How to Create Transformation as a Coach

In this LMScast episode, Malorie Nicole shares her experience and expertise as a coach.

She talks about how her path into coaching began with her personal health issues and her choice to enroll in a health coaching program for her own wellbeing. Her first encounter with coaching inspired her to research other coaching certifications and mentorship partnerships.

Malorie Nicole adds that she works with a variety of customers in her coaching business, each of whom has unique needs and objectives. Her coaching technique assists clients in navigating these patterns. She stresses the importance of dealing with identity-related issues and exhorts CEOs to continue working on their personal and professional growth in order to overcome obstacles and succeed.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Malorie Nicole. You can find her on the abundantly clear podcast.com. Welcome to the show, Malorie.

Malorie Nicole: Chris, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to start the morning with you.

Chris Badgett: We’re gonna take a couple tracks with this interview.

I’m excited to talk with you. You kind of have two journeys here. One is a, coach of CEOs and somebody who helps create transformation in the lives of others. So there’s like your subject matter expertise and there’s also your journey as a coach. Where did the coach calling come from to help serve other people. You know, kind of focus in on this particular niche.

Malorie Nicole: Great question. I developed some food intolerances years ago before health and wellness became kind of what it is today with all of the course creators. And the world that you and I kind of live in. People talk about health and wellness a whole lot differently than they did 10 years ago, and. We have a lot more knowledge around how to.

Sustained wellness for the body. And about a decade ago I went through some really, really challenging, health issues that I wasn’t getting clarity on with conventional medicine practice. And in that time I found a health coaching program. Honestly, I invested in it just for me, for my own health and wellness at the time.

Although it was a certification program. I was trying to figure out like what was going on with me and how to get healthy and what I can do to fix the problems that I was experiencing. And to be honest with you, I didn’t even know what a coach was at that point, like other than, you know, a football coach or a basketball coach or an Olympic coach.

I had never heard of coaching before, and the entrance into health coaching really expanded my mind into. All of this other stuff in the world of coaching and that led me down a path to continue getting certifications and working with mentors. And I actually started a health coaching practice and it, it morphed into what I do now over time.

Chris Badgett: And what do you do now, like in terms of your current coaching practice?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah, it’s a couple different things and I’ve gotten more comfortable over the years with just saying that like it’s a couple different things. I don’t have like the perfect elevator pitch. I don’t have like the one line sentence.

This is what I do for everyone. Because I do a handful of things for different types of people. To some people I am strictly like their executive coach. I work with them and other, um, people on their leadership team and we’re doing executive coaching work. I. With other clients, I’m more of a transformational executive coach.

So you know, maybe their company is going from 3 million and they wanna do 8 million and they’re gonna have to grow their team. And they know that the growth of the company, a lot of their own personal growth is going to need to happen in order for the company to expand. So I do something with them.

It’s more of a process called internal upgrades, and it really is the mindset and performance and staying dialed in on their own belief systems, making sure there’s no sneaky limiting beliefs in the way of the growth that they’re going after. So there’s a few different varieties of people that come to me.

You know, sometimes people come to me when they’re like, I am creatively burned out. I feel like I hate my business, Idon’t know what’s going on. I built this wonderful thing and now I’m just, I’m burned out. Don’t have any time. I have money, but I don’t have time, don’t know what’s going on. But then there’s also some people that are like, I just need to grow my support team.

I need to have an executive coach in my corner. I know that we’re, you know, we’ve got big goals and I wanna continue to have people on my team supporting me in the direction of the goals that I’m after.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. How did you develop like a system or like a framework or your methodology as a coach?

Malorie Nicole: That is a good question and something that personally is challenging me this year. So I’m in the process of writing a book and it is, Requiring me to look at, okay, I’ve got six years of calls with people that’s like literally tens of thousands of hours of coaching calls. What is the actual process that I go through to to take people through a transformation when I’ve got different types of people at different stages coming to me?

What does it actually look like? And what I’ve found in working with a really phenomenal book coach and working with some other people that have. Gone through my process with me to help reflect it back, which has been amazing, is that the process isn’t necessarily a linear thing, which I know for like selling a course and in the course creator world, that’s really not the best, the the best marketing thing in the world, but it does come down to five principles.

So every time I work with someone, there are five principles that we end up covering. Now, whether that happens in a linear fashion, one through five, or we kind of cycle back, that’s to be de to be determined depending on the person and the season of entrepreneurship that they’re in. Those five principles are identity work.

It always starts with identity work. Who we are being, what creates our habits and behaviors the way that it does. What are the stories that we’re telling ourself about success and about the life that we wanna live, vision, work? What are the goals that we’re going after? Where do we actually wanna take the business?

You know, there’s a lot of entrepreneurial pressure that people find themselves in. Uh, scale, scale, scale, scale, scale. And sometimes that’s not what people actually want. Sometimes they wanna spend more time for their kids or hiking in the mountains, but because they’ve gotten in such a hustle and grind mentality in the entrepreneurship space, it can be a little hard.

To really pull back some of those layers and find alignment in their business. So vision is really, really important to me on getting clear of, you know, not necessarily what you can achieve because we all have limitless potential. But what do you wanna achieve? What does success actually look like for you and your business and where you wanna take your company?

After vision, we look at structure. That is like the, the systems and the behaviors and the habits per both personally and in the business that set you up for success. Boundaries is a big one. I don’t necessarily think that burnout is the problem. I think that it starts with a boundaries issue that actually creates a lot of entrepreneurial burnout.

And then the last one is communication. None of these things work unless we work on our own expression of self and communication. And that is a lot of team, a lot of team dynamic. Are you actually communicating to your team what you want to achieve? Are you just. Becoming a manager of people. A lot of the clients that I work with come to me and they’re like, I just feel like I’m managing everything in my life.

And that’s not really what I thought life was going to be. And as, as a person in the c e O seat running a company and they just need some help with a new energy addressing things differently, working on different communication styles so they can build leaders within the company to give them more space to let go.

Chris Badgett: Wow, that’s solid. Let’s, uh, let’s dig in on the identity stuff a little bit. What? Mm-hmm. Tell us more about that. Like, if you’re leading a company or you’re an entrepreneur, like what, how is identity getting in our way? Or, or what are we, where, where do we have room to grow from in there?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah. There’s usually two types of people that I see.

There’s two patterns that happen, there’s the person that leans in. And the person that leans out. And what I mean by this is ’cause this is actually what I see happen is when problems start to arise, the control sets in. So this is the C E O, and this is totally a hypothetical. We’re not saying that all CEOs find themselves in in bucket A or bucket B, but this is a C E O pattern that.

When when things get stressful, they become the decision maker. So versus building people in the teams become their own leaders. What they do is they become the solution for every question that needs to be asked, and that really creates a bottleneck in the company. They have to work on a little bit of identity work of letting go and trusting and communication of developing the team members to really be able to.

To take hold on their own. And sometimes that kind of stuff actually has a little bit more to do with childhood stories that we may be carrying into our business or other business relationships that we’ve had before we’ve started. You know, the company that they may be in now, you know, that happens a lot where.

Let’s say A C E O, for example, had another business relationship in the past and it didn’t go that well. And so there’s a fear of really trusting people on the team to take initiative and take hold. So that’s the lean in pattern. It’s more of like an anxious pattern. When things get stressful, it enhances their stress, and then you have some decision fatigue that happens and a lack of clarity.

That happens with the day-to-day and you just create kind of an anxious energy within the company. And then there’s the avoidant pattern, which is a lean out pattern when things start to get really stressful. This, this particular c e o pattern looks like. A fear response, they shut down a little bit.

They, they get paralyzed a little bit. They don’t even know what to do. And this can happen when a company is going through big growth spurts. Sometimes you can’t always predict when a growth spurt is gonna happen within a company, but when it comes. If you haven’t necessarily done the identity work of what does it look like when I’m leading a team that’s doing double the revenue that we’re doing right now in some of the more deeper personal stories that are there?

Sometimes it can lead into more of an avoidance pattern. I. That can then create a bottleneck in the company because things get overlooked. The biggest one that happens with avoidance, because I like to give people like tactical things of where to look at the, the two biggest things that people avoid are financials and letting people go.

I’ve never had a client that said, I wish that I would have. Fired that person six months later that I chose to. It’s always, I wish I would’ve done it sooner. And I know that’s a hard topic to talk about because everybody wants to dream that all of the people on their team are just gonna be amazing all of the time.

But it’s not the reality of a C E O and a business owner. And sometimes you do have to let people go and. It’s a challenging thing for people to do is to really have those conversations and address them with ease and with grace, but also hold the standard for the company of what somebody might wanna build.

So those are the two biggest things that people start to avoid is looking at financials and looking at team and making sure that they’re, you know, holding up to the standards of the company that they want them to, to be at.

Chris Badgett: Wow.In your view, what makes a good coach? Let’s say, you know, there’s a course creator watching this who wants to kind of add on a coaching program around their subject matter expertise.

Mm-hmm. What does good coaching look like and what does, you know, quote, bad coaching look like?

Malorie Nicole: That is a great question. Oh my goodness. I love that question. I don’t know that. I’ve done so many podcast interviews and I don’t know that anybody’s ever asked me that question, so thank you for asking it. I think one of the biggest things that create creates a great coach is active listening, so really understanding, okay, I hear what my client is saying right now, but what are the, what is the message that they’re saying underneath What’s coming out of their mouth?

What else might be here? So sometimes you have to ask a question three or four different times to get to the root of something. And it doesn’t always, it’s not because your client doesn’t wanna tell you. It’s not like they’re trying to withhold information from you. It’s just that that’s how we process information.

Sometimes we need to go to three or four different layers to really hear the truth of what might need to be said. So one of my favorite questions to ask my clients is, if we’re really ripping the bandaid off here, what would you say to me about this? And they go, oh man, that’s a great question. And it’s like, well, it’s the same question that I just asked you, but we’re just going one layer deeper to have that transparency and honesty with yourself and developing that skill because that is really a skill of.

Being able to be present with your clients and just really listen to them and not feeling like you need to always provide the solution. One of the things that really helped me become a good coach is doing my own work on not attaching myself to my client’s success. And I know that might seem a little weird because you want your clients to be successful, but when your own personal worthiness stories are caught up in the success of your clients.

You, you almost create a codependent relationship with your clients and that is something that happens a lot in this industry is that the client’s results are, are more because you need to be validated than they are of creating a healthy coaching relationship. So the more you actually lean out and don’t just jump in and provide solutions and, and project what you think might be the best answer there.

Help your clients come to their own determination and really hold that space. And even if you think you know what the answer is, ask a couple more questions and help them get there. You’re gonna offer more transformation for your clients. You’re gonna have more trust with your clients and they’re gonna stay with you longer if they’re building companies that you know are gonna continue to go through seasons of different iterations that need support.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. How do you help, uh, clients with strategy?

Malorie Nicole: Good question. It’s all dependent on what someone wants. So that is the, the vision pillar in the, the book that I’m writing. Is really important because I have some clients that they wanna have a team of 50 people and they wanna continue to get to 20 million.

And then I have some clients that are like, no, we just wanna do like 3 million a year in revenue and have three to five employees and work 20 hours a week. So it really depends on. What is it that we’re actually after? And I think that’s something that people miss in strategy a lot and why burnout happens so often in entrepreneurship because we go to step 2, 3, 4 without looking at step five.

So, Really we need to work backwards. What is it that we’re actually working towards so that we can get you there if we don’t know what we’re working towards? Chances are you’re running a race. Somebody else is telling you that you should run. You know, there’s so many different ways that you can have an online business.

There’s so many ways that you can be successful these days. The opportunities that we have at this day and age are. It, it tenfold compared to what you could do 15 years ago and being really clear about what you wanna achieve is what I think is the first step to strategy and then working backwards from there.

Chris Badgett: You’ve kind of talked about it, but I just want to clarify it. Mm-hmm. For you out there listening, what’s the difference between executive coaching and transformational coaching?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah, that’s a great question. Transformational coaching has a little bit more, well, I shouldn’t say a little bit.

Transformational coaching has a lot more to do with the deep interpersonal relationship of self. So you are looking at things like, Why might I be avoiding conflict? You know, I have a lot of people that come to me that are like, I avoid tough conversations on my business and I don’t know where that comes from.

And it’s something that I need to clean up because it’s gonna help me be a, a better leader. Or an example of transformational coaching, a transformational coaching need that someone might come to me with is, It doesn’t matter what I do. I seem to keep dragging myself back into the business. Even after I hire a team and I hire support, I’m still working 50 hours a week.

What is going on there? That’s actually not a strategy thing. That is a, a little bit of a, a, a possible. Addiction to chaos or a need to be needed, like there might be something deeper going on there that needs to be cleaned up as to why you would create the systems and the structure and you’ve got the success, but you still find yourself continuously caught up in the momentum.

There’s something more personal going on there. Another thing that people come to me with that requires more transformational work is, I’m not as creatively energized in my business as I once was, and I’m not sure what’s going on there either. You know, it’s something we don’t talk a whole lot about in entrepreneurship because it’s way more fun to talk about the fun things, right?

Everybody’s happy all the time, but we all know that in entrepreneurship you go through different seasons of it. Especially those of you that are listening to this that are like going on eight in 10 years that you’ve been doing this. Maybe you’re getting a little bored and that’s okay. And how often do you hear people talk about, yeah, it’s okay that you built success and you’re getting bored and what’s next for you?

There’s transformation that might help you figure out what that next season looks like. And you know, it’s, it’s not always just about strategy. A lot of times people that come to me, They already have a lot of clarity on strategy and what creates successful business. They, they help other people create successful businesses, but they need some more clarity in, in themselves and the stories that are running their show and their life to figure out what is the next chapter, what, what does the evolution look like?

Executive coaching, It is more about focus, it’s more about what are you working towards? More strategy, more, um, team and leadership, tactical stuff, how to. How to stop managing people, how to really build leaders within the company. Um, communication tools, so it’s less deeper work. I think one of the problems with the personal growth industry and the business industry is people get caught up.

And that you need to go do this personal growth stuff and that’s, that’s gonna like fix your business or you need to go do the strategy stuff and that’s gonna fix your business when a lot of times it’s both. It’s, we continue to grow and evolve as people. And we also need to look at the tactical strategy pieces of our business too, and have both of those worlds work together.

And I think that’s something, you know, more in the female industry of entrepreneurship, but it’s either one or the other. We’ve gotta work on both.

Chris Badgett: How did you develop as a coach with the, uh, inner game, outer game kind of balance, where those two worlds do work together and you help people do that?

Like, how did you, like some, some people I see as like really good strategists, but not so much transformational type people, and then mm-hmm. Other people like really extreme personal development stuff, but how did you. Become strong with the blend of both yourself.

Malorie Nicole: So my background before this was in engineering and I’ve always had a way of seeing things in pieces, systems and how things, yeah, and how things connect.

But the mentorship that I did when I started getting into transformational coaching was really about childhood programming and limiting beliefs and the stories that are running our life. And that was really useful and I use it all the time. But I couldn’t unsee the other things that I already knew. So in that training, it was very intensive.

It was like a two year training and I worked underneath someone and she really helped me. Like working with her was the most transformational thing I’d I had done in my business to this date. But in working with her, I also was very clear that there’s all these other things that I’m seeing in people’s businesses and I’m not going to, to not vocalize that too.

I’m not gonna just have this pigeonhole, I. Of, okay, I’m, I’m learning this stuff with this mentor. This is the only thing I can focus on, because there’s this whole other part of my brain that was like, yeah, but what about this and this and this and this and this? And so naturally I just kind of let it, let those blend.

And I even, I say that on my website. I say it to people on calls, and I think people, you know, it’s not for everybody, but the people that it is for, they love the transparency, they love the honesty. They get it, and it’s a really good fit. The people that I work with are not afraid to do the deep work, but they also understand that that’s not where we’re gonna live.

We’re not only going to just do deep work for the next three months or six months or whatever. We’re gonna focus on the business and the tactical pieces too, because it all works together.

Chris Badgett: If you look at c e o entrepreneur types, I, I know that everybody’s different and there’s nuances, but are there any particular stories that you see the c e o founder entrepreneur types get stuck inside of that is holding them back, like that’s pretty common across all your clients or tho those types of people?

Malorie Nicole: Totally, totally. And. This took me a little while to figure out, because this question comes up a lot, but the book coach that I’m working with, it’s been really I, I know I’m alluded to this earlier, but it’s been really transformational for me just to rehash a lot of the conversations that I’ve had, a lot of the processes because it’s not something I’ve ever done with someone to sit down and really look at like, what is it that you’re actually doing when you’re doing the transformational work and the story that it keeps coming back to.

And something she said to me a few months ago was, You’re teaching people how to receive, because what happens when A C E O goes from, you know, making $30,000 a month to building a really large company, you have to learn how to receive support. You have to learn how to receive feedback without it totally shutting you down.

Received objective feedback from your team and not take it personally. You have to learn how to receive more money. Without it making you feel uncomfortable. You know, we all have weird money stories sometimes that we have to address and clean up and go through. Um, most entrepreneurs anyways, I shouldn’t say all, but a lot of entrepreneurs do have some money stories that when they’re cleaned up, it enhances their business.

You have to learn how to see, receive, um, receive ease. You know, if you think about it, not all of us were programmed in both at home in our childhood and in society. Pressure. To receive a life that’s not full of chaos and stress, and that can feel very unnormal to some, you know, if you or somebody, especially if you’re listening to this and you grew up in a house that had a lot of chaos and maybe there was a little bit of trauma, you might notice that your business relationship is mirroring that.

Learning to receive that ease is something that will help clean up the energy that you bring to your business. So really a lot of it goes back to. Is it okay? The stories that we’re telling ourself in our mind, is it okay that I’m receiving all of this money and that I have 30 or four 40 employees relying on me and that I’m growing into this person that, you know is, is doing big great things?

There’s a lot of times that I’ve seen clients create more stress. Because they have team relying on them, and the story becomes, all of these people are relying on me, right? There’s a deeper story there that creates more enhancement of the pressure they put on themselves, and then the amount of stress they carry around on the, when we start to untangle that a little bit and just go.

Yeah, so what? You’re really smart and you’re brilliant, and you built a great company and you’ve got a bunch of employees. Why is this such a big deal? The energy starts to shift and they go, oh, I didn’t even realize the amount of emotional pressure that I was putting on myself to carry the weight of these 30 employees.

Right? Some of it is really just the intention that we’re putting that creates how we experience it.

Chris Badgett: What’s a example money story that where it’s counterintuitive, like people don’t realize that they have this money story, story that’s keeping them from growing.

Malorie Nicole: A lot of that has to do with deservability about money.

And my, my thoughts on money have even changed over the years of my own growth. You know, some people. Some people work really hard to make a lot of money and some people don’t. You know, all of us know people in this world that have a lot of money and they didn’t work really hard to make it. They just happened to have it.

Maybe their parents had a trust or something, or maybe they stumbled upon a really brilliant idea and got into the market at the perfect time, and their success took off really, really quickly. Now, in the personal development space, a lot of what they preach is. Your worthiness equates to how much money you’ll allow yourself to receive.

I don’t really think any of that’s true. I think some people make a lot of money and some people don’t. And there are a lot of people that work. Really, really, teachers work really hard, right? They don’t make a lot of money that doesn’t really have anything to do with their worthiness. But when we bring our worthiness and observability into the money stories that we create, then it gets a whole lot more complex.

None of us really deserve the money or don’t deserve the money. If we’re looking at more of like a, a, a, if we zoom out a little bit and look at more of a spiritual level, if we don’t make money about deservability and we just make it about objective business stuff, are you doing the right things to get more customers?

Yes or no. Okay, great. Then it doesn’t become such a personal emotional money journey that we ourselves get tied up in. So part of the process in in what I do with people is interesting, Chris, because it’s actually removing the emotion that people don’t realize they’re carrying and being more objective about it, which makes things easier on the mind and on the body and on the spirit as they’re moving through their business growth.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Where are, what are some example traumas or situations that cause a need to be needed story to embed in a person?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah, that is a great question. And it comes from all over the place. So sometimes it’s, sometimes it is like there was a lot of chaos in the house and maybe mom was an alcoholic, or dad was an alcoholic, and you know, stuff that you wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

Then sometimes you also wouldn’t wish this upon anyone either. But sometimes it’s more like rejection. Sometimes it’s, dad wasn’t around very much because he was working all of the time ’cause he was trying to provide for the family. And because of that, this child might have developed, uh, a pattern because they had younger siblings.

I see this one a lot. They had a bunch of young, younger siblings and they were the oldest son and they were always taking care of everybody. And then that translated into how they. M maneuver themselves in the business. And those patterns, once they realize it, they can start to un, un pattern it and dissolve it and remove it.

And the big thing that I want people to know too is that. You don’t have to stay doing this deep work for years and years and years. A lot of times just the observation of it and the understanding of the patterns and saying, oh, I see, I see where these things are showing up can help you transition. A new story and develop a new story and pattern and behavior and belief that will shift.

People are not their patterns. We all have patterns, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t be changed or dissolved or created anew.

Chris Badgett: I saw on your website, which is it mallory nicole.com, uh, you mentioned you made a statement that like you’re rare, like, uh, this founder entrepreneur type. Mm-hmm. C e o type, what makes them rare, special, unique in the world, in general?

Malorie Nicole: Oh, like my client is rare. I was like, really? Did I put that on my website? That’s interesting.

Chris Badgett: I think it’s on, uh, your

Malorie Nicole: high level leader space, not high level leaders. Yeah. Yeah. So what makes those people rare? And I do believe they’re rare because they, they are willing to take a step that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily wake up in the morning and jump into.

The clients that I work with are typically running companies doing three to 22 mil, and their responsibility is a lot more than most people’s responsibility, and their risk tolerance is a lot higher than most people’s risk tolerance. Their innovative thinking is a lot higher than most people’s innovative thinking, and because of that, the problems that they deal with are often more complex than problems that you know.

A lot of other people deal with, you know, that I, I don’t wanna get into this hierarchy thing. But people that solve problems at that level, it’s really important that they have support for them, that they have people that they can go turn to not, you know. I’ve found that just going to a therapist, a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with, just going to a therapist doesn’t really give them the clarity that they need for certain things that they struggle with.

So if you’re listening to this, This isn’t just about me, this is anybody. Find an executive coach, find a c e O coach. Find somebody that can challenge you, that can help you decipher what’s the best next step for you because, The other rare thing about these people is that they often don’t have people on their teams that challenge them.

They often don’t have people in their circles that challenge them. They’re often the ones challenging everybody else on the way that they’re thinking. They’re challenging their team on what their team is bringing to them, but who are the people in their corner that are also challenging them and helping them stretch their balance and thinking and, and making sure they’re staying dialed in.

So, I mean the, it is a little bit of a rare breed of people. It’s, it’s people that, like, they have a hunger that is never gonna go away. It’s what they want. And I love supporting people like that.

Chris Badgett: As a podcaster, Malorie, I normally don’t ask people two questions at once, but I’m gonna do it this time because it, I think it provides some healthy contrast.

What’s, if you’re coaching somebody and you’re trying to help them, what would you say in terms of partnerships? What’s, what are keys to a great partnership at work? Let’s say, you know, two entrepreneurs leading a business, two or three leading a business together, and then contrast that with leading a partnership at home, or not necessarily leading it, but just having a successful partnership at home.

With a spouse who is not of a similar personality or entrepreneurial type. Mm-hmm. Like how do we have really healthy partnerships at all levels?

Malorie Nicole: Yep. And I love that you asked those at the same time, because they really are the same. Okay. They’re very similar. Um, you know, we could, we could talk about each separately and create our own conversations, but what it really comes down to is expectations, vulnerability, and communications.

Did I say communications is plural? I said it plural. Communications, because there’s so much communications, right? There’s body language, there’s verbal, there’s communication. Is isn’t all of it. Business partnerships. One of the things that happens most often as to why business partnerships don’t work out is the expectations aren’t right from the beginning.

You jump into it based totally off emotion, and you’re not talking about objectives that both of you want to achieve. And when you get into a business partnership in a business relationship and you haven’t had some of those further conversations about what do we both want this to look like? Then it can get kind of sticky.

The same thing happens in a marriage when you get into a marriage and you don’t have conversations. Which requires vulnerability, about what does success look like in this marriage? You know, I think it’s really healthy to approach a marriage with a similar frame of mind that you would approach a business of, kind of like a business relationship.

And that doesn’t mean that your marriage is going to be business oriented or there’s not going to be intimacy. Or connection or anything like that. But setting sa, setting aside those times for saying, okay, you know, who’s gonna be responsible for this and who’s gonna be responsible for this? And are we on the same page?

So there’s not patterns where you think you’re doing the right thing and your spouse thinks they’re doing the right thing. Or same in the business partnership. You think you’re doing enough and the other person thinks they’re doing enough. But one or both of you are left unhappy because that lack of vulnerability and communication doesn’t happen.

Vulnerability is something that. Everybody needs. Everybody needs to have vulnerability in their relationships and just that willingness to have the deeper conversation. Than maybe you think you need to have, go a step deeper. Share what is it, you know, what’s really underneath this that we can get to that can create more of a transformation or better enhancement for our relationship, whether it’s business or marriage.

Don’t be afraid to have those conversations. Because those are really what changed the trajectory of where the relationship is headed. And it all comes back to, again, expectation and communication.

Chris Badgett: You mentioned earlier like a eight to 10 year, uh, itch or maybe the passion mm-hmm. Changes or, um, maybe burnout that is really settling in or something.

What, what’s under all that? I know that’s a big generalization, but Yeah. Like, Describe what you, how you would help someone who’s feeling a little burnout and they’re. They’re trying to rediscover their passion for their business.

Malorie Nicole: I think a lot of it comes back to what we were talking about in the identity piece.

Sometimes people start building something that’s really exciting for a little while. But they stop doing their own alignment work. And they just get into the what needs to happen today to take care of the business and what needs to happen to run the ship. They’re no longer asking the deeper personal questions of, am I enjoying this?

And when you look at your calendar and you can say that 15% of the work on your calendar is stuff you actually enjoy. You have to be honest with yourself and say, is this still working? And that can be really scary for people. To build something that is working right on paper or moneywise financially.

But their spirit or their soul is going, this isn’t working anymore. That’s a really challenging thing for people to admit to themselves. And sometimes it’s not actually that they need to shut the business down and start over or start anew. It’s that something in the business needs to change the dynamic in the work that they’re actually contributing to the business.

Maybe they haven’t built the team that they really wanna build. So there’s a variety of ways that can go. It. It isn’t a one path thing for everybody, but the first step that I would ask anyone to look at is to look at your calendar and do an energy audit and go hour by hour. How excited am I about this work that I’m doing?

And rate it. And if you get to the end of the week and more than 50% of it is stuff that you just like can’t stand doing, something needs to change

Chris Badgett: any other energy management. Ideas. I’m sure you have them, but like what, uh, if we want to, uh, increase our energy, ’cause we, you know, founders, entrepreneurs typically love their work.

Mm-hmm. Earn out gets in the way, uh, workaholism and not sleeping gets in the way. Mm-hmm. There’s all kinds of bad habits that get in the way, but how do we. Better manage our energy, which is one of our most vital resources.

Malorie Nicole: Mm-hmm. This is where we get more into like the holistic side of it. Macros, count your macros, eat the appropriate nutrition.

And I love walks. I know that sounds like, you know, we we’re looking for the hack, but I actually am a big believer in let’s get rid of the hacks and go back to like, Primally what our bodies need. Walks are a saving grace for me. I walk in the morning, I walk at the end of the day. My husband and I both do.

We both work from home. We both work in the entrepreneurial space. It can be really easy for both of us to sit down at the table and just continue talking about work into dinner without that transition period. So I call them buffers. We need buffers in our day of where we transition out of work. And into family, especially those of you that are listening that have children.

I know this is a big issue with moms and dads that work in an office at home and then shift straight into like going and eating a meal with their three kids and their spouse. It can be really hard to say. To your brain, okay, stop thinking about all the things that you were just thinking about and be present with your family.

We need buffers in between, even if it’s 15 minutes, even if it’s 10 minutes, go outside for a few minutes, walk around in your lawn before you go to the next thing. Have buffers this. That’s the the granular. And then also for CEOs, I highly suggest quarterly solo retreats. All the CEOs that I work with. I recommend to them go on a solo quarterly retreat with yourself to give yourself some space away from your computer. Because most of the clients that I work with don’t come to me and say. I was, I was sitting in front of my computer today and I had the best idea ever, and just this amazing idea came across my mind.

It’s almost always. I was out of the office down by the river, or I was at this mastermind event with, you know, other people doing great work like. I’m doing, or I was on my solo retreat away from the office and I found clarity on this thing that I’ve been working on. So I’m a big believer in buffers. Get yourself away from your computer.

Your mind is still gonna think about your business. It’s what we do. We love it. Our passion is in it, but we need the buffers in between.

Chris Badgett: What would you prescribe on a solo retreat like format, if you could like kind of organize the the activities?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah, that’s a great question because one of my, one of my clients recently, I was talking to him about it and he is like, I don’t wanna just go journal for the whole weekend.

And I’m like, then don’t, first of all don’t do things you hate. Right? Which, Is a whole nother topic in and of itself. But I don’t think that any of us need to do something just because somebody said that we should, and our entire body’s resisting it. And we’re like, oh no, but I need to do this. In order to be successful, we need to learn to follow the flow, follow the things that align with us, follow the things that that inspire us.

That’s where we’re gonna find our clarity. So something with him that I suggested is. Well, instead of just going and writing for 48 hours or for two days, what if you write down like a mind map all of the things that you’re working on in your business and the names of all of your employees, and then just create a mind map from it and see what you can come up with.

Let’s say you’re thinking about maybe someone in a client success role. Her name is Rachel, and you write Rachel’s name down and then you’re just thinking about Rachel. What does Rachel need in order to be successful this quarter? Is Rachel really being challenged in the role that she’s in? Does she have the adequate like developmental stuff that she needs to get to where she could go next?

Is there anything that I can think about her that I’m not seeing? When I’m going through my to-do list and trying to get through the Monday through Friday work. So just looking at the big picture. But then also getting really specific in the granular mind mapping is something that I’ve suggested to people before.

Um, really the big thing for me is don’t take your computer with you. We think differently when we write and we do when we type. Or when we’re checking emails. So even if it’s a one day retreat that you’re getting away, whatever it needs to be, I suggest that people don’t necessarily go to try and solve specific problems because then you’re going with an intention that you’re gonna have like a great big outcome.

And maybe that’s not gonna happen. It’s more to give yourself space to think, space to think away from what’s on your day to day.

Chris Badgett: Um, Jessica, who’s watching this live says, who is this amazing human speaking to my soul? Can you, can you, Mallory, tell us about your podcast? I have some more questions for you, but I just wanted to make sure Jessica was able to find you.

What’s your podcast? Yeah,

Malorie Nicole: of course. It’s abundantly clear podcast.com and it’s all, it’s on all of the platforms. And, uh, just a, a quick tip, if you’re. If you want to listen to my podcast, what you’re gonna find are solo episodes. They’re less than 10 minutes every single week, but if you go back into a couple years ago episodes, you’ll find interview episodes.

But the podcast is, um, really just like a lot of the topics that we’re talking about, the, the emotional piece of it, but also the practical piece of it and how they blend together so that business owners can be successful. And it’s short and sweet because. I know my clients, they’re busy. I try and make it custom to the people that I work with.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Going back to the solo retreat idea, I actually have a sabbatical coming up, which I’ve never done before. Oh, nice. And, uh, I’m actually gonna take two weeks completely off. I’m gonna be in the French Alps with my family. But then the, the last four weeks I’ve had some time set aside for deep work on a book that I’m, I’ve, uh, got been in my head for a decade.

Um, oh my gosh,

Malorie Nicole: I’m so excited for you.

Chris Badgett: Just, uh, kind of building on what you’ve talked about with the. Solo retreat, which I, I do those as well, and they mm-hmm. They’ve added a ton of value, um, over the years, once I learned a, a process around all that. But what would you advise on somebody who is trying to focus on a sabbatical who’s been, you know, Busting their, their tail for a decade in the industry without really resting enough and, and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm.

Malorie Nicole: Focus on one question because it sounds like you’re, you’re also curious on what’s next in your next season. What lights you up? What lights you up right now? I think the biggest thing with sabbaticals and retreats that people. Where we do it wrong or where we could improve it is we go into it with our problem solving brain.

And as entrepreneurs, we’re all really good at solving problems, right? It’s literally what we do. We help people solve problems. We go into different markets to solve problems, but sometimes we can be so good at solving problems that we create problems for ourselves. And when we do that, we stop hearing ourselves.

So it’s almost like, how can you go into this without having an objective? Then see what you find and then see what comes up. If you go into it with no plan at all, what would be created from that space?

Chris Badgett: I think that goes back to what you were talking about with like letting go and releasing and stuff.

Mm-hmm. That’s part of it,

Malorie Nicole: right? Yeah. Surrendering to, I’m not gonna go on this two week sabbatical trying to solve anything or come up with a new course, or come up with a new business plan. I’m just gonna go hear myself. Maybe I’m not gonna hear myself like maybe I’m going to go fishing or go hiking or, or I don’t know if you have kids that hang out with my kids and just like be present for a little while and then see what comes up from there.

It’s moments like those where we undermine how often we find our answers when we are not looking for our answers. And it can be so hard for us as human beings who want safety and want control and. You know, we’re all embedded to want those things for security purposes to turn that off. But so often when we have the space, we come up with ideas that we didn’t even know were in there.

Chris Badgett: I wanna just touch on one of your five principles, which is communication. As a, if somebody’s a course creator or coach, or an entrepreneur or agency, communication is essential to get better at. It’s one of our company values at LifterLMS. Clear communication. How do we get better at communication?

Malorie Nicole: I think the first part is to, how many employees do you have?

Chris Badgett: It’s about eight. Okay, Cool.

Malorie Nicole: So the first part is really looking what I help people. Start with is really looking at what is our process for communication? Because a lot of people don’t even know what the company process is for communication. They just know it’s something they do Well, we talk about these things.

This is something that, you know, we have to talk about. It’s part of the business. But what I like to do is get granular on it and say, okay, so this problem that you keep having, let’s say for example, um, let’s talk about client success because everybody kind of deals with that in the entrepreneurship space.

What do you as a business business owner expect to happen if a client is unhappy or if a client is coming to you with, um, you know, complaints or something like that. I would wanna know really process oriented. What is the system that you’ve set up for success? So this is where we we’re actually getting out of the transformational, and we’re getting into the practical and we go, does your team actually know what you expect?

Because most often the gap is, I know what I would do. But I haven’t relayed to my team what I’d want them to do. And so I’m constantly feeling disappointed because I want my team to be stepping up. And doing something that I haven’t told them that I want them to be doing, or I haven’t relayed the process to them.

I, I’m gonna say this and I know it’s gonna ruffle some feathers, but a lot of times CEOs think that everybody else is just going to think like them. One of the biggest gifts they can give to themselves is understanding that your employees don’t think like you. If they did, they would all also have a business with eight to 50 employees.

Right? And when you allow that awareness to go, oh shit, yeah, my employees aren’t gonna think this way. I’m going to be really specific about this process, and I’m not gonna talk about it in quarterly meetings or annual meetings. I’m gonna talk about it over and over and over again in a weekly leadership meeting.

Until it’s completely ingrained into the business to where it handles itself and it never gets missed. That’s like key number one right there. Looking at every single area of, okay, when this happens, what does it look like now? When this happens, what does it look like? And getting really, really specific on communication.

Another thing is language versus saying, Hey team, I want you to get this done. Changing your sentence to my intention is to get this done by next Friday. What needs to happen in order for you guys to be successful? That is so different as the receiver from hearing. My boss just told me I need to get this done by next Friday to, oh, my boss is asking me what I need to do in order to be successful to get this done by next Friday.

Let me sit back and think about that for a second and come up with the answer and give it to him. It puts your team members in a power position to where they can take ownership of their responsibility. And that is really how you develop leaders. You start coaching them and you stop telling them that’s what’s gonna create the company culture shift into getting you out of manager mode and getting your team into an a more inspired opportunity mode. Where you’ve got people coming to you saying, Hey, I had this great idea.

It’s a, it’s a, an unlearning process, but it can be really impactful for the business.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And you’ve got some people watching this live, tagging their friends, so they’re, you’re definitely hitting, uh, hitting some nerves here. Last question, as we get ready to land the plane here, uh, you mentioned like not taking things as personally or zooming out more into the executive coaching style mm-hmm.

Of, um, but I, I know a lot of founders. Get really, they’re very emotional or they’re very attached, um, to their business. I know there’s scientific studies where seeing the, their logo gives them the same brain response as looking at their, at a child, their baby, their child. Mm-hmm. So how do you, how does one detach and be a little bit more objective and, and, and develop that, that skillset?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah, I think the first, the first thing that I would wanna say to that is that we’re not detaching your inspiration. We’re not separating your inspiration from it. That’s not what we wanna do. But the more you become less reactive, The bigger your inspiration can get, because then you have room for creative energy.

If you’re in reactive mode all the time, you’re actually not working the part of your brain that’s in innovation, that’s coming up with new ideas because you’re constantly trying to fix the problem. Right. And it’s a skill. The other thing that I wanna say to people too, going back to that, you know, a lot of people either do the, the, the interpersonal growth or they do the strategy piece.

Emotional resilience is a skill that is built. It is not. I did four sessions with a coach on inner child work, and I am now emotionally resilient and I, I never react or respond negatively to anything. It is all of these things that I talk about. I believe they’re skills that we built. It’s not, I went to the retreat in Bali and I fixed, I fixed myself, and I never do that again.

We are constantly evolving in entrepreneurship, in marriage, in our relationships, in every part of our life. And continuing to look at, I don’t wanna say from the deficit of how can I always improve. Because that can have a negative connotation to feeling like you’re starting each day from the negative of how can I always improve?

But being willing to be honest with ourselves about what are the areas of growth that are available to me right now that would better my life if I focused on them.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Malorie, could you describe, you know, a perfect fit client for you and how they, if they, if somebody’s interested in working with you, what they would need to do?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the places that I tell people to start is to go to my website and to take a 10 question quiz. It’s called Do I need an Internal Upgrade? And. That tells you if you need a little bit of transformation. Transformational work or, uh, I will remove the word need that tells you if some transformational work is available to you in your business growth, and if it could be something that could enhance where you’re going next.

That’s the biggest thing that I think helps people go, oh, maybe some transformational work is actually helpful for the next stage of where I’m going. It’s really easy. It’s 10 questions and I promise there’s it all. Answers do not lead to. Yes, you need an upgrade. There is actually a solution on there too.

A quiz result on there that’s like, no, you’re doing great. Keep going. Because one thing for me that. I’m super big about in my work is it’s really boring to work with someone that doesn’t need my help. What are we gonna do? Sit on the phone every other week or every week and just. Make up problems, like I’m a big believer in not creating problems where problems don’t exist.

So really understanding and for anybody look, listening to this. Looking for a coach, really understanding, again, expectations wise, what are we actually gonna be working on together? What does this look like? What are we going after that’s gonna give you the best success that you can with the coaches that you work with?

One of the reasons I think we hear in the coaching industry of like. Oh yeah, I worked with this person. It wasn’t that great, blah, blah, blah. Disappointment is because that first conversation, the expectations aren’t actually clear of what. You’re going out to achieve. So the, to answer your other question that I haven’t answered yet. The perfect fit client for me is somebody that listens to a piece of content and goes, oh my gosh, I need some deeper work.

And this is resonating. Like it’s someone that’s not just looking for a business strategy plan that I hand them. That’s not to say that those aren’t really useful. I’m just not the person that does that. It’s not my zone of genius. It’s not my thing. So if you’re looking just for strategy, probably not the best person.

Most of the people I work with again, are founders or owners doing one to three to 20 million. They have teams of five to 50 people they usually fall into to that category. So, It’s more of a feeling thing than anything. It’s less about numbers and more about feelings.

Chris Badgett: Awesome.

Malorie Nicole: And, uh, it’s like an intuitive Yes.

Chris Badgett: And tell us about your podcast one more time.

Malorie Nicole: Oh yeah. The podcast is abundantly clear podcast.com. It’s less than 10 minute solo episodes. Episodes, excuse me, once a week on all of the principles that are going to be in the book. The book will be out in, um, a couple months. And it’s just the best way that I can help people coach themselves. Without actually doing coaching work with me.

Chris Badgett: Do we have a title for the book yet?

Malorie Nicole: Yeah. It’s called the Abundance Decision. Because I do believe it is a decision that we make. And not something that just lives in, in our minds. It is a decision that we make every single day to step into abundance and to build an abundant life.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Well, thank you Malorie for coming on the show.

Yeah, appreciate you shining your light and in many ways coaching me and all the listeners on, on this call. This has been a really informative, um, interview, so thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Go check out Mallorie’s podcast. Check out the book, and we’ll have links to all that stuff below the show notes and. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Take care.

And that’s a wrap for this episode of L M S Cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over@LifterLMS.com slash gift. Go to LifterLMS.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.

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