Chris Marr 0:00
Chris, when it comes to communication skills, most people undervalue them, or they think they're actually good when they're not, and as a result, they don't invest in developing their communication skills. For most of us, it's actually the one thing that will make the biggest difference in the work that we're doing. That's
Finola Howard 0:20
Chris Marr author and founder of the authoritative coach. His book will interest you because it's a call to step into your genius, to stop people pleasing, challenge your clients and be indispensable. Chris will make you look at everything you do so you can extract the maximum value from it and use it to take you to the next level of your business. He is grounded, pragmatic, and there's a lived wisdom that is apparent when we speak. I loved this conversation. I could have actually stayed longer, so I look forward to hearing what you think. I'm Finola Howard, Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart and your host of the your truth shared podcast, I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared. I kind of really want to nail one of the questions that I consistently find myself asking of myself, of my journey, of what clients ask of me. And it is always that question. It comes back to this, especially for this podcast, which is, what does it take to succeed? And one of the people that I want to introduce you to today is a wonderful gentleman called Chris Marr, and he has an interesting background. He is a coach, and yes, I've interviewed lots of coaches, and I'm wanting to speak to people who have something very pragmatic that you can walk away with. And Chris has written a book. Well, Chris is actually more than this book, in my experience, but Chris has written this book he called, Become An Authoritative Coach. Stop people pleasing, challenge your clients and be indispensable. And here is his wonderful book. And here is the wonderful Chris Marr welcome Chris
Chris Marr 2:27
Thank you very much for having me a lovely intro. Thank you. So I've
Finola Howard 2:30
read this book. There's so many kind of nuggets in this book and that are useful. And you've, you've taken the choice to to do this short, valuable book idea, because everybody has, you know, it distills the wisdom, and it means that. And I got this really strong feeling from the book that I could let it down and pick it up and reread it and remind myself of what I've learned. And I found myself even do that in prep for today's recording. But one of the things I just, even, I just turned over the book today and went your need to be liked is holding you and your clients back from succeeding at your highest potential. Just say a little bit more about that. Yeah,
Chris Marr 3:12
so the whole idea of that statement is, where do I want people to be by the time they finish the book, like, what's the big takeaway? And it's that fill in the blank statement of I now realize what? Okay. I now realize that my need to be liked, and my people pleasing behaviors and the way that I hold back from saying what needs to be said, or I sweep things under the carpet, or I don't proactively approach awkward or potentially difficult circumstances or conversations. Me not doing all of that isn't isn't just me that's being impacted by that. Like the whole the bigger picture of the bigger motivation is actually, if you step into this, you know that everybody's going to win because of it. And so I think oftentimes in life, we are quite happy to or not happy. But if we're the only ones that are suffering, we can sort of let it go. But if we know that the client, in this case, is also suffering from this, this people pleasing behavior, or these, this need to be liked, then maybe we'll do something about it. Right? Maybe it's actually the the accountability that we need to actually make the change. So it's helping people see that it's not just affecting you, but it's actually affecting your client's ability to get their results. And the reason for that is because if you don't say what needs to be said, If you don't point out the mistakes, if you don't point out the behaviors that are holding them back from being successful, if you aren't prepared to be direct and challenging, then they're never going to know who's going to tell them otherwise, right? And so what we. To be is like the of course, there's ways to say this, there's techniques to do in a way that lands, but ultimately, if you do all that well, then your clients are going to have breakthroughs. They're going to have the transformation. They're going to be able to get those results, perhaps even beyond what they even thought was possible for themselves. So that's me saying just a little bit more about that statement, but yeah, that's where it comes
Finola Howard 5:25
from. Yeah, I love it. What makes me what I'm called to ask you next is there is so many coaches in the world, it's very hard for them to differentiate from each other and find their unique space. But it's interesting that is this why they're people pleasing? Like, first, really, all of these coaches are people pleasing. Like, why did you choose these as a target reader or target audience, the coaches and people pleasing? Why was this a space that needed to be filled with a book? I mean, I actually can see it. I can see it in my own clients, this holding back, this being kind of self effacing, this being humble, this showing the mirror that we're told that mentors and coaches do, this putting the person first, often, this nurturing approach to coaching, whereas what you're advocating is a much more assertive role, an important role, as you said, because you've got to name the enemy in the room or name the challenge that the client is facing so that they can also see it, because clearly they can't see it. Why is why are so many coaches people pleasers,
Chris Marr 6:44
right? This is Yeah, so of course, I was a people pleaser. So big part of the book is my own journey through figuring a whole bunch of stuff out, right? So the book was basically, the books are curation of many of the lessons that I was learning at the time about how to be a better business coach for my clients. The book, then was as a product I don't know like now, I I almost wish it wasn't just a book that looked like it was only for coaches, because the really what I say is it's not just for coaches. It's for anyone that wants to be more coach like in their approach. Because really as like transferable skills, like these, transferable methods, skills tips are really for anybody that wants to be more coach like in their communication. But I will say this is that the people that I was teaching, I think fell into two camps. If they didn't, if they weren't already look I think when it comes to communication skills, most people undervalue them, or they think they're actually good when they're not, and as a result, they don't actually invest in developing their communication skills. How many people do you know that have prioritized communication skills and communication skill acquisition and development as part of their professional career? Like hardly anyone, but for most of us, it's actually the one thing that will make the biggest difference in the work that we're doing. And so when I was when I'm working with people, they fell into mainly two camps, but 80% of the people I was working with fell into the camp of being what Kim Scott would call ruinously empathetic. Right? They were on this. They were they really did care about their clients, but they cared too much. They didn't want to risk the relationship.
Finola Howard 8:40
But does that mean that their relationship became personal?
Chris Marr 8:44
It means that they aren't willing to say that you've got spinach in your teeth, you know, they aren't willing to point out the obvious mistakes, because they're too actually, they're too invested in their own feelings around it, like it feels awkward for them. They're embarrassed. They don't want to do it. And I was, I always sort of label those people as amateurish. And in other words, if you really wanted to become a professional, you really need to step into being very proactive about these assertive situations that you need to get yourself into like you need to, you need to take the step into it,
Finola Howard 9:21
which makes me ask the question, do you think a lot of small business owners know what it means to be professional, right?
Chris Marr 9:29
So I don't think people really appreciate that there's their job is to actually have and facili be world class at facilitating what I would call transformative or breakthrough conversations with their team, with their clients, and that usually means talking about things like, if you want to have breakthroughs and transformations, you naturally have to start talking about and or pressing on things or challenging. People in ways that they've never been challenged before, or having conversations with them about things that they've never talked about before, or asking them questions about things that they've never been asked before. And so if you want to be in that camp where you're the people around you are growing and they're changing and they're developing, you have to be the type of person that can be skilled at having these types of conversations. You can't do that if you are in that camp where you're really, you're you're prepared to sweep things under the carpet, or not approach certain things, or you're, you stay silent, essentially. So I think when it comes back to your original question, which is like, why this book and why it's needed is because, based on what I've learned, this is what most people need is to make that kind of leap from holding back and not wanting to risk the relationship and not saying things that might annoy or frustrate or create tension In relationships, to move in across that impasse to being more direct, whilst also being able to show that sort of high level of personal care with your clients. I
Finola Howard 11:11
think also, there is something else in your book. It reminds me of this idea that a lot of these coaches don't realize that they are the prize. So just to poke at that a little bit, because I asked the question of you about do you think that people know what it means to be professional? You immediately talked about transformation, and then I what came to me was the word bravery, or it doesn't mean that they're not brave enough. And I'm not sure that is it, because to be professional, to actually, to sit in the world, to say, I can bring you transformation makes you appreciate that you are the prize that helps them achieve that transformation, and that moves you into this, you know, owning your space piece, which leads us back to the name of your book, but you understand what I mean about this link with professionalism. Because many people enter this space who may not what we would have called 2030, years ago, doing your time, they kind of fall into this, do a course and learn about coaching, and they and they don't necessarily have the skill sets that you would have learned by doing your time in a professional organization. Or do you think I'm being unfair?
Chris Marr 12:29
Potentially, there's two things that come there's two or three things that come to mind here. Let me, let me talk through and see what lands, what sticks. I think you do have a spectrum between timidness and fearlessness. So what we want to do is just generally swing the pendulum towards fearlessness away from timidness. Timidness is not an attractive quality, generally speaking for professionalism. You do want to speak confidently like you want to be convicted and committed to your expertise and your ideas. You don't want to communicate or turn up with your clients in a way that creates more doubt in their mind about the thing that they're doing with you, right? They should feel more clear, more confident, more committed, and so we have to be very careful about how we turn up, how we might be accidentally diminishing our authority because we're not communicating in an effective way that creates confidence in the client, right? So this timidness along to fearlessness, this we're trying to, I think we're trying to walk across that spectrum to be more fearless, which is and and what I mean by that is that we can step into any situation and feel confident that we can handle it well, because our skills will show up. Secondly, I'll share three things. The second thing is these. I don't think they're concentric circles, but these like us, almost like a Venn diagram, but with three circles together. So if you imagine that the three circles are confidence, and then overlapping the circle in the middle would be competence, and then another over another overlapping circle at the other end would be Ego. Okay, so we've got this these, this idea that if we want to speak in absolutes or speak confidently about our expertise, or speak confidently about a promise that I can make for the transformation that I can help you achieve in your business or your life or your professional career, whatever that might be. I can do that in a way where I feel I believe in my ability to do it, and I know that I know how to do it right. I've got the skills, so I've got the competency, the skill and the confidence to do it. The people that get it wrong go between the other two circles, which is ego and competence. In other words, I know what to do, and I'm always right. That's not it. So the way that we approach it is that I believe in myself and my ability to achieve these results of this transformation. I know what skills I have that can be useful here, but I'm actually also prepared for the. Not to be a fit. I'm also prepared for to be wrong under some circumstances. It's called grounded confidence. It's not fueled with ego. It's fueled with actual skill acquisition and skill development that then provides the confidence. And I think a lot of people get this wrong, where they say, Oh, I don't feel confident. And I say, well, what's the skill you need to develop to feel confident in moments like this? Because once we get the skill and once we get all the organizations that we're in, and once we get all these training programs that we're in, it is literally about skill acquisition. And this is the third thing that maybe speaks to what you're saying, is that the unfair piece that we might be unfair or treat people unfairly, is everybody has the ability to learn skills like there's no such thing as natural talent. There's but there is something called deliberate practice, our ability to pick a skill, focus on it, develop it. Anybody can do that, if they have the motivation to do so, so you don't, you know, anybody can be great at anything, if they're willing to put in the time and the focus and the intention into developing specific skills,
Finola Howard 16:14
no such thing as natural talent, right? Say more. Well,
Chris Marr 16:21
there is, I mean, any, every study that you look at, there's most, I mean, there's when you peel it back. It might sound like this superficial story about somebody who, like, was born like, you know, take Tiger Woods, for example. He had a golf club in his hand when he was nine months old. You could say he came out of the womb like, ready to play golf. But the truth is, is, like his dad put a golf club in his hand and it was a toy to begin with. Begin with. Then he just got hundreds and hundreds of hours and tons of practice and support and guidance and feedback and coaching, and became a great golfer. And so, you know, everybody, and I think this is like, debunks this idea. Anybody listening to this podcast today should be able to have the confidence in themselves to acquire more skills, to become better, and actually let go of the narrative that just because you aren't good at something doesn't mean that you can't be good at something. Just because you can't sing doesn't mean that you can't learn how to sing. Just because you can't have difficult conversations with your clients doesn't mean that you couldn't learn the skills on how to do that and feel more confident in that area,
Finola Howard 17:24
so that that is immediately reassuring to anybody listening
Chris Marr 17:29
100% like, Yeah,
Finola Howard 17:31
another question for you. There's a tendency in coaches to keep learning so that they don't have to step forward. It's like, I just get this extra qualification or this extra method. Talk to us about that. Oh,
Chris Marr 17:44
yeah. So this is like knowledge versus skill, right? Which is knowing versus doing, which is like a real potential crutch for a lot of people, skill development isn't knowledge like skill development is your ability to do the thing, to practice, the thing, to get into the actual kind of high stakes environment of the thing. So, yeah, I'd agree with that. I don't know, I don't know that qualifications are the path to success in that if we were to do it, it should absolutely be about skill, like acquiring skills or developing skills. So I mean, there are, I'm sure, many coaching qualifications that require hundreds of hours of deliberate practice, for example, that would be, in my book, a good match. And so we just gotta watch that. We don't. I think, when I think about this question, I think knowledge and skills. I think knowing and doing two separate things, we can do the both at the same time. But the other thing that I think about a lot as well is, are you spending more time in other people's ideas, or are you spending more time developing your own ideas? In other words, a lot of people spend too much time in other people's books and other people's ideas, and it's okay to spend time there, especially if you want to get foundational knowledge about what's happening in that space. But I think you need to very quickly move out of that box into a box which is and how do I turn this into my own thing? How do I bring that together and maybe build on that thing, or bring in, like other ideas into this? So I do think that there's a balance between how much time we're spending in courses and programs and other people's ideas, and what percentage of time am I spending on developing my own thing? And I would say that that for me, it's far more important that I feel like I'm developing my own ideas and my own frameworks and my own I like, like creating work of my own. Seneca talks about this in his books. He says, How much longer are you going to spend reading from other people's notebooks? Isn't that about time? Isn't it about time that you created something of your own? I think about that a lot. Like, I think that there's, there's time for other people's ideas, but if you want to do something like meaningful, I think it's important to think, Well, how do I create my own work in all of this,
Finola Howard 20:11
my own impact on the world? I mean, I wrote, I was writing some notes for a client just before we came on this call, and that's exactly what I was speaking about. But just, I just want to take this idea another step forward, which is, it's not like we're talking about skill acquisition, but there's a point where, where I often see coaches continuing to learn, learn, learn, as we've just been talking about, so as to avoid marketing themselves. Okay, and what's interesting about your background is you're not just a business coach. You worked with someone who wrote the book literally called they ask you answer, which was about, you know, web, how to write copy for website, how to actually build a system where people you can attract your clients to you. It's a book that I recommend to everybody, Marcus Sheridan. They ask you answer, and you spend a lot of time with working with Marcus and working to this formula to develop stuff. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And in fact, we're probably talking about your story, about this exact same topic and how you moved out of that,
Chris Marr 21:25
right? So yeah, Marcus and I are good friends. We're business partners, and we've worked together for about 10 years, like way before the book came out. They ask you answer, but that's ultimately where I cut my teeth. As a coach. I went from working so I taught and trained and coached the ask you answer to, like, literally hundreds of businesses all over the world. And there was a period in my career where I went from teaching, you could say, like solopreneur, like micro businesses, some small businesses, and then I went, I shifted gears, like I went from first gear to fifth gear, and went to join Marcus as we built out a new coaching business in America, where it went from like, into these much larger businesses, where there's, like, large marketing teams, large sales teams, large leadership teams. And everything shifted for me, and that is really where I got, like, when we think about everything we've been talking about with skill acquisition and deliberate practice and where the book came from. It was ultimately, through those, like literally 1000s of hours of coaching in that environment that I was able to kind of really figure out what I was capable of in that that stage of my career. So it was that was to me, there's a there's a few lessons in there, but one that definitely sticks is, and it's something I've done for my whole life. I still, still kind of unpacking it a little bit, but when I talk to my clients about it, I should, like, I just try to get as much from everything that I'm doing. So if I'm going to do hundreds of hours of coaching a year for another company, you're you, I'm going to be recording every call, I'm going to be like sharing every lesson, I'm going to be documenting every mistake. I'm going to be unpacking it all, you know, I'm going to be getting as much from the experience as I can, whereas, like somebody else doing the exact same job in parallel with me, might get 20% of what I got out of it. So I'm like, and why?
Finola Howard 23:18
Why are you like that? Where did that come from? Because I think that's that was one of the things that struck me in our first conversation together, the fact that you have this really pragmatic approach and that conscious, deliberate effort of extracting the greatest value from every experience that you have, like like, if we were to stop speaking and leave people with that idea that you, if you could consciously extract the greatest value out of everything that you do, you would transform your life,
Chris Marr 23:52
right? It's about growth. It's about me wanting to grow as a person like you mentioned this earlier, this idea that as coaches, there's this, like, propensity to continue learning all the time. We're doing a course within an art certification. We're doing whatever. But I would argue you're not actually working on the stuff that actually matters. So, like, so what I mean by that is you're not working on you getting better. Like, what's the stuff that you struggle with that you should be working on and getting better at like Jim Rohn talks about this idea of like you work harder on yourself than you do in your job. What he really means is, what are the things that you are afraid of? What are the what things do you find difficult? What kind of things are you like lacking confidence in? And get to work on that stuff. Get a therapist, get a coach, figure it out, put yourself in difficult conversations, say yes to the hard projects that are going to push you outside of your comfort zone. Like, and get as much from this experience as possible, like, if you're going to do it, do it, like, if you're going to be there, be in it. And it's like trying to extract like you. I do have this. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but professional development, or personal development, has been my life since I was a teenager, since I was 13 or 1414, years old, but that took me to like, kind of like a conference for kids type of thing. So it's always kind of been there, except it's sort of matured from reading all the books. Is, if you're watching the video, you see like a selection of books behind me, but actually very more kind of in the last 10 years or so, I'd say, since about 2015 or 2016 realizing that the best work that I could do was on me. Like, why am I why do I suck at this? Why do I feel resistant to these ideas. Why do I have an opinion about that? Why don't I like that person? Why is it, you know, like trying to figure out, work on all of that stuff, I don't know that there's a book or a certification or a course you can do that would even be close to you, like, help you figure that stuff out, other than you asking hard questions and like putting yourself in difficult situations where you have to figure out and so I do think there's something there about this idea that as coaches, growth isn't about learning more stuff, that it's also about actually learning about who you are in all of this and growing through your difficult stuff. And that actually, I would say, is way more valuable when it comes to helping other people through their tough stuff that they're going through as well.
Finola Howard 26:34
But I think people can smell that they get
Chris Marr 26:36
Yeah, we're back to like, knowing versus doing, aren't we? Yeah. Do you want a coach that thinks that the smartest person in the room because they've read all the books and done all the courses and know all the frameworks inside out? Or do you want to work with someone that's really grounded in themselves and can help you work through like a difficult decision that you have to make to sack your business partner you've been friends with for 20 years and how to, you know, like, all the emotional stuff that comes with that, or do you want somebody that's going to give you, like, a step by step guide on how to fix it? You know, there's,
Finola Howard 27:09
I love that. Thank you for that. There's another thing that really struck me, and I said this to you when we were chatting, which was, as I read the book, I started to see that you feel, and I looked at your stuff, I said, I said this to you, that you feel different to me in this conversation than the person who wrote the book. And we chatted about that, because from having written a book myself, I know like you, as I wrote the book, I was healing myself, healing something in myself, and so that I was fundamentally changed myself at the end of the book, I'm no longer the person who started writing the book and the person who finished writing the book, and then it's and now what, and what I felt from well, I'll stop speaking and Say, how do you what's your response to that,
Chris Marr 28:02
right? The I would say, like, I pretty much the same as what you've experienced. I think once the book was done, it was done, and you know, what's there's something quite interesting about how I think about it. Like, one day I want to take that book out of print. Like, I want those ideas to be obsolete at some point. Like, I want to be thinking differently about the whole thing. There's chapters in that book where people ask me about them that I'm like, I just think entirely different about that thing. Now, it doesn't mean that what's in the book is wrong or that somebody won't we didn't get value from it. It's just that I don't necessarily fully agree with my take on it back then, and so I'm quite happy. In fact, I think the like I would worry. I would be worried if my ideas haven't evolved or changed, or my opinions haven't evolved or changed two or three years since writing the book like that would actually be my biggest fear in all of this. And so, yeah, I mean, once the book was done, it was out into the world, and I was like, I think a big part of it for me was about like, let's give that stuff away, because if I get rid of that, I can actually work on bigger things. I can work on my next set of ideas. It's the challenge to, like, now that that stuff's done, I can't I'm not this. I don't want to go I want to go into something new. I want to start developing new ideas, or, you know, challenging myself to think of something new to to bring to the world. So, yeah, pretty similar to what you said.
Finola Howard 29:31
I remember doing a reading for my own book, and then, and the introduction was, and these are all of Finola ideas. And I went, No, don't give me that introduction. These are not all of my ideas on this subject. This is a snapshot of time on a small space that I'm speaking yes,
Chris Marr 29:53
100% Yeah. This is just what I felt like was appropriate to put the book. It's definitely not everything. Yeah. That's yeah.
Finola Howard 29:59
Laugh. The other thing that, really I walked away with, and it made me act, take an action, which you like, is you can really see in what you're doing, the influence of what you shared with me. Of you actively following the work of the Stoics and with the starting point, the daily stoic and right, just share with you, because he that Ryan Holiday has been in my ether for a long time, and the work of the stoics has been kind of sneaking up on me for years, but now I am signed up to the daily stoic, and it changed my daily practice. So thank you for that, Chris. But talk to everybody about this, because the thing that in such a short space of time already is this idea of action. Because I think one of the things an overlap between me and you, perhaps, is tackling the space, tackling the stuff that makes us, that stops us from acting, to move us into action. But I'm going to hand it to you. Let's talk about the stoics. So yeah, I mean, what
Chris Marr 31:07
we're talking about here is, like, people who lived 2000 years ago, who have written and documented their lives, or, like, what, like this. It's actually incredible how accessible their writings are, and how similar their lives were, even though you could argue like just lifestyle is significantly different, but it's same stuff, right? Dealing with difficult people, dealing with gossipy people, dealing with politics, dealing with people who make decisions outside of your control, dealing with anger, resentment, sadness, love, death, like these are timeless feelings and timeless ideas that we all need to like, arguably, work on, to improve on. And I think that the stoics struggled with this stuff. They figured out a bunch of stuff, which was great, and they shared it with us and wrote about it and help us, you know, understand how we can live not just a better life, a more virtuous life, but also, like a happy like, how can you just be happy in the chaos of living life in 2025 and beyond? You know, like one of the biggest challenges we have is that we want to control everything, right? We want to control everything from our kids switching the lights off when they leave a room to the politicians who make decisions that affect our day to day lives and our businesses and the Stoics tell us to focus on what's inside your control and not outside it, right? And the reason for that is because that's where your happiness is your happinesses and your ability to have agency in your day to day. And there's 100 other lessons that we learn from the stoics. But the reason I picked it up was because I didn't know who I was, like my the work that I was doing was to figure out who I am in the world, like, who am, who am I? In all of this? I was very doubtful about my own opinions and like, what I thought and how I felt, and I was very people pleasy And very, kind of, like, easy going. And there was, you know, people I was hanging out with, and things I was doing, and all the things I was saying yes to were not making me happy. And that piece of work has that just never ends, of course, but this goes back about 10 years ago, where I just knew there was I had an experience that helped me see that I actually don't know who I am and what I want. And it really triggered this idea that again, we're sort of back to one of the themes I've mentioned already, which is, instead of looking into the external world for all the answers and the courses in the books, I had to go inward. I had to really dig in. And so this is where the daily the stoics helped me a lot. As much as I was reading the books. The information was helping me, like, figure out what I agreed with and what I wanted and all this. Like, what are my own values, and how do I want to turn up in the world? And, like, how can I be happy and all of this, and what decisions do I want to make, and figuring out, just, you know, really, just thinking deeply about who I am, which has, in turn, helped me to be, you know, better in situations like this, and speaking to people and working with people and all the rest of it, and a good dad and the good husband and, you know, being okay with my imperfections and my vulnerabilities and my the things I'm not very good at, and not, you know, not comparing myself to other people and all this stuff like I can't overemphasize just how everything that you're struggling with in your day to day, work and life, the stoics struggled with it too, even though it was 2000 years ago and Marcus, Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and all the others they all. All had just really great wisdom for us to take into the modern day, to help us navigate all these challenges that we come up against day to day. So, you know, I could talk for hours about Stoics, but on a day to day basis, they just helped me to be more present and happier and just be more self aware about what's showing up for me and why I feel that way, and what that what that means.
Finola Howard 35:30
Can I ask you if we're thinking about daily practice, because that's a daily practice, everything we've been speaking about is how we approach our day and our lives and consciousness about what we do, what can you share with us, what you do as a daily practice to help you be better?
Chris Marr 35:48
Yeah, of course. So I got like, day architecture is, is critical. I like, there's a couple of things I do that are might borderline obsessive, but like, so number one is my calendar is my number one plate. Like, I live in my calendar. I don't live in to do lists. The calendar is the key. So the calendar is like, where your habits should be there, like, the things that you want to spend time on should be in your calendar. If I look at your calendar today, I should see everything that you are doing in your day, whether that's going to the gym or doing it swimming, you know, whatever it might be, it should all be in there to the point where I've got it marked out when I'm writing and when I'm reading, and what I want to do, where I want to spend my time. So the first thing is, is like, what do I want to spend time on? And when am I going to spend time doing that thing? And it's not on the calendar. It's so easy for other things to like be a priority instead of those things. That's the first thing and but of course, that's a pre like. The precursor to that is figuring out what you do want to spend your time on, right and what's going to be good for you. So I journal every day. I do Julia Cameron's morning pages. That's been a big part of my journal and practice for a few years now, that was a step up from doing something like daily stoic. The daily stoic is a very prompt based journal, like you write a little bit about a thing that's different every single day, whereas morning pages is three long hand pages from no prompt at all. But most of that is like, I've talked about my journal practice before, and one of like, nobody's ever going to read my journals. Certainly I don't read them either. But, like, my biggest fear sometimes is that somebody only gets the first two pages of my journal, and it's the bit where all the head trashes, and then they'll get the third part, the third page, which is the bit where I kind of resolve it all for myself, you know. So, like, they just see this, like, evil, demented person who's got all this head trash and is, like, thinking negatively about a lot of stuff, and then the resolve piece is always the end for me. So I end up, like, like, I can't say any other way than just, like, working through my stuff, right? And like, I've got this in and when I married Cara, my wedding vow says, There's a line in my wedding vows that says, I'll look after me for you if you'll look after you for me. And that responsibility is something that I don't take lightly, that I have, you know, I've got the therapist, I've got the coach. I try to, like, get to the gym and exercise. I do my journaling I'd read. I'm doing the work to try and be the best person I can be, because that's the job. I can only do that work. I can't expect my wife to do that for me. I've got to try and do the work that helps me to turn up to be better. And so the journaling practice is absolutely key. I try to do it every single day, even to the point where I've got, like a mini journal just just since we're talking about it, I have it like a mini entry, just for this episode, right? Which is this, this call today was like, What's my intention? Like, how, like, I'm thinking about, I have to sort of train myself to be like, take two minutes before meeting you today and say, What's my intention for this next hour or so that I'm going to be spending with you, you know? And like, it's just, I know that I need to write that to myself. I need to take the moment. And a lot of people are like, back to back meetings. You know, every day meeting, meeting, they don't have time to just reset and think, who do I want to be? How do I want to turn up? What does the best version of me look like in all of this? And I find writing stuff out helps me a lot. Like the writing pieces is absolutely critical. So the journaling in the morning is just the Julia Cameron's morning pages is, like, one of the, one of the best forms for me, I would say, I think for most other people, might find it quite overwhelming to begin with, but once you get into it, you find that it's just, is it flow? Oh, the amount of the clarity, the ideas that I get from it, about for my business, like, it's some of it can be very practical. Like, I'm like, oh yeah. Yeah, I've got to do this thing, Josh. Josh Waitzkin has this, really, this cool thing that I hooked on to, which is, he calls it the MIQ, which is the most important question. So he finishes every work day with a most important question. Just writes it down, and then he forgets about it, and he goes to bed and he gets up in the morning. That's the first thing he journals about. And if you did that fifth, like, 365, days of a year, like you can just imagine, like the how much growth there is in it for you, if you're coming to the page every day for 30 minutes to really address a question or a challenge or work yourself through something, so it's just a massive unlock.
Finola Howard 40:40
Well, what that says to me is, you know, one of the very common things that we would hear from clients is this idea of feeling stuck, of being stuck, regardless of whether you're a solopreneur or a leader in of a team, it can be the thing of, I'm stuck and I don't know what to do if you are doing that practice. You would never be stuck.
Chris Marr 41:02
Well, at least when you came to me, you wouldn't say you're stuck. You would tell me what you've been thinking about and what you think your options might be, and you might have some actual thoughts of your own on the thing. It's actually, it's a really interesting point, because actually frustrates me as a coach, when someone comes to me with, like, the surface level problem. It frustrates me to the point where I'll tell my client what they need to do next time, which is, don't come to me with the first thought. Come to me because you've worked through it and you think you might have what you think is going to be the right thing to do. I'm happy to talk to you then. So I do challenge people to like to think prep stuff, yeah, do think about your own stuff. Like, find your own agency in all of this.
Finola Howard 41:45
It's lazy not to actually, right? Yeah, it's very
Chris Marr 41:49
empowering to, like, feel like you have agency, but these are just tools Finola as well. Like, when I say to people, like, I have clients with him, like, Oh, I feel overwhelmed today, I will literally ask them, What would you what tools do you default to when you're feeling overwhelmed, right? Like, don't I'm not here. I'm not going to save you from this. You need to know how to deal with these daily current things are going to come up. Like, you're going to be alive for a long enough time for these to come up hundreds of times. You need tools. You need default solutions to these issues that you're having. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, happy to talk through it with you, figure out what those tools are going to be with you. But now it's over to you to make sure that you can default to these tools when you feel like this. And I think this is, I guess, it drips, and you're just saying out loud, really for the first time, I think that I do try to teach my clients how to do this stuff without telling them to journal. I'm saying, figure out what the tool is that you need here to overcome this challenge if it's going to come up again in the future. So I think I'm trying, I am dripping it into the work that I'm doing to help them see that they have that agency. Not
Finola Howard 43:01
only that, though, Chris, you are also teaching them to empower themselves to be better at solving their own problems, which in turn makes you have to be better again for the next stage. So it's always that not only does your client grow because of this empowerment, but you are forced to grow also, like it's
Chris Marr 43:19
100% that's exactly what it's all about. It's like you want to elevate people. That's our job. Help them feel more capable, competent, confident. That's what it's all about. If you can help people feel like that, then there will be a transformation for them in their life, and maybe they won't need you at some point in the future. You know, they've they can upgrade themselves to the point where they they can, they can move on.
Finola Howard 43:46
Well, if you, in turn, are transforming yourself in the process, then everyone's moving,
Chris Marr 43:51
right? True. I mean, this is good point. People maybe stay with you for quite a while, right? They could stay with you, working with you, with you, for years,
Finola Howard 44:00
as long as you keep growing, yeah, what would you like people to walk away with today?
Chris Marr 44:05
Oh, I don't know. I think there's probably a question here, which is really, when you I don't know, how many topics have we talked
Finola Howard 44:12
about? Well, here, here's another question, because we have four copies of Chris's book. Oh, what would you like them to do to get a book?
Chris Marr 44:22
Where do your audience typically watch or listen to the podcast?
Finola Howard 44:27
They listen to it on YouTube or, well, it could be between. It's across all platforms, right?
Chris Marr 44:33
So why don't we say something like, if you leave a comment saying, like, what's the most valuable thing that you took from the episode today, and what you're what action you're going to take. I think that's been a big theme for us today, right? It's like there's this there's this idea that there's a forward momentum in your life, your career, that you have agency to be better, to improve. I think that seems to be coming through pretty strong. So I think the challenge should be, what's one thing you're going to change? About your day to day that is going to help you to develop and grow. And then if you put a comment, send you a book. I
Finola Howard 45:09
love it. That's a great way to finish. Thank you so much for your time. That
Chris Marr 45:13
was great. I had a great time. I'm glad we got to talk about all these things that are important, and that's
Finola Howard 45:17
it for this episode, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Make sure to connect with Chris on LinkedIn, and don't forget to get in with your chance to win a copy of his amazing book. Check out the show notes to find out more. Thank you for listening to your truth shared. And if you enjoy this episode, please do rate and review it in your favorite app at love the podcast.com/your truth shared, it really helps spread the word and helps me to continue to invest in this podcast.
