35 - Add facilitation to your offer suite with Leanne Hughes
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarf, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years, I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach, and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups, and more.
and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveler, a reader, a mom, wife, and dog parent, and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses.
The executive coaching business is tough. And I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes, and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. [00:01:00] You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable, and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are.
I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context, as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, Then this is the place for you.
Ellie Scarf: Hello, and welcome to the business of executive coaching podcast. I am so pleased to be here today with Leanne Hughes. Welcome Leanne. Thank you. Lovely to chat to you, Ellie. Now I'm going to do a, the formal part of proceeding. So I will introduce you officially, and then I'm going to ask you all of the the, the interesting questions.
Ellie Scarf: So Leanne focuses on producing extraordinary outcomes for individuals, teams, and organizations in a huge range of environments and economies. She likes the term thought breeder, which I love to describe [00:02:00] her calling her calling being to engender innovative, pragmatic ideas and results with her clients.
Ellie Scarf: And I, as anyone who listens to this knows, I love innovation, but I also love a violent focus on pragmatism. So that really speaks to me. Leanne's based in Brisbane. She is a prolific communicator and author of the two hour workshop blueprints, which I don't know if we'll use this video, but just in case I do, I'm holding up here and you can see behind her and I reckon have recommended this to, to many folks.
Ellie Scarf: She's also the host of the first time facilitator podcast. So I plan to take notes from her expertise today and her articles feature in all sorts of publications, including smart company and CEO world. And this is cool. Her work is very unique and she has been inducted as one of less than 50 people into the million dollar consulting hall of fame.
Leanne helps people achieve big goals and surpass their own aspirations personally and professionally, and working with her is all about understanding how much [00:03:00] growth you can continue to achieve. So I want us to focus on that today.
Ellie Scarf: Leanne, welcome again. It's so great to
Leanne Hughes: have you here. Thank you. And I loved the iterations that you added to that and your input to it as well. And because thought breeder, I thought, I just, I mean, the whole thought leader thing and it being self proclaimed, I just couldn't do it to myself. So I think thought breeder is more about the work that we do in terms of the coaching, facilitating, inspiring ideas into action.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah,
Ellie Scarf: absolutely. And it's got that sense of. Generativity but I was like, where, where, where the spark, where the start, where the, yeah. So as I mentioned, as always, and this is probably a coach coach thing, I have so many questions for you. But I'm going to try and, and, and not just, you know, rattle them off one by one.
Ellie Scarf: Let's see where we go. Would you start by not just introducing yourself, but maybe telling us a bit of your story?
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, it's like, what's the, the launchpad for it? I think it might be fun and I'm not going to go completely linear here, but when I was really like, one of my first memories [00:04:00] as a six year old was going to a birthday party and it was awful.
Leanne Hughes: Ellie, like there was, there were no activities. There was no structure. I remember being like super bored. Just sitting around, I think it was like a barbecue that my parents picked me up a few hours later. And I remember in the car thinking, where was, where were the activities? Where was, cause my dad and I used to structure our parties.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. We would have an agenda. We would have a variety of activities. And the work that I do now is a lot about that, like designing great experiences for groups. And I think it was really an innate thing that happened as a six year old. So I've kind of in my career flitted between, I mean, I love group psychology.
Leanne Hughes: I love playing team sport. I'm very fascinated in team dynamics love communicating, so podcasting and writing is really fun. And just bringing that all together in the consulting world and just seeing what mediums and tools I can use to help clients out. So that's like the short story, but kind of around where it started
Ellie Scarf: from, like that six year old girl.
Ellie Scarf: And this is probably you know, quite going to tell us a lot about your [00:05:00] personality, but are you someone who thinks that every person should get a present in pass the parcel or only the person who wins at the end?
Leanne Hughes: Well, that's a really good question. I think that only the person that wins at the end, because it creates that suspense.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. That's the whole point of the game. Like if everyone, every layer, but we would create these parts of parcels that were like, we, we had an old keyboard box. So it was huge. So dad would bring out the past. Everyone's like, Whoa, what is in this? And then it would end up being like a little sort of token or a book.
Leanne Hughes: Right. Yeah. Like that unpredictability of that big box. So I learned about being unpredictable back then. And in fairness, dad's like an engineer, but he's super creative. So it was nice kind of learning that from him.
Ellie Scarf: I love it so much. And when you were, you know, taking on this childhood journey, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
Leanne Hughes: Oh, that's a really good question. I wanted to be a professional netball player, like number one. Okay. Number two, I don't know if this was more of a profession, but when I was in grade eight, nine, eight, nine, and 10, every night I would [00:06:00] bring up the local radio station and just compete in competitions. And I won a few cool things like trips to Sydney.
Leanne Hughes: Oh, wow. Clothes vouchers. So maybe there was always an element of, communicating in the media as well. I thought you were going with like professional gambler. No, I mean, judging from recent performance, no. So yeah, sport media and the reason why I like sport and actually played netball for a lot longer than I should have, I should have probably stopped playing, but it was more that I just love my friends and that dynamic of being around a team.
Leanne Hughes: So yeah, I think where I am landed now is, has been that mix of communicating teams.
Ellie Scarf: Amazing. And what was the professional journey for you?
Leanne Hughes: So how did it, how did it
Ellie Scarf: play
Leanne Hughes: out? Yeah, it was all, I mean, I just pretty much did an arts and a business degree. Cause I didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Leanne Hughes: My first job was with Accenture and. I realized after a year that I hated it. I hated all the rules. I hated that. They hired talented, not, I mean, it's not a bad company, [00:07:00] but it's not, it wasn't built for me. Yeah. You know, you hire great people. Then you just tell them how to do things. You know, I felt like I was chat GPT or something.
Leanne Hughes: Like they're just programming me and. I had a quarter life crisis and joined probably the most controversial company in Australia called Wicked Campervans. And I, yes, I think, yeah, if you're
Ellie Scarf: not from Australia and you're listening, do Google it. It was pretty interesting.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. You'll see all the headlines.
Leanne Hughes: I actually shared that at the event. With Michael Bunga senior did a couple of weeks ago and like the gasping in the room, people were shocked by it. So, but I learned, I mean, that was the best thing ever to do at the age of 25. I worked directly for the owner. It was seek forgiveness, not permission.
Leanne Hughes: We would do crazy stunts. And what do you, what that showed me was the power of agency and how you actually do a lot. You can do a lot more than you think you can. There's no one on over the back of you. Kind of slapping your wrists. Like I, you know, we did something called the naked special. Pick up your van naked, get your first day for [00:08:00] free.
Leanne Hughes: And we didn't get in trouble for that. And you think, geez, if you can do that. And so that kind of built this thing around, you can push the rules a bit. So that was really interesting. Ended up moving to Broome in Western Australia, lived there for seven years, worked for the government for a tape up there in a marketing role.
Leanne Hughes: But then that pulled me back into workforce development. And then most recently before leaving my job, I was working for a global mining company in Brisbane. And that's where I got my start. The commodities at the time resources price was quite low. So we couldn't afford to get external facilitators.
Leanne Hughes: And my boss decided to send me all around the world running workshops. And when I was in Canada one time I was jet lagged. One participant just refused to jump into an activity and it really threw me. So I flew back to Australia and asked all my friends how to do it. That's.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Amazing. So I love, I love that forgiveness, not permission approach and, and yeah, I imagined that getting people to show up naked was very much [00:09:00] in that, in that category.
Ellie Scarf: I just don't know. I guess it could be public nudity, I suppose that's illegal.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. You do, right? You think all these things and you think that you're going to be policed. There's so many things that we did and we even got like lawsuits every week and my boss would just rip them up. Crazy. And yeah, and so I, everything, I mean, coming from the background that we're, you know, conform to the rules, Accenture was really about rules.
Leanne Hughes: To see that you, we weren't getting in trouble and that it was a real, I'm not that I'm all that way now. I mean, but I'm, but I will, I will slightly. Yeah. And I think the line's a lot further on than we think it is.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. And I can see what I'm thinking of is the parallels to running your own business, right?
Ellie Scarf: And we'll, we'll definitely dive into that. But one of the things I found hardest about starting my own business, and I know a lot of other people do is that there is no one telling you what to do, not in a bad way and not in a good way. Right. So no one's [00:10:00] telling you off and no one's giving you, you know, a pat on the back.
Ellie Scarf: And I think there's, there's, there's something in that, which is how do we get comfortable with that? Sort of that lack of having the policemen there to keep you in line. I
Leanne Hughes: know. I struggle with it too. And even if I think about my LinkedIn 12 months, so very corporate. Yeah. Cause I was like, you know, someone who's going to approve this, no one's approving it.
Leanne Hughes: But I still felt like limited in what I could share. And I've kind of struck that off now, but you're right. Yeah. And so
Ellie Scarf: how did you make the decision to, to say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to do my own thing now. This is, this is what I want to do.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. A few reasons. Well once, so our global mining company had operations in different countries and I wanted to go to Mongolia.
Leanne Hughes: So once I went to Mongolia, I got back, I was like, cool. What next? But there's nowhere else I want to go now, the hierarchy. Yeah. And they didn't seem all that excited about life, like honestly, they just seemed overworked and in meetings all the time and like, well, I don't want to progress here. And then [00:11:00] I I had a former podcast guest and we collaborated on a workshop to speak at the Gallup Clifton Strengths Conference in Omaha.
Leanne Hughes: And when I, that, that sort of culmination, we got chosen that week and I'm like, what am I doing? I felt so like, wow, I'm speaking at this conference, but I'm still working in this, it felt misaligned. But we'll, that's in February. Why don't I just give them a few months notice and we'll kick it off, kickstart it there.
Leanne Hughes: And look, if things don't work, I'm not unemployable. So that there really was no risk.
Ellie Scarf: I don't think. Yeah. But it's, it's interesting. There's something obviously in you that could make that decision that there's really no risk. Whereas other people in the same situation might've seen that as quite a big risk.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, that's right. It is. Yeah. And I think this actually plays out a lot in my life and with the people that I work with as well is. And I always go in with an approach of why not versus why, like, and I think something I've sort of, I'm starting to think about is just having a shallow approach versus depth.
Leanne Hughes: Cause if I actually went and did the risk analysis. You know, I went [00:12:00] deep on that and went through forecasting funds and
Ellie Scarf: maybe I
Leanne Hughes: wouldn't have made this decision, but I was playing it like a kind of constructive delusion stage. Like why not give it a go? I love that.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. I love that. And I think, I think there are probably a lot of people who, who ultimately try and come up with the permission to start a business, to step out there looking for that validation, but inherently for all of us, we've got to make that decision or why not give it a go?
Ellie Scarf: I think that's.
Leanne Hughes: Well, we've got, I mean, and not to get too deep, but we only have one life. And I think there is, there is absolutely. And it's different seasons of life. I mean, my husband has a steady job. We don't have kids. Yeah. We've got a hat. We locked in a house at a good price, like 2016, like it's different now.
Leanne Hughes: There are different, and I'm not being completely flippant, but I think, so it is, I completely understand that for other, it's very contextual in that approach. But I think some of the time, you like there's a great quote from George so Gordon Lightfoot, he's a former [00:13:00] psychiatrist and he said, the biggest prisons are the ones we have in our own mind and we tend to find External reasons to not do the thing when a lot of the time we just have to give it, like you said, give yourself that permission.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. And sometimes the reasons we're creating to, to get in the way, you know, it's really coming from internally, but we can, we can, you know, our brains are very clever. We can come up with all sorts of reasons. Yeah. Whether or not they're accurate. So, so since you started your business, what sort of work do you do now?
Ellie Scarf: Cause it seems like you've got quite a diverse practice.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, I do. And my, my definitely Achilles heel is like, what is the value proposition? And what is your niche? It started off a lot of training, leadership development. Now it's kind of pivoted. I'm bringing in some of that marketing element working with industries, like from pharmaceutical through to retail, different methodologies, MCing events, like I'm running an event for a university conference next week.
Leanne Hughes: Coaching one on one advising. So some of it is like one on one, it is around that [00:14:00] validation and like getting people off the hesitation station, like that one to one level, it's around like leading change and using like the word of mouth marketing strategies I learned at Wicked Campers and how do you bring that in internally to like create a movement.
Leanne Hughes: Sometimes it's around helping people become better trainers, facilitators, presenters, finally. Yeah. And I love, actually, that's why I sort of left my job because I love the variety of Those different challenges. Yeah. So it's definitely involved and yeah,
Ellie Scarf: I'm enjoying
Leanne Hughes: it. I think,
Ellie Scarf: I think more than not the coaches that, that are in my orbit do like a bit of variety.
Ellie Scarf: I think not many coaches just do coaching. And I think that that's, that's Partly preference, but also partly, I think from a financial viability. If we want to build a robust business, I actually think we need to have coaching offers and also I call them coaching adjacent offers, but you know, things like training, facilitating consulting, where we're talking to the same.
Ellie Scarf: Clients, potentially same people in [00:15:00] clients, but we have the ability to start to cross sell a little bit and just expand.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, I think that I'm, I'm with you on that. I love that phrase, coaching adjacent. That's super cool. Yeah. Nice one. I mean, I really like useful phrases like that, so thanks for sharing.
Leanne Hughes: I think the big thing when. I started to work with Alan Weiss in 2020. He's like the rock star of consulting. And when we were talking on the podcast, he was like, your business model's wrong. You shouldn't be delivering that much. And I'm like, what? Cause I thought that was a good thing. Like, and he's like, no, no, no.
Leanne Hughes: And what he picked out from me is that I was leading with my methodology. Like I would say, oh, I'm a trainer. I'm a facilitator, but he's like, what result do you create? And then decide for that situation, which methodology will you, will it be coaching? Will it be advising?
Ellie Scarf: So
Leanne Hughes: yeah, I found that really that was a big watershed in my career
Ellie Scarf: for sure.
Ellie Scarf: That's a really helpful way to think about it. And, and it probably is very customer centric, right? Cause customers don't come to us going, Oh, I really want a training program. They'll come saying, I've [00:16:00] got a problem with my new leaders. Yeah. And how we fix that is like a choose your own adventure.
Leanne Hughes: I love that.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: I might come in with like, you know, I need a one day workshop and then you're like, well, why do you need that? Like what's the, and it might not even be training. Could be coaching. It could be. Yeah. Well, advising them to performance manage someone out. Like, so you're right. It's kind of getting peripheral vision.
Ellie Scarf: More surprisingly frequent, just managing someone out would solve a lot of problems. A lot. Which is, which is an interesting reflection. What's your favorite thing about being in business? Agency.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly. Like I made a friend message the other day. Oh yes. Sorry. This morning. And she's like, Oh, I've got a friend.
Leanne Hughes: That's got corporate box tickets. The cricket on Monday, December 16th. Do you want to come along? And I'm like, yeah. And the other friend on the end of the message, she has to check in with work. She's got a new job, so she doesn't know. And I'm like, Oh, I feel for her,
Ellie Scarf: like
Leanne Hughes: the fact that we, so just the agency designing a business, which works.
Leanne Hughes: Like [00:17:00] where I can really optimize my strengths and talents. I think is, is it for sure? What about you? I'm curious. What do you love about it?
Ellie Scarf: Well, I love, I love at the moment, the thing I'm loving most is the creativity, like the, because I think in other times in my business, so I've been in business for a long time now, but.
Ellie Scarf: I sort of lost a little bit of that sense of creativity. And I think in this new iteration where I get to work with coaches, you know, there's a lot of content that I'm developing. There's new programs. There's different ways of working with people. I'm learning so much. Like I love, I love that. And I, you know, I want to use my creative muscle more and more these days.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. And you're really prolific as well. Like you've been out
Ellie Scarf: there,
Leanne Hughes: which is awesome.
Ellie Scarf: Can I, can I just say, and this is like giving myself a bit of a pat on the back. I have done six months of weekly podcasts and, and like, I have a story about myself, which is that I'm not a consistent person. Like I'm a, I'm an all in or all out, I think like sustaining for six months, I feel good about that.
Ellie Scarf: I think.
Leanne Hughes: Oh yeah. That's worth, worth celebrating. Yeah. [00:18:00] Thank you. No, really. It's a big feat.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: We've
Ellie Scarf: recorded this and we Yeah. Perfect. and so on, on the flip side, you know, what, what do you find hardest about being in business?
Ellie Scarf: The hardest thing about being
Leanne Hughes: the, I miss being in, in teams. We like, you know, I said before, yeah.
Leanne Hughes: So, but some of my work this year has actually been working, like partnering with teams and getting involved and jumping on their meetings. So I, I'm getting some of that, which has been probably the most in the five years that I've had business. Mm-Hmm. . But just like you said, there's no sounding board for us.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. What I picked up in over the last, like, probably three years, I've recognized like how we're a lone wolf and how we need to get out of our own heads. So now I've got like friend tools around the world on WhatsApp. I love that word, friend tools. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Peers that you just, like, are your friends.
Leanne Hughes: That you learn from and just voice noting them, even though it's not live conversations. It's that's been really helpful to get out of your own way. Yeah. [00:19:00] And it is like the bug does stop with you. So
Ellie Scarf: yeah. Mm. Yeah. That's the challenge because, you know, I really, I really observe in a lot of new coaches, there is that, that sense of loneliness to some degree, which is, you know, one of the, one of the challenges that I want to solve by building a great community.
Ellie Scarf: That's one of the things. And then I think the other biggest challenge they have is around visibility and sort of feeling, you know, That, that fear of, of how they're perceived and putting themselves out there, particularly in a sales and marketing way. And, you know, I've, I've definitely had that. I feel, I feel better about it now.
Ellie Scarf: Like I feel like I've been better about it. Is that something you've grappled with or is that. Tell me, tell me. Okay. I love like,
Leanne Hughes: if I could just be a media house of one happy to do it. I love I love communicating and sharing value where I can. I, so no, I don't, it hasn't been a problem for me. I think [00:20:00] definitely when I started the podcast, I was really nervous around it and very scripted when it came to the interviews and things like that.
Leanne Hughes: The thing about, and you've just talked about consistency. I'm with you. I don't, like, I'm like a kind of like ad hoc rocks type of person. But the value of like doing the podcast was that it improved my communication skills, my way of thinking, writing a book, clarifies, like, so communicating is actually like, what do I find about content?
Leanne Hughes: I don't view it as me spruiking my services. Cause I think if I went in with that mindset, yeah, I'd feel a bit icky and gross about it. I go in with, what can I learn about this? What can I experiment with? I treat LinkedIn as a, as just an experiment, like what content here is going to resonate with me? If it.
Leanne Hughes: If something's landing, let's pivot onto that. If it doesn't cool, great feedback, but I don't associate my worth with likes or notifications. And that's important, I think. And so I think what we're talking about is actually like kind of self esteem, maybe possibly self worth
Ellie Scarf: it's,
Leanne Hughes: it's a deeper [00:21:00] conversation around that.
Leanne Hughes: I think. But also I remind people that I've worked with, like, no one cares at all. Like no one really cares. Like everyone's so self absorbed and focusing on themselves. Like no one, like, so I always
Ellie Scarf: remember that. Like no one actually cares. And a lot of the time people won't even see it. Right. They won't see it.
Ellie Scarf: If they do see it, they probably won't read all of it. Yeah. And, you know, and, and the ones that do are the ones who are your people, right? And it's a great way of finding who are we talking to, who can we add value to, and, you know, finding that.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think about your viewing pattern on my viewing pattern on LinkedIn, it's like I'm scrolling and scrolling until I see something kind of interesting or that hooks me.
Leanne Hughes: But most, most of the time I'm just,
Ellie Scarf: which is, which is interesting. So one of the particular things I know a lot of coaches really dislike is putting photos of themselves up. And yeah, I used to, I used to be done at the thing I've had to do was like exposure therapy, like just, just more, more get photos and just do [00:22:00] it.
Ellie Scarf: And now I feel good about it, but you know, that, that, that is what stops the scroll though. Like people will see a face and they'll be like, Oh, there's a person. Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. It's a funny one. It is a funny one. I mean, I also know like a ton of really great coaches, facilitators who don't do any social media, but they're just so good at the word of mouth referrals and optimizing.
Leanne Hughes: So I think, I mean, an element of is playing it to your strength, a lot another part like you don't, we all don't need to be social media. No. No problem. Faces, but I like your idea of exposure therapy as well. You don't, cause you post it up. It's like, there's a really great Ted talk around is it Jia Jiang, 40 days of rejection that I just went through.
Leanne Hughes: Yes. The opposite, the upside of what you're talking about is insane. Like the amount of leads work I've had just through LinkedIn, through a post that I thought maybe not much value in it, but someone else has found incredible value. Like that's, It's all kind of upside.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Well, so, so on that note, like how do [00:23:00] you go about getting new clients?
Ellie Scarf: Like what's your strategy?
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. Well, in my first year, it was really about just optimizing my existing network. And I think we tend to overlook them. I've got sort of five in my own mind, five categories of clients. Like there's, there's your best, there's your test, your test, your quest and the rest. Oh my gosh.
Leanne Hughes: Tell us
Ellie Scarf: about
Leanne Hughes: those. Okay. Well, you nested the people closest to you, like your friends and family. And it's kind of funny. I, my, my dad flew over to India with me when I was running leadership training over there in 2019. And when we got back like a month later, he rings me and he's like, you do something with people, right?
Leanne Hughes: And I'm like, oh my gosh. So we overlooked.
Ellie Scarf: our people
Leanne Hughes: closest to us. And so we, so that's a real like sitting, like a low hanging watermelon. Then your best like current clients, previous clients, people that love your work, that will evangelize on your behalf. The quest I love that these are people that Michael Bungay Stania was a quest person for me, someone I admire, I'd [00:24:00] love to work with in future.
Leanne Hughes: And so you start sort of digging the well before you get thirsty and. Test is you're not too sure. You think maybe there's an opportunity here. Let's just have a conversation and then the rest is just everyone else.
Ellie Scarf: And
Leanne Hughes: so in terms of my work, initially it started off with like, yeah, queuing up the best and the nest.
Leanne Hughes: That's where I got my confidence. And then with the content strategy, then I started attracting people that might be test sort of audiences. But especially in the first few years, I also had like, like cashflow partnerships. So I would do associate work with other people that would get big jobs. And that was great just for confidence and getting muscle fitness.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. But for me, it's been about how do I continue building that brand and just, I don't do any outreach. It's mainly attraction through the podcast,
Ellie Scarf: Referrals. That's, that's awesome. And all the people who are in my community are going to be like, okay, yeah, now thank you. Someone's reiterating what Ellie goes on about.
Ellie Scarf: I don't use those phrases, but I do talk about the importance of starting with your close network. Right. And that like the best and the nest, [00:25:00] like those are the people, those are your people who you need to go to. Sometimes it can be awkward to, to reach out to them. Right. So we talk a lot about strategies to do that, but yeah, I love it.
Ellie Scarf: I love it. I love it. And I do. I do. I probably encourage. A bit more outreach of that sort of perhaps the test, but yeah, it's, it's interesting. And I love the idea of quests. I love it. It's like, how would you translate that? Would that be like, this is your dream client. This is the,
Leanne Hughes: you
Ellie Scarf: know, if you could, yeah.
Ellie Scarf: You dreamiest dream client.
Leanne Hughes: Yes. I totally love that. Well, even when I did, was mapping out my podcast, I was like, who are the top 100 dream guests? Like who would be the, these are the quest people and Julian Treasure did the speech, TED talk, how to speak so that people want to listen. Like he was guest number six on the show.
Leanne Hughes: Like, it's just, we are so lucky to be living in this day and age. You know, but that like, so that even just being friends with Michael Banga Seniors has brought [00:26:00] amount opportunities, like positioning yourself with people that are really great in your field, again, something that's overlooked. And I don't do it like while I'm talking about it, this sounds very transactional and it's not about that at all.
Leanne Hughes: Like, and I think with anyone that's like a kind of with elevated status, you just got to think what value can I offer them? Absolutely.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, I mean, at the core of it all is relationship, right? That this is all about actually where, where people having a human experience and, you know, yes, yes, we do want to grab businesses and we have to do things to, to do that, but you know, we do it through.
Ellie Scarf: You know, authentic connections, I think.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. Being a good human
Ellie Scarf: being of service. Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever have any stumbles when it came to sales and marketing? Like anything you find? Yeah, totally. I mean, pricing
Leanne Hughes: was terrible. Like my pricing are out, but you got to get, look at it. And even I think what I've changed anything I needed to get clients.
Leanne Hughes: So charge ridiculously low amounts because I [00:27:00] needed. The social periphery for my website, like the fact that I worked with them. And so maybe I wouldn't change that. My, the biggest stumble that I've now completely overturned was how long I would spend writing a proposal. Like I would spend maybe a week.
Leanne Hughes: It's too long. Like now 24 hours, turning it around like speed and responsiveness. Like critical. Yeah. And the more time I spent thinking about the proposal, like the heavier it got, the more resistant I got to writing it.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Yeah. So how do you, how do you get over that? So for me, I guess my biggest tip on, on that is probably have boilerplate.
Ellie Scarf: Documents, right? So have documents that you can adapt and, and don't overthink it because a proposal is like a starting point, really, you know, you have a conversation and then you just frame it as here's our draft to work from. Perfect. That's usually, is that what you do?
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, but I've also, that's exactly, I love that mindset you just spoke about, Ellie.
Leanne Hughes: And the other thing I do is I've leaned on my strength, which is like video, right? So I do loom videos and I talk through the [00:28:00] ideas again, first draft, talk it through, takes me three minutes, send it to them. So that's, that's great.
Ellie Scarf: Yes. Great. So if anyone listening doesn't know what a loom video is, what it allows you to do is bring up a document and then a little picture of you, a little, little image of you, or you don't have to have a picture of you.
Ellie Scarf: And then as you sort of scroll through the document, you record yourself talking to it as you go through. It's very cool. And you can do a lot of it for free. You can get a paid. So if you ever want to do that, it's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: I would, yeah, highly, highly encourage it. Oh, that's that's cool.
Leanne Hughes: So a few reasons. Well, I'll go through two. One is, If I'm talking to someone and they need to get not approval, but they need to share it with someone else in the team. Like it's hard for them to market on behalf of me. So either I'd want to call with that or three of us, or they can just send them the video and they can get a sense of who I am because they're buying us as people, not just, you know what I mean?
Leanne Hughes: Like they actually literally are buying us as people and our personalities. [00:29:00] And the second thing is it's innovative. Like no one is, you know, maybe in two years I'll have to change my approach because everyone will be doing loom videos, but still at the stage now where they're like, Oh my gosh. And so that just shows you, this is what it'll be like when you work with me is like, it won't be stock standard.
Leanne Hughes: So I think it's a branding call. Yeah. Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: I actually think that's a really great suggestion that, that people could, you know, take away and use right away. Right. It's it's a, it's a great tip. So you mentioned that pricing was interesting. How do you think about pricing now? I think that in terms
Leanne Hughes: of value, what value they're getting.
Leanne Hughes: And this is again, something I learned from Alan Weiss's book, Million Dollar Consulting. So I guess because I'd come out from a world where I was working in learning development and my question for a facilitator was what's your day rate. Right. And the second idea that now it's like the wrong, I'm talking to the wrong person Because it's not about the day, right?
Leanne Hughes: It's about what value are we creating for this organization's team not the time [00:30:00] spent together. So removing, just stopping the assumption that time equals value was the big, that was a huge
Ellie Scarf: thing.
Leanne Hughes: I'm so happy. I learned that what two or three years into my career, cause I'd still be charging on day rate and hours.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. And so how do you, how do you shift the conversation with a client who is like, you know, like they're getting your coaching, right? Say, and they're dividing it by the number of sessions. Yeah. How are you doing half a day or a day? Like, how do you, how do you shift the conversation?
Leanne Hughes: Yeah, it really depends on what the work is together.
Leanne Hughes: And so it'd be like, okay, what result are we after? What do you want to be, get better at? And so even, so I would, I might even mix up methodology. So it might be. We'll do just on demand coaching, or we'll do like, I have Leanne on demand. So that's like a voice note coaching thing that I do. If you have a problem, you can call me in 24 hours for, I will go, I'll get back to you within whatever, a certain period of time, because what I found when I was working with a coach in my first year, we had every coaching every two weeks, [00:31:00] but I want to, there's some points where I'm working on a proposal.
Leanne Hughes: I'm like, I need your help now. I'm so bad. I had to wait, like. Six days, not responsive enough. So I, rather than saying 10 sessions at X rate I'd be like, wait, this is a result, we're going to, we're going to get you the result. It might be a combination of calls. It might be a combination of face to face or this, this is the value to you.
Leanne Hughes: If you get that, I'll charge you like a 10th of that. And that's how I work it out.
Ellie Scarf: That's very cool. And you know, was there, like you said, it was a few years ago that you had that shift. And so was that it, was it hard to implement?
Leanne Hughes: Oh, well, I, it happened through kind, yes, there was a, there was a lag in terms of hearing it and understanding it and then doing it.
Leanne Hughes: I reckon there was about a six to eight month lag and it was only when I jumped in a community with Alan Weiss, a mastermind, and I heard someone's charging like 50 K for a strategy day. I was like, what the hell? Yeah. So I was, I [00:32:00] intentionally paid all this money to put myself in an environment where I could hear people playing it, their clients were like Lamborghini, et cetera.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: But before that, I had no idea because I was hanging out with other facilitators and trainers charging day rates. So I think what Ellie, what you're doing with it, creating a community, it's the most powerful thing because you then, it puts you in a situation where you're like, whoa, that's possible.
Leanne Hughes: And like, they're just a normal human. Like, they're not like, you
Ellie Scarf: know
Leanne Hughes: what I mean? They're not great. And they're doing a lot of things, but it's like, wow, that's,
Ellie Scarf: Cool. Like great to know. Yeah, it is. And you know, I'm, I think I'm thinking about that idea of, of pricing based on value for, you know, like a kind of traditional executive coaching engagement.
Ellie Scarf: And I think it's a little trickier because we don't necessarily know. What, what the value is, because when we're briefed, we're briefed from the organizational perspective and we haven't yet integrated the perspective of the coachee, which is, which is interesting. How can we have that conversation do you reckon?
Ellie Scarf: So are you, you're talking to a representative of the [00:33:00] organization, not the coachee? Usually we're briefed. Usually we get the brief and it comes from like a leader or an organizational representative. And then we meet, then we meet the coachee. Right. Yeah. And it's usually after like, they're usually introduced to two or three coaches and the commercial discussion is usually happened separately.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. So that was the working with Alan. He's like, do not go through anyone else. Like talk to the economic buyer, which in this case would be the executive leader. Like that's who I would. And that takes self, like, you know, you gotta be. Confident to say that a few lines like Ellen's written a great book called the martial arts of language where he talks about all these things yet and what you can say in return, but you know things around time, time based commitments.
Leanne Hughes: It's like ethically. I can't charge you time based because that incentivizes me. Right. To take more time. Right. But people want, you know what I mean? It's kind of unethical to charge on time. Whereas I could get you a result tomorrow. Wouldn't that be better? And isn't that worth more? Oh, how
Ellie Scarf: interesting.
Ellie Scarf: Oh yeah. That's and it's [00:34:00] so counter to, to like the traditional way we do things. I know. What
Leanne Hughes: would he
Ellie Scarf: say?
Leanne Hughes: Oh, what do I say? Oh so much. I don't, I don't, I, what is it? I don't. You don't need to market on my behalf. Let's set up a conversation with the three of us. I'd love to find out like what the returns are on this.
Leanne Hughes: Cause I think when you work with an executive leader, gosh, like the impact that your coaching could have on their business, it'd be worth millions, right? Millions. Often it is. And so. Yeah. That's, that's the goal. If you so he, again, I don't want to offend anyone. This is, I'm passing on a message from Alan Weiss, but he's like, HR stands for hardly relevant.
Leanne Hughes: He goes, I don't have the budget. They, all I can do is say, no, you've got to talk to the economic buyer. And so, yeah, again, that took me some time to, I mean, I was working with HR and L and D. My whole focus was on targeting them as my ideal buyers. Ideal buyers are the people with the budget.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: Oh, that's, that's, that's interesting.
Ellie Scarf: And probably, probably would, [00:35:00] I would have some debate about that. Cause I think in, in, I mean, practically in many cases, HR do own the budget for, for coaching specifically. But I think, I think the message I like about that is don't be afraid to talk to the buyer about the commercial reality of the intervention that you're bringing.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah, absolutely. And, and like actually, Don't be afraid to start to quantify impact either. Like, even if you're hypothesizing at the start. So it's like, well, what if this person could lead a 5 percent increased engagement in their team, which could, could translate to a 5 percent increase in return. Right.
Ellie Scarf: And I'm being
Leanne Hughes: totally random,
Ellie Scarf: but what does that look like? Yeah. What is reduced turnover? What does increased reduced sickness absence look like? All sorts of
Leanne Hughes: stuff. Exactly. That's it. Or we're even like, what does a better night's sleep cost? Like how, what's the value of that? There's, you know, like just,
Ellie Scarf: yeah.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. And once you get into, Oh, sorry.
Ellie Scarf: Oh no. I was going to say, even if coaches aren't having that conversation with their clients, I think thinking about it [00:36:00] helps them to feel more confident in articulating a price that is not that high. you know, that, that basic bare bones hourly rate, but to say, yeah, this is my, you know, even if it is a package, you know, and it's not, not on an hourly basis, but, you know, it's just, it just feels more expansive.
Ellie Scarf: And
Leanne Hughes: yeah, like that. Yeah. And I think like there has to be, you know, A return on investment. Like I think the problem sometimes with training and where I was caught up in my first couple of years is like, okay, we train people like the, the feedback is the smiley sheet. Well, what is the return on investment in the business?
Leanne Hughes: And like, what control do we really got once I've left a training session? Really? Not a lot.
Ellie Scarf: No.
Leanne Hughes: So we couldn't really, you can't really quantify An ROI on a one day workshop, but if you're doing like strategy and then helping with accountability following there's the value
Ellie Scarf: in
Leanne Hughes: terms of, yeah, so it is a, it is a dramatic [00:37:00] way in thinking.
Leanne Hughes: Cause I, again, I'd come from a world where it's same as probably many of your coaches have come from a time based and yeah, as opposed to
Ellie Scarf: objective value. Definitely. I think that's, I think we're going to have some good conversations about that in my community. Cause we talk a lot about pricing. It's a, it's a, a big topic.
Ellie Scarf: So, so a lot of the coaches that I know, listen to this podcast and that I have in my community have this. Either, you know, they've got experience as a trainer and facilitator. And so they want that to be part of their business, which I highly encourage, or they may not have that experience, but there is a sense that they want to build that capability.
Ellie Scarf: And my, my take is that coaches have got all of the, you know, the foundational capacity to be great facilitators with some tools and tools and techniques. Do you think that's true?
Leanne Hughes: Yes. Oh, yeah. I think coaches are the best at asking questions and that's probably one [00:38:00] of the skills of any good facilitator.
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. And I think coaches are also brilliant at being present in those conversations. And I out of that, I think that's when I graduated from being a first time facilitator, I graduated from not having to be in control and script the conversation to being a bit looser and being more present.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: So I think coaches make Brilliant facilitators.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. And so like, how, what would you suggest? Like if a coach wanted to, you know, say, okay, I want this in my toolkit. I want this in my office suite. Where do they start? I'm going to think your book, but could you elaborate a little bit on, on what you'd do?
Leanne Hughes: Yeah. I mean, the books one way, but I think I, I, I, how I learn is I actually put myself in situations where I'm the participant.
Leanne Hughes: Like I go to as many workshops as I can, but I take a meta level. So I'm not there really for the content. I'm there to see what people are doing. Like, even when I watch a YouTube live stream of like a one person broadcasting on a live stream, I pick up virtual facilitation tips.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Leanne Hughes: That person's basically, they can't see anyone and they're just [00:39:00] bringing this energy and doing all these cool things.
Leanne Hughes: Like, Oh, how do I bring that into my session? So I think, I mean, if you're starting like be a. The participant, that's how I got it. I was like, I was a participant of many workshops and I thought, Oh, I think I could run this. Cause I, what I was learning was not anything new. So observe what they're doing.
Leanne Hughes: Yep. I've got the podcast and everything else on that. I think it's a nice, if you're sort of graduating is to co facilitate as something to kick off.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Right. Cause you're
Leanne Hughes: not completely in charge of holding the space. You've got a buddy to do that. Ideally someone that's done it before. So I mean within your network, maybe it's reaching out to someone within your community early that facilitates, say, Hey, next time you're running one, can I volunteer to take notes and just being part of that process, seeing how they design it, debriefing through the breaks offering him just to run a 15 or 20 minutes segment of that
Ellie Scarf: would be a good
Leanne Hughes: start.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. I mean, that's exactly, if I think back, that's how I learned. Yeah. I started facilitating, I had friends and mentors who, who ran sessions and I came in and I started observing and then I started taking on little bits and then [00:40:00] eventually, you know, I'm, yeah, I was allowed to, allowed to do it on my own.
Ellie Scarf: No one gave me permission, but I just did it. Yeah. I also like the idea of almost like throw yourself in a little bit because sometimes we can put it off forever, but if we actually sell it, then we have to do it. I love that. Yeah. Yes. Just, just, yeah. Because I think what I've observed is that people are a lot more capable and have a lot more knowledge and a lot more experience than they're giving themselves credit for.
Ellie Scarf: And sometimes what they need is just the, like a little push to, to get it.
Leanne Hughes: I love that. I, yeah, agree. And look, even, I mean, you facilitated hundreds of workshops likewise, I still get the nerves. Like it's still around, so it's just, you're right. Get in the ring. Put yourself in service of the group. Like, I mean, just once I shift the focus of myself, it's a lot easier.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Yes. Yep. So in your book, there's so much gold. And like, I particularly like [00:41:00] your what's it called? Is it the spark sheet that you get? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so could, could you tell people who are listening, like what, what, what is that? Yeah. Not the, not all the secrets, obviously.
Leanne Hughes: It's kind of like, just, it's like a run sheet, but I created it with a specific focus.
Leanne Hughes: Cause in the book I talk about Spark is like an end to end process of designing a workshop. S is setting it up the environment, getting clear on the purpose. P is powering up the environment. Both yourself and the group. So I'll power up is my favorite part of running any workshop. A is like the core part of the workshop.
Leanne Hughes: So main, like the content, the activities you run are as a review reflection out. And K is cool. Like continuous improvement. What resources can I keep for the next time I run? So I don't continue reinventing the wheel. And so while that's like a metaphorical. Framework. I was like, how do we land this? And so the spark sheet basically is like a one pager.
Leanne Hughes: It would probably be longer when you fill it with your activities, but just, you've got that [00:42:00] spark sheet there, which has, okay, right up front. What is the purpose? What are we going to send beforehand? What props do I need? And the three sort of subheadings underneath that are timing, topic, and tools. And so for me, it's what I was using all the time when I was running my sessions and I thought maybe it's helpful for other people.
Leanne Hughes: I love that you've called it out.
Ellie Scarf: Absolutely. Because I think a lot of people think there's like some magic or like some sort of secret that, that, you know, People just, I don't know, are born with about how to run a session. And what I love is that this takes it out of that, you know, mystery into a very practical thing that people can do.
Ellie Scarf: So I think someone who has not run a workshop before could, could take your book and go through the spark model and the spark sheet and go, okay, this is entirely doable. Yay, which, which I think, yeah. And I would encourage all coaches to have a go.
Leanne Hughes: Thank you. Got me because it was written, it wasn't written for facilitators.
Leanne Hughes: It was like literally written for normal people who are like, you've got to run a workshop next week. That's [00:43:00] who, so thank you for calling that out.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. I appreciate that. So, so yeah, I, you know, I highly recommend it. So how do you, how do you work with, how can people work with you? Like, is, is the best way for them to get to particularly coaches and facilitators to tap into your knowledge?
Ellie Scarf: Is it, is it to read the book? Is it to work with you one on one? Like, what do you do? It really depends
Leanne Hughes: on what stage of the journey that they're at as well. So some, I mean, from the, I guess there's free content in terms of the podcast, I've got a Facebook group called the flip chart where people ask questions.
Leanne Hughes: It's so
Ellie Scarf: cool.
Leanne Hughes: It's fun. Yeah. 50 people in there. I think we're up to like two and a half thousand now around the world. Yeah, that's just on Facebook. I'm like, oh, I want to get off Facebook, but that group is so good. So I've still the book is a nice entry point for like the practicals. And then more at the high end, I've got like a red carpet experience.
Leanne Hughes: So I had someone that was hosting a two day conference. She flew up from Sydney. We, I helped her redesign all that, the activities, we had champagne and hung out on rooftops. So it's kind of a fun thing. And then Leanne on demand's kind of in the middle for more, if you [00:44:00] need specific advice on a topic or a workshop, Asynchronous support, but yeah, it's, there's a ton of, I mean, different ways, but I think my start is the book and the podcast.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Can I ask you a few like quick, quick fire, rapid fire questions which is I like to ask everyone have you ever said no to work? Yes. What sort of things would you say no to?
Leanne Hughes: It depends on the well, it depends on the call I have with the client. And if they're, so if they're a bit too conservative or everything, it won't be, we won't be in alignment.
Leanne Hughes: I will make that call because there's been times where I've accepted opportunities because the money was good and I knew straight away It was not a good fit and I was in a world of pain and I sort of promised myself not to do that again. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: If you could coach or run a session with any personal organization in the world, who would it be?
Leanne Hughes: This. I've already, I did it two weeks ago with MBS and I was actually thinking who else in the [00:45:00] world would it be? I, so Jenny Blake was the first author I ran and we ran workshops in Paris and MBS and yeah. Who would it be? Who would it be? I'm really, and even for companies, I, my mind's just saying, wanting to say Google, but I don't want to say Google.
Leanne Hughes: I would say, you know, maybe I would say something like an Apple in San Francisco would be kind of fun. I
Ellie Scarf: That would be super fun. Yeah. Oh, look, thank you so much for all of your time today. Like you know, I feel like I could keep talking to you for hours, Leanne, but you know, I, I really appreciate it. And you know, I would encourage everyone who's listening, check out the book, it is brilliant and you know, we'll we'll keep in touch.
Ellie Scarf: I'll put lots of links in the show notes based on all the great info that Leanne has sent me, but thank you so much for being here.
Leanne Hughes: Oh, well, thank you. Hosting is such a great conversation, like good on you and well done on the podcasting consistency and thanks so much for the invite today. I appreciate it.
Leanne Hughes: Thank you.
[00:46:00] Thanks for listening to this episode of the business of executive coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us.
This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics, and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses, and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found at elliescarf.com. Have a brilliant week, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
