Alan Heyman shares a powerful narrative about a pivotal moment in his professional life, where an unexpected meeting with a new boss turned into a distressing experience that propelled him toward a transformative career shift. The conversation, intended to be a simple check-in, became a public airing of grievances, with pointed accusations and insinuations that left Alan feeling attacked and undermined. This uncomfortable scenario, compounded by the presence of witnesses, forced him to confront the realities of an unfit leadership dynamic, highlighting the importance of workplace culture and the profound impact of leadership styles on employee morale. The experience served as a wake-up call, prompting Alan to reassess his professional values and aspirations, ultimately leading him to establish a coaching business focused on supporting others through significant life shifts.

The dichotomy of comfort and discomfort runs deep in Alan's story. Initially, he had thrived under a previous supportive boss, cultivating a safe environment where risks were encouraged and failures were seen as learning opportunities. In stark contrast, the new leadership style was one of power, leading to an atmosphere filled with fear and insecurity. Alan's reflections illuminate the importance of emotional intelligence and the need for leaders to foster environments where open communication and trust are prioritized. This episode serves not only as a personal reflection on his journey but also as a broader commentary on the critical nature of leadership in shaping workplace dynamics and individual fulfillment.

Takeaways:

• Creating a supportive work environment cannot be overstated; toxic leadership hampers growth.
• Coaching is a valuable tool for leaders to navigate challenges and enhance their skills.
• Finding the right fit in professional relationships is essential for long-term success and satisfaction.
• Every struggle in a career can be a learning opportunity that shapes future success.

As Alan discusses his transition from employee to entrepreneur, he underscores the significance of aligning one's work with personal values. The realization that his previous role was no longer fulfilling sparked a courageous leap into entrepreneurship, where he could create a space for himself that resonated with his true self. Alan emphasizes that change is often uncomfortable but necessary for personal growth. His journey captures the essence of embracing vulnerability and taking bold steps towards a more authentic life, inspiring listeners to reflect on their career paths and the moments that catalyze change.

Guest Bio

Alan Heymann, JD, PCC (he/him) is an accomplished coach specializing in helping introverts and individuals undergoing transitions. With a rich background in communication and leadership, Alan brings warmth and energy to his coaching practice. He has coached leaders from diverse backgrounds and authored the book "Don’t Just Have the Soup: 52 Analogies for Leadership, Coaching and Life."

Connect with Alan

• Peaceful Direction
• LinkedIn

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Matt Gilhooly: 00:00:41

And what ended up happening, Matt was actually target practice.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:00:44

The boss had invited me to join him and a couple of members of his team with a member of my team, so he could take some shots at me and kind of express his frustration for things that he was experiencing in his world related to my world.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:00:58

And it was very odd because it was not an experience I had ever had before, since it was very pointed questions about, why didn't you go to this meeting or talk to that person?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:07

And isn't it true that this thing you said you would do, you didn't really do?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:11

And at one point, he was actually insinuating that I was more loyal to my prior boss than I was to him and saying that he wouldn't be surprised if I relayed the contents of this entire conversation we were having to my prior boss, because this was a fellow who came in and was almost deliberately erasing the legacy of the prior incumbent and wanting to make his own mark.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:33

It wasn't as though you could build on the success of your predecessor.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:36

You had to kind of, like, destroy it to make your own.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:38

And it was odd.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:41

It was ugly, it was uncomfortable.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:43

And the worst part about it was there were witnesses, because it wasn't this one on one conversation that I could go back and kind of process and figure out what to do with.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:01:51

It was like, in front of an audience, including people who didn't really have any touch with my business function at all, but they were just there as kind of part of the entourage.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:00

Today's guest is Alan Heyman.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:02

He is an executive coach who guides introverts and individuals, navigating really significant life changes.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:08

In this episode, Alan talks about a transformation, formative moment in his career where meeting with a new boss turned out to be really a verbal attack in front of a bunch of other people.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:18

This unexpected, quote, unquote, leadership moment led him to reevaluate his professional path.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:24

We talk about this pivotal moment when he realized that his work no longer aligned with his values and the decision to embark on a new journey.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:31

As an entrepreneur and executive coach.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:34

Alan's story is a testament to the power of introspection and really, truly the courage required to embrace change.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:40

Whether contemplating your career shift or seeking inspiration to align your work with your passions, I think elements of Alan's story will resonate and hopefully inspire you.

Alan Heyman: 00:02:50

So get ready to be inspired by Alan Heyman's journey from this traditional career path to a fulfilling role that truly resonates with his personal aspirations.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:00

Without further ado, here is my conversation with Alan Heyman.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:05

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the the life shift.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:09

Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:25

Hello, my friends.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:26

Welcome to the Life Shift podcast.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:27

I am here with Alan.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:29

Hello, Alan.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:03:30

How you doing, Matt?

Alan Heyman: 00:03:31

You know, the secret's out, everyone.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:33

We've been talking for a couple minutes, so we already did these little pleasantries, but that's just how the podcasting game goes.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:39

You know, it's great to have you as part of the life shift podcast.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:44

This.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:45

I think this is close to episode 150, which is kind of unreal to me.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:51

This podcast started as a school assignment during the pandemic.

Alan Heyman: 00:03:54

I was getting a second master's degree because I was kind of bored, and I just didn't know what to do with my time.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:00

And I took a podcasting class, and I was like, hmm, I'll try it out.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:03

I'll see what goes.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:04

And here I am a couple years later, doing this podcast that I never knew that I needed for anyone.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:10

That's new to listening because Alan is on.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:13

The concept of the show started because when I was eight, my mom was killed in a motorcycle accident, and my parents were divorced, and they lived thousands of miles apart.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:22

And I lived with my mom.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:23

And from the moment my dad had to sit down and tell me that my mom had died, my life shifted completely from the track that it was on to a brand new track.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:34

And this was late eighties, early nineties.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:36

And the people around me really didn't have the tools.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:40

We weren't talking about mental health.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:41

We weren't really talking about how to help a child grieve.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:45

And so I pretended everything was fine for decades because I thought that was what I was supposed to do.

Alan Heyman: 00:04:51

But all the while, I really thought, I wonder if other people have these, like, line in the sand kind of moments that just change everything.

Alan Heyman: 00:05:00

And, you know, I'm older now, so I realize that people do, and they have lots of them, and we have these moments in our lives that we can look back and go, wow, had I not done that or had that not happened, what would my life be?

Alan Heyman: 00:05:13

And so I've just been so fortunate to talk to 150 people to hear about these moments in their lives.

Alan Heyman: 00:05:19

And before we started talking today, Alan recording, I should say, you were like, yeah, I've had multiple life shift moments, and it's like that.

Alan Heyman: 00:05:27

Aren't we so lucky to have these moments that change us in ways that hopefully we can reflect on and see as a positive experience down the road?

Alan Heyman: 00:05:36

So, thank you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:05:38

Thank you all right.

Alan Heyman: 00:05:39

Let's get started.

Alan Heyman: 00:05:40

ttle bit about who Alan is in: 2024

Alan Heyman: 00:05:47

Like, what's your life like these days?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:05:50

Yeah, well, in: 2024

Matt Gilhooly: 00:06:05

It's a collection of great folks from all around the world, and I feel so fortunate to be part of that group while also charting my own independent way in employment for the first time since I became an adulthood.

Alan Heyman: 00:06:16

So you're not busy at all, is what you're saying.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:06:20

I would say life is never dull.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:06:21

How about that?

Alan Heyman: 00:06:23

That's good.

Alan Heyman: 00:06:23

I mean, I think for some people that is a really great thing because it keeps you energized.

Alan Heyman: 00:06:28

And I would imagine that a lot of your story brought you to this point, and maybe it's a welcome time in your life.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:06:38

I think so.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:06:39

And maybe just to draw that distinction between busyness for its own sake, and we have a culture of busy in the United States and the western world and doing work that energizes us and motivates us and gives us a sense of purpose, which is what I think we all want.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:06:52

And I'm feeling very fortunate to have.

Alan Heyman: 00:06:55

And, you know, I think a lot of us want that.

Alan Heyman: 00:06:58

I think society for a long time, and I don't know how it is now.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:02

I'm not as young as I was a couple decades ago, but I felt like for me specifically in that regard, I think society taught me, like, there was this checklist of things that I had to do, and a lot of that came with that.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:15

Busyness came with that you have to graduate high school, then you have to go to college, then you have to get x grades, and then you have to get a job, and then you got to get promoted.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:24

And it was always like chasing, chasing, chasing, very busy life was telling me what I was supposed to do.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:30

I don't know who ever gave me that checklist, but I always felt like I absorbed that.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:34

And a lot of people I've talked to have also had that.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:36

So your distinction really hits in the place of we all wish we could be doing the things that light us up, and sometimes it takes a little bit to get there, but really glad that you're energized.

Alan Heyman: 00:07:49

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:07:49

And it also depends on who our role models are.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:07:51

Earlier in life, and I feel like the same as you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:07:55

I had various people that I worked for, people in my family, people in the academic space who modeled that kind of work, work, work, go, go, go.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:08:03

And your worth is your productivity or your output.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:08:06

And, you know, it probably took me until I was in my forties to figure out how to restore, to figure out how to tend to my physical and mental health in service of all the other things that are important to me in life, but also in service of being able to work more sustainably.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:08:21

Burnout is a real thing, and I see it every day with my clients, especially in certain sectors of the economy.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:08:26

And I think we need some more foresight from our leadership in terms of what sustainability at work actually looks like.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:33

So you think it's more related to the role models that people looked up to and not so much like what?

Alan Heyman: 00:08:40

I don't know.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:41

For me, it felt like someone was telling me I had to do all these things.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:46

It wasn't my dad, it wasn't the people around me, but it was like this.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:50

I don't know.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:50

I think of high school, and I'm like, there were four paths that we could all take back in high school.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:56

It wasn't like you could do anything you want to do.

Alan Heyman: 00:08:58

In my world, the one that I lived in, it felt like you had to be a lawyer or you had to be a doctor, or you had to be this or businessman, whatever that means.

Alan Heyman: 00:09:05

You have to do these particular things.

Alan Heyman: 00:09:07

That's so interesting that you see it in that way.

Alan Heyman: 00:09:10

I see it as, like, society was yelling at me to do these things.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:14

I think it's both hustle culture is real, grind culture is real.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:17

And there are certainly plenty of occupations out there where that is the expectation when you're starting right out of the gate, and I was no exception.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:25

I started as a local tv news reporter.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:27

I worked nights.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:28

I worked weekends.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:29

I worked continuous coverage.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:31

So I get it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:32

And it takes a long time to unwind from that sort of thing and to be okay with the idea of saying, I need rest.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:39

I don't want to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week anymore.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:09:42

So maybe if I have some direction and certainly quite a bit of privilege, I will take steps to make sure I'm not in that space for the rest of my working life.

Alan Heyman: 00:09:52

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:09:52

I would also say, like, in the nineties and maybe early two thousands, rest was seen as, like, you wouldn't tell people you needed that because it was like a vulnerability.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:00

Like, you were weak.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:01

You couldn't, you know, so I think it's nice that people are now leaning into this, like, self care, self awareness.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:07

It's okay to not be okay.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:09

Like, all these mantras that people are adopting in a way that kind of allow us to find that rest or to find that safe space.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:10:18

Absolutely.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:10:18

And it helps me work with my clients because they know there's a need and they're comfortable more and more discussing it.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:24

And what you do for them is probably helping them also, or reemphasize the ideas that, you know, where they are is okay because other people have been there, but there's also a way out, and you can be okay in this other space and feel a lot more energized, like you were talking earlier.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:43

So fascinating.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:44

Sorry, we went off on that tangent.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:45

But, you know, I think it's important to say because I think so many people kind of just adopted these ways without really thinking about it.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:54

And now I think some of us are kind of waking up to that.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:57

And like you said, in your forties.

Alan Heyman: 00:10:58

In my forties, I'm like, oh, I can do what I want.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:01

That's cool.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:01

So, yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:02

Or I can do less of what I don't want.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:04

Well, that's true, too.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:05

Unless.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:06

Yeah, yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:07

There's also little, like, little notes here and there where it's like, well, some things you're gonna have to do, but that's okay.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:12

And that's part, just as a human part of life, as an adult.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:14

Right, exactly.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:16

So maybe you can kind of paint the picture of, of your life leading up to this moment that ended up creating this version of Alan in the world.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:25

So go back, however you.

Alan Heyman: 00:11:26

However far you need to, to kind of paint this picture.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:29

Absolutely.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:29

So I've had several careers during my adult life since graduating from college, starting, as I mentioned, with a local tv news reporting job.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:36

I went to journalism school and for a while had the fantasy slash ambition, I would say, of being the next iteration of Peter Jennings or one of the great giants of television from when I was growing up.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:48

Didn't work out that way, as it doesn't for the majority of people who pursue that path.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:52

And that's all right.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:11:54

I had a number of twists and turns that got me to the pivotal point that we were preparing to discuss today.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:01

But the long and the short of it was I was working in several different roles and in several different organizations.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:07

For somebody who I knew and trusted very well, you know, once in a while, we have the good fortune to find ourselves in the company of a boss that will follow from organization to organization.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:17

Or role to role.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:18

And that had been the case for me, and I was in my third iteration of that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:23

And it was wonderful.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:25

It felt like home professionally, and there was trust, there was safety.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:29

There was go ahead and take risks and try new things, and if it doesn't work out, we'll support you because it's kind of for the good of the order.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:35

What ended up happening, though, is that the boss left the organization.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:40

And so that is going to create a fair amount of uncertainty in anybody's world, in any organization in mine, because I was a direct report to the head of the organization, because I was in kind of a new and somewhat untested area of the.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:54

There was a vulnerability there, depending on who was going to take over.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:12:57

And what ended up happening after an interim period of being led by somebody who I also knew and trusted, was that there was a leadership change at the top of the organization.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:07

And my boss was a stranger, probably for the first time in more than a decade, because I had always worked into jobs through connections that I had in organizations where I already had contacts.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:18

That's a common story, at least among my clients, is that you don't necessarily get your job by applying to a bunch of postings on LinkedIn.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:25

You find somebody who knows somebody, you make your way in.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:28

So I was working for a stranger, and there's a getting to know process that happens in that kind of a dynamic.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:35

And I have to say that the early signs did not feel very encouraging to me, but there were no alarm bells.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:43

And when I say this, I say it in the most kind of gentle, charitable way possible, in the sense that not everybody is going to be a match for every person that they're working for.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:54

There are style differences, there are experience differences, there are identity differences.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:13:58

And to me, that's part of work life.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:00

It's not human tragedy.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:02

It's just there's not always a great fit.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:04

And I started to get a sense that it was not going to be a great fit, but I didn't know exactly, and I was going to give it some time to just kind of work itself out.

Alan Heyman: 00:14:12

And I think, uniquely, you had also that safety for a decade, too, which kind of lowers all of our guards a little bit, too.

Alan Heyman: 00:14:22

So you have a new body coming in here to kind of navigate.

Alan Heyman: 00:14:25

And I guess you said, like, with kindness, you say that, that it wasn't big alarm bells weren't going off, not just yet.

Alan Heyman: 00:14:31

It wasn't going to be like before.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:32

It was not that I knew.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:34

And one of the first things that I began to notice was that there was an issue with access in that, you know, going back to the old Hamilton line, I tended to be in the room where it happened before under the previous administration.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:47

I was being excluded from meetings.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:48

I was being left out of conversations.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:50

I was nothing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:51

Knowing what was going on at the heart of the organization.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:14:54

And when I needed access for guidance or for a decision that I couldn't make on my own or for allocation of resources, I couldn't get it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:02

It was hard to reach the guy.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:03

We were in different buildings.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:04

We didn't meet that often, so there wasn't a lot of contact to base rapport and relationship on in the first place.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:11

And I wasn't getting the kind of access and exposure that I felt were necessary for me to be successful.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:17

And I dont want to make it sound as though I was some sort of needy special snowflake or something along those lines.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:24

I was judicious in knowing that the people that I worked for were busy and I wasnt going to demand their attention where I felt like I didnt need it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:31

And certainly theres plenty of jobs where you dont run into the boss hardly at all, and you can be successful.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:37

Look at the federal cabinet in the United States government, for an example.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:40

You do your thing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:42

I tried to do my thing, but there were times where I needed something and I couldn't get it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:46

And what happened was, we were based in DC and the DC area.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:51

There was travel to a conference representing the sector of the economy that we were in for our organization.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:56

And I took a member of my staff there, and there were a number of colleagues around.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:15:59

And I did the conference thing and I ran into people from other similar organizations around the country, and I said hello, and how are you doing?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:06

And we caught up and I caught some great presentations, got some inspiration on the very last day of the conference when I was basically almost checked out and just ready to go back to work mode and get home after a bunch of days.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:20

I got invited to meet with my boss and I got invited to meet with my boss at the last minute without much clarity on what the meeting was, which is always kind of a little bit of anxiety inducing when you don't know a person well.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:31

And it turns out what happened was this meeting was in the not yet open hotel restaurant, so its deserted, its tables with chairs folded upside down on them and that sort of thing, if you could picture it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:44

And at that conversation was not just the boss and me, but it was a couple of members of his team.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:49

And I had brought along a member of my team as well.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:51

So it was almost like kind of like a summit in a way.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:54

And I had no idea how to prepare for this experience or what was going to be needed of me, what questions would be asked.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:16:59

And usually I like to go in with a bit of a, so im not wasting peoples time.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:17:03

And what ended up happening, Matt, was actually target practice.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:17:07

So the boss had invited me to join him and a couple of members of his team with a member of my team so he could take some shots at me and kind of express his frustration for things that he was experiencing in his world related to my world.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:17:22

And it was very odd because it was not an experience I had ever had before, since it was very pointed questions about, why didn't you go to this meeting or talk to that person?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:17:31

And isn't it true that this thing you said you would do, you didn't really do?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:17:35

And at one point, he was actually insinuating that I was more loyal to my prior boss than I was to him and saying that he wouldn't be surprised if I relayed the contents of this entire conversation we were having to my prior boss, because this was a fellow who came in and was almost deliberately erasing the legacy of the prior incumbent and wanting to make his own mark.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:17:57

It wasn't as though you could build on the success of your predecessor.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:00

You had to kind of, like, destroy it to make your own.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:02

And it was odd.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:05

It was ugly, it was uncomfortable.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:07

And the worst part about it was there were witnesses, because it wasn't this one on one conversation that I could go back and process and figure out what to do with.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:15

It was like, in front of an audience, including people who didn't really have any touch with my business function at all.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:21

But they were just there as part of the entourage.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:24

So what didn't I do?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:27

I didn't have the courage at that moment to say, what is this?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:30

What are you doing here?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:31

Or to just stand up and walk away and say, I don't, you know, I don't need this crap.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:34

I'm out of here.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:35

I just sat there, and I kind of took it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:37

I answered a few questions.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:38

I kind of realized my role in this conversation was just to kind of take the hits, not to actually provide information or rebut after.

Alan Heyman: 00:18:45

That probably wasn't even about you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:47

Exactly.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:47

And I can't tell you how long it actually lasted.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:49

It felt very long.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:51

But I went to the bar afterwards and huddled with my colleague from my team, and she was pretty devastated, and she was almost in tears, and she said, you know this is really bad, right?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:18:58

I said, yeah, I know this is really bad.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:01

I don't have words to protect us or chart the path forward for us based on what just happened.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:08

I need to process it a little while.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:10

But, yeah, I agree with you, it's pretty bad.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:12

So meeting over conversation, debrief with my colleague in the bar over afterwards, I think she went out and did a little bit more processing of her own after the fact.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:23

And that was the moment in which I decided, okay, I don't know when, I don't know exactly how, but I'm going to leave this job and start my own coaching business, and it's going to be sooner rather than later.

Alan Heyman: 00:19:34

Because you wanted to have no one else be in that situation before.

Alan Heyman: 00:19:39

Was that kind of the impetus of that?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:41

Yeah, it's a couple of different things.

Alan Heyman: 00:19:42

With the coaching element, I should tell.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:44

You that the coaching piece had become less and less of my portfolio within the job.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:49

So in addition to any kind of friction or frustration with the boss in that relationship, like, the subject matter of the work I was doing was getting progressively less and less interesting.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:19:58

And then we had this flashpoint in the hotel bar in Nashville at the end of the conference where I'm like, okay, so my job here is apparently just to absorb the frustrations of the chief executive rather than actually do something productive or something that feels good to me.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:20:12

And that was the moment that after almost 25 years of having been somebody else's employee throughout my entire career, that I kind of got over having a boss.

Alan Heyman: 00:20:23

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:20:23

Cause you don't want to be in that situation before.

Alan Heyman: 00:20:25

I mean, from you telling that story, I think, like, as this grown adult now, I'm like, that was nothing about you.

Alan Heyman: 00:20:33

It seems like he was just trying to show off and show power with his insecurity in front of other people.

Alan Heyman: 00:20:40

I mean, you don't have those conversations with people in that way, but I can't imagine being in your situation because it's like, what do you do?

Alan Heyman: 00:20:50

Like, I know you said this is what I didn't do, but, like, are you even supposed to do that?

Alan Heyman: 00:20:55

Like, we're.

Alan Heyman: 00:20:56

These are not things that we're taught to experience, nor should we have to.

Alan Heyman: 00:21:01

So, you know, I think, like, what would I do in that situation?

Alan Heyman: 00:21:04

I probably feel really defeated.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:06

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:06

And I did.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:07

And I don't necessarily, you know, I say all the things that I didn't do and could have done.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:11

Obviously, in hindsight of many years, I don't think my response or my lack of response was the wrong call at the time, but it was very middle school playground.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:20

And what I came to learn about this person and the way that he led was, yes, as you say, it was power over.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:28

And sometimes he would respond well to if he throws a punch, if somebody else hits back, which is good to know in hindsight.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:38

It's also nothing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:39

All my style as a leader or as an employee.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:42

And so what that tells me is that I don't have what it takes to kind of be successful in that environment.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:47

And again, that's my very neutral way of saying that, because it doesn't, you know, cast judgment on either party.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:53

It's just like, okay, this is the leadership dynamic within the organization.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:21:57

This is a dynamic that makes me uncomfortable, that doesn't fit well with who I am, therefore Sia.

Alan Heyman: 00:22:03

And it was far different than what you had experienced for the decade prior, right?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:08

100% different.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:09

And, you know, these things do happen.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:11

And as I said, bosses change.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:13

And sometimes your moment of knowing that this is not a good fit is not as focused or as dramatic as mine was.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:20

But, you know, it's almost as though I had been kind of waiting for a sign for a little while.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:24

And, you know, it doesn't get any clearer than that.

Alan Heyman: 00:22:27

No, not at all.

Alan Heyman: 00:22:28

And you hadn't heard, like other people say, like, their experiences with him or anything like that?

Alan Heyman: 00:22:33

Oh, yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:22:33

Okay.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:34

You know, and that, you know, what I can share is that people I was close to were not treated kindly on their way out, whether it was their decision to leave or whether the decision was made for them.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:44

And there was a lot of turnover, there was a lot of turmoil.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:48

There was a lot of fear in the environment.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:49

And I think that was kind of by design, and that's not the way that I like to lead.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:22:54

And I think that the good news is, one, that I was able to turn the corner and establish my own business and be successful, not have to talk to this guy ever again in my life.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:06

And two, is when I do have clients who are working their way through what I would call a toxic leadership environment, I know how to recognize the signs.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:14

I know what it's like to go through that experience and to kind of walk along with them as they figure out what the proper path is supposed to be.

Alan Heyman: 00:23:21

So when you left that conference, was it a lot of soul searching of, like, how do I get out?

Alan Heyman: 00:23:28

Or did you already kind of start.

Alan Heyman: 00:23:30

Had you already started building a little bit of an idea or a plan to move forward?

Alan Heyman: 00:23:35

Because you said things were getting kind of not exciting, not, I think it was built.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:39

So what I had been doing for a little while was I was coaching on the side.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:44

Im East Coast.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:45

I would coach some clients on the west coast after I got home in the evening, take some PTO, take some lunchtime.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:51

So what I at least had was proof of concept that this was something I could do and get paid for.

Alan Heyman: 00:23:56

That makes sense.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:23:57

Was fortunate to build up some savings so that there was a bit of a cash cushion, especially once I made the decision, but before I made the jump.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:03

And so for me, it was more like, okay, let's make a plan.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:07

Let's have a timeline, let's execute on this thing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:11

And that has always been something that comes rather naturally to me, as in, let's take some time and gather some inspiration and check in with some people on the decision itself.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:22

But once the decision is made, I will come up with a plan and I will get us there.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:26

We'll decide, my family and I, that we're going to go to Seattle for four days in August for vacation.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:31

And that decision is what I need to kind of build the plan from there.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:36

So that's what I did.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:37

And it was careful, it was quiet.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:39

I did not talk to a lot of people about what I was doing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:42

And I said, okay, this is now February, that this incident is happening in Nashville.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:48

I want my quit date to be Friday, November 1.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:51

And that's what it was.

Alan Heyman: 00:24:52

That's very specific.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:54

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:24:54

And there were different things operating in terms of school year and vesting of retirement plans and various things like, so that's not important.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:02

But the target was November 1, and I kind of, like, put the steps in motion backwards to make it happen.

Alan Heyman: 00:25:08

I like that.

Alan Heyman: 00:25:08

A planner, the planning is an important aspect, and it's not always great to just jump.

Alan Heyman: 00:25:14

But I'm wondering how you show up.

Alan Heyman: 00:25:15

How do you show up as a good employee after a situation like that?

Alan Heyman: 00:25:21

In that interim, how do you do it?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:23

Yeah, it's tricky.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:25

And I think my past experience is kind of like a recovering diplomatic people pleaser.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:30

Comes in handy in a situation like that, and then I'm not going to be unpleasant to people.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:34

I'm not going to be throwing bombs in my wake or just kind of try to blow the place up on my way out.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:39

I was the founding head of this particular business unit that I was leading, so there was important work to be done in getting the transition ready, and I really did want it to continue succeeding after I left.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:49

So I didn't bear any ill will toward my colleagues, my staff, the actual organization itself.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:56

It was just, I knew I wasn't getting along well with the head.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:25:59

And so there was succession planning.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:26:02

There was a fairly long period of time there where I knew I was going to leave and nobody else did because I needed to kind of keep it to myself to keep the plan going, to get the clients to have in that was a little bit anxiety inducing because there were people who I knew and trusted in the organization who announced their plans to leave, it turns out, too early, and were basically told, heres your cardboard box, youre done now.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:26:27

And I didnt want that to happen because I wasnt ready financially, mentally, etcetera.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:26:32

So it was a lot of quiet, behind the scenes work, almost in two directions.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:26:36

One future of the business going to continue without me into this new thing that not a lot of people are going to know about.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:26:41

And it was headache inducing at times, a little bit stressful to kind of be in both places in your head at the same time.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:26:49

But I've done it before in the sense that I'm about to leave a job for a new job that I've accepted that people don't know about back here, it was just a longer incubation period, and it was my own thing that I was starting that was deeply tied to my identity as a professor professional, rather than just signing on the dotted line to take another job someplace.

Alan Heyman: 00:27:09

Right?

Alan Heyman: 00:27:09

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:27:09

Cause I was gonna ask if it was, like, really draining to have to show up in a, I guess, diplomatic way.

Alan Heyman: 00:27:16

Cause I could imagine, like, you can't fully be yourself because you're, like, scary.

Alan Heyman: 00:27:22

That guy's scary there.

Alan Heyman: 00:27:23

But then you also have this exciting part.

Alan Heyman: 00:27:25

So, like, I wonder if there was like, this balance of, like, oh, well, that one's sucking all the energy, but this one's giving me all the energy.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:27:31

Yes, I think that was absolutely true.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:27:33

And I think that what I would describe in hindsight is escalating levels of relief from struggle.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:27:41

And so the height of the struggle was in the moment where I was basically being dressed down in front of an audience.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:27:48

But the relief that came afterwards was almost instantaneous, and it was monumental to the point where I think if you asked her now, my colleague, who I went to the bar with afterwards, who witnessed me taking all these shots, would have been concerned about how not bothered I seemed at that moment when she had been through exactly the same with me, near tears, wondering, what's going on?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:11

How do we make sense of this?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:12

I had immediate clarity, and I felt really good in that moment about the fact that this was it and I had decided to leave, you're like, thank you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:21

I didn't say it to my colleague or anybody else.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:24

And so the source of that relief would not have been obvious.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:27

So for the interim period, there was that very tangible, very instant relief, along with all of what you just described.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:35

And then when, of course, I left November 1, then it was all of the relief.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:39

It was light as air.

Alan Heyman: 00:28:40

Did you get to tell him that you were leaving?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:44

I did.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:45

I did.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:45

And it was an awkward, uncomfortable conversation.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:49

And expect that, right.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:28:52

There were not actually many one on one conversations between the big sort of dressing down sporting event, whatever, and the resignation moment.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:00

I gave about a month's notice, and he was not expecting it at the time that it happened, but it was one of those things where when you're a leader, you have a responsibility to understand and to internalize the impact that you have on people through your words and actions.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:18

And what this was was I had a meeting scheduled with him, one on one, that was dropped onto my calendar by his assistant with no subject line and no information for late in the afternoon toward the end of the week.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:31

And so I walked into this meeting prepared to resign from my job, not knowing if I was also going to get fired.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:36

And at that point, of course, it didn't matter, but it was still a little bit like nerve wracking and all of that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:41

And the thing is, the conversation we had was perfectly pleasant.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:44

It was probably the most pleasant conversation we had ever ended up happening.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:48

And he conducted himself exactly in the way that I would have expected somebody who has this type of conversation on a fairly regular basis would do.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:56

It was pleasant.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:57

He listened.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:57

He understood.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:29:58

He shared a few things.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:00

He expressed, actually, a little bit of disappointment, which I dont know if it was sincere, but it was shocking to me.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:07

This was toward the end of the week.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:09

The following week, his assistant called me and said, so, are you going to give us a letter?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:14

Sure, ill write a letter, no problem.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:17

So I wrote the letter.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:19

I went upstairs, I handed it in, and I went to a meeting or something.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:23

And I came back from the meeting, and the member of my staff who had been with me in Nashville looked at me and said, have you checked your email recently?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:29

And I said, no, I was in meeting.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:30

She said, check your email.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:31

The boss had sent an organization wide announcement that I was leaving while I was in the meeting, after I turned him, so he scooped me on my own nuke.

Alan Heyman: 00:30:38

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:30:39

Power.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:39

Yeah, exactly.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:40

So that was it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:42

I was there for a pretty easy month afterwards, doing transition, handing stuff over to my successor.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:47

November 1, I was out, but it was like there had not been any doubt about my decision in that moment at all.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:30:52

But if there had, there's another sign for you.

Alan Heyman: 00:30:55

Yeah, there's a couple thank yous that come along with, like, thank you for doing what you did, even though it was terrible.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:00

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:00

And also thank you for just doing that, because you just confirmed that all my decisions are.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:05

Are the right ones.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:06

I wonder if he even remembers the conference moment.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:10

Probably not.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:10

It sounds like he was like that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:12

I would be surprised just because he remembered.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:14

Yeah, it seems like that kind of thing was a bit of his style.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:19

All of the people who were involved in the conversation, other than him, are no longer in the organization, so there wouldn't even be anybody to lean on in terms of a memory of that.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:29

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:29

It's so interesting.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:30

I think there's a lot of people like that, and they don't.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:33

Like, somehow they.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:35

Maybe they do, but it seems like they don't realize that maybe they're the common denominator to a lot of these situations.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:42

And I.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:43

You know, I was gonna say, I wonder if you work with people like that, but they wouldn't be aware enough to reach out to you for coaching help, so probably not helping those types of people.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:52

It depends.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:53

It depends.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:53

And sometimes you don't reach out and.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:55

Be like, I hear you're terrible.

Alan Heyman: 00:31:56

Would you like to be?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:31:58

There may be a board member or an executive committee or some sort of entity like that makes a gentle suggestion.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:32:06

I don't know.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:32:07

I'm somewhat skeptical of the idea of coaching as a remedial practice of coaching as a place where you send someone to get fixed for something.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:32:14

However, I will say this.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:32:16

I think my background as an employee and as a coach very much led to the clarity that I experienced in the moment that I had in Nashville.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:32:25

And I can imagine very much having a client that I'm either working with already or somebody new comes in, trying to process through a moment like that and figure out exactly what it means and find the right framing to make it actually helpful, as you've described, to turn it from this, like, crisis into the.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:32:41

Thank you.

Alan Heyman: 00:32:42

I feel like they're just like.

Alan Heyman: 00:32:44

Just like with therapy, I think coaching, like, someone needs to have enough self awareness that and, like, onus on the things that they do to be able to make those things.

Alan Heyman: 00:32:53

This is just me assuming that to make those things changeable or doable or, I think, like, therapy.

Alan Heyman: 00:33:00

I didn't go until I was in my thirties, because I wasn't ready, like.

Alan Heyman: 00:33:04

And then when I was ready, it was like the clouds parted and all the things happened and, you know, but I knew if I had gone in my twenties when I was pushing everything and blaming everything and all those extra things, I don't know that it would have sunk in.

Alan Heyman: 00:33:18

So I think coach, I think of coaching very similarly.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:21

I think in the sense that both of them start with a desire for change on the part of the participant, then, yes, 100% the remedial part.

Alan Heyman: 00:33:28

I feel like they would just check a box and then maybe go back to their old.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:32

And this used to be the thing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:33

This used to be almost the pity move as the person was gently nudged out the door.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:38

We'll try to set them up with a coach and see if they can salvage something before outplacement happens.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:44

Not very effective, in my view.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:46

And so I'm glad that we're not focused this way.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:33:48

And I've been fortunate to work with a number of quite young emerging leaders in this practice, and getting to them at that moment when they're first developing as the leader and everything is wide open and they haven't even nailed down their own style yet is amazing because they can have such impact.

Alan Heyman: 00:34:04

Do you look at that moment as anything in you changed?

Alan Heyman: 00:34:08

Or was it like you had this slow fire burning and then that was the oxygen it needed to light?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:34:14

I think that was it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:34:15

I think it was an accelerant on something that was already kind of smoldering rather than a big change pivot kind of within me, because there wasn't, I couldn't say.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:34:25

And that was when I discovered I was an entrepreneur.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:34:27

No, it was just that I discovered that the timing for a bunch of things I had been wondering about or wishing to explore was now rather than later.

Alan Heyman: 00:34:37

Did you have the confidence before that you could run your own business or was this like, well, let's try, because this sucks kind of moment for you?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:34:46

I think I would answer the question in a couple of different ways.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:34:49

So I had been a partner in a very small business in my early twenties, and I had started this sort of business within a business that I was actually working in at the time that this terrible conversation happened.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:02

So I guess what Im saying is, in terms of the mechanics of launching an entity, of bringing a corporate body into being and systems and processes, yeah, 100% totally fine.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:13

And I dont want to overlook that because a number of people in my line of work dont have the skills or the confidence or the they need to outsource it or get on top of it right away.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:23

That was not the issue for me.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:25

The issue was, can I make a living at this?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:28

And fortunately, at least early on, it was not, can I replace my existing full time, every other week salary with this, but can I make a living at it?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:37

What I needed for that was really two things, proof of concept and savings.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:42

And I had been accumulating both.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:35:43

And one of the reasons why it took from February to November for me to leave was also the savings piece to be able to give myself enough Runway so that if this thing didn't take off quite the way that I thought it was going to or hoped that it was going to, we would still be okay.

Alan Heyman: 00:35:59

Like a pragmatic, practical jumper.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:02

Well, yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:03

t how in the month of July of: 2024

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:21

It happens.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:22

Theres a lot of up and down in self employment and were fine.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:26

And I saw it coming and I knew why it happened.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:28

And its all good.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:36:30

g in February in Nashville of: 2019

Alan Heyman: 00:36:45

Trey no, I said that in a way that its great that you have the ability to plan and think ahead and think through all the options, because I think theres also a bucket of entrepreneurs that are so passion driven that the rules and the roads and the things dont matter because theyre going to jump fully.

Alan Heyman: 00:37:04

And its like you have this succession plan for yourself, like, of how you were going to move through this space.

Alan Heyman: 00:37:10

And he just, like you said, through some, you know, lighter fluid on the, on the fire that you had, because you had the proof of concept, you had a process, probably, of how you were going to do things.

Alan Heyman: 00:37:21

You had the experience running the other businesses.

Alan Heyman: 00:37:23

So it's like a really a nice blend of what probably a lot of entrepreneurs that are kind of winging it would love to have in their experiences.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:37:32

I appreciate that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:37:33

I think it truly is a balance.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:37:34

And I'm fortunate to be connected with a lot of entrepreneurs in my space who have great vision, who have great purpose, who have great ability to inspire, which I need more of in my own personal mix, because I'm methodical, I'm risk averse, I'm cautious at times in a way that is comfortable, in a way that is safe, but a way maybe that doesn't stretch my boundaries the way that I could.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:37:59

And I've had the good fortune to work for a good number of leaders as an employee where that was their strength.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:04

They could pull the best out of their people through that inspiration.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:08

And it's something that I miss sometimes now that I'm working for myself.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:10

So being connected with others kind of helps scratch the itch there a little bit.

Alan Heyman: 00:38:13

Trey, what have you learned from coaching all of these people like about yourself?

Alan Heyman: 00:38:18

What is this new journey in your life been like for you in your growth period?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:23

I think I could point to a few things, one being the struggles that I experienced as a leader within organizations are not unique to me in the sense that my clients are often bringing them in.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:36

And I think part of that is because there's almost a universal nature to leadership.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:40

And part of it is that I think my clients tend to meet a similar profile, and sometimes that profile is similar to me.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:47

And there's a nice kind of reassurance in that that I may not have known it at the time, but I was not alone in what I was experiencing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:38:55

Two, ive been very, very lucky to take careful note of my preferences in energy levels and capabilities and to know what I can deliver effectively and when I can be in service of my clients and when I cant.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:10

So one of the things I think we all fall into as entrepreneurs is we just take, say, our target dollar figure for the year or past salary, whatever that is, and back it into the number of possible working hours in a year.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:24

And the thing is, much as I'm imagining, you can't record five or six podcast episodes in a day, every day for a whole week, and then do that for a year.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:33

I have a limit on how many coaching sessions I can deliver in a week, or how many facilitations I can do in a month before my energy level is compromised and the quality of the work starts to suffer.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:44

And I've learned that a little bit through trial and error and a little bit through experimentation, and too much.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:48

And too little.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:49

But it's a great thing to know, because then I can decide how much do I need to do to make this thing work for me, for my clients, for my family?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:39:58

And I did go into this with at least the idea that I would try to be working a bit less than when I was full time working for others and commuting back and forth into an office every day, because remember, that was pre Covid and I've met that milestone.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:40:13

So I'm not putting in the hours that I did in past jobs.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:40:18

I'm thankful for that, and I probably could do that if I wanted to, but being in service to the people that my practice supports and to my family is the priority, and I can't do that beyond that kind of threshold of diminishing returns, right?

Alan Heyman: 00:40:32

No, I think that's super important, especially for entrepreneurs to hear that you still have to create, you actually have to create that balance, you have to create that awareness, you have to create that space so that this is business, this is life, and you have to find that balance.

Alan Heyman: 00:40:49

I think a lot of people, like you said, just dive right into it, try to do it, but also on the same thing.

Alan Heyman: 00:40:54

And I wonder if this is true for you.

Alan Heyman: 00:40:57

Are there certain people that you just won't work with if they want your service, but you find out a little bit more about them and it's like, that's not a right fit and you're okay saying no.

Alan Heyman: 00:41:08

Is this something that you do?

Alan Heyman: 00:41:10

It seems like yes, but yes, that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:12

Is definitely something that I do.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:14

Not often, because I think whatever it is that passes for my client attraction process these days, and it's pretty loosely defined, tends to bring in people who I'm interested in working with.

Alan Heyman: 00:41:25

That's fair.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:26

I work as a contractor to a number of different coaching service companies, and the ones that I'm working with now are very skilled at bringing together coaching clients.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:35

So they'll put myself and two other colleagues in front of someone and let them choose.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:39

And it would have been a great fit for all three of them kind of thing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:41

But it does happen, and I have gotten quite comfortable over the time that I've been doing this business at letting folks know, hey, this is not my sweet spot, I'm not skilled in this area.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:51

Or there's something about your profile, it's not a great fit, or we're having an introductory conversation and there just isn't the chemistry.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:41:58

Very, very happy to refer a person like that out to somebody else in my ample network of fellow coaches who do things slightly differently or do slightly different things than I do.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:10

Sometimes it's timing, sometimes it's pay or the amount of effort that would be required in engagement.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:16

Sometimes it's style.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:18

And I remember very clearly before I even left my position as the full time employee that we've been talking about this evening, I was getting inquiries, and I was having conversations with prospective clients, and it mattered at that point because every session that I booked was a session I would get paid for, which was proof of concept and experience and networking, all that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:38

I got a call from a friend of a friend who was in pretty dire straits and was looking for a coach to support him in the leadership journey.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:45

He was the number two person in a startup, and I basically said hello.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:49

And he was probably 25 minutes into the call with complaining about how terrible his boss was.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:42:55

And when he finally paused, I said, hey, I just want to say at this point, I don't think you need a coach.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:01

I think you need a new job.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:03

And he didn't really want to hear that from me, but he heard it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:07

We didn't have another conversation.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:08

There was no coaching engagement.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:10

I don't know where he went or what he did, but it was this kind of aha moment for me where it's like, wait, I would love to have revenue, I would love to have clients, but I can't help this person where he's at right now in the way that he thinks he needs me to.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:24

And so clarifying that and what coaching is and what it can deliver is important because I want to make sure we're meeting people's expectations.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:31

No, I love that.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:33

I wish a lot of people in certain fields would have that understanding or have that click type moment in which it's like, could I take money from you and could I do this?

Alan Heyman: 00:43:45

Sure.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:46

But am I going to?

Alan Heyman: 00:43:48

No.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:48

Because it's not the right.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:49

You know, like, and that's.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:50

That's the sign of, like, you're doing what you should be doing, and it's the right space for you, and it feels, like, authentic, and it lights you up.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:57

Like you said, it energizes you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:43:59

It's.

Alan Heyman: 00:43:59

All these things kind of make sense, and it's not just, like, another job or another thing to do.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:04

It's so.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:05

It's so interesting because before I started this podcast, to be totally honest, I don't think I knew too many coaches.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:13

Like, it feels like there's a lot of coaches out there that it just, like, it just wasn't even in my awareness that people sought anything other than a therapist, you know?

Alan Heyman: 00:44:23

And so.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:24

But there's coaches for everything.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:25

I mean, I guess I knew there were, like, baseball coaches and things like that, but, like, people in the business world and people in certain areas have, you know, all these different coaches, and you said you have a huge network of people.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:36

Are you finding there's a difference in the last, like decade in the way that people seek out or use coaches.

Alan Heyman: 00:44:43

Has that been a shift in some way?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:44:45

Absolutely.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:44:46

So there's a growing awareness of coaching, I would say, and I can trace this back to my own origin story in that ten years ago, I hired a coach pretty much as soon as I found out what a coach was and what a coach could do and that I was having some leadership challenges in a different job at a different employer, and an executive colleague of mine was in coaching school, and I didn't even know what that was.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:07

But it mattered to her and it was important and it was interesting.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:10

And I hired one of her classmates, and to this day, she, my former coach and I are still doing work together, so her business has really taken off.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:17

But, yeah, look, Georgetown University, where I got my coaching certificate, is now teaching more cohorts each year than it did when I was in the program six ish years ago.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:26

The International Coaching Federation, which is our member association, is growing by leaps and bounds.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:31

The conferences get bigger every year.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:33

And when I attrive that, too, is that the field has grown and it has also trickled down past the C suite of, let's say, the Fortune 50 or the Fortune 500, because it used to be that only the really, really, really highly paid executives in any given organization could get coached because it was so expensive and it was in person and it was all day and it was very, very high ticket.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:45:58

And now I coach emerging leaders at nonprofits sometimes, and it's very valuable, interesting, meaningful work.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:06

And the fact that there's more of us out there doing it has almost democratized it in a way.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:11

And you want to be careful because you don't want it to be a race to the bottom.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:14

And there are some providers out there who are doing that in terms of what they charge and what they pay.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:18

But I think there is a lot out there.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:21

And one of my earliest discoveries on becoming a coach, to my great delight, was that we are kind and generous people for the most part, and we're not competitive or we're not out there trying to take each other's business.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:33

And if I'm not the coach for you, my neighbor over here might be.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:37

And I get a lot of business that way, either working with or for fellow coaches or just referrals, because you also get to the point where you've been doing this for a while and you build the network and there's going to be more demand than there is supply.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:46:49

So it's great to be able to.

Alan Heyman: 00:46:51

Share Trey from your perspective, which will probably be biased because you are a coach, what are some of the benefits for, for someone if they were to get a coach versus whatever else is out there?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:02

A book?

Alan Heyman: 00:47:02

I don't know.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:03

Sure.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:03

No, absolutely.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:04

I appreciate the question.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:06

And that question, almost with the exact same phrasing, came my way as a gift in one of these introductory coaching conversations with a potential client.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:15

That person, by the way, hired another coach, but appreciated the answer.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:18

And so what I did was I on the fly, kind of off the top of my head, broke it down into four key benefits that I tend to provide over and over again with every single engagement that I do.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:28

And other coaches operate differently, but this is kind of my model.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:31

The first and probably the most important is reframing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:35

And so what is required to change a mindset is to change actions and behaviors.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:40

And to do that, you've got to be able to look at your situation differently.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:43

And the way you look at your situation differently is you talk to somebody who's not in your situation, who doesn't have your coworkers, who exists outside of your leadership bubble and can see things upside down and sideways and say, have you considered this or what about that?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:57

Item number two is curation.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:47:59

You mentioned it just now.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:00

What about a book?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:01

Well, I've got a ton of books over here.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:03

There's tens of thousands of leadership books on Amazon that you could order.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:06

What are you going to read?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:07

Who's the expert that you're going to find to help you address your issue?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:11

I know who these experts are because I'm a generalist, not an expert, and because I work in the field.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:15

So I read stuff like this every day.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:17

My clients always get videos and podcasts and Ted talks and books on the things that are affecting them.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:23

Item three is accountability.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:25

We're going to develop action plans together that are going to help you make some change in your world.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:29

You're going to talk to those five people.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:31

You're going to approach a conversation a little bit differently.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:33

You're going to put your phone outside the bedroom at night and get an alarm clock, whatever that is.

Alan Heyman: 00:48:39

Imagine that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:40

Yeah, imagine that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:40

Right?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:41

I've had clients who've done it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:42

It's almost magic.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:43

But seeing it in front of me means you're going to be more likely to do it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:47

It's the same reason that fitness trainers get paid a lot of money.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:49

They hold people to account for the actions they commit themselves to.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:52

And the final thing is what I call the balance between support and challenge.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:48:57

I am the supporter among supporters for a leader who's in crisis or having a hard time, because leadership is hard.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:03

I've been through it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:04

If it was easy, we'd have nothing to talk about here.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:06

At the same time, human beings are human beings, and power is power.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:10

And what happens is there's a bubble that gets created around every leader where they're going to be surrounded with people who will tell them things over and over again that they think they want to hear.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:19

It's not because anybody is evil or nefarious or anything like that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:21

It's just the way that it works.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:23

I am outside the bubble.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:25

So in a supportive and kind and often loving way, I'm going to say the thing that nobody else is going to say, and if you don't like the thing that I'm saying that nobody else is going to say, but maybe it takes you a little while to go back and process it as you're feeling your feelings about what I said.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:41

I get to stay married and keep my house.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:49:43

And that is a wonderful benefit of being a disinterested third party who doesn't have a statement of the outcome.

Alan Heyman: 00:49:48

I like that.

Alan Heyman: 00:49:49

I like the idea.

Alan Heyman: 00:49:51

It all makes sense.

Alan Heyman: 00:49:52

And it's like, I always look back, I'm like, why didn't I know of this?

Alan Heyman: 00:49:56

And maybe it was that top tier thing where I just wasn't making that kind of money and I just didn't even, it wasn't even in my awareness because I wasn't out there.

Alan Heyman: 00:50:03

But it's so fascinating to hear how many.

Alan Heyman: 00:50:05

And the people, like, I talked to other coaches that are, like, very specific, they only focus on this or they, you know, like, and it's so fascinating that you can find your own space here.

Alan Heyman: 00:50:16

And it's so valuable because, like, I mean, like, we even that, like you said, fitness coach or, like a baseball coach, like, that's just someone that's gonna help them get better at whatever they're doing in their sport.

Alan Heyman: 00:50:28

And, you know, it's the same kind of thing.

Alan Heyman: 00:50:29

So, yes, it's funny that looking at myself and going, why didn't you even know about, you know, like, it's kind of humorous to think about, but I love that you're, you know, you found something, even though you have it before, but you found something that you can do every day, all day long, if you choose to, that energizes you, also probably drains you, because just as having conversations on podcasts can be draining, right.

Alan Heyman: 00:50:54

If you're talking about really tough things or you're, you know, in a really intense moment with one of your clients.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:00

It's probably pretty draining, but it energizes you just the same because you're helping.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:05

You're doing the things that, you know, I think everyone should be doing with each other through conversation, through, like you said, you end up in this bubble, and people are afraid to pop the bubble every once in a while, you know, to make people uncomfortable and push them a little bit harder.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:20

So I love that you found this for yourself.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:22

And it's like you think back to that moment where that guy was just a total a hole.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:27

I said it, you didn't say it, and you almost want to be like, thank you for that, because you kicked this off.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:35

Like, I know I started it, but, like, you really kicked it into high gear because he did that.

Alan Heyman: 00:51:41

Do you look back at that and go, well, I'm glad he did that?

Alan Heyman: 00:51:43

Kind of.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:51:44

Yeah, I mean, that was his, I'm quite certain, unstrategic, unintentional gift to me.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:51:49

Right.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:51:49

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:51:50

And I will tell you, I've had less painful versions of that conversation a couple of times during my career that were more directed, and I actually have a term for it that I use from time to time when I'm talking to a client who.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:05

They have an employee who's just a real challenge, and they wish there would be a change somehow, but they don't know how to move the needle.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:10

The term that I use is devastating pep talk, and it sort of consists of somebody who's in authority going to the other person and saying, hey, I know this has not been an easy time for you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:22

I know this has been a bit of a struggle.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:24

I know there's been a little bit of a misfit fit, maybe with your interests or maybe with your motivations.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:29

Will you please take the weekend and give some serious thought to your future and figure out whether this is actually what you want to be doing with your life professionally.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:39

And if it's not, let me know what I can do to help.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:42

Anything.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:43

You have my support, you have my connections, whatever you need.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:48

It's risky.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:49

There are some HR things that you have to be aware of if you're initiating a conversation like that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:52:53

And of course you're doing it because you wish the answer will be no, and that they'll figure it out and leave on their own, which I've done a couple of times in my career.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:53:01

But wouldn't it be lovely if we could all just sort of be adults and be more open about this sort of thing and have a conversation and come to a solution that actually works for both people when those interests are no longer aligned.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:53:12

on that I had in Nashville in: 2019

Matt Gilhooly: 00:53:25

Like, really?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:53:26

Is this for you still?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:53:28

Because in his sort of underhanded, target practice, power over kind of way, maybe that's what he's asking, even though he didn't actually use the words.

Alan Heyman: 00:53:39

I'm not convinced of that.

Alan Heyman: 00:53:41

I like the idea of the devastating pep talk, though.

Alan Heyman: 00:53:43

I like the idea of people being open enough to be human with each other and not just boss and employee or whatever leader and.

Alan Heyman: 00:53:51

And underling, whatever we want to call him.

Alan Heyman: 00:53:54

I like the idea of totally being open and saying, hey, this just isn't the fit, and I'm going to move on.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:01

It's nothing.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:02

You did nothing, any of those kind of things.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:04

But the way you told the story, this guy just sounds like he just wanted to show off in some way, and it wasn't really about you.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:10

But I'll just take that for what it is.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:13

No, I think I kind of have the same kind of parallel to the Life shift podcast and thinking, like, what if we all just had these conversations and talked about the things that were hard and we talked about the things that maybe we weren't good at but we'd like to get better at?

Alan Heyman: 00:54:30

Or we said the vulnerable things out loud, and then we realized, oh, you also feel like that, oh, I'm not alone.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:39

Oh, you got through it by doing this.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:54:43

Cool.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:43

Maybe I'll try.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:44

You know, like, those are the ideas that I have.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:46

I think, of this eight year old version of me.

Alan Heyman: 00:54:48

Had I known other people that were grown up, they had lost their parent, and they were successful and they were happy and they were doing all these things and they had a path forward, maybe I would have been like, oh, there's hope, instead of being whatever I did for 20 years in this grief process.

Alan Heyman: 00:55:04

And so, you know, I love that idea, and I hope we get there of this.

Alan Heyman: 00:55:09

You know, maybe they're not devastating pep talks by them.

Alan Heyman: 00:55:11

They're just talks, you know, and they're just realistic conversations about not the right fit, you know, like, you don't love it, that's okay.

Alan Heyman: 00:55:20

We can move to the next thing you know.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:22

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:22

It's not tragic.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:23

It's just kind of part of work life.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:25

And sometimes things are a fit and a connection, and then after a while, they're not for various reasons.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:32

So it does not always end the way that it starts.

Alan Heyman: 00:55:34

That can be said of relationships, that can be said of family members, that can be said of all sorts of things.

Alan Heyman: 00:55:39

So why should work be any different?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:41

Oh, I think work should absolutely be the same.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:43

And I think what we're talking about here, and the reason that I have work as a coach and you have worked as a podcast host and everything else is that the people part of this, the relationship part of this, is hard.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:55

It takes effort.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:55:56

It takes making mistakes and figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:56:00

And it takes energy that we don't talk about very often as we're thinking about KPI's and deliverables and quarterly goals and moving the ball forward on the business.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:56:12

This stuff that we're talking about here, to me, this is the stuff of leadership.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:56:16

It's the reason why I'm involved in the work, and it's overlooked at your own peril.

Alan Heyman: 00:56:21

I agree, because I think if you had these conversations, then your work relationship could be stronger, which then can affect your meeting those KPI's and all the things are intertwined because, you know, they're not isolated.

Alan Heyman: 00:56:34

And I think if we could figure that out someday for the whole world to do with, maybe we shouldn't, because then you might not have a job.

Alan Heyman: 00:56:41

So we'll make sure that we still have some strife for you to help with.

Alan Heyman: 00:56:46

But, you know, I think I love that you found this space for yourself, and I know that it's helping other people, and I'm sorry that you had to experience that, but I'm kind of glad you did, because now you're able to help people this in this full time way that you do.

Alan Heyman: 00:56:59

So I always look at these, I try to find these silver linings now at this point in my life of some of these moments.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:57:06

No, I appreciate that.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:57:07

And I've had plenty of small t work traumas, I would say, and I could go back and list them one by one.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:57:13

And every single one to a moment has some sort of a positive outcome later on down the line, either because it led directly into something that turned out to be great, as in when I hired my first coach ten years ago, and now I am a coach and I'm working for her, and life is good to you know what?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:57:32

This was not a positive experience for me, and I learned a tremendous amount about the sort of leader I choose not to be by watching the example of somebody else.

Alan Heyman: 00:57:40

Exactly.

Alan Heyman: 00:57:40

There's always something to learn from it.

Alan Heyman: 00:57:42

I even say it, had my mom not died, I would not be this person.

Alan Heyman: 00:57:45

And all the struggles that I went through, I would not be this person.

Alan Heyman: 00:57:48

And so in some weird, disturbing way, there are some silver linings from the experience that I had as a child and all the mistakes that I made along the way.

Alan Heyman: 00:57:56

And so I think there's always a place to learn from whatever we experience, if we choose to learn from it.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:02

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:03

And I think it's evolution to be in a place where you've experienced something that is the loss to end all losses as a young person who maybe even doesn't know what loss is intuitively at that point, and something that you would never seek to repeat or wish on another person, and at the same time, you kind of don't want to give it back because it's brought you to who you are.

Alan Heyman: 00:58:25

Exactly.

Alan Heyman: 00:58:25

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:58:26

It's a challenge.

Alan Heyman: 00:58:27

Speaking of going back, I like to wrap up these conversations with a question, and I'm wondering if, like, this entrepreneurial five years in, Alan could go back to Alan that was about to walk into that meeting.

Alan Heyman: 00:58:41

Would there be anything you would want to tell him?

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:44

Wow.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:45

Well, I would lose the element of surprise if I had inside information.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:49

And I think the.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:51

The surprise and the shock of it all was interlaced with the actual content of the conversation, of which there was not much.

Alan Heyman: 00:58:56

You just walk on by.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:58

Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:58:58

So there might be a small amount of, like, hey, don't take the meeting, or, hey, maybe there's some value in you deciding when the meeting is over and getting up and walking away, rather than, like, sitting and tolerating the whole thing.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:59:13

Maybe there's something better by way of comfort that you could offer the colleague who's clearly suffering through this experience with you.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:59:20

But otherwise, I don't know that I would go back and make too many changes.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:24

Yeah.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:24

Just like, high five on the way in.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:26

Good luck.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:59:27

You got this.

Matt Gilhooly: 00:59:28

And it's going to lead to things you can't imagine.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:31

Yeah, it's.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:32

So how fortunate are we when we have the ability to look back on those moments and reflect on them in a way that isn't, I guess, in a positive ish way.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:44

You know, I think that we're the lucky ones because I don't think a lot of people are there yet in some of these moments because we are taught, like, we started this conversation.

Alan Heyman: 00:59:54

I think there are elements in society that tell us that being a victim can be helpful or, like, we can live in it and certain things can come from it.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:03

And I did that for 20 plus years, and it served me in the way that I needed it to.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:09

I guess but now I'm at this place where I'm able to reflect on these moments and go, wow.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:13

You know, like, that taught me a lot and I'm thankful for it, for sure.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:17

I think that is wisdom and that is age.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:20

Thanks.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:21

No.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:22

If people are interested in learning more about you, connecting with you, finding out about your coaching services, what's like, the best way to find you and get in your space?

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:31

Sure.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:31

So peacefuldirection.com is my website.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:33

Peaceful direction is the name of my coaching practice, and it has information on the services that I offer, how to get in touch, how to schedule an exploratory call.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:42

I'm also on LinkedIn a lot.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:43

It's the only social network that I use, so it's pretty easy to find me there as well.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:46

Good on you.

Alan Heyman: 01:00:47

Why LinkedIn?

Alan Heyman: 01:00:48

Because it's where your audience is, essentially.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:51

It is.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:51

And it's the place where you talk about work, and it's the place where I don't get drawn into distraction with memes about people's cats and that sort of thing.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:00:59

I leave that to my wife and daughter to tell me what's interesting and funny, and I look at it when they're interested.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:03

Hey, that's probably the smarter way to do it.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:05

You also probably have an alarm clock instead of your phone.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:08

I do.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:08

None of our phones live in the bedroom.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:10

It's a family rule.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:12

I love it.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:12

Well, thank you for sharing your story in this way, letting me ask the questions in the way that I did.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:17

I really appreciate you being a part of this journey.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:19

Matt.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:20

This has been a delight.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:21

I am so glad for the opportunity, and I feel like I learned a lot about myself through the questions you were asking.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:25

Well, that is a compliment and I will take that.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:28

Thank you for that.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:29

If you are listening and something that Alan said stuck out with you and you want to reach out to him, please do that.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:34

But also, if there's someone in your life that you think maybe needs to hear Alan's story because maybe they're going through something similar and they just need that little, oh, I'm not the only person going through this.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:43

Why don't you share this episode with them?

Alan Heyman: 01:01:45

And with that, I will say thank you.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:47

And I will be back next week with a brand new episode of the Life Shift podcast.

Alan Heyman: 01:01:51

Thanks again, alan.

Matt Gilhooly: 01:01:52

Thank you.

Alan Heyman: 01:02:05

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.