Leaving things better than you found them and being honest and open are good traits to have and will likely serve you well.

The former makes the world, or your little part of it, better because you were part of it, while the latter both shows respect and earns you respect.

Stephanie O’Brien was raised with these values. Although her life took an interesting path, they became her true north and steered her through challenges, including a business relationship that ended due to misaligned values.

Growing up, she didn’t fit in well with a lot of classmates, which led her to an early interest in creating fiction stories and writing novels.

Stephanie wrote her first novel when she was 12. Then she destroyed it before anyone other than her mother could see it, even though her mother warned her not to do that. Throughout her childhood, she explored a variety of hobbies – reading voraciously, writing fiction, playing the piano, and more.

After her family took a Robert Kiyosaki real estate course, she discovered property management was not her thing, in part because – how crazy is this?! – tenants were stealing the doors!

Then Stephanie’s mother took a course on coaching, which led Stephanie to launch a coaching business for entrepreneurs. It was a natural and welcome transition, getting to work with people who aligned with her values of leaving things better than they found them instead of stealing doors from their landlords.

She was still writing fiction novels, she had her coaching business, and her entrepreneurial path was picking up, so everything seemed fine.

But Fine is a 4-Letter Word.

Stephanie came to feel like she was stuck in a prison, resentful of her business.

The question she had to answer was who was guarding the door?

The answer turned out to be one many creative, multi-passionate entrepreneurs have to discover eventually.

Her values proved to be her liberation – and yours, too, as you’re about to hear.

Stephanie’s hype song is “Armeria no Torikago”.

Resources:

• Stephanie O’Brien’s website: https://www.coachclientconnection.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-obrien-program-design/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieOBrienCoaching
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephanieobriencoaching/
• Get Stephanie’s Masterclass, “Course Creation Made Easy: Beat the Blank Screen, and Get Your Coaching Program Created Fast!” - https://www.coachclientconnection.com/Course-Creation-Made-Easy-Masterclass/

Invitation from Lori:

If, like Stephanie, you find yourself in a prison of your own making, the 5 Easy Ways to Start Living The Sabbatical Life guide is the golden key to your freedom.

Once you read it, you’ll

✅ Discover a counter-intuitive approach to making intentional changes in mindset and lifestyle.

✅ Learn how to own your feelings and your struggles so you can address them.

✅ Find out how to face fears, step out of your comfort zone, and rewire your beliefs.

It’s only 7 pages, so it won’t take you long to get through. Especially when you find yourself caught between what you know to be your passion and what you believe you have to do for money. Yes, you can have both. You just have to step outside yourself and look at what’s going on.

When you’re ready to say F*ck Being Fine, this guide is the place to start. It’s time to be open and honest with yourself so you can make things better.

Go to https://zenrabbit.com right now to download it for free.

Now it’s time to meet Stephanie. It looks like she’s just sitting there daydreaming. What’s on her mind? I have a penny, let’s use it to get her thoughts!

Lori: Hello and welcome to Fine is a 4-Letter Word. My guest today, Stephanie O'Brien. Welcome to the show, Stephanie.

Stephanie: Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here.

Lori: I am happy to have you, and I'm so interested in what we're going to talk about. So let's just jump right in, and let me ask you, what were the values and beliefs that you were raised with that contributed to who you became as a young adult and who you are today?

Stephanie: I'd say one of them was leaving things better that I found them, and that's really one of the things that drew me to coaching is seeing all these people who are dedicated to making the world and other people's lives better than they found them. It's what made me want to be part of their missions. Another was being honest and open, telling people like it is, which I think is really important especially because there's sometimes a temptation for people to only show the best part of their lives, the best part of themselves, but that's just not relatable for a lot of our clients.

When I see somebody talking about how they launched their business perfectly, everything went smoothly, they immediately started making lots of money. Well, that wasn't my experience, so that's not relatable for me. That makes me think that you don't really know what I've been through, and you won't be able to help me in the position I'm in. So when we're honest about who we are, what we've struggled with, what we're going through, it shows our audience that what we're going through, what they're going through is surmountable, and that we understand it.

Lori: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's not really believable when people are like, no, everything went smoothly, because that's really not how life goes.

Stephanie: Maybe sometimes people catch lightning in a bottle and it takes off right away, but then they can't necessarily relate to people who didn't have that experience, which I'd say is a lot of coaches.

Lori: Right, which is the majority of them. Have you ever had the experience where telling the truth kind of backfired on you?

Stephanie: I actually kind of recently had to end a business relationship where he didn't appreciate me being honest about some of the certain things that he did not agree with. I shouldn't go into too many details right here, but yeah, we ended up realizing our—I don't know if I can technically calling it a backfire, because it's a case where our values turned out to be very misaligned and it probably was for the best that we split up.

Lori: Yeah. So in that case, I guess, telling the truth just brought out—highlighted what wasn't going right and kind of made it go faster. You were going to find out somewhere, might as well find out sooner rather than later, right?

Stephanie: Pretty much.

Lori: Yeah.

Stephanie: It’s the nice thing about you being honest is it helps to weed out the people who aren't a good fit.

Lori: Absolutely, absolutely. What else did you learn growing up? Who were the most important influencers in your life? Was it your parents or was it somebody else?

Stephanie: I'd say the main one was probably my mom. I also was influenced by a variety of fiction authors growing up. I was actually a fiction author before I became a coach.

Lori: Really? Okay. When did you start writing?

Stephanie: I've been writing pretty much as long as I can remember. I finished my first full-length novel when I was 12 years old and it was kind of a terrible novel. Mom told me, “Don't delete it, you'll regret it.” But I was like, “No, no, no, it's horrible. I'll never want to see this disgrace again.” She was right, I shouldn't have deleted it. But yeah, I went on to write a total of 14 novels at this point, four of which were good enough by adult me standards to self-publish.

Lori: Wow, congratulations. That kind of reminds me, when I was a kid, I wanted to stop taking piano lessons because I hated practicing and my mom's like, “You're going to regret it.” And I'm like, “No, I won't.” And they're kind of right, moms, yeah. Maybe I should have stuck with it. Can't play anymore.

Stephanie: Never too late to take it up again.

Lori: That is true, that is true. But I think, no, I think that ship has sailed. I'm on to new adventures now.

Stephanie: Kind of same here, I used to play piano too and it's been a while.

Lori: Yeah, yeah. Did you play in recitals?

Stephanie: Sometimes, yeah. I never got anywhere near the level of playing professionally, but I did play piano fairly well for a while. I just kind of fell away from it. And now relearning it would be a learning curve that I'd rather spend the time on other things.

Lori: Exactly. That's what I was thinking too. Yeah, same. Yeah. At what age did you learn to read?

Stephanie: Good question. I'd say probably four or five-ish. Mom had me starting to read pretty early and reading, that's one of my favorite activities. So yeah, I don't remember how old I was when I started to read.

Lori: Yeah. Did your parents read to you when you were—before you could read yourself, did they read books to you?

Stephanie: Yeah. And then I got into the habit of taking this huge stack of books way more than I could actually read in the sitting I was taking them for and sitting down with them, making a mess.

Lori: Yeah. No, I'm asking because I think people, especially when you get into writing novels and writing stories that young, you have had a background in reading like most writers are readers. Actually, I don't even know any writers who are not readers.

Stephanie: Yeah, it's where you learn the craft. I've seen one analogy. Reading is like inhaling and then writing is like exhaling. You got to draw it in before you put it out.

Lori: Yeah, I like that. That's very cool.

Stephanie: Thank you. I didn’t original credit for it but it is good.

Lori: It is, it is. What was the book you wrote when you were 12? You deleted it, but do you remember what it was about?

Stephanie: Yeah, it was a sci-fi book about—it started out as a rescue mission, getting people off of this really dangerous planet and then moved on to them crash landing on another planet, where the main character ended up having to solve a political dispute. She was kind of a blatant Mary Sue, but 12-year-old writing some things, it’s kind of what you'd expect.

Lori: Okay. All right. And then what kind of books are you writing now?

Stephanie: The one I'm currently working on is actually a sci-fi fantasy. It's about an ancient semi-goddess of memory, emotion, and war whose brother, the only person who could share her ability to remember past incarnations and the only person who wouldn't leave her or forget her as the millennia went on, he’s been sealed in an alternate dimension. So she's on a quest to find him, to find out why he created the magic wisps that possessed people and resulted in his banishment in the first place and to see if the person he used to be can still be saved or if he's become someone completely different.

Lori: Wow. That's so cool.

Stephanie: Thank you.

Lori: Where do you get your inspiration?

Stephanie: A lot of it is in other people's stories that inspire me. I end up creating an original character wandering around in their sandbox until these characters develop relationships and storylines and dynamics that take on a life of their own and become something entirely separate from and different from the original. So basically, yeah, they grow up in this other incubator and then grow up and can move out and be independent.

Lori: Okay. All right. What do you do to prepare your mind to be open to these ideas coming into it? Do you have any practices that you follow or rituals that you do?

Stephanie: Not really. I just daydream a lot.

Lori: Daydreaming, okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people look at people who are daydreaming as just wasting time, but there have been studies done that show daydreaming is essential to creativity and focus.

Stephanie: Yeah. And I think it's a way to explore ourselves too. I know sometimes if my mind keeps on going back to a fictional scenario and wanting to replay it, I often find that it ends up kind of being an indication of something I hadn't processed emotionally that I needed to pay more attention to and process. We can get so caught up in our day-to-day things that we don't take time to really process and this is one of my ways of processing.

Lori: Wow. Yeah. Okay, all right. That's so cool. I don't think any of my other guests have brought up daydreaming as a way to process emotions. And I want to spend a whole bunch of time there, but I'm just curious because this question is coming to my mind of when you were a kid, did your family allow emotions or were emotions not a thing?

Stephanie: I'd say they allowed them to an extent, but I did end up suppressing a lot because I was one of those kids who felt like everybody got a manual for human interaction except for me. And obviously, a lot of other people feel like that too. I wasn't the only exception, but I'd be sent to youth groups and such and I don't know why the other girls in youth group hated me so much. I’m trying to sit down at a table with just this sequence of, no, I'm saving this for her, no, I'm saving this for her, no, I'm saving this for her. So I had to go through this whole series of rejections every time I simply wanted to sit down. And that kind of started a trend where I spent my whole childhood struggling to make friends. And so, when I was out in public among other kids who I didn't know how to relate to, didn't know how to make friends with, I did spend a lot of time hiding the sadness that came with that.

Lori: Wow. Yeah. I mean, humans in general can be so cruel to each other, but kids especially.

Stephanie: Yeah. And it was really sudden too. I don't know what suddenly started. A new girl had moved into the class and I don't know if she started that trend or if it was just correlation, not causation. But yeah, it was definitely a bad foundation for my social development. Something I had to put a lot of conscious effort into growing past and overcoming.

Lori: Although is that one of the things that inspired you to get into writing, because in that world you were in control?

Stephanie: I hadn't really thought of it like that. I don't know if I'd say that was specifically one of my inspirations for getting into writing, but once I'd gotten better at interacting with people, it was one of the things that got me into writing for coaches was helping coaches to communicate in a way that would help them connect with their clients. That was actually the reason for the name of my business, Coach Client Connection.

Lori: Right, right. Okay. So since the show is called, Fine is a 4-Letter Word, is that the place in your life where you would say, I was saying everything was fine, but it wasn't or is there somewhere else further along outside of childhood where you had an instance or a section of life that was that?

Stephanie: I'd say that I did in childhood and sometimes in adulthood, but the one I'd wanted to talk about for this, because I think it might be really helpful for your audiences, juggling these two different passions, fiction writing and coaching, I'd been pressured from a lot of people to focus on the coaching at the expense of the fiction writing just because it can be really hard to make a consistent income from fiction writing. The thing is, it's such an integral part of me and something I love so much that leaving it on the back burner through the whole work day was almost starting to make me feel like I was being held hostage by my coaching business. Like my coaching business is holding me back from doing something else that I love, so I was actually kind of starting to resent my coaching, which is really not a place you want to be in when you're working on your business.

Lori: No, especially resenting your own business. A lot of people, they resent their job, but now when you're resenting your own business, yeah, you're holding yourself hostage, right?

Stephanie: Pretty much. Now when I look at my schedule I’m thinking, Steph, you're an independent business owner. You are not working a 9:00 to 5:00. You made this schedule that is creating this circumstance. You can just put writing time in there or you can just feel—in the middle of another task, if you have inspiration, you don't have to leave this inspiration to go sail in the back of your head and not write it. You can just write it when you want to. Unless you're in the middle of a call with somebody, you can just write it when you want to. So yeah, I've been telling myself it was fine to keep on putting this other piece of myself on the back burner while I focused on my coaching, when in reality I was putting myself in a self-inflicted prison where I really wasn't feeling fine and it was 100% my fault for imposing on myself these rules that didn't even have to be in place.

Lori: Yes. So many people do that. Creating these rules that we make up ourselves. Yeah. We're holding the keys to our own prison and not realizing it.

Stephanie: Heck, I was holding the bars in place. All I had to do was let go and they'd fall over.

Lori: Yeah, and then I bet—how long did it take you to figure that out?

Stephanie: I think the situation had honestly been brewing for a few years. I was relegating my writing time to just the evenings, but then of course by that time I'm tired. I've already used most of my brain power. I just want to sit down in bed with a video game or something, which was of course turning the writing that I loved into work too. So it was just turning way too much of what I should have been taking joy in into work that I wasn't taking joy in.

Lori: Yeah, yeah. So how did you turn that around? Did you create specific hours that you will, I'll say, allow yourself to do your creative writing? Do you have specific days that you keep coaching on some days and writing the other days? How did you manage that time-wise?

Stephanie: I basically just gave myself permission to start writing when I had the inspiration to write. Not usually in huge chunks during the business day because I still got to stay on schedule, but if I had a really good idea, just take a few minutes to at least outline it, write it down, and I'm making more of a point of getting up earlier, having some more time before work when I have the option to write if I want to. And also, Fridays is a bit more open than other days, so I have time to write then unless—I'll admit, I do sometimes also use them as kind of catch days for catching the stuff that I got behind schedule on during the rest of the week. So basically, if I manage to stay on schedule and get everything done, then I have more time to write. If I fall behind and have to delay things to the next day, then Friday, my writing time on Friday kind of suffers from that.

Lori: Yeah. So that's a good incentive to get your stuff done.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Lori: Yeah. So I imagine that when you are allowing yourself time to write and being able to, I was going to say indulge, but it's not an indulgence at all. It's like a requirement or an essential. When you allow yourself the time to do the writing that you're actually then a better coach.

Stephanie: Yeah, I'd say that I'm—for one thing, I’m happier. And for another, I'm more modeling that lifestyle where you can, in fact, do what you want to do when you want to do it instead of turning the business into a prison.

Lori: Right. Which kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning about being your real self like being honest.

Stephanie: Yeah, and just telling myself that I could just focus exclusively on coaching while neglecting this other integral part of me definitely wasn't being honest with myself. Processing emotions, processing what I'm feeling, it can be easy for me to get so much into the day-to-day that processing in real time has never really been one of my better skills. I've usually been more logical, more cerebral, so actually taking the time to process my emotions is something I have to do more consciously.

Lori: That's a really interesting point because I think a lot of people are not necessarily—I don't even know if we're wired to process emotions in real-time.

Stephanie: And it's certainly difficult for me and sometimes I won't necessarily be feeling good about something, but I actually have to take time to think about it later and hey, why did I feel like this?

Lori: Yeah, that's such a smart way to go about it, to kind of analyze why was I feeling that way, or what made me respond that way, or how could I have done that differently, or just to process. It's just, you become so much more self-aware.

Stephanie: Yeah. And I think it's very important too, to analyze where our emotions are coming from, because so many people, for example, blow up at people who really didn't deserve to be blown up at because those people did something that wasn't really that offensive, but it reminded them of something painful. So it was like poking the wound. The poke itself isn't that severe, but the wound makes it a big deal.

Lori: Right, right. Oh, my gosh, yes. That is such a good key takeaway right there. It's not often the thing that triggers somebody, but it's the thing that it reminds them of, or the wound was already there. I had from our notes when we were talking before we recorded that you get a lot of your ideas from song lyrics.

Stephanie: Yeah. Sometimes I get from a lot of sources, the experiences, stories, song lyrics. I actually got a whole short story once from just one line in a song that sadly we may never be. Gave me a whole idea for a story with characters who were aware that they were characters in development in an author's mind, but if their story wasn't compelling enough, if they weren't compelling enough, then they would never be.

Lori: Oh, my gosh, that's so—

Stephanie: Yeah, they just end up in the author's mental scrap pile.

Lori: That's so cool.

Stephanie: Thank you.

Lori: I really appreciate how your mind works, or at least what I'm seeing of it in this conversation and the previous conversation we had. I just think that—I find it fascinating.

Stephanie: Thank you. It is interesting to see all the different ways inspiration can take hold, and it's so different for so many other people. It's interesting, with the human body in general, but especially with the brain, we're built to roughly the same model, but there are so many variations within that model for how we work.

Lori: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Tell me more about how you got into doing the coaching, because obviously—what were you doing before that? You've been a writer since you were 12, you said, and probably before that, even before you took your first pen to paper. I don't know how old you are. I don't know if you just started with a computer or a typewriter. I remember I started writing with pen, but then I also had the typewriter.

Stephanie: I think my first attempt at a novel was written in pencil and paper. Not a pen, pencil, so I could erase but I stopped that one partway through because I realized I was basically just rehashing Watership Down.

Lori: Okay, yeah.

Stephanie: I tried having a typewriter for a while, but I definitely prefer a computer just because it's so much easier to write down a sentence, see how it feels, arrange it, move it. Right now, in my current novel, I'm in the process of rearranging several scenes, because I realized one character, I didn't want her to sense another's presence until later in the book. So I had to move the scene where he became within detection range until later in the book.

Lori: Yeah. Well, I mean, that's certainly something that computers allow, but back in the day, when I was starting, we didn’t have computers. A lot of my listeners were born before that. So yeah, typewriters with that little white out crap and you couldn't just move stuff around.

Stephanie: I did use a typewriter for a bit.

Lori: You did like cut and paste like physically cut and paste.

Stephanie: Yeah, I did actually use a typewriter for a bit, but I kind of felt it was more of a novelty. But I found it in a garage sale for five bucks, and it was on the other side of town, so I brought this thing home on my bike's handlebars.

Lori: Wow, okay. Do you still have it? It's like a relic.

Stephanie: No, I'm not actually sure where it went. We moved a few times since I did it.

Lori: Yeah. Okay. So going back to the other question though, what were you doing before you became a coach? You were writing, but what were you doing as a career, or did you just jump into that right away.

Stephanie: My family went through some of Robert Kiyosaki's courses on real estate investing, so we tried that for a while. Honestly, kind of hated every minute of it. That we were doing it as a family. Mom bought a few too many houses too fast. We were looking to fix them up and sell them, but then found we couldn't move them fast enough, so we ended up renting them out when we wanted to be selling them. I never want to manage properties again.

Lori: Okay.

Stephanie: The damage deposit almost never covered the aftermath of the hurricane, so we had to do major repairs after pretty much every one.

Lori: What market was that in? What geographic market?

Stephanie: The Brandon, Manitoba area.

Lori: Okay. All right. I’m just curious because some areas, I think tenants tend to be worse than others. I don’t know.

Stephanie: Yeah, we definitely cherish good tenants in this area.

Lori: Yeah. Okay, so you were doing some real estate investing.

Stephanie: If you didn't ruin the paint job on the walls, you were above average.

Lori: Oh, I know, because I've been a landlord as well, and we had one tenant in Florida that—he was a nightmare. We had to evict him. Lawyers were involved and stuff. Yeah, no thanks. Overall, though, I still think it's fascinating as not a profession, as something to do. Real estate, I still think is a good avenue, but yes, the bad tenants make it really tough.

Stephanie: Yeah, and it's overall just something I don't enjoy enough to actually want to do again in any capacity, especially with all the bad memories attached to it.

Lori: So that was something that you learned from your family, real estate investing. No thanks.

Stephanie: Yeah. And yeah, that was one of the things that made me fall in love with coaches so much. After all these people who kind of had this attitude of take what you can, give nothing back, by which I mean one of them actually stole a door. So after dealing with this Pirates of the Caribbean crap for all this time, meeting people who are actually looking to be their best selves and make the world a better place instead of leaving it worse than they found it was a huge breath of fresh air. It was like coming back to life again.

Lori: Wow, okay. Somebody stole a door. Interesting.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, we had some weird incidents. Someone stealing a door, somebody nailing sticky tack to the wall as if sticky tack won't stick by itself. People insisting they wouldn't smoke indoors. People using the roof as a garbage can. Accusing us of turning off their hot water when we come there, turn on the water cap and there's the hot water. So we had all sorts of really weird people.

Lori: Yes, right. So I would imagine that could be fertile ground for characters as well.

Stephanie: I've thought about writing a book, Landlady Lemonade, but there are too many other projects that I'd rather be working on.

Lori: Okay, all right. Well, that's on the back burner. Okay.

Stephanie: Pretty much. I've got a whole file of different story ideas.

Lori: I love it. I love it. What was I going to say? Who was the coach? Did you have a coach that inspired you to then become a coach? How did you get introduced to the coaching world to find these people who were interested in giving back instead of just stealing doors.

Stephanie: Well, my mom actually—it started when my mom became a coach under Mary Morrissey. She went to her coach academy. So I started going with her to all these different marketing seminars and such to learn the business side of it and that was how I started meeting coaches because I've been the writer. At least, the most experienced writer of the family for years by then. So I was looking to learn to write for non-fiction business purposes and that's how I got into the business and coaching world. So I actually started out, I was a writer for coaches long before I was actually a coach for coaches. So I studied under several people, Vrinda Normand, Helen Rushing, Justin Livingston, Ted McGrath. Those are a few of the ones I've studied under. Vrinda Normand was actually my first marketing mentor.

Lori: I know her.

Stephanie: Yeah, she is cool. I like the luxurious pampering brand that she has. She really does make her brand and her events and such feel like she's pampering her clients.

Lori: Yeah. Cool. That's so funny. I don't even remember how she and I originally met but you cross paths with people all the time and it's so interesting. It helps you realize what really a small world it is. What were you writing for them? What were you writing for the coaches.

Stephanie: I was writing emails, social media posts, sales pages, mostly stuff like that. I actually ghostwrote one book and I can't really say who the client was because of ghostwriting but I've been working with them for quite a while, writing a lot of emails and such for them. So I'd become so familiar with their materials. When they asked me to write a book for them, I could just say, okay, go ahead and do it with pretty much no instruction.

Lori: Okay. Wow. Do you still do that ghostwriting?

Stephanie: Yeah, I still do some ghostwriting, some editing. I actually just earlier this week finished editing an entire non-fiction book for a client. So I've done developmental editing on it first and then some copy editing.

Lori: Okay. Yeah. Do you think that having a book is the equivalent these days of having a business card years ago?

Stephanie: I'd say it's more a business card on steroids. If you say I have a business card, whoop-de-doo. If you say I wrote a book on that, that has a lot more impact. It shows you have the subject matter knowledge. Go ahead.

Lori: Right, right. So yeah, because I think a lot of coaches and speakers have written—they’ve written a book or they are writing books because they feel like it's the most basic thing that you must have to set your credibility.

Stephanie: I don't think having a book is really a requirement for having credibility. It's a booster, but there isn't just one way to run a business or grow credibility. You can grow credibility by sharing valuable content on your social media pages. It's a more immediately accessible way for people to see your credibility. I think people might need to see that credibility in some cases before they buy your book just to know that the book is worth the investment of money and especially time. You probably put a lot more time and money into getting the book.

Lori: Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point that you just mentioned about the energy. It's not so much time, but energy. And I think a lot of times people use those terms interchangeably or they don't even think about it. Time management, for example, I think it's more accurately energy management.

Stephanie: I've seen some people drawing that distinction. I'll admit I'm not 100% sure of the actual step by step logistics of managing energy as opposed to time aside from putting the most challenging tasks at the highest energy points of the day. That's one area I've heard of but haven't really gotten into myself.

Lori: Yeah. Cool. What kind of coaches are you working with?

Stephanie: I'd say primarily life coaches, health coaches, and relationship coaches. I can work with business coaches, but I've found that most business coaches who message me are looking to sell to me rather than buy from me.

Lori: Right. We've all gotten those messages through LinkedIn. Hey, are you looking for a new client?

Stephanie: I mostly get them—

Lori: Yes.

Stephanie: Oh, sure. Get my hopes up, asshole.

Lori: You can't fool me anymore with those emails.

Stephanie: Pretty much. I mostly get it through Facebook, but I've gotten some in LinkedIn and email. At this point, I get the, are you looking for new clients? I'll kind of give them the benefit of the doubt unless their profile indicates otherwise. One person, they did that line on me and then I said, “Yes, I am.” Are you interested in—and do you have a business that’s going to help people with? Oh, what if we could help you get more clients? I just straight up told them, “I was afraid you'd say that.” You have no idea how many times—I told them too. You have no idea how many times I've heard those exact sales pitch from who knows how many people.

Lori: Right. And then you could turn it around and say, “Hey, would you like to differentiate yourself? That's what I help coaches do.”

Stephanie: Unfortunately, I think a lot of these people are either employees going on a script or just bots.

Lori: Right. True.

Stephanie: So they don't necessarily have a decision-making position to change their messaging. But it's especially weird though, with these appointment-setting companies, what you're demonstrating to me right now is that you have no system whatsoever for determining who sent what message to what lead. So what you're communicating is, that you're going to annoy my clients so much that you get me blocked more often than you get me clients.

Lori: Yes, yes. Yeah, it's funny. That's the end result for sure. Okay. So I asked you about getting ideas from song lyrics and I should have held that question until now, when I'm going to ask you what your hype song is.

Stephanie: Ironically, my hype song doesn't actually have lyrics.

Lori: What?

Stephanie: One of my many hype songs is mostly, I believe, flute song. It's a nice instrumental song. I'm going to get a lot of energy to it.

Lori: Okay. All right. So do you plug that in when you're—when do you do it? Before you start writing, before you start working with a client? When do you feel like you need a boost of energy?

Stephanie: Maybe before I work out. If I have trouble with giving myself a boost of energy, right, before working is that I want to get up and run around when I'm supposed to be butts in seats working.

Lori: Okay, all right. I got you.

Stephanie: When I'm feeling energetic. I just get up and run around the house like a cat.

Lori: Yes. That's right. You said in your bio that you love cats.

Stephanie: Oh, yeah. I've had cats pretty much my whole life.

Lori: How many do you have?

Stephanie: At the moment, two.

Lori: Okay.

Stephanie: One of them didn't want me to get up and get ready in time for the interview. She wanted to snuggle me.

Lori: Of course, that's what they do. You're not getting up and then you don't want to get up because you don't want to disturb the cat. Everybody who's got a cat knows that.

Stephanie: Yeah. One of the hardest things to leave behind is a purring cat.

Lori: Yes, especially on a cold day.

Stephanie: Oh, yeah.

Lori: All right. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, if they're a coach and they're looking for some help, how do they reach you? What's the best way?

Stephanie: Well, my email is stephanie@coachclientconnection.com. You can also look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook. My Facebook link, I'm just going to pull that up really quick.

Lori: Okay. Well, I'll just put it in the show notes. You're good.

Stephanie: Okay, that works.

Lori: Yeah. People can just look for you.

Stephanie: My URL is Stephanie O'Brien Coaching on Facebook. So that's one of the best ways to get ahold of me.

Lori: Okay. Cool. Yeah, I'll put links to all of that in the show notes as well as the link to your very unique hype song that doesn't have lyrics. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today on Fine is a 4-Letter Word.

Stephanie: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me here. I had fun.

Lori: Cool.