Matt Spielman (00:02:41):
Well, I’m smiling on this end because Bill was just a remarkable human being. And he was all about positively impacting others and helping people become the best version of themselves. And he was called, The Coach. In Silicon Valley, he was called The Coach, primarily because he was the football coach at Columbia, and they didn’t necessarily do so well during that timeframe. He kept the moniker, however, and he continued on and he was a coach to scores and scores of people, not only in Silicon Valley, but across the US and the globe.

Matt Spielman (00:03:16):
And you mentioned, as you were saying in the opening remark there, “I had the good fortune of talking to him, interacting with him.” And man, what a gracious person, and he made you feel like … When I would email him and talk to him, that I mattered, I was important. And I know he had a thousand other people who were emailing him and texting him, and that’s just a gift. That’s just a gift, and just incredibly inspirational. I was really fortunate to have met him, three times for a good chunk of time where we got to interact a good amount.

Trey Lockerbie (00:03:46):
Yeah. You hit it right there, that nail on the head there, because what a gift it is to make people feel like they’re the only ones. I remember in the book, all these people who were using him as a coach, sometimes they didn’t even know the other person was using him as well. And so, they kind of felt like they were the only client, and he made people feel that way, which is so special and really hard to come by.

Trey Lockerbie (00:04:05):
I’m curious, given that you’re a coach nowadays, what, in your opinion, were some of these billionaires using Bill looking for in a coach?

Matt Spielman (00:04:14):
Yeah. All of these people who had achieved this remarkable success, didn’t get there just by accident or just with their feet up on the ottoman, sitting on the couch and watching TV. They were at it, trying to improve, develop, grow, they were trying to do whatever they can, read books and articles and talk to people.

Matt Spielman (00:04:33):
And it’s that mentality that leads somebody to say, “Hey, you know what I’m living.” And I sometimes use a scale and the numbers are somewhat arbitrary, but let’s say “I’m living an 8.7 out of 10, and I want to maintain that. And it requires me to continue to go to the gym and to continue to invest, if I want to stay there.” Generally, it’s not necessarily staying there, but they want to get to 8.8 out 10, 8.9 out of 10, 9.1 out of 10, whatever the case may be. And those are the people who are raising their hand and saying, “I want to partner with somebody because I know that partnering with a trusted, trained, objective, third-party person, is going to help bring the best out of me and get at some of the things that drive me, and what it is that I want to bring about and see those really meaningful and consequential results come out.”

Trey Lockerbie (00:05:23):
I want to highlight that word you just threw out there, which was, “Objective.” I think that’s a huge part of this because, where do you find objective opinions? Especially, when you’re running a business, maybe you have thousands of employees, everyone close to you is maybe on your payroll or in your family, that’s somehow affected by your decisions in some way, shape or form. It’s very rare to find something like an objective opinion to really bounce ideas off of.

Matt Spielman (00:05:46):
It’s vital. And that objectivity, there’s a big difference between a coaching partnership and one that may be a mentor, an advisor, a manager, a friend, parental. It’s, sometimes people in giving advice, they’re often sharing what it is they think that you should do, based upon, what they have done. However, time needs to be spent to understand, what do you value? What interests you? What excites you? How do you see the world? And it’s this, finding a partner who is all about truly listening and hearing, which is incredibly rare anyway but especially these days, in an objective way where it’s really, what’s coming from you is most important. Not, “My experience, that I went through and you should follow this, and this is what I…” That may be relevant, down the line, but really identifying what’s coming from within, from within you, that comes through having that trained third party objective, and other person focused relationship. It’s not about me, but it’s all about you.

Trey Lockerbie (00:06:50):
Yeah. You and I, we were joking earlier because my experience with my coach is almost frustrating to that degree. Because at some point I’m telling him, I’m just like, “Just tell me what to do.” And he won’t do it. It has to come within, as you said.

Matt Spielman (00:07:03):
Well, Trey, I think, so if I told you what to do, A, who am I to tell you what to do, right? There maybe a field that I’m an expert in, but there’s so much more going on, on your side that if I give you advice, maybe this afternoon it would work. But a week from now, it’s like, that came from somebody else that didn’t come from inside you. Real meaningful behavioral change, it’s something that comes from within you. It sparked from within inside you, the eureka goes off within you. And that’s really the that’s the science behind and the import of the coaching conversation.

Trey Lockerbie (00:07:36):
I want to come back to the science there. But keeping on with Bill here for just a moment longer and then transitioning to you and your career, you’ve mentioned this, that, he was somewhat of a failed coach, meaning he was coaching at Columbia. They always had a losing record underneath his tenure. And I find that so funny.

Trey Lockerbie (00:07:51):
But you, unlike Bill, you have a very impressive resume going from, this economic degree at Columbia, to Morgan Stanley, to Harvard business school MBA, to becoming an executive in multiple mega corpse like NTV and Return Path. What’s interesting to me about your background is, it appears you were following a fairly traditional path into finance and then pivoted into things like marketing and ultimately into coaching. I’m curious about a few of these inflection points, if you will, along the way that led you to where you are today.

Matt Spielman (00:08:24):
Yeah. When I summarize the last 20 years or so before I launched this company Inflection Point Partners, I’ve gotten to where I could do it fairly, succinctly, but it’s, with every step I took, I got closer to that which drove me, and that which I was excited about, and that which I wanted to do, which triggered the energy that I talk a lot about in the book. Because we can’t always articulate what it is that we want to do, but energy, we definitely know. We know if something energizes us and we know if something takes energy away.

Matt Spielman (00:08:55):
So a couple of the key inflection points or milestones along the way or decision points where, I did start my career in finance on the Fixed Income Trading floor at Morgan Stanley. It was a really great experience. But I also just in identifying energy, I found that I was getting up, out of my seat and just going around and talking to people naturally because I was very curious about what it is that people were doing. At the same time I was awarded, to really focus on one sliver. I was working on the mortgage backed security desk for one sliver of that particular product area, and I was going to be most useful to my clients if I was an expert in that particular element. That didn’t work well with me, especially for a 24 year old, very curious person.

Matt Spielman (00:09:36):
I applied to business school. First year, I did not get in. Next year I did apply and I was fortunate enough to gain admission. And there was something that happened when I landed on the campus to pursue my MBA. I had this wide open emotional aperture and I wanted to take in all the stimuli I could.

Matt Spielman (00:09:52):
And I tell this story that, there was one night I was preparing for class, the next day I was reading one of the cases, and I saw a commercial on in the background. What I thought was Billy Joel, playing at Madison Square Garden. And I heard what sounded like 18,000 people in unison, singing Piano Man. And it really struck me. It struck me. And I had three thoughts.

Matt Spielman (00:10:12):
The first thought was, “Wow, it’d be pretty amazing being at the concert, Madison Square Garden,” or what I thought was Madison Square Garden and was a religious experience to have 18,000 people singing in unison, that particular song. Second thought I had is, “What if Billy Joel had chosen not to become a musician? We would have dozens of songs that weren’t penned and weren’t part of people’s backgrounds and even part of their present. And now, he’s still performing and I’m going to see him next month, again. So that was the second thought I had is, “What if he had taken the path of least resistance,” because it’s not necessarily a sure thing to become a musician, certainly not at the level where he has performed and the record sales and the concert performances, et cetera, it’s really amazing.

Matt Spielman (00:10:54):
The third thought, which I think was most important for me at that time is, what is my version of that? What is not necessarily, write a song or series of songs and perform them on stage, but what is my version of his piano man? I wasn’t quite sure actually, and whatever the outcome was, I was going to be okay with it. I couldn’t articulate it at that time, but that started, in earnest, the journey.

Matt Spielman (00:11:15):
So then, continued to grow, evolve, in my career, which also meant taking more responsibility, which meant managing people and managing larger teams. And I found, talk about energy, I was absolutely drawn to seeing people grow, develop, thrive, giving them opportunities. If I was going to go see the CEO later that day, I wanted one of my employees to go and have that experience. And I wanted to engender the fist pump, whatever version that is, and I’m clenching my fist now, whatever that version of that is for you, that’s what I want to see in the folks that I was managing. And that was absolutely the most rewarding.

Matt Spielman (00:11:50):
Yes, I was in sales and we had a revenue target to hit. Yes, I was in marketing and we needed to get the messages out and all that was important, all that was done and all that was achieved. But I really derived a tremendous amount of energy from, seeing the folks on the team just really thrive and light up, and that was okay. That’s really important to me.

Matt Spielman (00:12:07):
But right about that time, I started working with my coach, Peter Hazelrigg, and I’ve been working with him for 12 years. And he gave me permission, he said something super simple, yet it hit me like a ton of bricks. And he said, “Matt, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it.” Which then started a couple of years of conversations back and forth, about a year and a half, where I ultimately turned to him. And I said, “Peter, this relationship has been one of the most important in my life. And the impact that you’ve had on me has been, almost immeasurable. I want to do what you’re doing,” was basically the conversation.

Matt Spielman (00:12:36):
So then we set out an action plan for me. How could I realize that? And Trey, this was at age 42, 43 years old. And people thought I was a little bit crazy, that I was leave a C-level executive path, to actually go back to school and pursue executive and career and organizational coaching.

Trey Lockerbie (00:12:54):
All right. So there’s a lot there. I’m going to stick with Billy Joel for a quick second here, because this stood out to me and I’m really curious about it. Because there’s actually this quote from Billy Joel in your book, it says, “If you’re not doing what you love, you are wasting time.” It shouldn’t be controversial perhaps, but it is. There’s two sides of this coin. I’ve heard billionaire Mark Cuban, for example, say that, “It’s actually terrible advice to follow what “passion,” because passion sometimes comes from getting or being good at something.” I’m curious how you define passion or what you love and where it makes sense to actually do that.

Matt Spielman (00:13:31):
I think where the issue is, is less about the word passion. I think people are pursuing happiness. And I think sometimes the most challenging workout, there is nothing happy about it, but at the end of that, there was a satisfaction of working through that high intensity interval training or that crossfit workout or getting through that 2000 meter row or whatever the case may be, there is nothing happy about that. And I don’t think anybody’s passionate about that actual experience. But I think it’s the feeling of satisfaction, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of, “I can do that.” And also there are positive impact. There are positive repercussions and there’re positive impacts from that.

Matt Spielman (00:14:12):
I think it’s, the pursuit of meaning, it’s the pursuit of consequence, and it’s also, I talked about or I intimated it, the fear of. Let’s say, Billy Joel gave into, “Well, I’m not going to be a musician. My parents have certain expectations for me. What are the odds of me becoming…” That’s sort of fear speaking. We have those narratives in our head swirling around, those ruminating thoughts, that’s the opposite of what I would think of success, which is, giving into those thoughts and the fear. A.

Matt Spielman (00:14:40):
Nd it’s actually, proceeding forward, really going within and listening to what it is (we talked about energy before) that may energize me, that may light me up, that may excite me and I’m going to pursue that. If I want to get fit or I want to run that ultra marathon or whatever the case may be, that’s something that is meaningful and consequential to me, and I am passionate about that outcome and the impact on me. I may not certainly be happy going through the training or happy about that particular… But I think that’s the delineation. Trey.

Trey Lockerbie (00:15:10):
You threw something out there as well, I want to explore it a little bit more. You said, “The pursuit of consequence.” What do you mean by, the pursuit of consequence?

Matt Spielman (00:15:17):
I think that in the book there’s a chapter called, Should Versus Could. And I think a lot of people that I talked to they’re very high achieving people. They are working at really good jobs in high positions, they went to really good schools and all of that, and all that’s fine. There is this life that a lot of us have gotten into. And I raise my hand, it’s like, “Hey, I should do that. I should apply to this school. I should apply to that job.” And that’s okay, as long as it aligns with this much more powerful question to say, “Huh, maybe that’s what I should do. But right now this moment, what could I do? What would be meaningful to me?” And if even you just say that to yourself versus, “Hey, what should I do here?” Versus, “What could I do?” One is an exogenous force on you, the other is really coming from within.

Matt Spielman (00:16:06):
So it’s the could-goals, the could-outcomes, that are much more of consequence and they feel much, much better. The ideal is if there, should and could align. You and I determine that, “Hey, what we could do is launch this particular endeavor that we have in front of us.” And we lay out a plan and we may wake up the next morning and say, “Hey, we should get on that.” But because we both agreed there’ll be meaningful and consequential to us, and potentially the world around us if we launched that initiative. So I think should and could, could absolutely align, but it’s going to be much more meaningful and consequential to us if it comes from within.

Matt Spielman (00:16:43):
And just a footnote there, I’ve spoken to more than one person who a friend encouraged them to run a marathon. “Hey, you know what, Matt, you should run the New York City marathon.” And Matt, if it doesn’t really come from within the training may last a month, a month and a half, and then it’s February 6th and it’s 11 degrees outside and it’s raining and it’s disgusting out. And I’m not going to get up, I’m going to roll over. I’m not necessarily going to train for that marathon. If it comes from within, if I could do that, and I envision myself crossing the finish line and I have friends and family there and that’s something I really want to do, that goal stands much more of a chance of actually manifesting.

Trey Lockerbie (00:17:19):
We’re going to get into the process here a little bit more. But on this topic, there’s a question you pose in your book, which is, “What is important to me?” It kind of goes in line with what you’re saying here about what is consequential to me, and I can relate. My wife and I can definitely relate.

Trey Lockerbie (00:17:32):
We always thought we’d be musicians. And we went out there. My wife ended up being the background singer for Rihanna for almost five years, so touring at the highest echelon of that industry. And I had some big success on my end in other ways. But when we actually sat down and we said, “Well, what is important to us?” We realized that family time was important to us, being home, raising a family, having a consistent income. Even though we were really good at these things, when we defined what was important to us, our decisions changed.

Trey Lockerbie (00:18:03):
So how can people think through, adjudicating those two things?

Matt Spielman (00:18:08):
It’s one of the things that we talk about a lot with our coaching, partners and their … They talk about them as clients, we talk about them as partners. I think about this, there’s something I design called, The Purpose Puzzle, and I talk a little bit about it in the book. And there are these nine facets or pieces of your life that contribute to how you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis. There are a couple of things that you mentioned in your puzzle, and I’ll just read off a few. There’s, family and health and connection with friends or sometimes lack of connection with friends, life partner, career, your physical environment, spirituality, et cetera.

Matt Spielman (00:18:41):
And what we do is we try to identify of where we are today. And let’s say on a scale from one to five at each of those nine puzzle pieces, and there may be a three for career out of five, it may be a four, family, and that helps us identify present state, and then we could begin to talk about the future state. And if I were to say, “Trey, okay, this is what your purpose puzzle looks like,” and we use shades of red, so it goes from pink to crimson, and various shades in the middle. And I say, “Okay, there are three goals that you can set for yourself, to either maintain a four or a five out of five or move something from a one to a three or one to a four.” And you may say, “Okay, well, I want to focus on my career. I want to focus on being more present with my family and also my health.” Your finances could be one of them as well.

Matt Spielman (00:19:29):
And then we set a goal around that and we talk about what a meaningful or consequential outcome would be for you in, let’s say, those three areas and then inching them forward from a two to a four, let’s say. But again, this is all you focused. This is not what anybody else thinks you should focus on. And you’re taking an honest objective assessment of where you are today, where you might want to be tomorrow across, let’s say, three or four areas of your purpose puzzle.

Trey Lockerbie (00:19:56):
That’s incredibly interesting. This quote, “You can have anything, but you can’t have everything,” comes to mind, right? At least all at once, right?

Trey Lockerbie (00:20:03):
Sticking on this, we did define passion earlier. I’m curious how it relates to success, given what we just talked about. Having success in different industries and moving around. You’ve had a lot of success in many industries, but how does that relate to the success you feel today? How do you go about defining the word?

Matt Spielman (00:20:19):
Yeah, so it was my last class of our first year, and it was a course called, Leadership and Organizational Behavior Lead. And we’re reading a case about somebody who had a decision, the protagonist had a decision. He could either go to one firm and make X amount of money or go to another firm and make Y amount of money. And the class was debating about, well basically, netting out that, “He should go here, it’s a better brand name and he’d be making more money, so he’d be more successful.”

Matt Spielman (00:20:47):
My hand shot up [inaudible 00:20:49] and professor Kang said, “Matt, it looks like you’re going to jump out of your seat.” And I said, “Well, it really depends on how the protagonist defines success.” And like any good professor he said, “Well, Matt, how do you define success?” And I said, something to the effect of, “Success is having the desire and the ability to listen to one’s self and then the courage to act upon it.”

Matt Spielman (00:21:10):
I think we get caught up sometimes in lofty outcomes and maybe brand names or a certain amount of money in the bank. And all of that can be successful, as long as it aligns with what that person wants to do on the inside. And only that person knows. And I remember there were a couple years, I did participate in the New York city marathon a couple times and people … I always got this question, kind of bothered me a little bit, because it wasn’t really why I was doing it. “What’d you run?” And I told them what I ran. And said, “That’s really good.” Well, that’s them actually thinking from their perspective, that’s really good.

Matt Spielman (00:21:41):
Let’s just say it was a 3-30, 3 hours and 30 minutes. They don’t know if I was pacing to go on a 3-10, and I’ve been working really hard, and that was really disappointing for me. Or I was at four hours, and that was amazing that I was able to accomplish that and that was really successful for me. So only we know inside, whether we are successful or not.

Matt Spielman (00:22:02):
And you mentioned that I’ve had successes in my career, I’m not sure I’d qualify them as such. And there’d be other things that other people would say, that weren’t necessarily successes. And I would say, that was some of my biggest success.

Trey Lockerbie (00:22:15):
All right. So given the level of education we mentioned that you have, and the experience through your career to date, it’d be easy to assume that you would have enough to justify coaching somebody else. But why did you feel the need to go back to school in order to become a coach?

Matt Spielman (00:22:32):
Yeah, that was really, really important part of the process for me. I viewed launching myself as an executive organizational career coach, as a three-legged stool. And I felt I did have the two legs and I needed to add the third.

Matt Spielman (00:22:48):
The first leg was, I felt like 20 years of work experience would help me be a little bit more empathic and understand the situation that my clients are in and hiring and firing, presenting to boards and raising capital and exiting and that kind of stuff, so that’s leg one.

Matt Spielman (00:23:01):
Second leg was just, I discovered along the way, we talked about it a little bit earlier, just how I’m constitute as a person, what drives me. And I like, igniting careers and energize lives and then triggering the fist pump, that’s my fuel man. So those two legs I kind of had down and I felt pretty good about those.

Matt Spielman (00:23:17):
The third leg was, doing it the right way, the education, the science behind. There is a science behind the coaching conversation; what is a coach and what a coach is not. And I found the most rigorous coaching program because I feel like the coaching profession can be squishy. Anybody can call him or herself, a coach, there aren’t necessarily … If you want to be a doctor, you can’t just walk around saying that you’re a doctor or similar with a lawyer and therapist, et cetera. I wanted to make it as rigorous as possible. Not only because I want to work in service of my clients, but I also want to message to my clients or my partners, that I take this craft seriously and I’m going to invest the time, the energy and the significant financial resources to do that.

Matt Spielman (00:23:54):
So I entered the Columbia Coaching Certification Program, back in 2016 in May. And then after that, I launched Inflection Point Partners in August of 2016, and the training continued. I complimented that with that experience with going down to Duke and Durham and studying in the medical school there and becoming a board certified health and wellness coach, studied at the Duke School of Integrated Medicine. And then other trainings and follow on certifications from there, because there are various things that I learned that I put to practice in all of our conversations, in some form or fashion.

Trey Lockerbie (00:24:28):
You highlighted there what a coach is and what it is not, and I’d like to explore this a little bit more. You gave a few examples earlier of what it is not. A lot of people picture a therapist type figure when they think of a coach, especially when it comes to business and personal relationships and things of that nature. So maybe go ahead or a little step deeper there on what coaching is and what it is not.

Matt Spielman (00:24:50):
So let me take the therapist versus coach. I actually think they’re more similar than different. I think the main difference is … And this is broadly speaking, so I may get texts or emails after this and I welcome them.

Matt Spielman (00:25:02):
But therapists and psychotherapy in general, tends to look at today, looking backwards and coaching tends to look at today, going forward. And the coaching conversation and the coaching partnership, is absolutely therapeutic, and people hang up the phone or close the Zoom or end the in-person meeting with more energy. There’s more intentionality to their day. There’s more conviction to their actions and it’s very therapeutic, but it’s definitely not therapy. We don’t get into childhood trauma or certain blockages. We may look at a particular instance that mirrors what’s happening today, what you may have done in that particular instance, what worked well for you and sprinkle some of those ingredients into the current situation.

Matt Spielman (00:25:49):
Anyway, so that’s the therapist versus coach, and they’re actually more similar than different.

Matt Spielman (00:25:54):
But what a coach is not, and the way we are trained and really in most programs, I think, they abide by this is, it’s not directive, it’s not prescriptive, it’s not giving the advice, it’s not telling you what to do. That’s not necessarily learning, that’s sustained learning. It’s more of the empowerment model. As I say, “It’s more reflective than it is directive.” The way I think about it is, if we’re in a car together, you are behind the steering wheel, your hands are on the wheel, your right foot’s on the gas, right foot could be on the brake and your left foot could be on the clutch for those who still drive manual, I’m in the passenger seat, you’ve determined through our conversations where you’ve ventured your GPS coordinates of where you want to go.

Matt Spielman (00:26:38):
And you’re navigating, you’re driving and you have a partner there who’s encouraging you, who’s supporting you, who’s challenging you, who you may want to pull over at the quick stop and have fast food. I may say, “Well, I know you’re hungry. What are some other options along the way,” type of thing. That might be a little bit more helpful choices for you. So it’s that type of a partnership.

Matt Spielman (00:27:02):
And actually the word coach, the derivation of the word coach is this: we both get in this vessel of movement at the point of origination together, and the stage coach then through the power of the partnership moves forward to that desired point of destination, but it’s really driven by you. Yes, we ask Socratic questions, we really listen, we really hear, as I mentioned earlier, which is really rare and we really try to ladder up to various outcomes.

Matt Spielman (00:27:27):
There are instances when a client may say to me, “Matt, I’m presenting to the board tomorrow and what we’re talking about, my preparation. How would you go about it?” And what I would do is, I pretend take off my coaching hat and I slide over and I take on a different persona. I say, “Well, if I’m presenting to that board of directors tomorrow, and these were my objectives as we discussed, I might approach it like this, this and this.” And then I go back to my coach and say, “How does that land on you?” And then they’ll say, “Well, that’s not really my style.” “Well, tell me about your style.” Something like that.

Matt Spielman (00:27:55):
And then there’s certainly instances, Trey, where I move from coach to more of an advisor, consultant, mentor. And I say, “I actually really think you should do that based upon the information that we have.” But I do call it out. I do. The coach’s job is to empower and encourage and to drive the awareness in the coaching partnership.

Trey Lockerbie (00:28:12):
That’s a good distinction. It almost sounds like there’s a lot of accountability involved as well, almost having accountability partner to some degree. How much of it is setting a goal and then being there to hold people accountable along the way, make sure they’re doing the work?

Matt Spielman (00:28:27):
That’s a really big part of it, and I do a lot of work within organizations.

Matt Spielman (00:28:32):
Last week I was walking out of the office and the managing partner said to me, “Matt, we just …” Everybody there at the firm created one of these Game Plans that I talk a lot about in the book, and each of the clients creates. And he said, “Just having you here, I feel like it just holds us accountable. You’re walking around, you all know what our goals are,” because they’ve all shared them. And sharing goals is the platinum standard for goal achieving because it creates accountability, transparency and alignment, and I know what they all are. So yes, just knowing that I’m there knowing that… And whether it’s I or a coach or a spouse or a son or a friend, if you’ve shared your goals with him, her or them, just them knowing that and that the person may check in and see how we pace against that goal.

Matt Spielman (00:29:13):
You mentioned you were (whatever the goal may be) what progress have you made against that? You mentioned you were to get the gym three or four times a week, or you mentioned that you were going to fill in the blank. How’s that going? What’s working for you there? Let’s identify. Let’s do more of that. What are some of the things that are getting in the way? What are the blockages? What are the friction points? Let’s identify those and let’s try to create workarounds there.

Matt Spielman (00:29:35):
So yes, the articulation of the meaningful and consequential goal to that person, sharing it, creates really important accountability. And I think the way goals are set and often not achieved is unfortunate. And often, new year’s resolutions by the third week in January, most of them have gone by the waste site and that’s really unfortunate. So we try to do almost the exact opposite of that and create a whole system around it.

Trey Lockerbie (00:30:00):
Yeah. That raises this question of, what are the reasons you see coaching relationships fall short? And you’ve seen a lot of them. I’m curious if there’s any common denominators as to, if it’s just the wrong fit or someone’s not living up to the accountability measure? What are some reasons it doesn’t work out?

Matt Spielman (00:30:18):
Chemistry’s important. I also think you’re going to do yourself a service if you find a coach who has been through rigorous training, because there really are. So there’s not only, a lot of great learnings going through the training and there’s a lot of practice coaching and being coached, you also have, access to a lot of people in your cohort who are really serious about it. And you check in with, and they ask you about your coaching and they can ask questions. I think finding the right partner, I would say it’s step two.

Matt Spielman (00:30:43):
Step one, Trey, where I’ve seen the partnership not work as well as if it doesn’t come from within, which is a bit of a constant theme of today. Sometimes, let’s say a spouse may say, “Matt, I think you should consider coach … ” Again, the “should” part, “I think you should consider coaching.” And then that person reaches out to a coach and talks to a bunch and then hires one and starts working. But it didn’t really come from that person. First step is to admit that, that person really wants to partner with somebody, that step one. Step two is find the right person.

Matt Spielman (00:31:12):
And I do think that step three is, be open to the mantra which we use all the time here as somebody who likes action and jumps into things really quickly is, I think we need to slow down in order to go faster. Session one, we don’t start crafting goals and writing down what … I think we need to understand, what I was talking about earlier which is, our values, how I see the world, what matters to me, what would be meaningful and consequential, why, for what reasons, what are the outcomes that are … Where do I see my life in five years and 10 years.

Matt Spielman (00:31:44):
I’m working with a client now, who wants to create a 50 year vision and he’s 47, and we don’t just jump into goals. We actually slow down, take a deep breath, go within, go through a couple of exercises in order for us to go faster. That would be step three.

Matt Spielman (00:31:58):
And then the rest, that regular cadence that works for that coaching partnership and it’s different. Could be every week, it could be a check-in every day. I’ve check-ins every day with some folks. Could be every month. I’ve check-ins every month with people. It really varies. But, some form of regular cadence, to your point earlier about the accountability, I think is important.

Trey Lockerbie (00:32:19):
Okay. I want to highlight here that all the examples you’ve given so far let’s just take the “Getting in the car together and going somewhere,” and me saying, “I’m hungry. I’m going to go to the In And Out,” or whatever. And in all of your examples, you have not ever started the question with why. Why do you want to go In And Out? Why do you want to do X, Y, Z? I’ve noticed this and highlighted it. I’m curious, how important is it, in a coaching relationship, to steer away from the question why?

Matt Spielman (00:32:45):
It’s really important. Coaches ask what or how questions. What about that would be meaningful to you? How might we want to go about that? How can we envision that coming about? Why, tends to trigger a bit of defensiveness. I mean, oftentimes, a parent, I almost think about, why as, why weren’t you home at 11:00? There’s a bit of that. And that’s the last thing we want to do in this really special… It could be an intimate relationship of, both sides are really open and really listening and hearing one another. The last thing we want to put up is any kind of a barrier.

Matt Spielman (00:33:20):
There are different ways to get at that, but, the what or the how questions, can be magical and be really powerful, and you just get much better information.

Trey Lockerbie (00:33:28):
I’m curious, out of the now thousands of hours you’ve done coaching, what are some of the most common topics you typically see people bring up to you?

Matt Spielman (00:33:39):
I would say that, a meaningful percentage centers around, how to better manage my time and my energy. And I’m often speaking to people who, they have resources, they have means and what they don’t necessarily have, or none of us has, is infinite amount of time and energy. In fact, quite the contrary, energy renews each day, time, well we have 24 hours a day and we can’t get any more of that. So in this world where there’s infinite opportunity, infinite noise, infinite noise, it’s super important to find the signals. So that’s one that comes up is, how do we best manage our finite amount of time and energy?

Matt Spielman (00:34:18):
The other is interesting, kind of surprised me. Somebody asked me this question maybe six months ago, and it was more anecdotal, was my answer. And I started keeping track after that, of, what topics are people bringing to the coaching conversations?

Matt Spielman (00:34:31):
The second one is, preparing for challenging or difficult or sensitive conversations. We often may think that we go in one side of a difficult conversation, that it comes really naturally to the other person who is maybe delivering feedback or whatever, what might be really sensitive. Could be laying somebody off or whatever the case may be. You didn’t get promoted today. I’m here to tell you a little bit of a secret, they wrestle with that, period.

Matt Spielman (00:34:56):
So we spend a lot of coaching conversations thinking about… They’re pretty clear on, the what needs to take place in the conversation. We talk through about the why the conversation needs to take place. We spend the bulk of our time on the how, and oftentimes they want to push to the buy when, and generally it should happen sooner rather than later, and they want to push it out, but we don’t let that, the accountability partner.

Matt Spielman (00:35:17):
So I would think that’s the second one

Trey Lockerbie (00:35:19):
On that one really quickly. Do you ever rehearse the conversations? Role playing?

Matt Spielman (00:35:23):
Yeah, so often very much. And that’s actually where my work experience helps a lot, and everybody who works on our coaching roster has work experience, that’s really important. I will absolutely role play for sure, Trey. I might be the person that they’re talking to and even adopts… If there’s a longitudinal in our relationship, meaning, over weeks, months and potential years, I may have gotten to know that person or even just by hearing about him or her, and I can adopt a little bit of the persona for sure.

Matt Spielman (00:35:50):
There’s this topic that comes up, and I have to channel the legend in the coaching space Marshall Goldsmith, is, “What got you here is not necessarily going to get you there.” And there’s a realization that, “Matt, I’ve been so successful. I’m a managing partner and I was able to get…” The next 10 years of that firm and that firm’s success, that person needs to adopt a different way of doing things because what got that person there is not going to get the person in the next five or 10 years of the future of that firm. Those are conversations that we talk about. And that’s really tough, because they’re really good at the things that got them there and they need to maybe shed some of those or the D word, delegation.

Matt Spielman (00:36:28):
And then there’s, developing new habits. “Matt, I got to figure out a way to work out in the morning because my afternoons, my evenings are just too busy.” So developing new habits is something that we talk about a lot, and that’s one of those where the accountability partnership is super important because, it’s a 30 to 45 day type of thing. The switch just doesn’t go off one day.

Trey Lockerbie (00:36:47):
I want to talk a little bit about your style. Because as I was reading about Bill Campell, it became clear that he was really known for his verbal tough love. I mean, he did not use kid gloves. He was always delivering exactly what you need in his own style, if you will. But he was also delivering support in very emotionally intelligent ways, and showing up for people when they needed it most and providing sufficient praise when it was deserved.

Trey Lockerbie (00:37:13):
I imagine Bill’s tough love approach is not for everyone. So have you found a style that works for a broader set of people and maybe even, how does that tie into your own?

Matt Spielman (00:37:23):
I read a lot about Bill’s approach and how he put two executives together and went up both of them and until they resolved something, and that worked very well in that context, especially coming from him. The elder statesman, in the valley, who had done it before, in his 60s and 70s, and it was an amazingly effective style for him.

Matt Spielman (00:37:43):
Maybe it’s my sports background and I can be supportive. And I think that’s really what you were saying earlier, I could be supportive and I could be really stern and I could be really tough. And it is really all about performance and achieving our mutually agreed upon expectations.

Matt Spielman (00:37:58):
And I’ll share with you this mini story. In college, I played baseball and I loved playing the Military Academies, and I derived some of my … I’m going somewhere with this, which is, my style is derived from and can be seen from the following story.

Matt Spielman (00:38:13):
So in college I played baseball and I really enjoyed playing against the Military Academies, Army and Navy. They played hard. They gave it everything they had. And I saw that first hand as shortstop, coming over the bag, turning a double play, their job is to take me out so I could not complete the double play and get the out at first base. And there was one particular time where were playing army, and I came across the bag and the runner did his job and he took me out and I did not complete the play. He played hard and he did what he needed to do. He was stern and he took me out. And when I was on the ground, he extended a hand and he lifted me up.

Matt Spielman (00:38:51):
And I feel like, we have a job to do in our coaching partnership, client coach. And we agree upon our outcomes that we’re going to work towards and that we’re going to hold the partnership accountable. We’re going to create goals, we’re going to document the goals and I’m going to be supportive and I’m going to encourage, and yes, empathic and sympathetic, and I’m going to challenge. And we’re going to bring about the outcomes that we’ve agreed to, and I will extend a hand. That’s my style.

Trey Lockerbie (00:39:18):
See, I think that’s so important because going back to that objectivity, how do you even value someone who can call you on your BS, for lack of a better word. Because we tell ourselves so many stories and we live by stories, our own stories about ourselves, and to have someone actually challenge you on that is just invaluable.

Trey Lockerbie (00:39:35):
And sticking on storytelling for one second here, one of the things from my experience sitting in peer groups and even in my own coaching sessions, it’s amazing how much time can actually be wasted on the situation, the players involved, the risks and rewards, basically the story. And I see in peer groups, they love that part. Everyone loves the story. They love to just go to solutions, ask people, have you tried doing X, Y, Z, asking more about the details around the story. But when fundamentally it’s actually something, usually, much deeper.

Trey Lockerbie (00:40:07):
There’s even a chart that speaks to this, where, “The story is the tip of the iceberg and everything below the water is where you get to the much deeper issue.”

Matt Spielman (00:40:16):
That’s right.

Trey Lockerbie (00:40:17):
So how do you guide people to look for the deeper and sometimes more personal issue at hand?

Matt Spielman (00:40:24):
Yeah, so I think about it as, which I mentioned earlier, the slowing down to go faster. Especially, the people that you’re referencing in the group that you’re in and the people that I talk to, are really very motivated, high achievers, and they want to jump right into action. But we don’t just leave the driveway without plugging in the coordinates of where we’re going to go, because then we’re just driving around aimlessly, using fuel, which doesn’t make much sense, but I understand why it happens.

Matt Spielman (00:40:50):
I think about it as, if we use the metaphor “for a house,” and we need to spend time excavating the land and pouring the cement to the foundation, very unsexy work, wildly important. And that’s where the word foundational came from, because the rest of the house sits upon that. And then we look at the architectural plans and then we’re like, “Okay, we need to build a house on top of this. And then we need to ultimately complete that house and do all the fixtures and the finer things and the window shades and all that stuff.” I think about, the pouring the cement to the foundation as the why. “And we need to start on why,” Simon Sinek said. Then the architectural plans of what it’s going to look like is the what. What is going to sit on top of that house? What is that going to look like? What could that manifest into? What could that be?

Matt Spielman (00:41:36):
And then the building of the house, it may take the longest, the most physical labor and it’s tiring, exhausting for those who are doing it, but that’s probably the easiest part, that’s the how. So it’s almost like, the ready is the why, what are we going towards is the what, and then the fire is, the how we’re going to bring that about. And the why is often the most overlooked part, which is why we slow down.

Matt Spielman (00:42:01):
There are a couple of different exercise we do. We want people to understand themselves a little bit more, their preferences, their behaviors, their [inaudible 00:42:09]tions, what drives them, what interests them, what excites them, what energizes them. And then, we do visioning of, what could they see themselves doing, becoming, realizing, achieving, and in what context, over what timeframe and that’s the work. Trey, to your point, “Below the water line,” that, that’s the really important part.

Matt Spielman (00:42:31):
The people that we’re talking to, they can execute like crazy against these things quite successfully. The important time that spent up front, kind of, pouring the cement to the foundation, the why part, the very unsexy part and often the most overlooked part.

Trey Lockerbie (00:42:46):
Yeah. A recent example of that for me was we had a member who was dealing with someone at work who basically gave an ultimatum. And he was struggling with this thing about, “Well, this guy’s my friend,” and he’s whatever. And it took someone posing this question of, “Well, why are you letting someone who’s seemingly your friend treat you this way or make you react in this way? What is triggering you about X, Y, Z?” And that’s the real work in my opinion, is understanding those deeper issues.

Trey Lockerbie (00:43:14):
I want to touch on the “coordinates” that you mentioned earlier, because another thing I’ve noticed is how important the right question is. So for example, how do I blank? You really can’t solve the problem until you have the right question in place. So this sounds simple, but actually distilling an issue into a, how do I question, is deceptively difficult? I’m curious if you use this technique. How do you typically guide your clients to find the “true” how do I question, at hand? How do they find the “coordinates” if you will?

Matt Spielman (00:43:47):
People generally come with an idea of what it is that they want to do and multiple things that they want to do, they come with a point of view. And then, it’s our job to explore the contours of that, the drivers behind that. And then get a little bit, even more clear about what that could be, what about that would be important to them, how might that positively impact their life. But they generally come with a point of view. And the Purpose Puzzle that I spoke about earlier, is a wonderful mechanism to get at nine facets or pieces of your life that may affect how you’re feeling on a day-to-day basis. And that was, the life partner, career and friends and health and community and finances and physical environment and family and spirituality, et cetera.

Matt Spielman (00:44:26):
And in and around that ,people have pretty strong feelings about things that they may want to dive into, want to bring about, and those are the good starting points. Those are good starting points. And we go back to, when was a time in your life when you felt… All these people that we talked to, have rich experiences that we can dive into, and they could be negative, neutral, or really positive, but we can learn things from them.

Trey Lockerbie (00:44:52):
One thing I really loved about your book is that, in lieu of having a coach, and some people listening may or may not have a coach, you can actually use the book as a really great stepping stone or a place to start. And it all stems from this Game Plan System you’ve put into play. So walk us through, if you will, the Game Plan System or GPS as you call it.

Matt Spielman (00:45:12):
Yeah. So the Game Plan System or GPS, the double entendre is intentional, because it’s intended to provide direction for you. And yeah, in the book, people can download all the tools and it’s really a three step process, which makes it a system. And I’ll talk about the actual Game Plan, which is the middle step.

Matt Spielman (00:45:29):
But it follows a lot of what we’ve been talking about so far which is, the first step is, we need to gather information. And there’s formal and informal information that we gather. The informal information comes from questions that we ask, the coaching conversation, kind of like some of the questions that we were trading back and forth here today. Some of the formal information come from assessments, so that could be the NBI, it could be the MBTI or Myers-Briggs, it could be the VIA or VIA, Values And Actions, which ranks somebody’s strengths, from one to 24. And it’s a free assessment that I encourage everybody to do. You can go to viacharacter.org if I’m not mistaken.

Matt Spielman (00:46:08):
So that’s to generate awareness in oneself and what I’m about and what really drives me and also awareness of other people and why other people might do things as well. Sort of pouring the cement to the foundation, as it were, so that’s step one.

Matt Spielman (00:46:22):
Step two is, we create this document. Single page, and I often laminate it, document. Think football coach in college on Saturday or football coach on Sunday in the NFL, and those are the plays that are going to win that particular game. And they could change from week-to-week if they’re, 16 games or 12 games in college or something like that. But think about that document housing four goals, usually it’s four goals could be three, it could be five, and there are multiple components to that goal. And we use a goal achieving model that speaks to goals that, these are goals that you can action against. So 300 sunny days in Colorado next year is not something that you could do anything about. They need to be meaningful and consequential to you, as we spoke about earlier.

Matt Spielman (00:47:06):
So the A is for action oriented, the C is for consequential, the H of ACHIEVE, and this is part of a larger acronym, this is, The ACHIEVE Goal Setting Model. The H is hard but not Herculean. So it’s a stretch goal. The I, is an integrated goal. If there’s more than one goal, the ideal scenario for us to give us the greatest chance for it to come about is that, working in service of one goal increases the chances of another goal happening. So if I’m positioning myself for a promotion in one goal, and I really want to learn a computer programming language, because I’m really interested in it, those are integrated goals in theory, because learning that computer language could help me position myself for a promotion. The E in the ACHIEVE is, it needs to be specific or explicit. V is, let’s tap into the power of visualization. Athletes have been doing it for decades, why not all of us? And then the final E is, endpoint or the time horizon. So when do we want to have brought about this goal?

Matt Spielman (00:48:02):
Each of the goals on this laminated single page document, and we have four goals, needs to abide by that ACHIEVE Model. Now it may sound a little bit like the SMART Goals that some people may have used before the acronym SMART, and I just believe that smart was lacking in several places. And I went back to the 1950s, and Locke and Latham, who are the goal setting experts, and read a lot of their work. And I infused a SMART-Goal approach with this new acronym called ACHIEVE. So this document houses, the four goals, and we laminate that.

Matt Spielman (00:48:35):
We move to step three, which is, we identify, if the partner is open to it, key stakeholders in his or her life that he can give this Game Plan to, to create that accountability, to create that transparency, to create that alignment. Three cliche terms that in business, that all of a sudden are not cliche anymore, and then we execute like crazy against that Game Plan. And it establishes a bit of an agenda for when we check-in and we have our coaching session, which is, a natural question, Trey, it’s, how are we doing against the goal? What’s working well? What are some of the things that are getting in the way? We also, at times revisit the goals. And oftentimes with clients, sometimes they’ll create two to three versions in a given year, because they’d achieved either much of the goal or almost all of it or they sometimes sharpen it because context changes in their day-to-day, in their lives.

Matt Spielman (00:49:23):
We need to gather information which informs the co-creation of a Game Plan. And then the third step is, we execute like crazy against the Game Plan and it holds the partnership accountable as well.

Trey Lockerbie (00:49:36):
I want to stick on the H of the Game Plan: The hard but not herculean. This is interesting to me, because I’ve been struggling with this one, myself. There’s a guy I follow very closely, I look up to a lot. He recently said something to the effect of, “Realistic thinking gets to realistic results and unrealistic thinking gets to unrealistic results.” And I think what he’s trying to say is … Don’t limit yourself is what he’s saying.

Trey Lockerbie (00:50:02):
And sometimes when your goal setting or trying to develop a goal achieving plan, which I love that reframing, it’s hard to know if the goal is achievable or not or herculean or not, or realistic or not. And then, begs the question, should the goal actually be something unrealistic? I’m curious how realistic do we get when it comes to goal achieving?

Matt Spielman (00:50:24):
Yeah. So if we need understand a little bit more about what is realistic and what is within the realm of possibility, sometimes that could become a coaching conversation for us to determine, is that realistic? Is it too unrealistic? And we may seek an outside expert. I will say that from the School of Positive Psychology, an area that I studied, that, if the goal is too easy to achieve and you actually achieve it actually becomes a little bit more hurtful to your self-esteem because you achieved it and like, “Well, I probably should have achieved it anyway.”

Matt Spielman (00:50:59):
And the science actually says that, “If we reach a little bit higher, then we might be comfortable and we aim for the sun and maybe we land on the moon,” something along those lines, and maybe we fall a little bit short. But to how we feel and our self-esteem, it actually increases and it’s a really positive feeling. So if there’s a decision point of, do we reach for a little bit higher or we settle for a little bit lower, we generally reach for a little bit higher.

Trey Lockerbie (00:51:26):
Kind of ties into this idea of, goals versus tasks. So when you’re setting goals, sometimes people just come up… Say you’re sitting with your team and you say, “What are these goals for this quarter?” A lot of times they’re just tasks disguised this goals. “We want to get this done.” And it’s important to understand, how do you define goal and how do you separate it from a task?

Matt Spielman (00:51:46):
A goal is an outcome. By the end of this quarter, what is it that we want to have seen produced? When I first started doing this with clients and we were creating these goals, I actually phrased it in a tense where it was, “By the end of this year, we will have brought about a certain outcome.” So we put ourselves in that future point and then the tasks or the action items which are on the Game Plan, and the actions, those are the specific tasks that bring us closer to achieving those goals, and they work in service of bringing about that outcome. So I think about goals as an outcome that we want to bring about and a task that actually work in service of those goals.

Trey Lockerbie (00:52:27):
You mentioned coaching a little league, and I want to see if there’s any correlation or connection here between your coaching playbook and parenting. For example, are you speaking and teaching or coaching [inaudible 00:52:41], the same way you would a little league team? Is there a difference here or are there similarities?

Matt Spielman (00:52:47):
There are a lot of similarities, Alex aside. We use baseball metaphors as often as we possibly can. We share that interest and passion and a little bit of our background there. I would say one of the biggest lessons… And I was the president of the little league and I coached 16 teams, from seven years old to 13 years old, and we really focused on, control the controllables. There’s so much out of our control, but what is in our control is, do we get a good night’s sleep the night before? Do we try to quiet the noise around us as we’re walking through the plate? Do we think about maybe, what happened last game that may have worked or didn’t work? And do we get down in our stance in the field and ready ourselves for the ball?

Matt Spielman (00:53:30):
We can’t control what the pitcher throws. We can’t control how the ball bounces before we field it and maybe there’s an error, something like that. So we really focused on, control the controllables, and that’s exactly what we do in the coaching conversation and in the coaching partnership, which is why the A, in the ACHIEVE Model is really, really important. Because it’s, “What can we action against?”

Matt Spielman (00:53:51):
And notice before, I said something about positioning ourselves for a promotion. We wouldn’t necessarily say, “I’m going to get promoted by the end of the year.” We’d phrase it differently. “We may not actually have the control over that, but we want to do what we can to position ourselves for that.” And I think, that was one of the key things that I focused on as a little league coach and in my conversations and it’s a universal theme.

Trey Lockerbie (00:54:16):
All right. I have some bonus questions here, if you’re up for it.

Matt Spielman (00:54:19):
Sure. Yeah.

Trey Lockerbie (00:54:20):
You put some of these questions in your book, so in the spirit of that, I thought I flip them around and ask you the same. This should also give the listeners a little bit of a framework for how they should be thinking, what are some primers. So here we go.

Trey Lockerbie (00:54:34):
First one is, what are you most proud of?

Matt Spielman (00:54:38):
I’m most proud of the relationship with my wife over the last 22 years, and we are true partners to each other. There are times when her career was in the foreground and mine was in a little bit of the background, and then that switched. And we’re constantly looking out for one another and fueling what the other person wants to do. And I certainly know that, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today and having made this transition without her support.

Matt Spielman (00:55:02):
And we have two boys, they’re 18 and 17, and they’re fine young men who are good to the core, and I’m most proud of that and that feels the best.

Matt Spielman (00:55:11):
To the point earlier about, having the desire to listen to oneself and the courage to act upon it, I am really proud of the transition I made at age 44, going back to school and then launching this second act, as it were.

Trey Lockerbie (00:55:25):
Here’s the next one? What has been your biggest disappointment?

Matt Spielman (00:55:29):
Yeah, so I normally don’t think about things like that. Knee jerk reaction would answer that question as, in my sophomore year of college, I was a starting shortstop for the team and I subsequently played really poorly. And I talk a lot about the why. And, after the first 13 games, I was benched. Watched the rest of the 33 games from the bench and I lost my starting job, and I had to win it back, and that was a real disappointment.

Matt Spielman (00:55:56):
But the reason why I troubled answering the question a little bit is, I don’t think about it in that frame because that’s not where the story ends. I’d shoulder surgery after the season, managed through the rehab and getting back on the field and telling the coach, “I’m going win the starting shortstop job back.” And he mentioned to me, “Well, okay, Matt, we’ll see the performance on the field.” And I did. So the balance of the story is, my junior and senior year, I did play baseball, standing at shortstop, playing in each one of the games.

Matt Spielman (00:56:23):
But I don’t tend to think about things like that, because that’s just part of the story. What the follow-on, is the response, which is the really important thing.

Trey Lockerbie (00:56:31):
What words describe you at your best?

Matt Spielman (00:56:35):
It’s almost like I’ve been shot out of a cannon. And I use the words, energized, enthusiasm, excitement, where I think about the three Es and it leads me to full engagement. And I’ll lose track of time and I’ll look up, and an hour and a half has passed and that’s when I’m at my best.

Trey Lockerbie (00:56:54):
All right. Last one here. What one wish would you have fulfilled?

Matt Spielman (00:56:59):
Yeah, I want to do a Ted Talk. That’s something that I really want to do. I’d like to boil a lot of what it is that I’ve learned and experienced in the 3,100 coaching conversations into, 12 minute, 16 minute, 18 minute discussion.

Trey Lockerbie (00:57:13):
Fantastic. Maybe help us reframe what these questions… Because you also asked the coach questions in the book as well, but what are these trying to achieve?

Matt Spielman (00:57:21):
Yeah. Those questions and some of those questions that you ask, are sent to the client prior to session one. And we usually give the person, let’s say three to five days to ingest, marinate, think about and then answer, and then send ahead of time. And the coach spends time, reading, understanding, and it sets up the, how we’re going to think about… I think about, that’s a little bit of cement to the foundation that we were talking about earlier and it sets up how we’re going to approach conversation, one, and informs the partnership more broadly.

Matt Spielman (00:57:52):
And you can tell even from some of my answers, even the question about this appoint, where I frame, I talked to you about it, you could actually get into, “Hey, well, what happened? Tell me about that.” So you don’t think about this appointment. “Tell me how you think about things. How might we use that in our discussion here?” So it’s really good fodder for important key incisive questions that drive the partnership forward.

Trey Lockerbie (00:58:16):
Very cool. Well, you’ve definitely done an amazing job distilling down these 3,100 coaching sessions you’ve had into this amazing new book, Inflection Points: How to work and live with purpose.

Trey Lockerbie (00:58:27):
Before I let you go, Matt, I want to definitely give you an opportunity to hand off to people, where they can find the book and learn more about you and follow along with you and what you’re doing and any other resources you want to share.

Matt Spielman (00:58:38):
Yeah. I appreciate that opportunity. The URL, the website for the book is www.theinflectionpointsbook.com, theinflectionpointsbook.com. If somebody wants to reach out to me or anybody on the team, you can do that and we welcome people reaching out.

Matt Spielman (00:58:57):
The book provides free resources where you can download all of the tools, all the templates, all the questions that Trey was asking, and the Game Plan that we were talking about earlier. I do go back to something I said earlier, there’s a wonderful free assessment that everybody can use, it’s called, Via, and I believe it’s viacharacter.org. And it will rank the way you answer the questions or it’ll rank your character from one to 24, based upon the energy that you have around those. And your top five are your signature strengths.

Matt Spielman (00:59:29):
And the science behind it is, the more you use your signature strengths on a day-to-day basis, not only the happier, more fulfilled you’ll be and the more energy you’ll have, but the more success you’ll have, the greater outcomes will be produced. We tend to focus from a position of strength and that is a wonderful assessment.

Matt Spielman (00:59:45):
There’s a free version and there’s a much more rich, 48 page version, a paid version.

Trey Lockerbie (00:59:51):
Fantastic. Well, Matt, excellent book. I love this conversation. It’s not something we often explore on the show, but again, if a billionaire needs a coach, you probably do too. I appreciate the time, Matt. Thank you.

Matt Spielman (01:00:03):
Thanks so much, Trey.

Trey Lockerbie (01:00:05):
All right everybody, that’s all we have for you this week. If you’re loving the show, don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app, and if you feel like leaving a review, it really helps the show. You can also reach out to me directly on Twitter at Trey Lockerbie.

Trey Lockerbie (01:00:16):
And I highly encourage you to check out all of the resources we have for you at theinvestorspodcast.com or simply Google, TIP Finance.

Trey Lockerbie (01:00:24):
And with that, I’ll see you again, next time.

Outro (01:00:27):
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Outro (01:00:43):
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