book. All these things are just things that we can practice ourselves into.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. My husband has reminders go off in his phone. [01:10:00] To do things for me too. It’s so sweet. Every day he will send me a beautiful, heartfelt text message complimenting me. It’s different every day. It’s so beautiful and it’s just something so simple and it just makes me smile and just, I’m like, thank you.

Like that took him what, 30 seconds to do, but it really made a difference. So yeah, he’s the same as you. He has reminders go off so that he can remember to do these beautiful things 

Todd: well, and it’s to pull, it’s to pull you out of like, whatever you’re fo pull, pull me out of, okay, well I’ve got these things that are going on.

Hey, don’t forget, this is still the most important relationship that you’ve got. So, yeah, I, it’s not an indictment. I don’t feel like it’s an indictment on anybody if they’ve got reminders. It’s just a mix. It’s you’re ensuring that that thing happens. 

Melissa: Absolutely. I love that. This has been so amazing. Todd, I’ve absolutely loved hearing from you and learning from you, and it’s been so inspiring.[01:11:00] 

Is there anything else that you wanna share with us or any last parting words of wisdom? 

Todd: I would just really encourage people, because I know the types of individuals that would be listening to your world and that is, pick some of these topics that are really important to you and make sure that you answer that question around what are my thoughts on leadership?

Or what are my thoughts on coaching? Or what are my thoughts on insert your topic category. The lady you had mentioned before, that’s just an absolute wizard at Lactation consulting is like, what? What are my thoughts or beliefs around what it means to be a great lactation consultant? She probably has already answered those things, but yeah, I just, I would wanna pull people out of the constant consumption of other people’s content, whether it’s books or whether it’s social media, and start consuming your own ideas on things.

Melissa: Yeah, it’s very easy to feel like you’re drowning in other people’s thoughts. And I’ve written five books and when I write books, I stop consuming everything because I’m like, I just need to [01:12:00] stay in my own voice. And it’s easy to look at everyone else and then even like start speaking like them or whatever it is.

I’m like, hang on, no. What do I believe? What do I think? So come back to that. So I truly believe like turning off the noise at some periods in your life is very, very helpful. So I love that so much. And just really tuning into yourself. 

Todd: Well, that’s how you’re gonna be able to know what you’re about then, is because you’re actually doing the work that it takes to, to figure that stuff out too.

So 

Melissa: absolutely. Now you are helping, you are serving, you are inspiring and supporting so many people with your work. And I wanna know what I and our listeners can do to give back and serve you today. How can we support you? 

Todd: Well, I always love it when someone, if you screenshot the episode, if it’s on your iPhone or wherever you’re consuming this or like, whatever the method would be.

And if you tag Melissa and myself and like, what’s your favorite takeaway? Or what was the favorite, favorite thing? And if it’s not even on socials, if it’s [01:13:00] just DMing and asking, um, a question, I, I, I love that. That’s my best content that I could ever produce is coming from people inside of the, the dms.

And, and then, yeah, I’m still on a mission of making sure that that yellow book of mine, the alter ego effect, gets on as many deaths and bookshelves and into people’s hands as possible. So would, would love it if. People grabbed a copy. 

Melissa: Yes, definitely. And I’ll link to that in the show notes, and I wanna encourage everybody, go and check that out, read it, give it to anyone that you think would benefit from it.

But thank you so much, Todd. This has been so awesome. I’ve absolutely loved connecting with you and hearing your wisdom, so thank you for being here. Keep doing all the awesome work that you’re doing in the world. 

Todd: Thank you, Melissa. Looking forward to connecting in the future too.

Melissa: I hope you got a lot out of this episode. I have so many key takeaways that I’m gonna implement into my own life, and I really do hope that you go and embody everything that we spoke about today. [01:14:00] And if you loved this conversation as much as I did, please subscribe to the show and leave me a five star review on Apple Podcasts if you haven’t already.

And once you do that. Email me a screenshot of the review to Hello at Melissa Ambrosini, and I’m gonna send you my wildly wealthy guided meditation just as a thank you for taking the time to leave me that review. I’m super grateful in advance. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now jump on over to Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini, and tell me what you got from this episode.

I love connecting with you and I love hearing from you. Now, before I go, I just wanna say thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest, and the happiest version of yourself, and for showing up today for you, you rock. Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, please share it with them right now.

You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy. Healthy is [01:15:00] liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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