Vibe Check with @dawufi | episode 10 with @coachcoale
Aired Date
September 12, 2024
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Series
Vibe Check
Episode
Vibe Check with coachcoale
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https://youtube.com/live/rCh0PW8tYk0what's up everyone you're listening to vibe check with me dewoofie and we've got an incredible episode today i first got to meet our guest coach kevin cole through friend of the show les gray since getting to know him i've come to deeply respect and appreciate both his knowledge and ability to communicate on topics like authenticity vulnerability and trust there's a ton of knowledge in the episode today so i hope you can take some of that with you on your own personal journey as well now without further ado here's vibecheck 10 with coach cole
we're back with vibecheck yes i'd say about 60% of the people do the clap with me we're here with coach cole i'm so excited you can tell we're all smiles we've been a great conversation already introduced me through the legendary les who is also a a guest on the podcast and i'm so happy to have you here man i think i'm i'm trying to do a little more introductions when when we do this and sort of my perspective on why i think it's really special that you're here and we had a couple different conversations initially around education but then after that some other some other topics which i thought were really interesting so you're you know a coach i think you have some incredible incredible thought processes which have already helped me a lot even during this this time of sort of getting my podcast going and i thought it was really well one i just think it's valuable to share valuable things with my audience but two you also have a very interesting presence on farcaster which obviously this podcast is farcaster coded so with that i will let you introduce yourself though and tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do
yeah david thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here so my name is kevin cole or coach cole i do three things so i'm an executive performance coach for individuals and teams i help them optimize i'm a founding coach for two ai companies and i'm a member of an organization called execu insight and that allows me to give talks trainings and seminars to industry leaders around the country most of the coaching in terms of my coaching journey that i do is in the space that we're talking about so like frontier forecaster frontier tech ai crypto web three is where i do most of my coaching and what i love about that is i have the privilege the huge privilege of being able to support individuals that are building the future and then
that hello
and i find that i find that very inspiring so that's what i get to do as a coach before coaching i spent about fifteen years working in schools so i was a dean in some of the most fantastic independent schools in the country and that took me from atlanta to alexandria to la where i spent a handful of years where my daughter was born and then north carolina i earned a master's in organizational leadership from columbia university undergrad from the university of virginia while i was at virginia i played lacrosse and had the chance to win a national championship successfully win a national championship i i should say with my teammates in 02/2006 so that was a huge moment for me as a student athlete the culmination of a lot of goals that i had but it's also something i bring into my work now as a coach working with individuals and teams helping them think more like elite athletes or elite sports organizations and i think very much life is a team sport i think like any great team sport it really matters who you get a chance to connect with so i'm thrilled i'm grateful a that you and i had a chance to link up when i had some questions about montessori education for one of the organizations that i'm supporting also to see where this conversation will take us even if i've learned anything as a coach it's that conversations can be powerful and go anywhere and so i think the same is true here i i think i have a sense of what we'll talk about but of course i imagine it will unfold
yeah and i feel the same way i i feel like a deep presence when you speak that like sort of grounds me which i i hope the readers will sense as well both both directly from you where i'm sure they'll get it and hopefully from my side as well but but we did meet through farcaster we met through we met through lesgray one of my one of the connections i'm i'm most happy to have been able to make and i have this sense i think firecaster as a microcosm but also broadly in sort of the world that people are very very frequently looking for more authentic interactions with each other and this is sort of a pendulum that swings is sort of my my take after reading through history and you know there was there was an error there of of very whitewashed you know marketing and and centralization both on the tech and sort of storytelling side which which played out as exactly as you would but now you know to get a little meme y if you think about like you know bratz summer or like these kamala coconuts there's there's a lot of things going on where it's you know i i guess the the trite way to possibly say it for on a on a podcast like vibe check is it's just kind of vibes now but i think there's something very deep there that i think is is really interesting that's happening so with that in mind i would love to hear a little bit about how you found farcaster what you've been doing there and anything interesting that has sort of kept you around in a world where i think both individuals and brands and companies are looking to engage in sort of a different manner than possibly have over the what we'll call the the web two arc of the iphone launch to the day something like that right and i i i suspect you'll have very unique perspective having coached having coached some companies in in in how to you know engage in these authentic practices but i'd also love to hear some sort of your personal experience on how things have been and and what you've been enjoying or you know also completely open to things that have not gone well
it's a great question so i'll begin with a number so i'm 39 years old now and i began social media at 37
long long long time lester yeah
so i have a lot of wisdom on this subject i i got into social so right about the time when i was transitioning out of working in schools and and doing the coaching thing
in a more full time capacity i started out coaching individuals in the evenings and on the weekend i wanted to coach people that inspired me so at that point what i was noticing is something interesting like a lot of the smartest folks that i knew were heading in the direction of ai crypto well more crypto and web three then and defi and you know more lately ai although some people have stayed the course as you know and so but those those individuals that i was supporting said look you really gotta get on twitter you really gotta get on linkedin most of my coaching friends were saying you gotta get on on linkedin and and so i started building out a profile not having any idea what i was doing just sort of watching what people were doing and on twitter and kind of noticing that it was
like trying to figure out kind of in in many ways i'm still doing this trying to figure out like what is gonna land well with people and so i started following some people that people that i supported were following or engaging in conversation and i think this was about two years ago maybe a little bit less dan posted something about forecaster on twitter and i was like well this is interesting this is a space that i really enjoy hanging out in i'm a nontechnical individual so i'm an outsider bringing that perspective but if if this is where a lot of the people that i like coaching hang out then it would make sense to hang out there so i sent him a a dm and basically said i'm a an executive coach i support ceos and founding teams many of them are in these spaces you know ai crypto web three i would love an invite got right back to me he said here you go so i sort of stumbled in and i don't know if you've ever had this moment where you're just sort of like what the hell am i doing here you walk into a space and it it you know you're sort of immediately confronted it's you imagine going back to middle school like walking in the dance and you're like oh okay here we are i'm in my challenge zone at the moment and and so i'm on farcaster you know engaging with with super smart individuals and and so i had a friend i'm not gonna throw them under the bus on this on this pod but i had a friend that said that reached out to me they see me as a more tech friendly individual in their life and they said i'm trying to learn microsoft excel and i'm like well i don't know how the hell to but you know i i know some people that i think might have a good answer to this so i posted this about two years ago i posted this on farcaster thinking why not yeah if somebody on farcaster can't answer this question then it can't be answered so this is like the most viral post that i've had i'm putting it in quotations okay so i think this is important because it sets the foundation for how you so i i this is what i posted i said asking for a friend truly where do you go to learn excel and the responses were unbelievable i'm gonna read some to a local excel training class in 1994
this is this is what last posted holy shit this made me fall out of my seat
see google search when i'm stymied but here's what's cool dan eventually responded and he goes i would imagine gpt spreadsheet is only a year or two off and so my my point in all of this david is that i think when you're new to a space how people treat you makes makes such an impression
you know how you're new to when you're new to a space how individuals treat you make such an impression for better and for worse i mean that impression can be positive or negative but how people those individuals treat you when you join in this case farcaster or an organization or a team
it it can have such a profound impact and so what i really appreciated about that was people were ribbing me and giving me a hard time and and to me that's a that's a sign of affection it's like there's humor there and i appreciate that and you know these folks have something to say but they're not taking themselves too seriously and one of the guys who started this took time to chime in and give me feedback and that has been consistent ever since so going on about two years now so i think your question about authenticity is really important because as a coach the number one thing for me is establishing trust if i can't establish trust with the person that i'm supporting we're we're not gonna get anywhere they're not gonna feel there's not gonna be psychological safety for them to be vulnerable and vulnerability is important or authenticity is important because it allows that individual to take good risks and when they're able to take good risks in the conversation that we're having they're able to to gain new awareness and once they have that then they have the ability to shift behavior if they want to so i think of it as the precondition for all good work you've gotta have authenticity because it helps build trust and that allows people to take good risks there was an interesting experiment i can't remember the details but they had two groups of people go through an interview process and one group like spilled coffee they made mistakes
the other group all buttoned up didn't do that which group do you think was likelier to get hired
i mean my gut says to go against my gut i'm gonna i'm gonna guess it's the coffee spillers
yeah because people saw them as human
right
and i think that's really important i think that's really important but that can be hard because you feel like you know what's at stake for you i don't i don't want people to judge me i don't want people to think that i'm i don't belong here or i can't hack it but oftentimes doing the opposite of what your inside voice is telling you is gonna get you where you wanna go
yeah pause for one second someone's at the door i'm back i'm so good alright we're back apologies for the interruption you said a lot of really incredible things in there i think in particular the idea of taking good risks really stood out to me because it's just such such great universal advice if i ever felt myself like being the real me whatever that whatever that stands for when i first showed up to broadcaster it did feel like a risk but it did feel like a place where or i was able to do so and i know that as the network gets larger it it feels more imposing i think for people joining the network to show up i suppose that a a larger and larger middle school dance is is possibly one way to frame that right like when when you're in a smaller school i mean maybe maybe when it's more intimate it can still feel just as just as alarming i suppose but but but i think taking good risks is is just so beautiful because you can think about it at a deep sort of personal level but to any founder who's building any sort of network that's building any protocol anything where something is interacting right where there's some sort of an exchange happening from technical node operators to you know social networks to customers and service providers this idea of creating a space where you can take good risks is something that i think is is really palatable and really poignant i do i do feel like i'm i'm showing up to a middle school dance sort of every day it's very frequently it's sometimes i feel like that's what most of my life is but i but i love some of those ideas that you tapped in on
i think as far as you know the coaching goes i'd like to talk or hear your thoughts a little bit more on
sort of what you're seeing you know in the space today what are some of the highest leverage points that you've you've worked with people on and obviously nothing's a replacement for signing up for the session for with coach cole but in an effort to sort of put wisdom into the universe and also have people you know potentially excited to work with you one on one or company on one however it's defined would love to hear how some of those things you were talking about i i assume there will be parallels between you know bringing yourself to the farcaster network and what you work on with with people on a day to day basis
yeah
well i let me ask you a question i wanna kick it back for a second when you hear the word coach what comes to mind
well i didn't know that you were a lacrosse champion it does explain quite a bit i i will be i will be honest in like my lack of assessment if that makes sense
right
because there are there are vince lombardi's that come to mind and i i think that's that's a pair or you know steve kerr's and phil jackson's and i i think that's probably a part of it
my therapist also comes to mind and i know that's not it but i know it's a part of it and i keep one foot in the traditional finance world where i used to work for a financial adviser and i've always sort of had the opinion and shared by what i would consider most very successful financial advisers that it's about 10% managing money and about 90% armchair therapist for your clients but only talking about money so so the all these images come to my mind i don't know and maybe it's fair maybe maybe the answer is it's all of it maybe the answer is none of it but but i hope that's enough of a basis to then kick it back to you again
okay okay no i think this is important because this is one of the most common questions i get david is what tell me what exactly is coaching and i i think this is you know if i asked an individual to draw a coach i think people would you know would pretty much like check off all the items on a rubric but it's i think we've made this too difficult honestly and so a lot of what i do is more in the direction of less in the direction of graduate school more in the direction of trade school
oh interesting
it is and i'll give you i'll tell you exactly how i i move through a coaching call with an individual and people listening people listening would you know this is something that they can they can use right away for themselves for the people that they work with it's it's simple it's not always easy but it's simple so i i think so i wanna go back for a second we talk about coach i think especially now it it you know like anything we can make it really complicated but as my friends in in farcaster know well you want something to be popular it usually doesn't begin by making it more complicated and so i think it's important to simplify things so the term coach actually goes back hundreds of years to europe where
wealthy individuals hired somebody in a horse and a buggy to travel a distance to teach them something and so that term that term came to describe the like i hired a coach the horse and buggy and then it came to describe the individual in there so getting coaching so fundamentally we're talking about an individual that you bring on to help you achieve your goals and so i like my introduction to coaching goes back almost four decades my dad was a strength and conditioning coach at the virginia military institute for almost forty five years maybe forty five years just retired shout out to pops and what i saw him do
more times than i could count was you know talk about authenticity establish trust with the person that you're working with get to know their goals their aspirations help them make progress towards those things reflect back things that help provoke awareness and shift behavior and then celebrate with them when they achieve the goals that they have so you know you mentioned so what's my definition of coaching there are basically three things k the first is it's gotta be co creative right you mentioned great coaches phil jackson okay you're neck of the woods phil jackson's a great coach phil jackson also had michael jordan so it's gotta it helps it's gotta be a cocreative process right you can't be a coach in isolation you have to be working with individuals i think that's probably an obvious point but it's one that's often overlooked hey and so i've gotta be in the practice of actively working with individuals i've also gotta be getting coaching myself which which i think is an important piece so that's the first point it's gotta be cocreative second piece is i'm working with individuals to help provoke awareness help them think differently about something that's a foundation of change an moment
and then the second piece and this is really difficult is once you have that awareness help them shift behaviors
that's it establishing a cocreative process working with somebody to help them think differently and do differently provoke awareness and shift behavior and so we talk about coaching i think about it like this or you mentioned therapy a therapist is excellent i'm very pro therapy myself i've had some amazing therapists in my life they're excellent at going into the past to make sense of the present coaching is much more about okay david where are you now where do you wanna go and tell me about that space in between and it's a little bit different than advising where i have expertise on something and i'm telling you i'm putting something on the table for you to consider it's different than mentorship where maybe i am a few steps ahead of you in life and i'm gonna reflect back to you some wisdom that i've gained different than consulting i study nothing but this thing i'm an expert at this thing and i'm gonna tell you what to do think about it you and i are getting in the car if i'm your coach i've got a contract with you to figure out where you wanna go where the hell do you wanna go do you wanna go west what does that look like are we going to sf we go into la what neighborhood within la and then throughout the journey i'm gonna be making sure hey are we still making progress towards the goals that you had great if not let's recontract so in a coaching call for me it always starts with some version of these three questions so what can people do listening to this immediately start asking these three questions first is what do you wanna work on words are important this is different than what do you wanna talk about we're not here to have a conversation we're here to do work and the heavy lifting by the way is on your side of the screen so that's the first question what do you wanna work on second question is why is this important this is a timing question i gotta understand as your coach why it's not possible to ignore this any longer
because once i understand why it's not possible then i understand the sense of urgency and why this is so important for you to take care of this thing now and then the last question is in in the time that you and i have what does success in this conversation look like so that's how we start a coaching call at the beginning mo i've done a lot of talking in this conversation but most of the conversations i have with individuals i'm i'm talking very little i'm listening asking questions reflecting back and then at the very end i say okay what are you taking away from our time today any key takeaways any key learnings and that last five minutes ten minutes is a magical moment because that's when people lock in that that new awareness yeah so that's that's an overview of how i operate there are excellent coaches out there by the way that do things differently so that's just that's my version of it that's what works for me you know i've worked with over 80 individuals spent over eight hundred hours working with these folks and and this is this is the thing that i've i keep coming back to because this is it's a really helpful structure for any any coaching conversation
no i love it that you lay you did laid out so much good stuff that it's hard for me
to get everything out but i wanna
i you're laying out so much good stuff that i don't i don't wanna like i how do i put this i'm very glad you're talking a lot one of my one of my goals in this podcast is really to share the wisdom that i've i've found through my own network that i think will be valuable to other people and and it's i'm very glad to hear and see that that you feel comfortable sharing those things but it's it struck me when you were talking about the process that it's it's like wildly unsurprising that you're interested in crypto actually because if you were to just to describe a technology that is you know cocreative and has some incentive structures to like change behaviors and like brings new awareness like you're very much describing a crypto network in many ways right like a lot of this coaching is actually i think even relevant down to protocol design where you want people working with each other you want people you know being able to be aware of what's happening which is effectively sort of the the verifiability or the the transparency transparency of blockchain data and then the incentive structures like the economics that go into it this is all very close parallel so really interesting to to hear that out loud from from you and then and then be very happy happily surprised that like it actually maps very closely to the way i think about a lot of things also on the growth side right because when i talk to people about growth or extending reach very frequently my advice is obviously not one to one but it it it involves a lot of relationship sort of management although it's often like out in the wild right it's it's it's probably not as deep as coaching but you know replying to people and tagging people in was a lot of the advice i gave to people who were trying to extend their reach ways to bring awareness to yourself and and storytelling is is a big part of i think of how at least on the you know sort of marketing and bd side i recommend people work on changing people's behaviors or bringing awareness to problems so i think that's all that all maps over very well
yeah i appreciate your i i just learned something in this conversation i like the way that you put growth as extending reach
yes yeah i don't i don't
i don't cosign vanity metrics which has not always put me in favor with everyone that i speak to especially in the web three growth community but i do very much feel that that there are genuine authentic ways to you know extend your reach connect with your audience and and help people with with the problem that you're solving and i don't think it has to be so adversarial i don't think it should be adversarial i think this is sort of a a byproduct like i was talking about of the way technology shifted over the past ten years but we're we're noticing a shift in other directions and i i think not to do too hard of a pivot but this is another one of the things that i had written down because we connected initially on on some montessori education topics when i was growing up extremely niche it felt how do i put this we were the weird kids is like the next way to put it right like yeah there was a lot of what people would call granola or crusty today and like that was kind of it
do those kids wear shoes at school what's going on there
yeah yeah exactly do those kids wear half shoes man things like that but as we move on and i think you're seeing you know i i i am a bit of an iconoclast but i'm i'm mostly sort of a we can make the world a better place type guy and that often ends up being sort of like speaking truth to power type lens that folks like yourself who've been involved with education now and then you know interacting with people younger than myself not to make myself sound too old at this point but there's a zeitgeist shift absolutely right in terms of what's been passed down through the generations that i think is really interesting so i don't wanna keep for too long i also try to be very cognizant of our listeners' time and you've given a lot of of of how would i describe it i i would describe it exactly the way you did i i would say it would be simple to digest but difficult to execute type information so very on brand but i'd love to hear just a little bit of your thoughts on how things are shifting in education and if if there's anything that then spills over into any of the other topics whether it be barcaster social media coaching how how those how that shift at the younger age has now impacted how we view the world i i suspect you'll have some thoughts there that i think could be enlightening to me at the very least and that's sort of my north star if i'm interested in something i ask ask it and then i hope my audience thinks it's cool afterwards
so the question just so i got it is like what what do i from my perspective working in schools like what what do i see shifting
what have you yeah what are you seeing shifting what has already shifted and has that have you seen any of that play out in in your day to day anywhere really
yeah well i think one of the i'm a huge fan of maria montessori i mean i think man was she a visionary i think part of what she got right was she understood that the real customer of schools is the kid
so we're gonna follow the kid we're literally gonna follow the kid and we're gonna make accessible the things that they wanna play with and then help teach them protocols that are useful for them that make them feel good right so after you take the blocks out you roll the mat back up and you put it i'm not telling you anything you don't know this is a thing you experienced it's good
to share with the audience though
but it's okay so it's it's this is a thing that it happens in a lot of spaces i don't want to be dismissive here i think there are some remarkable educators and schools out there and i've had the fortune of intersecting with many but i think this is a challenge in schools like who's the customer the kids are the customer it's not it and it we can fill that space with you know teachers administrators parents guardians but at the end of the day the most important the most sacred experience in this whole ecosystem is the kid and if if they have a positive experience then it they it is gonna be horizon expanding for them they come out of that school interested in more things greater depth of knowledge on the things that they already loved and and that's how you actually affect change and so in schools i i saw you know work really hard to prove that things necessarily work in schools but the one thing that i kept coming back to as an educator was is it obvious to the kids that i care about them i mean think about your own experience who's your favorite teacher it's an actual question for you who's your favorite teacher
who's my favorite teacher
put you on the spot here you have to name just one
i i had an incredible
i had an incredible what would it have been it would have been six to nine is how they group the ages at montessori's plaza
named sue who really really sort of run let me run wild this is a strong strong statement but that's where i got a lot of my what i would consider
at least for what i run into people who have got through similar experience differentiated sort of learning aptitude my sort of urban nature around digging deep into things was very much cultivated around that age funnily enough to your coaching point i had another star player on my team who was i was math and science he was english and history and we pushed each other but but that experience right it's it's hard it's hard to talk about teachers without talking about classmates and that that sort of triumvirate was was very much was quite a turning point for me as early as that was on in my education career
k so i think you hit something that's really important worth not jumping over everybody learns differently
everybody learns differently now what i think this means in terms of coaching is that those people then grow up to lead differently different combination of needs usual behavior stressors when our needs are unmet and so montessori what i love about montessori is that it has an appreciation for people learning differently and and i think that's something i try to practice in my coaching conversations that i try to be present you know there are a whole list of powerful questions that you can ask but i think the best advice that i got is just shut your mouth don't even think about the next question until the person in front of you stops talking
be that present imagine going into a bubble with people be locked in and great schools do that great educators do that i think great organizations do that too they have a presence and a focus we started the conversation talking about authenticity you know it it's a it's a thing that requires cultivation it takes work it's hard
yeah yeah i couldn't couldn't agree more it absolutely is i'm i'm it's i think it's at least from my perspective i i suspect you'll agree it's also a journey right i think we give this advice sometimes or we talk about these somewhat hand wavy topics and especially when i speak to other people and i'm giving you know my own version of coaching which is usually you know growth growth centric at least in in sort of a professional capacity i'm often reminding not only them reminding myself that that there isn't there isn't an end authentic destiny right there's just there's an end authentic destination there's there's only the process of learning about yourself and and learning how to communicate that more effectively it's a journey to authenticity and and it isn't really not a destination and i do get a little bit cranky at times when people feel entitled to some sort of response or they feel entitled to a certain amount of reach and i i try to remain empathic but but in that sense i i always and this is maybe a nice place to sort of put a bow on this podcast where whether i think you're getting coached or whether you're looking for growth in a product or for your own personal social media accounts whatever it may be it is work right it is hard but i think it's endlessly valuable to go on those journeys and i just just really grateful that there's folks like yourself in the world who are willing to to share information come on podcast like this and and hopefully help people through some difficult times so
i i i would love to hear if you
have any closing thoughts but this is for me been been absolutely wonderful what a great way for me to spend some of my time
yeah well first thank you for having me
it's been i learned something in every single conversation it's true in coaching it's been true in in this conversation today i guess you know a lot of the folks that i link up with we start the conversation and they'll say something like i've been thinking about getting a coach for a while so if you're listening and you're thinking about getting a coach reach out to a coach certainly don't have to be me
but
but it should be
at coach cole varcass here yeah dm's open but seriously i mean give it give it a shot try it for six months what's the worst that's gonna happen we just had the olympics who's the last person that simone biles talks to before she goes out and performs and the first person that she talks to when she finishes her coach her coach
and i i thought you
were high
where where'd you think i was going
i i
thought you were gonna say who's the when's the last time anyone won a gold medal without a coach
look this is and i i have learned so much from my friends in the world of sports and performing arts that the highest performers have coaches right so you know set aside the ego the pride reach out to somebody and there are a lot of good coaches out there too that if the individual is coachable they can be flexible in terms of compensation or the organization is willing to pay for a coach a lot of people don't know that go to your boss say i wanna get better at what i'm doing would you be supportive of getting a coach for me nine times out of 10 people are thrilled to have that conversation so that's what i would say if you're on the fence at all if you're curious about coaching have a discovery call with a coach what's the worst that's gonna happen
i love it yeah such a pleasure thank you once again for coming on coach cole that's been a vibe check
see you later guys