Brain by Design

People pay for speed.

I don't agree with everything everyone says. But I'm always asking: What can I learn here? How can I make it my own?

One thing I keep coming back to is speed.

People will pay if you can get them a result more quickly.

So what does that mean for me? I think about it like this: I'm trying to create an experience that transfers knowledge and skills that took me twenty-two years to build, and do it in twelve months.

That's the work. Continuously finding ways to help coaches internalize, digest, and make useful what we do: translate brain and behavioral science into practical coaching tools.

Your market will tell you the truth if you listen.

My question is always: What are you learning?

If your market feedback is "too much information", stop giving them all the information. Pull back on the structure.

If milestones and stepping stones aren't landing and prospects are saying, "I don't even know what you're talking about", listen to that.

Your market is going to tell you what they want. The people you're working with will show you what's most valuable to them.

Trust them. Trust the conversation. Trust the data they're giving you.

Then adapt accordingly.

Date people before you marry them.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from Sabri Suby was this: we rush the relationship with prospects way too soon.

We meet someone, have one conversation, and immediately say, "Book a call." That's trying to marry them before we've even dated them.

We think that the intro session is the dating. But to a prospect? It's intimidating. They're wondering if they're going to get cornered into something.

Here's what I do instead: I let people know upfront that we're going to have a coaching conversation. We'll explore whether it's a good fit. If it is, we talk specifics. If it's not, they leave with resources and clarity.

No pressure. No rush. Just a real conversation.

Start believing in what your offer is.

The value you provide. The service you deliver. The transformation you create.

The more you do it, the more you see the effects of it. And part of it starts with the feedback.

When someone says, "I want to know more", that little bit of feedback, you're already sensing value.

Then you start delivering. You start actually working with people. And they give you that feedback on how valuable it genuinely was for them.

That's when your confidence in your value starts to grow.

Here's what I've learned: It isn't about you. It's about the vehicle. It's about the system. It's about the offer. It's about the journey they're gonna take with you.

It's actually ultimately about them.

And you have the gift of facilitating that.

Took me a long time to believe this, but selling is serving.

When you show up fully and put out an offer to folks, when you really say, "This is what it is, this is what it can do for you, this is what I've discovered", the level of confidence will grow over time.

Because of the feedback. Because of the felt sense of that value.

But here's what's critical: It is up to them to make that decision.

If I make the decision for them, if I rob them of that decision. I've done them a disservice in some fundamental way.

That's why you show up fully. Then you put the ball in their court and say, "I'm here to answer any questions".

When I'm in a call with someone who's interested but on the fence, I feel an immense amount of freedom for it to go any way and anywhere it needs to go to really explore if we can meet the need they're expressing. It's wide. It's very freeing.

You can't predict what people are gonna bring up. You don't want to. You want to actually get curious. Ask them what you can and can't promise. I want you all to feel that kind of freedom in your conversations.

There's a curiosity gap we're trying to create, where someone says, "I get what you mean, but I don't fully understand it, and I'd like to know more." That's the sweet spot. It makes sense to have a second conversation. It's just a logical next step.

Be explicit: "You may or may not want to work with us. I don't know that. We'll just have a call. Let's have a conversation about what your needs are and where you're going."

Saying it out loud, "This isn't a high-pressure sales call, we're just having a conversation," lets people relax and actually share their real challenges.

When people ask us what we do, how do we answer that question? The thoughtfulness we put into how we answer matters a fair amount. What's the thing that actually connects, that feels like "Wow, that's interesting. I want to know more" versus "Oh, you're a coach. Cool."

This is a mistake I made early on. I used to try to have the whole conversation in three minutes. What we're actually doing is setting up a real conversation. We're just connecting to see if there's enough interest to have a second conversation or not.

Is there a way to strengthen the ACC and its risk analysis abilities, and not have the DLPFC jump in so quick?

Yes. Let's take a step back into the land of neuroplasticity.

Can you strengthen any area of the brain? Emphatically, yes. The brain is much more malleable than we sometimes realize.

It is about getting the brain to play together well as a high-functioning team.

It isn't necessarily the case that certain areas of the brain are more important than others. The brain has these tensions in it, and it is about the brain working well together. Integrated. An integrated machine.

Dave Eagleman calls the brain a team of rivals, which I like. It brings to mind that the brain has these competing members of the team that can be at odds with each other.

I was using an app called Productive to track my sleep. It was one of the habits I was building at the time. I was trying to get to bed by ten o'clock. The operationalization of the habit was to get in bed by ten o'clock.

Then I hadn't looked at the data. I was just tracking it each day when I did it.

Lo and behold, I look at the data at the end of the month.

It was thirty percent. I had hit the habit thirty percent of the time.

That's really revealing. Brains are like positive illusion factories. They really want you to believe that you're doing better than you are.

One of the things that chips away at confidence is breaking promises with yourself.

Most of us have had the experience of setting out on a goal, some kind of behavior change we're trying to make. A new exercise routine, a new eating routine, a new meditation routine, a new writing routine, a new reading routine.

Some of this is starting things. Some of this is cutting things out. Cutting down on Netflix, cutting down on the Ben & Jerry's at night, cutting down on soda.

And then we've watched ourselves not do the thing we intended to do.

There's a difference between assuming that we have to be perfect to build self-trust and realizing that our self-trust is about resilience and learning.

When we inevitably fall off the wagon, when we don't do a thing that we intended to do, the way to thread that needle is to get confident in your ability to bounce back.