SHOWNOTES
Anyone who knows me knows that my work has been heavily influenced by Todd Herman.
I first found him through his program, 90 Day Year, which completely transformed my business, (and my life!)
Later I was coached by him in his Basecamp program.
So having him on the show was kind of a big deal for me. In fact, I surprised myself by getting emotional halfway through. But I guess that’s how it is when you get overwhelmed with all the feels, talking to your mentor.
I think you are going to love this conversation.
We talk a lot about how many of us think we should be ditching the one-to-one coaching model in exchange for the “passive income” models. Todd shares some pretty powerful thoughts about this.
Other stuff you’ll get from this episode:
👉Discover the Accidental Journey of a Coaching Titan: Todd shares his unexpected path from a passionate sports coach to a globally recognized coaching expert. His story is a testament to the power of embracing the unexpected.
👉 The $75 Blueprint to Coaching Success: Learn how Todd's humble beginnings, charging just $75 for three sessions, laid the foundation for his coaching empire. This story is a masterclass in valuing growth over greed.
👉 Unlocking the Power of One-to-One Coaching: Dive into Todd's insights on the irreplaceable value of personalized coaching. Find out why he believes this approach is crucial for uncovering transformational ideal.
👉 The Alter Ego Effect: Uncover the groundbreaking concept that has transformed the lives of athletes, entrepreneurs, and professionals across the globe. Todd discusses how adopting an alter ego can unleash your highest potential.
👉 The 90-Day Sprint to Viral Success: Be inspired by how Todd leveraged a series of free talks to never have to market his signature program again. A story of strategic generosity leading to exponential growth.
👉 The Transformation Age: Todd Herman argues that we've moved beyond the information age into a time where people crave transformation. Discover how coaches can thrive by focusing on accountability and implementation.
👉 A Verb, Not a Noun: Learn why Todd describes himself through actions rather than titles, and how this perspective fuels his continuous growth and impact in the coaching world.
Dig in and let me know what you think. I always love hearing from you!
RESOURCES
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
Here’s a bonus for you…if you go to iTunes and leave a review, I’ll send you a free copy of Todd’s book, “The Alter Ego Effect”. Just screenshot your review and send it to support@jenlehner.com
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:02.540] - Gary Vee Hey, guys. It's Gary Vaynerchuk You're listening to the Front Row, entrepreneur podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:00:04.480] - Jen Lehner While our guest today is widely known as Mr. Alter Ego, with a Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Alter Ego Effect, a show on Fox inspired from his book, Alter Ego, and an Alter Ego shoe line with Brooks Athletics. He also owns two training companies operating in the worlds of professional sports and business performance. You might also know him as the creator of the program, The 90 Day Year. His partial client list includes Real Madrid, Boston Red Sox, the National Football League, the Danish Olympic team and hundreds of other pro and Olympic athletes and teams. He's also the co founder of upcoach.com, which we're going to talk about a little bit. It's the world's first human transformation platform, helping coaches scale their programs, deliver transformational results, and manage everything in one place. He's been featured really everywhere, like NFL Films, ESPN, CBS Sports, The Today Show, Wall Street Journal, and What was that Comedy Guys podcast you were just on?
Read more...
[00:01:17.910] - Todd Herman Bert Krescher.
[00:01:19.270] - Jen Lehner Yeah, him and hundreds of other media publications. He lives in New York City with his beautiful wife and three adorable children. I'm so happy that You are here. Welcome, Todd Hermann.
[00:01:32.260] - Todd Herman This is long overdue, and I'm stoked to talk today.
[00:01:36.450] - Jen Lehner Yeah, me too. Okay, so I first discovered you years ago with your 90-day year program which completely transformed my business, and I would say by extension, my life for sure. Then I was lucky enough to coach with you in your base camp program. And recently at Ron Reich's event in San Antonio, we were both speakers. When you took the stage, I was riveted, as I always am when you take the stage. I don't know, you're really such a good speaker. But what you talked about, again, has shifted my thinking in my business. You talked about your journey as a coach and really about the overall power of one-to-one coaching. I want to start there. Your origin story as a coach has always been so inspiring to me that I have shared it with my own clients who are trying to get their first 10 clients. So can we start there? Can you tell everybody that story?
[00:02:35.860] - Todd Herman Yeah. An important frame that I placed around my origin was I am very much an accidental I'd say accidental coach and then accidental entrepreneur. I think there's a lot of stories that are told out there of someone being so deliberate. They had such a perfect vision or they had such a great vision for what they wanted to go and build as a product or a service, and then they went and they built it. And that wasn't mine at all. I played college football, I love sport. I started coaching at a high school. But I was spending more time talking to the kids about the inner game side of their sport. And that was my strength. I wasn't physically gifted. I'm not 6'4 and 245 pounds. And these kids started getting great results. But my method of teaching them was I was teaching them more about just how the brain works because I had fallen down that rabbit hole as a teenager. And anyways, these kids started getting great results. And this one mom came to me and said, Hey, would you mentor my son? I said, Yeah, sure. And then there's this long pause. I'll never forget it.
[00:03:44.860] - Todd Herman There's It's a long pause because I'm standing there awkwardly because I don't know what I'm supposed to say next. She's like, Okay, well, how much do you want to charge? In my head, I'm like, Oh, my God, what's the number? What's the number? What's the number? I said, How about $75 for three sessions? She's like, Done. That was my rate for the first two and a half years, from '97 to early 2000. That's what I charged. And what I learned was when you're super cheap, you get a lot of clients. But for me, that was important because in retrospect, one, I'm very grateful for the fact that I wasn't growing up in a day and age where there was this umbrella of get rich in coaching. Coaching wasn't an easy way back then. I didn't have this pursuit to start charging thousands or tens of thousands of dollars before my competency was even ready to charge that amount of money. And I was happy. I loved sports. I loved working with teenagers. And I busted my hump, but I busted my pump on a treadmill that I loved getting on every single day. And there's lots of different lessons in that.
[00:04:50.830] - Todd Herman But I stuck with that one-on-one coaching, and I still do it today. And my message when we were both speaking at that meant was there's a lot of different ideas out there about how if you do one-on-one coaching, you're trading time for dollars and shame on you, and you should really scale everything up and whatever that might mean, whether it's with group or courses. And I'm not poopooing any of that stuff. But you will never be someone who will ever find a transformational idea if you don't do one-on-one. And anyone can sit on stage with me and try and debate me all they want. But the alter ego concept, which, as you said in the opener, I'm Mr. Alter Ego. That was never a concept that was widely known. It was never something that was an actual device that people deliberately used or talked about as a method to help people transform until I discovered it and was able to put the different pieces together because of the deep one-on-one work I was doing with not athletes in one sport, but working across 86 different sports. And so if you're someone who is racing in the coaching, consulting, service industry, whatever, to get out of one-on-one as fast as possible, hey, that's fine, but you'll never be the person who will be someone who finds a transformational idea or concept that will stand the test of time.
[00:06:17.420] - Todd Herman And I'm not doing this to pat myself on the back. I'm really trying to cheer people on in realizing that there is extraordinary value in still doing a portion of your week, your month, whatever, doing one-on on work. You do not need to feel any remorse or regret or feel bad because you're stuck inside. I love the people I get to work with. My posture back, people, is beat that because I coach some of the highest, most elite performers on the planet in many different industries. Their days or their weeks are not filled up necessarily doing stuff that they love. Some of them feel very trapped by the work that they do.
[00:06:56.270] - Jen Lehner Yeah, that's a good point. When you gave that presentation and you and you were talking about one-to-one coaching. I mean, it is so true is that everybody looks at it as a starting place and that the ultimate place you're supposed to get to, to scale, is the one-to- Any model. Let's create a course as soon as possible. Let's do group coaching. But God forbid, we should, quote unquote, waste our time just doing one on one. And it really cracked me open in a way that, I don't know, I needed at time. And so I have added some one on one spots to my own business, and it feels so good to directly work with people again. I don't even know why couldn't I think about it on my own.
[00:07:39.780] - Todd Herman The other thing too, Jenn, is like when you're... I call it the field of play. I mean, that's my vernacular. And My point about it is that when you're really on the field helping people execute your idea or implement the thing that you're trying to get them to implement or whatever the content context is, when you're doing stuff in a one-on-one format, what it actually does is it allows you to transmute that experience into extraordinarily valuable content for other people because there's so much nuance found in that. And then that will be expressed differently in the content that you share, whether it's in a paid course or whether it's in a podcast or something else. That's the number one. You talked about Bert Kreischer. Okay. So Bert Kreischer, I think he had the number one movie on Netflix last year. And he's a favorite community of mine, not necessarily because I love his comedy so much, but he's a great example of people either love him or they absolutely despise him. He's a comedian that takes his shirt off, and he's got basically one story that massively blew him up. But on that podcast in the very first few minutes, it might have been in the first few minutes or it was just a little bit after the introduction, he shared like, When I heard you, I knew that this guy got it.
[00:09:06.400] - Todd Herman And he was saying that from the frame of celebrities, entertainers, singers, athletes that are underneath a white hot light of eyeballs of society, there's a very different level of strain, stress that's placed upon them that average citizens just do not understand. His point was, there were Things that you were saying that only someone who's actually working with people at a very high level would even understand, and it came across in the way that you were sharing your ideas or stories. My point about making that isn't about me. It's more about when you stay close to the one-on-one battle that a real human being is going through implementing an idea, you're able to now show up very differently in a public setting where people go, Oh, Jen gets it. There's something that's different about her. Whereas you can see it in the influencer space and the content, they might actually share a really great idea, but it's typically pulled out of someone else's world. It's a book or something like that. Now they repurpose it and they put a reframe on it and they call it something different. Happens to my book all the time. But there is absolutely zero depth.
[00:10:25.750] - Todd Herman You ask them one clarifying question on it and all you're going to get back is a platitude. That's how you can... It's actually a testing device that I use with people all the time to see if they actually have any depth of knowledge of something. Just one clarifying question. And if they respond in a platitude, it's guaranteed that they've never implemented the idea, they haven't personally experienced the idea, and then they don't also work with someone else on the idea.
[00:10:49.370] - Jen Lehner I love that. Can you give an example of a clarifying question maybe that you've used recently or that you might use?
[00:10:55.450] - Todd Herman Yeah, sure. Hey, Jen, I've heard you talk about the importance of having basically a dashboard where all of the work needs to happen for the team. I'm wondering, what is it about that that's so important to the CEO CEO.
[00:11:16.470] - Jen Lehner Okay, that's just once a point. Okay, got it.
[00:11:18.560] - Todd Herman You know what the answer is for that? I can tell everybody. The purpose and the reason why any leader, whether you're a one person show expanding with another person, The pain that someone is actually going through that gets expressed in being overbearing or controlling when they're giving up some element of responsibility inside their business. The actual need that's there isn't control. It's what everyone thinks that they're battling. No, it is not. It is that you are losing visibility and transparency into the actions in your business. And so the reason for the dashboard is to simply give visibility visibility and transparency of, Hey, where projects are? Where the numbers are? Are we moving forward? Is there anything that's slipping through the cracks? It's visibility and transparency. Because when you're the one person show, what do you have? A hundred % visibility and transparency into, A, all the balls that you're dropping. But at least you know that you're the one who did it. Well done. So that's one of the reasons. Well done.
[00:12:24.050] - Jen Lehner Good answer, Todd.
[00:12:25.490] - Todd Herman And my point is, if someone doesn't respond with that Or they go, they just respond with the platitude of, oh, well, I mean, it's what every business needs. Every business needs a dashboard. I'm like, okay, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the underlying reasons why. When explained, I just did this with a client in New Jersey, big wealth manager, brought all of his leadership team together. And these are people who are highly competent individuals. They're actual COOs. They're actual chief strategy officers. And I just asked them simply, why is it so critically important that we have project management dashboard put into place. There's lots of good answers. But when I explained, it's because of visibility and transparency for everybody here. They were like, Oh, my God, that's so right. Because it also frames it in a very positive way. There's nothing that's negative. It's not about controlling someone else. Anyway, it's just a very quick example of clarifying something.
[00:13:26.190] - Jen Lehner Love that. Wouldn't you say on that same vein with It's platitudes and surface-level knowledge and being able to go so much deeper when you stay connected with your folks by doing one-on-one coaching, don't you think, especially now with AI, what is so often the trend is that the more technologically advanced we get, the more we crave analog, whatever that is, the handwritten note, whatever. I think having a human to connect with one to one, because there is no shortage of information. There is no shortage of... We all have access to the most brilliant minds. I could access your mind in ChatGPT. I think maybe I have created a Todd Herman virtual coach for myself, to be honest. I think I did. I think I did an alter ego. I took your book, I asked it to create Todd Herman coach, so now I can coach with you one-on-one, but not really, of course, right? To have you completely different and that much more in demand, especially, I think now is the time when the people who really know what they're talking about is really going to be evident. The people who are truly excellent.
[00:14:44.240] - Todd Herman It already is, and there's already You already see pushback or commentary in certain circles about that very thing. But I think COVID really accelerated for people the critical importance importance of the human connection that Zoom could only take you so far. I think the massive simplification or minimalism that it's brought upon, whether it's people buying up smaller properties in the woods or the mountains or the Lake area or something like that farm is accelerated. But to your point, that one-to-one escorting someone along whatever the journey or the climb is, is in demand. In fact, I know from a, mentoring so many people in this space of, whether it's service delivery or coaching or training, whatever, and then also owning a platform that has now almost 6,000 coaching and training companies on it, the number one highest converting offer that is in the marketplace is is a coaching type offer, which is why you have someone... The reason so many people are out there calling themselves coaches right now is because it's making them more money.
[00:16:10.680] - Jen Lehner As opposed to consultant or- A course creator, a trainer, or something like that, because what's happened is courses have become more and more commoditized.
[00:16:19.860] - Todd Herman It's like, to use a search term, it's like the long tail of any niche or market. It starts with generalization, and then it moves into more and more specific. So here's a course on fitness. Well, here's a course on fitness for men. Here's a course for men that are between the ages of 35 and 48. Here's a course for men who are between the ages of 35 to 48 that have desk jobs. That's actually a lesson in how you can actually break in and find a niche market right away for yourself. But because information is so ubiquitous, it is everywhere, it's the implementation and the accountability of transformation that people are looking for right now, which is I really think that we've moved into the transformation age. It was the information age, and now people are so bloated on information that they're like, enough of this. I want to transform. And that's where the coach can insert themselves. And it's actually a very easy insert in my view, because it doesn't mean that you have to be so wickedly great at marketing. You just need to say, Hey, in some markets, it's, are you tired of just consuming the information and would like some support and help?
[00:17:38.340] - Todd Herman Well, that's literally what I do. I have a few different ways that I can help you do that.
[00:17:44.180] - Jen Lehner This is a perfect opportunity for me to insert for folks to take a look at todherman. Me because I love your website. I meant to copy this when I saw it the first time, so I got to do it now. But it says, I don't have it in front of me, but it's like, I write, I coach, Do you know it by heart? Yeah.
[00:18:02.220] - Todd Herman It says, I coach, I build, I write, I speak. A, it's in that form because one, I'm more than just a noun. Some people would say, Hey, I'm a coach, I'm an entrepreneur. And as the guy who is an expert on identity work, I use identity for my uses. I'm very cognizant and aware that identity can trap people. And we're more verbs than we are nouns. So that's why I say, I coach, because that's what I do. I coach people. And then what happens, because I coach people still one-on-one to this day, I then take those lessons and I build products, or I build another program around that. That's where 9010er comes from. That's where Upcoach comes from. So I build something that can be leveraged for more people. But I'm watching that. I'm like, Oh, what's broken? Are people still getting a great result that if I was coaching them one-on-one? No. Okay, well, then let's iterate and let's improve that. Let's make that better. And then what happens is, Well, after that process, then I write a book about it. I wrote Alter Ego Effect not as a method for me to build my coaching business because I wrote it 20 years after I started coaching.
[00:19:15.390] - Todd Herman And I'm not saying that I was the right way. I could have written it earlier, but I just wasn't done working with that concept yet until I wrote that book.
[00:19:25.360] - Jen Lehner Okay, great. Two things you just brought up. One, we have to loop back to. So I had made a note to myself because I don't want to forget about this, and then I want to talk about the alter ego. Back to the beginning. So you said 20 years ago, you started. Back to those early days when you charged that woman $75 for three sessions or whatever. You also did something else to fill up your client roster. And it was so brilliant and so simple that anybody could do that I love so much. Will you talk about that?
[00:19:59.010] - Todd Herman Yeah, I'll I'll say this, anyone can do it. However, you're going to have your one way to go about doing it. So I didn't know anything about marketing. I wasn't a marketer. That's not a moniker that I would ever think about myself. My business needs marketing, and so that's an activity that has to happen inside the business. But I was insecure about the idea that, is this even a thing? Because coaching wasn't an industry. Mental game, let alone, wasn't this massive marketplace that was out there. It took some heavy lifting to convince people that mental game was maybe a good part of the equation of developing this young athlete. And so I was like, Is this even a business? Well, I don't know. But the one thing I do know is I know how to speak because I was a 4-H kid. So 4-H is like agricultural boy scouts to people that don't know. And when you're inside of a 4-H club, you always do a speaking competition in your club. And then if you win that, then you go to regionals and divisionals and state or provincial, depending on what country you're in. And when I was 10, I started in 4-H, and I happened to be good.
[00:21:10.170] - Todd Herman I actually won my speaking competition, beat my brothers and everyone else in my club, and kept on graduating up. But I had really good mentors in my parents. I was very comfortable on a stage, and I said to myself, Listen, why don't I just do as many talks on this concept that I have around the Triune athlete, the mentally, emotionally, and physically tough athlete, that when you align all three of those, you get the greatest chance of peak performance to come out of that athlete. And so I knew two people. I called them up. Going back to that, so I had 90 days. I gave myself a 90-day window. I'll do as many free talks as I can. One thing I did right, which was accidental, I price-ankered it because I called up my friend Eric and I said, Hey, I'm doing these workshops. They're like 90 minutes. Normally, I would charge $2,200 for them, but I'm just trying to get my name out there more And I'll come in and I'll do it for free for you, if that's okay. And he's like, For sure. So I go in, I do this 90-minute workshop.
[00:22:06.600] - Jen Lehner And what was his role?
[00:22:08.960] - Todd Herman Eric was the head of not a hockey association in Edmonton, Alberta, where that's where I lived at the time, but he was like a hockey club type of thing. So he had access and he had a lot of high-level hockey players because that's where I started was hockey. So that's what I did. And then I called up another guy, and he was the head of the association for St. Albert, which is a bedroom community of Edmonton, and he did the soccer association. So I got these two people, so soccer. So I went and did it. And I always ended my talk with, Hey, what I said was, I'll do it for free, but only if one of the parents of the kids could be in the room, because I knew that I had a terrible business. Because, Jen, you're paying for my product, but you're not receiving it. Your kid is receiving the actual product. Now, you're receiving receiving maybe the glory of having a kid that's going to feel more confident, and that's if I actually do my job right, right? Feeling more emotionally stable and stuff. But it wasn't... So I needed to get that checkbook because that's what people paid me back then, checkbooks.
[00:23:14.880] - Todd Herman It wasn't swiped cards. It was a check. Mind you what, 75 bucks. Some people just gave me cash as well. So I needed that in the room. So here I am. I'm ending the talk, and I would say to all the parents, something like this, and I know a lot of you have other kids that are probably in sports as well, competing at a high level. I just want to let you know that I'm doing this presentation for free until June the 13th. I think that was the date. June 13th, it was June 13th, 1998. If you want to come up and talk to me afterwards about coming out, and I can come and talk to their team. And so that's how this viral effect started. I ended up doing 68 speeches in 90 days, and that was in 1998. I never had to market the peak athlete ever again because because I built such an engine of referral and referability inside of not only that part of it, but also in the way that I onboarded and got clientele.
[00:24:11.300] - Jen Lehner Okay. What I love about this so much, and the part of it that The takeaway, I think, that is applicable to really anybody who wants to do something similar is the part where you can give yourself a goal. I love that you said, I'm going to get this number done in 90 days, and that you set a goal for yourself. And I remember also you were like, sometimes there were four people in the room, and sometimes there were 200 people in the room, but you showed up.
[00:24:39.340] - Todd Herman My second talk was, I walked in, not just four people in the room, Jen. It was after a youth hockey game. They were 12, 13-year-olds. And I came into their locker room because that's where we were going to do it. And I had my crappy little Office Depot flip chart. And I say crappy because one of the three legs would always... It wouldn't tighten anymore because I had abused it so much. So sometimes in the middle of the presentation, the leg would just fall. So anyways, I had this flip chart that I would use. And as I'm setting it up, and I remember my back to the group, and again, they're just wrapping up getting all their stuff put into their bags. I'm writing my name on it and Triune athlete, the Triune athlete. And 13 of the 17 players walked out with their parents. Only four stuck around to hear me talk. I remember when I was just fitting, I was writing the A. I'll never forget it. I was writing the A in hermen, the AN part. I remember thinking to myself, Oh, I've won because I'm just I was excited to talk to these four kids because I love this stuff as I would have been if everyone would have stuck around or if there was hundreds of people standing here.
[00:25:52.930] - Todd Herman I could choke up because you get so fortunate when you find something that you really love speaking about or talking or sharing with people. And you also couple that with the group of people that you love sharing it with. And you're also inside of a market or an industry that you believe in. I believe in sport. I believe in the power of sport. I believed in very much working with young teenagers at that time. And I believed in this idea of the triune athlete. That's the other big thing as a takeaway for people that they miss out on is I actually had a concept or idea to share. I wasn't coming in and just saying, Hey, I want to talk about the mental game. I actually unwittingly, again, I got fortunate in some way. I don't know how that idea came to my head, but the triune athlete. I had that because then that became somewhat intellectually interesting for someone. As someone who helps others develop their intellectual property now, now I look back and I'm like, Oh, my God. You just happened to blindly swing at the ball and you cracked it. Right.
[00:26:59.720] - Jen Lehner That's the ultimate hook.
[00:27:00.250] - Todd Herman That's the other thing to take away. What's that?
[00:27:03.030] - Jen Lehner You had the ultimate marketing hook without creating a hook, knowing you were creating a hook like you totally did. I think you put yourself in the room. What is it in Hamilton? I'm not going to sing it, but it was like, I want to be in the room where it happens. You know what I'm talking about? That song. You made the room where it happens. You created your own room. I do think that if someone has something that they're passionate about, something that they know can help someone, that they really want to share, why can't anyone do this? In their version of this, I'm going to give myself 90 days. You don't have to have a fancy online funnel. You don't have to have Facebook ads. You just got to get out there on the field to play, in Todd Herman speak, and do it. I love it. I love it so much. Okay, we can't Give me another minute without talking about the alter ego, because that's a whole other thing. For those who aren't familiar with the alter ego, can you catch us up?
[00:28:08.180] - Todd Herman Yeah, sure. The alter ego was first coined as a phrase by Cicero back in 44 BC. Cicero was widely known as the greatest Roman statesman philosopher to live, and at least, if not the greatest, then one of the greatest. And he said in a letter to a friend who had asked him about... This is important. He asked him, Hey, you've had so much success. Basically, what tips you got for me? So DMs him back then, and he's actually in a caravan. He wrote this while he was in a caravan going off to someplace else. And he coined the term alter ego, and it means the other eye or trusted friend within. And in the context of his note to a friend, he was saying how one of the things that he learned- Wait, go back.
[00:28:50.770] - Jen Lehner The other eye.
[00:28:52.400] - Todd Herman The other eye or trusted friend within. That's what the alter ego really is in its pure form. It's that trust trusted friend within, whether you can have a conversation with, or it's that trusted friend or the other eye that you're trying to move towards as a vision of the person you're trying to become or model in some ways. But in the context of his note to the friend, he was like, Listen, what I've learned is that when I can shapeshift my identity, and I'm loosely translating, when I shapeshift my identity and I used it as my way of navigating the new challenges that I was always brought into, I was able to achieve things much faster because I didn't stay stuck in, Oh, Jen can't do that because she's from here, or Jen can't do that because of X. We can all do that to ourselves. And so in my discovery of working with people on the inner game, they would say things like, I've got a character, I've got this identity, I've got this secret identity, I've got this alter ego. Like all persona. They'd use all these different words. And for me, I was like, Oh, I did the exact same thing.
[00:30:03.100] - Todd Herman I had Geronima when I played football. And then when I was very insecure and lacked the confidence to really sell my fledgling little mental game business, Because I didn't have eight letters behind my name because of degrees. I didn't have four best-selling books. Three was actually the number. I thought you became an expert when you had three best-selling books. That was my stupid idea that I had way back then. And I looked like I was 12 years old because I had baby face. And it stopped me from going out there and trying to grow this thing. I wasn't telling people that I was the greatest mental game person in the world. I was working with teenagers and was pretty darn good at it because I was very good at building rapport with people, which is what many people overlook in the early processes of your business and even in the later processes of your business. I've met phenomenal experts who have lost bedside manner.
[00:30:56.560] - Jen Lehner Don't you think a big part of your charisma you were born with?
[00:31:02.500] - Todd Herman No. There's a lot of things that I've had to overcome. My brother is a very natural leader. I had to really work at my leadership skills. There's certain elements of me that there are dispositions that we're all born with, absolutely. But I think one of the great visuals that I've heard phrase before, when someone comes along and there's this beautiful garden with tulips and daisies and everything is just gorgeous. Someone says, Wow, isn't it amazing what God can do? The gardener is standing there and says, Yeah, and you should have seen it before I came along. It's one thing to have these dispositions. It's another thing to organize them and transmute them and direct the energy in a way that helps to get you results. I mean, there's still blind spots that I would have in the way that I show up in the world, and we all do. My point being is And charisma has nothing to do with caring. Here's what I learned early on, because there were some sports psychology people who would have been, quote, competitors who didn't give two shits about those young kids. They didn't actually care. I had amazing rapport with them because I wasn't that much older than them.
[00:32:17.550] - Todd Herman But I genuinely cared. Following up afterwards, the day after a game and a quick phone call and saying, Hey, how did it go? Or, Hey, did you do the thing that we talked about before? Closing feedback loops rapidly. Some people, they forget about the importance of that once they get to a certain level because their ego takes over. My point about that is that most people will look at the starting out stage as a disadvantage, and I really disagree. It's a disadvantage if you try to call yourself what I would now that I'm 28 years into my career, where you try to posture with something that's maybe a bigger promise than what you can deliver right now. But there's a tremendous advantage that you have around being fresh and having a level of hustle to fight and prove yourself in many ways. I never want to lose that. I never want to lose that. I remind myself of that every single day.
[00:33:19.240] - Jen Lehner Yeah. Also important to remember that that can happen at any stage in life. You can pivot onto a new thing or reawaken your thing or whatever. But how did your alter ego manifest itself at that time? You said that- Super Richard was the alter ego for me.
[00:33:43.150] - Todd Herman I take a look at the So I have a method that I talk about in the book. And for the sake of time, I'd say, either go read the book or there's other podcast that people can go. There's other cool things that we can share here that I don't talk about on another podcast as much because people do want to talk about Alter Ego. But for me, it was born out of, okay, so what am I not doing? I am not promoting this business. If I want this thing to break out, I need to get out of my own way. And every night, I would make a bunch of promises to myself about making phone calls, actual phone calls back then when you actually picked up a phone, and I wouldn't do it. In looking at it, I just was insecure. I wasn't very good at communicating the value that I had. I just wasn't taking action. So all this happened very quickly in my head because I already played with mentors in my mind. I'm like, Oh, when it comes to being decisive, well, that's Superman, right? Man of action. Goes into the phone booth, comes out, and saves the day.
[00:34:47.800] - Todd Herman I'm borrowing that from him. Joseph Campbell, I fell in love with him in 1986 when he did the Bill Moyer's CBS special about Hero with a Thousand Faces and the Hero's Journey. Years later, it ended up that I She ended up being able to sit on the Joseph Campbell Foundation board, which was a very full circle hero's journey moment for me, too. He was my other... And that was about communication. His ability to articulate really grand concepts, but in such an engaging way. I wanted to be articulate like him. Then insecurity, I wanted to be confident like Benjamin Franklin. I mean, if there's a human being who reinvented himself over and over and over again, actually used all three egos as well and had tremendous careers multiple couple of times in his life, well, I want that level of confidence. I mean, that was incredible to me. Those became my trusted friends within, my models for how I want to show up. And then I went and bought a pair of non-prescription glasses, and that became my cape. When I put on those glasses, that's when Super Richard would take over, and I would practice getting into that being this, and I would act my way into it.
[00:35:53.990] - Todd Herman And then that's what I would do to make phone calls. It was Super Richard was hired to be the advocate for Todd's stuff. I talk about this, actually, in the course, I talk about the importance of a very singular mission for why this hero was created for you. And because many of us have aspirations and dreams, and for whatever reason, we have a hard time seeing Todd do it or whoever that might be, but this person can do it. And so that person is coming in to take over that mission for you. And what happens is it eventually integrates into the self, into you. And I remember about six months later, I hung up the phone when you hung up phones, and I had just booked two speaking gigs for myself that were really big. And I looked down and my glasses were sitting on the table and I fought. And I remember I slam the table and I thought, Aha, I finally became him.
[00:36:54.840] - Jen Lehner Wow.
[00:36:56.670] - Todd Herman And that was in 1998. That I built, or 798, when I built the Super Richard. And then it was just so funny years later that I started seeing this amongst athletes, and I was like, wait a second, there's something else that's here. And that's going back to the earlier point that we were making about I want. I could have never found that concept if I just immediately scaled into workshops. Back then, it would have been workshops or trainings, because the nuances of the identity stuff was only shared in those quiet conversations, diving deep with people about, Hey, what's actually the thing that's helping you out there? Or just the nuances of those conversations. It's hard to get those things inside of group conversations.
[00:37:44.120] - Jen Lehner Back to, Coach, Coaching, what do you think the future is? Do you see... I mean, especially now that you have these insights, I'm super interested in that. Now that you have this amazing platform, which I want to hear about that as well, Upcoach, I guess you said you have 6,000 coaches on or 6,000 whatever, and the number one offer is a coaching offer. I'm curious about what other trends you might be seeing that the rest of us wouldn't have access to.
[00:38:14.660] - Todd Herman I think one of the trends that you'll see is more intimate, small retreat type offers doing very well. People traveling. I mean, it's already out there, right? People are like, Okay, Richard. I'm like, No, you're going to see more of it as a popular and accepted form of product from clientele. They're like, Oh, okay, yeah, I'd love to go and do something like that. Very experiential. Again, when you think about the umbrella here as people really want transformation, however you go and create that environment, then it's going to be, I think it'll be an offer for most people that will really do well. If it was a retreat where it's sitting inside of a room and taking notes all the time, that isn't going to be high converting necessarily, or something that will be talked about and referred. So that's one thing.
[00:39:16.120] - Jen Lehner Okay, I am interrupting my own conversation real quick because what Todd said about retreats, he's so right. And this is a perfect opportunity for me to tell you about a retreat or really a mastermind called the Front Row CEO Mastermind that I am hosting April the third in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. I'll let you learn all about it if you go to jennlaner. Com/mastermind for all the details. But we are going to really zero in into the smallest detail of your 90-day plan so that we can execute and sprint towards those goals for the rest of the quarter. Go to jennlaner. Com/mastermind. Now back to my Juicy conversation with Todd.
[00:40:02.320] - Todd Herman I think that, like what you're talking about having a Todd Hermann AI version coach, you're going to see more use of AI models to help you in navigating the coaching with clientele. Here's what I mean. Is when you have your own concepts or you have your own cadre of influences, and then you feed it into some AI algorithm. And then when, Jen, you send me a question before I respond, maybe I'll put it through this. So this becomes a companion coach with you behind the scenes to help you maybe catch your own blind spots, because it's that idea of the expert is at level 10, and then when they try to demystify it, all they do is go down to a level eight, and And they forget about the seven other steps that were there beforehand for the beginner. I think that companion type coaching behind the scenes, that AI, I think, is very well built to augment that world as well. And then I'd say the third thing is a real shift from synchronous coaching. Asynchronous coaching is already here, right? It's the idea of like, Hey, you can box me, or you can send me an audio message or something like that.
[00:41:33.850] - Todd Herman But I think in the marketplace, people will really accept it as maybe even the preferred form of coaching than over synchronous coaching. That 75% of the value I get from Jen is not based on whether or not we get on a Zoom call or we get on a phone call, or we meet face to face, that a lot of the value is in the ability to ping someone at all times of the day, or not necessarily that, but more frequently, asynchronously. I think those are three big trends.
[00:42:04.550] - Jen Lehner I think that's true. I think that's true because I think to be able to ping you and be like, Hey, just quick question. Do you think this is a ridiculous amount for me to charge for X, Y, Z? Or whatever the question is. I do think people find that helpful. Do you see a median... This is probably not even possible, but is there not a mean, but an average hourly rate you're seeing in your software, let people charge?
[00:42:35.300] - Todd Herman No, because it's so all over the map based on the different industries that you're in. I was just onboarded because this one client is a huge wealth manager inside of a major bank. Our team had to jump through some different hoops in order for it to get approved because he wanted to pay with pre-tax dollars. Anyway, not to confuse people. But anyway, when they were onboarding me, I was talking to their VP of development, basically a human resource person, and they said, I was excited to get on this call because you are astronomically more expensive than any other coach or service provider that we have inside of our system. I said, Yeah, that makes sense. She was expecting me to explain that.
[00:43:24.450] - Jen Lehner I love that.
[00:43:26.680] - Todd Herman I was like, No, I know that. And I'm like, It's not expense. It's, I'm astronomically more valuable than other people that you've got inside your platform.
[00:43:36.790] - Jen Lehner I love that. Somebody uses a big brand or somebody has a tagline reassuringly expensive.
[00:43:44.010] - Todd Herman Reassuringly expensive.
[00:43:44.970] - Jen Lehner Yeah, it's something like that. Because I think there's a lot of... I mean, you deliver the value, too.
[00:43:52.950] - Todd Herman I've massively integrated that into my esteem. I earned it. I stuck. I stayed I stayed at 75 bucks for three... I stayed at $25 for a long-ass time. But it's really hard for people to beat me on numbers of reps. It's really hard for anyone who's been in the coaching space.
[00:44:12.960] - Jen Lehner How do you, Todd Herman, continue to grow as a coach beyond your coaching sessions? What inspires you and fills you up?
[00:44:24.640] - Todd Herman Great question. The first thing comes back to a mission that I'm on, which is I want to be the greatest coach that ever lived. I'm never going to get that award. I'm never going to get called up onto stage, and no one's going to say that. But it's an idea that's in my head of that's how I want to be. And I hope on my final day, before I take my last breath, I've just hung up because I was just on a call with someone doing some coaching. Most likely it'll be with my kids. But that's number one. Is that idea. I love it. I love this vocation. And then, secondly, it surprised a bunch of people actually at the event that you were at when I had shared this. I still watch and have for two decades or listen, watch or listen, to up to three hours of my own coaching every week. Because I look at it as the game film. I have a very sports performance this approach to my world and how I look at things. And any great quarterback is going to come off the field and look at the game film, and anyone else in any sport is going to look at that game film.
[00:45:41.440] - Todd Herman And I'm listening for, When When did I... What was a really good idea that I shared there? That could be a piece of content. Because sometimes you're on the field, you're just mixing it up, you're coaching, and you forget about that one really big takeaway. Or I'm watching for behavioral cues. I'm watching clientele. I'm like, Oh, there was something that Jen just did right there that I didn't pick up. So I'm going to follow up with her, and this is what gets clients. Imagine we have a call on a Tuesday, Jen, and then I ping you on a Friday and say, Hey, Jen, I was just thinking about our conversation. And when you had mentioned some of the work that you're doing right now in building out a new program for yourself, there was something that you had said that I felt like maybe I missed or we missed there, and it was around the structuring of your curriculum. Am I imagining things or is there anything there? I'm not saying I'm not saying negative or positive. In the languaging of things, I'm not because I don't want to lead you down a path. It's one of the worst things that we can do as coaches, consultants, advisors, moms, dads, whatever, is create a presupposition that someone hooks on to that's negative that actually wasn't there.
[00:47:03.060] - Todd Herman Creating negative attitudes or beliefs about the self or whatever it is that they're pursuing that actually wasn't there. Because I need to take my position of authority in many of clients' heads and they go, Oh, if Todd sees something that's there, that's a problem, then there must be a problem. What am I doing? I never even thought about that. Let me think about that. You know what? You're right. I do feel insecure about my curriculum. I didn't say that. I don't want to say that you're insecure about your curriculum. Anyways, you saying that to a client, I'm telling you, blows people away.
[00:47:38.390] - Jen Lehner Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:47:40.210] - Todd Herman Out of all the activities that I could do that improves myself, it's watching the game film of my coaching calls, and I'm grading it through a bunch of different lenses as I'm there.
[00:47:55.050] - Jen Lehner Fantastic. I know that Jim Rohn is your eternal coach. The teachings of Jim that you've followed him, and he's inspired you in your life. But do you coach with anyone in real life now? Oh, yeah. Does someone coach you?
[00:48:13.240] - Todd Herman Oh, yeah, absolutely. I would say there's no one at this point in time that I'm paying to coach with. I have a couple of mentors that I'm working with that But let's say, I've coached them into being good coaches of me in some ways.
[00:48:36.360] - Jen Lehner Yeah, that's cool.
[00:48:38.810] - Todd Herman But yeah, it's just more it's a season of my life that I'm going through right now because of health stuff that I just don't have the capacity to push very hard in some domains. But absolutely. In fact, there was a season of my life back in the mid, early 2010s Hens, where I didn't have a coach for about 18 months. I didn't even notice it. It was because two of my mentors had passed away, Harvey Dorfman and Jim Rohn. Jim wasn't really coaching me anyway. I hadn't been for over a decade. But Harvey, I was very, very close with, and he's the legend of the mental game industry. I didn't even realize that I went through this gap or valley of... I just wasn't improving as much as I was in other years, and it was because I didn't have a coach.
[00:49:34.980] - Jen Lehner You had two practices that I remember. One was when you travel, you pick up randomly, practically with your eyes closed, pick up three magazines. That you would never normally buy. Maybe it's Cosmopolitan, Mad Libs, Mad magazine, and Fisherman's Digest. It would just be so random, which I always thought that was so cool. Then the other practice you had, and I wonder if you still do it, is writing a letter every morning.
[00:50:04.160] - Todd Herman Yeah, I've done that since the late '90s.
[00:50:08.530] - Jen Lehner You write a letter and you send a letter, right?
[00:50:11.580] - Todd Herman Yeah. So I write a personal note, and I've got my own letterhead, and it's a box. It's just sitting up over there. So I pull it out. And it was a challenge early on from Jim, actually, Ron, about writing a personal note to people. And he didn't even put it timely. He's like, Just write a personal note to people. Write a personal letter. He did that. That was part of his practice. And so I wrote a few of them, and I got a response to all three. Everybody responded back. So I'm like, talk about a feedback loop that's closed. So I just started doing that. And the way that I looked at it, maybe about a year into it, is I'm using this letter as a way, as an expression of gratitude to other people for some way that they've impacted me. An author's book, if I... And it's only a one on the page. And I have a certain structure that I have to it, but that's how I will kick off my day is doing that. And then on the magazine side of things, when I'm traveling, I don't just go to the magazine shelf.
[00:51:13.490] - Todd Herman I ask, because I'm an extrovert, I ask other people, Hey, do you have a favorite magazine or a random magazine that you pick up every now and then? And I'll make sure to ask people who... My preference would be to, say, ask someone who looks like she's a 75-year-old grandmother or whatever, because she'll definitely mention a magazine that I wouldn't think about. So on my last trip back, and this is last week, I picked up a magazine. Is it cat fancier? It was a cat magazine, anyway. And my point in what I've learned is that, hey, if you want to stay interesting, then make sure your inputs come from lots of different areas. Secondly, some of your most innovative ideas are going to come from the random collision of concepts, ideas, topics, markets that have nothing to do with each other. So that's just what I do. There's always something fascinating that I'll learn.
[00:52:14.080] - Jen Lehner I just love those two words together, random collision. I think I'm going to buy randomcollision. Com and see what happens with it because those two words are fantastic together. All right, Todd. Well, before we head out, I want to hear about Upcoach. Tell us what it is, what it does. Yeah, what is it?
[00:52:33.970] - Todd Herman Sure. So Upcoach, I've got three cofounders in the software. And two of us came together now four years ago. We're at the start of that epidemic, which shall not be named. And he's a very famous guy in the software and tech industry. David Hensel built up many companies, and he just started getting into coaching, and And we had known each other for a long time. And he's like, Listen, I've got this idea. And we came together, we talked, and then we co-founded Upcoach, and we started building up this platform. And there's so many different learning management systems that are out there, but there was nothing that was really built for the industry of coaching, which there's like one-on-one coaching type platforms out there. But what happens when you want to add some leverage into your business, like group coaching, or you want to add courses and trainings. Now you've got these different things. And so that was the vision was, I want to build a platform that's great for doing one-on-one coaching and then also helps to support people as they want to add more leverage so you can do group coaching and communities inside of it.
[00:53:48.020] - Todd Herman And there's a lot of accountability tools in it where you can help to keep your clients accountable with tasks or projects that they might be working on or helping them to track their habits And so anyways, it's a beautiful platform. I'm super pumped about it. And my favorite testimonials that we get is from people who've been coaching for a while. And this one lady, I'll never forget, she's She's an incredible career in the world of corporate America. And she's like, I've been coaching for eight years. And I thought that maybe I'm not bright. Why can't I figure out how to put more leverage into my business? And the moment I put all of my one-on-one coaching inside of Upcoach, immediately I saw exactly how to add group, cohort, all this stuff. And now she's making even more of an impact with more people And so, yeah, we've been doing it for four years. For two years, I had it shut down, meaning only I was because I was battle testing it. And then we took it out to the market. I invited people in, and now it's open season for everyone to come in.
[00:54:59.120] - Jen Lehner Is there a free trial of it?
[00:55:01.290] - Todd Herman If you go to our pricing page, and we can set up something on the back end, too, maybe not... Because I can't give you the exact code right now, but on your podcast page, if someone goes to Jen's site, we'll get a special code for people to do a $1 for your first month for you to kick every single tire that you possibly can.
[00:55:23.560] - Jen Lehner Oh, awesome. Thank you. I really wasn't fishing for that. I just was curious if it had the free month built in. But also, that's super. That's great.
[00:55:31.630] - Todd Herman Don't deny the fish that just jumps inside the boat if you weren't fishing for it. I'm not.
[00:55:35.970] - Jen Lehner I shall not. Well, Todd, this is... Okay, last question. What are you really super excited about right now?
[00:55:43.830] - Todd Herman I'm really excited about all the different coaching that I get to do every single week. I still... Maybe I'm boring, but I'm very excited about the work that I just get to do every single week, and I'm excited about the clients. I was just messaging before we got on the this particular interview with a client who's in one of our mentoring programs with just a massive personal win that they had with their daughter and something that we encourage them to go out and do. I'm always more excited about what other people are doing than typically my own roles.
[00:56:17.030] - Jen Lehner Yeah, I get that. All right. Well, I don't know if you know it or not, but this was a huge thing for me to have you on this podcast. I'll try not to get emotional, but You've made a huge, big difference in my life. You've been an amazing mentor to me, and I still continue to follow you and see what you're up to. I continue to be inspired by you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
[00:56:46.960] - Todd Herman Jen, I love you. Well, the thing that's easy to love about you is that it's so obvious that you care. I feel very fortunate that I get to have people who find me through you, and they send all of these amazing messages about how much of an impact you make on their lives. And so I'm grateful to be here and grateful for the chance. And it's always great chatting.
[00:57:15.030] - Jen Lehner Thank you. Thanks to Todd for joining me today. I so enjoyed that. And just to remind you, if you want more of Todd's brilliance, go to todherman. Me. If you want to learn more about his amazing coaching platform, that's called upcoach. Com. And if you want to buy the Alter Ego book, it's available anywhere books are sold. And it's called The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Hermann. See you soon.
