How to be a badass with Lyn Christian #12

The mBraining Show

Lyn Christian is a quintessential coach’s coach, teaching revolutionary principles that galvanize change in others, while living according to those same principles in her own life. As the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., Lyn guides private clients, organizations, and fellow coaches as they seek to reinvent themselves and reach peak performance levels. Her approach is focused on encouraging others to find their strengths and build lives that are grounded in courage, freedom, and integrity.

Lyn has always been adept at helping others reach their fullest potential. She began her career as a school teacher in the 1990s, and her innovative approach to education garnered awards and recognition from her peers. But, while she found her work as an educator rewarding, Lyn was inescapably drawn to the innovation and entrepreneurial mindset of the business world. In 1998, she left academia for a position at Franklin Covey, where she was instrumental in developing world-class training products.

During her tenure at Franklin Covey, Lyn honed her coaching and project management skills. She was ultimately appointed Associate Director of the Franklin Covey Project Management Innovation Center, where she trained hundreds of employees and helped the company accrue $4 million in value in less than one year. Over time, Lyn grew into a thought leader in business and personal coaching, earning a Master Coach Certification from the International Coach Federation, as well as certifications from both Franklin Covey Coaching and renowned Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith.

Within a few years of graduating from Coach U in 1998, Lyn came to a crossroads in her career. She had become Director of Innovation at Franklin Covey Coaching, and she established SoulSalt as a separate entity in 2002. Lyn’s coaching philosophy and private practice grew steadily, with SoulSalt drawing more and more of her focus. In 2004 her mentor, Marshall Goldsmith, challenged her to leave her position at Franklin Covey and set out on her own. In the years since, Lyn has become sought-after adviser to a diverse clientele representing a variety of industries, from small business owners, to CEOs, to celebrities, and anyone who comes to her with a serious drive to embrace wisdom and personal evolution.

Beyond her extensive work with SoulSalt, Lyn strives continually learn and embrace reinvention in her own life. In recent years, that commitment has been evident in her effort to face a childhood fear of drowning by entering competitive sports after the age of 50. When not spending time with her inspiring clients and family, Lyn competes in Sprint Triathlons and multi-sport endurance races, no doubt contributing to her reputation as a “badass,” and bolstering her ability to bring out the badass in others, too.

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Highlights:

00:19 Introduction
10:12 Not just black and white
18:14 Fraklin Covey
26:04 Be strong, be true
35:44 The 15-minute coaching
41:07 Badass
49:01 Lyn’s mBIT practice
58:46 Lyn’s advice

Transcription:

Intro 0:04
You’re listening to the mBraining show, a show about the new field of mBIT, where you’ll get a blend of neuroscience-based research with practical applications for wise living. And now here’s your host, Bill Gasiamis.

Introduction

Bill 0:19
Good everyone, Bill here again. The book mBraining, using your multiple brains to do cool stuff is available online via Amazon and can be purchased in both paperback and Kindle version. If you’ve been thinking about getting a copy, the Kindle version cost only about $7 depending on where you live.

Bill 0:39
And it’s a great way to share with others by sending an E version as a gift. Just Google mBraining Kindle version and follow the links. If you have been thinking of becoming an mBIT coach, there are now almost 100 trainers in 20 countries across the planet, running regular mBIT coach certification courses, jump online to mBraining.com and click the upcoming events and workshops link to find a place near you that you can attend the next mBIT coach certification.

Bill 1:13
This episode is brought to you by mBrainingaustralia.com Are you one of the world’s leading in big coaching certification providers. Now on with the show. Welcome everybody to another episode of The mBraining Show. Today I have a nother very special guest from way over the other side of the planet again, which most of my guests seem to be since I’m in Australia and and with me is the founder of SoulSalt Lyn Christian.

Bill 1:53
Lyn is the kind of person who guides private clients and organizations and fellow coaches as they seek to reinvent themselves and reach peak performance level. Her approach is focused on encouraging others to find their strengths and build lives that are grounded encourage freedom and integrity.

Bill 1:15
She began her coaching career as a school teacher in the 1990s and her innovative approach to education garnered awards and recognition from her peers. In 1998. She left academia for a position at Franklin Covey where she was instrumental in developing world-class training projects.

Bill 1:37
During her tenure at Franklin Covey, Lyn was ultimately appointed Associate Director of Franklin Covey project management Innovation Center, where she trained hundreds of employees and helped the company accrue $4 million in value in less than one year. Welcome to the program. Lyn.

Lyn 2:39
Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. Bill. It’s great to chat with you.

Bill 3:07
Yeah, my pleasure. It’s great to have you here and get to meet another person from the mBIT community who is doing amazing things in the US. We’re about to you baseline.

Lyn 3:23
I’m in Salt Lake City in Utah.

Bill 3:25
That’s right. And your business is called salt salt that I made. Did I say that correctly? It sounds like a bit of a tongue twister.

Lyn 3:36
It is a bit of a tongue twister. It’s called soul salt or salt of the soul. If I play it back to you, and it’s a name that was derived, not from myself, but from some market research after I’ve been coaching for a few years, almost five years, at some marketers talk to some of the best clients that you know, I considered really understood what I was doing and I understood what they were doing.

Lyn 4:02
And the common thread was there was one part esoteric about what you do Lynn, and one part very tangible and helped to live in this palpable world. And so they said, Well, we think we should be called salt of the soul. But now it’s kind of hard to say and they also thought since I was based in Salt Lake City, that it would be great to have a name with salt in it.

Lyn 4:25
So they called me soul salt. So there is one more part of my work that’s sort of esoteric, it’s hard to put your arms around it although people can feel the difference and see the difference in their lives after we’ve worked together. And there’s also this tangible as you mentioned, when I was coaching out of the project management Innovation Center, Franklin Covey. We could see tangible results with the model of training on project management and coaching through the process after the training

Bill 4:57
beautiful he If it’s gone into the name, really so it’s great to hear a lot of people don’t really make a lot of time to think about what it is that they own to identify us or call themselves or, or sort of put it out there that that that they are doing or being so it’s great to hear that there’s a lot of effort gone into a name means a lot more than just picking a name randomly.

Bill 5:27
Right. And I knew from wisdom working in my last corporate job with Franklin Covey was director of innovation for the Franklin Covey coaching branch. I, I knew that I would be the worst person to ask to name my own company, because I live inside of it. So the value of the name to me came from the recognition of the value from the outside client.

Bill 5:54
Wow. Well, that’s a different approach. Normally, you’re right. Most people just go with whatever they feel is a good name or sounds right. And there’s little, little thought given to how other people will perceive a name. So I think that’s a really great strategy.

Lyn 6:14
Thank you. It worked for me.

Bill 6:16
Yeah, it certainly did. That’s great. Now, I just wanted to quickly start the conversation here regarding your school teaching. You were a teacher in the 1990s. What type of teaching did you do? What? How old were the children that you were teaching?

Bill 6:35
You know, great question. I got my start. Professionally, teaching children, primarily sixth graders have taught first graders second and third, some fourth and fifth. But my favorite was teaching the sixth grade here in Utah, the sixth grade was the highest grade in the elementary schools before they went into a sort of middle school or junior high platform.

Bill 7:04
So they were the big dogs, you know, they were the big kids on the block. And when they first would come into class, they would be a little cocky. But by the end of the spring, when they were getting ready to go to seventh grade, the next grade, and mean, their career as an elementary school student, there was some fears and trepidation and some excitement.

Bill 7:26
And it was fun to to teach that dynamic. But you know, I didn’t think I would start in education. Bill, I was a debater in high school and had done quite well for myself and realized at some point that if I wanted to, I could go into law. But I had an epiphany that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life arguing. And I was out, out outside, in springtime, taking in some of the sunshine.

Bill 8:00
And I found myself sitting across the street from my old elementary school. And I thought that’s what I should do with my future is inspire children the way a few of my teachers inspired me instead of debating and building cases against people. So early on, I had a transformative experience and realizing that I should follow my heart instead of my head in occur in a career path.

Bill 8:26
Now that seems to have paid off dividends, as we’ll talk about in a little while. It’s interesting, what you say about people in the Korea in the legal Korea, which tend to be tends to be about arguing one point of view, as opposed to another for the benefit of you know, each individual client.

Bill 8:46
But often people find themselves not realizing that what they’ve done is they identify as somebody who argues and intend to take the argument of work, which, you know, is very necessary and obviously has a place to other parts of their lives, and it can tend to cause some challenges and frustration.

Bill 9:08
Was that something that you became aware of that you didn’t perhaps feel comfortable knowing that you would be arguing at work and that maybe that would lead to you being an argumentative type of person in places other than work?

Bill 9:24
No, you know, that didn’t even occur to me because I was so good at debate. But what I realized was when I looked at my debate scores after every debate, in three years of debating in high school, there are four debaters in every round, you and your partner against another debater and their partner. I have the highest speaking points in every single debate I was ever in.

Bill 9:51
So I went more to the fine-tuning and realized there was something inside of me that when I stood up and spoke, something came alive. And then also, I didn’t know this at the time. But I’ve learned this since I become a coach, which I’ve fallen into, almost accidentally didn’t plan on being a coach.

Not just black and white

Bill 10:12
There’s a part of me, as you mentioned at the beginning, where I base my work on freedom and integrity and courage to not prescribe myself or subscribe to these thoughts of there’s one right way for doing everything. And so if you’re in a debate, or if your argument, the myriad of argumentation within a courtroom, there has to be a right and a wrong recipe, a winner and a loser. And I find that life is so not that black and white, it’s not so binary.

Bill 10:44
And there are many ways to arrive at a successful point. And so I’m far more interested in I guess this is one of the reasons I was drawn to the innovation groups at Franklin Covey, and they were attracted to me was that I am fascinated with all the many varied and unusual possibilities that are before us. And then I also have the discipline and the left brain function of convergent thinking of wanting to converge down to now that we know that what will we do with it?

Bill 11:14
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really, that sounds really refreshing, actually, because there’s not enough? Well, in my experience, I don’t come across enough people that are aware of the power that I able to sort of generate or use to direct conversation in a similar way that a lawyer or somebody who’s has to argue a case would do, but just to that one distinction of knowing that there are many ways to get to a conclusion.

Bill 11:55
Could just lead to really making a massive difference in the outcome of that conversation with whichever person that you’re speaking to, and therefore, potentially removed, remove, you know, that angst and that anxiety and that tension of not having one or, or being the one or at all costs the winner in any conversation, because sometimes we could find ourselves being in that situation with loved ones as well. And that really isn’t useful or beneficial.

Bill 12:25
I would agree, I would agree with you very much. And that you know, and there’s also a part of the population that’s probably listening to us talking bill, that they’re uncomfortable when there’s not one right answer because they seek it, they want that safety, that structure to know that they’re right, instead of maybe adhering to some of the thoughts that you and I have, as we have embraced mBIT is that we are human becomings.

Lyn 12:52
And so in the human becoming process, at any given moment, you might be doing something that could be considered a failure. But isn’t failure, actually a stepping stone in the bigger scheme of success? Yeah. And I’m going to comment on something too, is, I see a kindred spirit in you because as I listen to your story, and I hear about the concerns you had with your head brain not working and you went to mBIT.

Lyn 13:23
And to the one of the second, maybe the second certification, you’re in the first 20 people to be certified in this content, that you realized, oh, there are diverse ways of having neuro networks assist me. And so you were so willing to embrace this innovative thought that something besides my head brain can guide me?

Bill 13:45
Yeah, yeah, I was willing to embrace it. It’s interesting, when you find yourself in that kind of situation, I have to admit that prior to my first sort of challenge with my brain The first time I bled, I didn’t, there’s no way I would have gone down that path. And, and that’s okay. I accept that as being just you know, the part of my journey, you know, that’s the part I was at at that point in time.

Bill 14:12
And then when I discovered that my brain wasn’t working properly, and I had fears and concerns about it, not coming back online, the way that I had taken it for granted beforehand, that it was always sort of working properly, etc. I started to seek for solutions, then, you know, I’m a real problem solver. And I really like to find answers to questions that are left of center what what you wouldn’t have expected and it takes people for a bit of a surprise.

Bill 14:47
It’s a bit of a shock. And I spelt into you know, the course with grant and Marvin and the first thing that I ever heard was or that I remember hearing was that comment, do you know that you have a brain not only in your But also in your heart and in your gut. And not knowing why I was there, I had only gone because a friend asked me to go and fill a couple of spaces.

Bill 15:10
I thought, well, I’ll talk about seek and you shall find, you know, here’s me, just desiring from the heart to seek a solution to my, my challenge around my head. And within literally a few weeks or months of me thinking in that way, and not realizing what I was doing is probably just more of an instinctive sort of scenario, I fell into an mBIT coach certification.

Bill 15:40
And the whole process just changed my thinking completely. And I can tell you, there’s a line in the sand. And I could take you back to that line and show that there was, that’s what it was when I was on the other side. And this is what it looks like when I was on the new site. And it’s been really amazing.

Bill 16:00
It is amazing. And, and I had a, you know, your words are resonating with me. It’s interesting yesterday, I didn’t realize until I sat down, I was running a little course in the snow. Because we have snow on our foothills. I was running a little course, yesterday listening to your interview with, with grant, prepare for today. And it was in the very same place very same trail that I was picking, where I first listened to grant and to Marvin talking on a web conference about this new field of mBIT.

Lyn 16:43
And my heart just lit up. And I was like, I don’t know what this is. But I’m going to go back and read listen to this one. I’m not mountain biking. So at that time, it was summer, and I was mountain biking on that same trail. And I listened again and then purchased a ticket, my partner and I, we decided to come to Australia, and take the course and not wait for it to get to the United States.

Lyn 17:05
So I was able to learn for both Grant and Marvin in one of the final times when they taught together. But I did not know why I was going, I just knew that something inside of me knew this would be good for me. And it resonated with all the philosophy and the constructs of my own work within Soul Salt.

Lyn 17:29
And I showed up and i’ve you know, same line in the sand. It’s been a different ballgame since then. And I’ve had I’ve had Lorna come over to the states twice and train here in Salt Lake for us. And to train other new people to the end it and I introduced the course and tell them that I think they’ll probably be people in the course that don’t know why they’re here.

Lyn 17:54
But they knew that they needed to be here. And they may find out in the next two years after they start applying. And I see heads nodding in every class that I say that. So I think it’s a common theme with mBIT material that it attracts us without knowing why we’re going or knowing why we show up. We show up because it’s exactly what we needed.

Fraklin Covey

Bill 18:14
Yeah, that’s exactly the reason I always say that’s amazing. I didn’t realize that there are so many people that have a similar experience. I’m glad that you shared that with me. Doolin in 1998, you left your work at the school, I believe and you started working at a company called Franklin Covey for the people who don’t know what Franklin Covey is, can you give us a bit of background on that organization?

Lyn 18:48
Certainly. So, Franklin Covey is a productivity company. I came in shortly after the merging of two companies, Franklin planning, which was a day planner company, a paper planner product merged with Stephen R. Covey’s company, the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Lyn 19:11
So, the covey leadership merged with the Franklin group and they became Franklin Covey, and their primary content at the time was in project management, personal and time management and leadership concepts. And so I actually didn’t know if I would even get hired there.

Lyn 19:35
But I knew I needed to leave education. I was way out of my my league in what I was doing with children. I was doing inquiry based learning, or I was literally coaching them with a little bit not me, and assisting them to find questions that they were interested in pursuing and requiring that they spend a portion of their day finding answers to these questions.

Lyn 19:58
So this was a I wanted them to learn from real life research and synthesis and, you know, getting up to their elbows in what it was like to apply knowledge and find knowledge. And this was very frightening to the education process. So I could see I was rattling some cages. And I’m one of those people who if I rattle hard enough, something will shake loose.

Lyn 20:20
And in this case, I felt like I needed to leave versus shaking loose. The constructs of the public school system, which were quite formidable here. And I could also see that standardized tests, were going to be the guide as to what was good education. And what was not even though I saw disagreed with that, so I couldn’t play that game.

Lyn 20:40
And I asked my neighbor who was very well networked in the business world who she would have talked to, because I realized the way I think and the way I function, probably business would pay for my innovative outside of the box creative approaches. And the way that I welcome that sort of thinking like that, there is no one right way sort of thinking.

Lyn 21:01
So she said, Well, I think you should talk to my business coach before you make a move. I had no idea what a business coach was. But I found out, I hired her, she assisted me in trance, for in my skills from academics and some publishing that I had done to a resume, I got hired as a writer and a developer for the time management content at Franklin Covey.

Lyn 21:25
And for some of their leadership projects, I did some ghost writing on some of their books, and loved my time there, but quickly got my work done. You know, when you’re managing 36th graders and relationships with their parents, you really learn to manage. And then I had three children at home as a as a single parent. And so I didn’t know that I had actually learned some good management tools.

Lyn 21:49
So I was able to get my projects done on time on budget, or under budget with the quality that was required. So I was quickly promoted to project manager. And then I learned project management and got my PMP certification from the Project Management Institute PMI, then I was asked by the CEO of the company to work with her at a project management group.

Lyn 22:13
And then in the meantime, I’ve been going to school learning coaching, because I was fascinated with the process that had helped me transform my life. And I was studying coaching and eventually got my MCC from the International coach Federation. So here I am being asked now to be the Innovation Group for Franklin cubbies coaching division, which I didn’t even know they had a coaching division when I was hired by them, and then help them build training.

Lyn 22:40
But my heart was always with the innovation of the individual innovating products and trying to find new ways to make revenue, generate revenue, and listen to what the market needs and then create something to meet that need is fascinating. But what’s far more fascinating to me, is standing by the side and supporting individuals, as they reinvent their lives, especially the thing that I’m interested in is supporting people who want to live their lives and earn a living by doing things that inspire them.

Lyn 23:14
So I really work now only with the entrepreneur, social printer, intrapreneur. These are the free agent thinkers who are going to take life by the horns, they’re going to take life by their own terms, and craft out the sort of life that they want. And often that involves reinventing their working identity more than once. So now you see where the working identity reinvention comes in, when I work with that population of entrepreneurs, social partners, intrapreneurs.

Bill 23:45
So that’s beautiful. So I’m curious, though, I know there’ll be a lot of similarities between the different people that you come across to coach, I’m curious, what are the similarities? Actually, what are the differences between somebody that’s being coached, for example, to be happier, healthier, etc.

Bill 24:12
And somebody who is a entrepreneur solopreneur, somebody who wants to make massive change? Now, I know there’s some similarities, but I’m curious as to the approach. What’s the difference in the approach to coaching those two different types of people?

Bill 24:28
It’s a great question the differences for me, and I can only speak for me because I’ve done this reinvention thing several times, moving from sixth grade teacher to writer and developer Franklin Covey, then to project manager in the Innovation Group, then to being Associate Director of a project management office and then being director over an Innovation Group myself for the coaching group.

Lyn 24:54
And then also transforming from school teacher to coach transforming from single parents to partner, parent all sorts of transformations. One of the things that I know and I have certifications in are some life coaching skills. And but along the way, I also have carved out a niche where I absolutely know how to support individuals who are willing to dig into their DNA.

Lyn 25:26
To dig into who they are as a human being, right from the the heart level, right from their core values out and build a business or build a career or build a life that sustains them financially. So there’s a combination that might be different from just the healthy other side is, it needs to be integrated with what they do for a living, or what they do for some of my clients have been multimillionaires, what they do to make a contribution back to society or forward to society, beyond their own wellness.

Be strong, be true

Lyn 26:04
So the constructs of soul solve are be strong, which deals with leveraging your strengths as probably best defined by Marcus Buckingham in his work around the sound at standout which is has it’s it’s a derivative of the gallops work in strength-based psychology in strength-based science.

Lyn 26:27
So be strong be true, which is work that lands right into the heart of it with individuals finding what I call their inner plumb line, how to stay true to themselves, how to stay on square with themselves. And generally some people call these core values but these guiding principles that live in their hearts, how to be courageous, and persist and stay focused.

Lyn 26:51
So now we’re talking about an integration of head, heart and gut of how to stay focused, also, how to be wise, which involves all of the mBraining concepts, how to be well, which is how do I enjoy movement and activity and rest? And how do I nurture my body, and then it creativity, and then be inspired. So those are the constructs of Sol Sol, and we blend the life coaching, with sometimes business coaching or career reinventing coaching or making a contribution?

Bill 27:29
So from So from what I’m here, there’s no real difference of the approach is the salt salt approach. And that tends to cover a lot of the things that people need to cover in a coaching session. And for everybody being individuals and being slightly different. It’s the same tools slightly different beginning or end or, or middle pattern. Does that sound?

Bill 27:53
Yeah, you really picked up on it, because I can’t cookie cutter every client that comes in my processes, they fill out a intake form. And we check to see if maybe they would be a good candidate. If they are, I do a 20 to 30 minute intake discovery session. And we both find out if they’re the right person.

Lyn 28:12
For me, I refer out a lot of clients and I retain a certain amount of clients for my own practice. And then we contract together the objectives you would cover. So while there are constructs to what I do in so salt, nobody goes through it the same. There’s not like what do we do on week one, week two, week three, it’s unique every time.

Bill 28:37
Yeah, that sounds marvelous. In my opinion, you know, probably a process more suitable to me, and the number of coaches that I’ve had now all tend to find their unique way. And each unique way of approaching the challenges that I want to overcome, tends to really support my outcome.

Bill 29:00
And I think if they’re coming from a place of opening space, creating a space for me to just be myself and talk about the things I need to talk about, I think that’s the best way to start a coaching session, practice, etc. And then whatever emerges, emerges. And that’s that beautiful, emergent model that we use in MVC, which is let’s just see what comes up rather than have a focus that’s, you know, rather than have a focus of let’s get to this point, which we will know if that’s an idea that came from the head Brian alone, that might not be the correct endpoint.

Bill 29:36
I would agree bill and I’m going to give a bit of friendly advice to anyone who’s been considering becoming a coach, if you study the core competencies of the International coach Federation, and if you take an mBIT coach certification certification class, you will have some of the best training and the best constructs that anyone could have in terms of preparing your mind.

Lyn 29:59
To be a true and pure coach, because there’s a lot of people who are mentors, counselors and consultants who are giving answers and being advisors that aren’t necessarily sticking to the client’s agenda and not doing peer coaching. And all those technologies have a place you know, we shant villainize them, there are times when you need to be taught directed advice and even have a kick in the butt.

Lyn 30:26
But the sort of coaching we’re trained to do with mBIT is very much aligned with client agenda and very much aligned with what my tagline is soul salt, which the tagline is, find your truth and then live it. So when they mBIT technology, individuals not only can find it, they can hear it, they can feel it, they can almost taste it.

Lyn 30:49
And sometimes they do taste it. They can identify what that truth is. And then my job as a coach is what sir john Whitmore wrote about in coaching for performance, which is our job is to raise awareness and then ask the individual if they would like to be held accountable to doing something with that new awareness right?

Bill 31:07
Wow, that is beautiful, actually. That is beautiful. Ask them whether they would like to be held accountable. There’s no there couldn’t possibly be a better way to go about getting permission to coach somebody to their outcome. That’s just amazing.

Bill 31:25
Thank you. I have long been a student of Sir John Whitmore. Now, again, that’s a great book. That would be something I would suggest people study to is to buy the latest version of John’s book 14 for performance out of the UK. That’s a really great tome.

Bill 31:43
That’s lovely. Well, that is just some amazing stuff so far. I’m curious as we continue, Lynn is we you’ve worked at Franklin Covey coaching, you’ve done some work with Marshall Goldsmith. These are two of the really sort of, well, not popular, but really well known names in the coaching field. Did you actually manage to get to spend time with Marshall Goldsmith and with Stephen Covey.

Bill 32:16
I did not get to spend personal time with Stephen R. Covey. I did get to see him often. While I worked there, I work more closely with his son Shawn and his son, Stephen, Mr. Covey. and learned a lot from both of those us. Shawn wrote the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective teams, which is a very approachable book, if you’re trying to digest the seven habits, and Stephen, and Covey, when we were opening the project management offices, the first time Franklin Covey had an office of this sort, when our projects were failing at about 60%.

Lyn 32:55
So we were out training, project management, but we weren’t applying it inwardly, in our own culture. And that just wasn’t good enough for Steven Mr. One of his sons. So he and, and the CEO had created this concept for the project management office and I was sitting in his office, he said, You know that my father’s always told me, if you want people to make a quantum leap in behavior, then we need to be careful what we name, the center, we want them to want to come to your center, and apply our content toward their projects.

Lyn 33:29
And so he guided me and we decided to call the office, the project management Innovation Center. And so just the project management office because everyone wanted to be part of the innovation. They wanted to be part of the new stuff that was going on and not just have that beat for the product creators, because, in effect, everyone who came into the project management Innovation Center, and started applying project management, content to their projects.

Lyn 33:55
They were innovators, they were helping us make the business healthier from the inside out. I did get to invite Marshall into the WBC, I was a the World Association of business coaching. I was an ambassador for them for a time and been writing some things of Franklin Covey about coaching and ran into Marshall and interview him talk to him, went out and got his certification which he was actually actively involved in that certification.

Lyn 34:23
And then brought it to Salt Lake a couple of times for other coaches. You know, part of what I do at evergrande called Sol Sol Academy where we will host events that help individuals learn how to become coaches. That’s why we bring mBIT certification into our into our community.

Lyn 34:46
So Marshall was a great mentor for me at a pivotal time when I actually left Franklin Covey and helped me start out on my own coaching by kicking me in the butt one day in a coaching call and telling me He’s been so generous with those of us who have followed him that I know there are 1000s of people that could relate conversations like this.

Lyn 35:07
But one day I was talking to him because I knew that he had earned a lot of his money from the connections he makes. And I happen to be have the strength of being a good connector, connecting ideas together from disparate sorts of fields of study, or ideation. Bringing people together that need to be together for the benefit of both their companies or their well being.

Lyn 35:29
And so I was asking him how he earned a passive income from that, because that was interesting to me. And he spent 15 minutes mentoring me, and I took copious notes. And then he stopped. He said, Lynn, can I just coach you for a minute? And you know, that was a no brainer.

The 15-minute coaching

Lyn 35:44
Here’s the premier International, saying, hey, can I coach you for 15 minutes, and I was like, please, he was in layover somewhere between France and Germany or someplace because he’s such an international coach. And so I said, Go ahead, Marshall. He said, Okay, let me ask you a question. you promote all these people, you make all these connections?

Lyn 36:06
Is that what you want to do for a living? And I said, No, you said, well, you promoted me, you brought my training into Salt Lake City twice. I see you promoting Franklin Covey all over the place. What about your own business? It made me stop, great coaching question.

Lyn 36:21
I didn’t have an answer at the moment. He said, here’s a deeper question Lyn, what do you want to be doing? Do you want to be writing for other people, you want to be teaching other people’s stuff? No, I really want to write what’s in my heart, I want to lead from my company, I want my intellectual property to be what I speak about and develop.

Lyn 36:43
And then he said, and I will be, I will not use the French use, but I will use a word very much like it. And he said, then you need to F everything else. And he used the F word. And he said, You need to just focus on your company, it was one of the best boots in the butt I’ve ever received. Because you know, you get scared, you start out there on your own.

Lyn 37:08
But I actually needed that boot my butt and I never turned back. And within 18 months, I was earning more in a quarter of coaching in a quarter of a year of coaching than I did as an entire year as director of innovation for Franklin Covey coach.

Bill 37:25
Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. And for somebody who didn’t know what coaching was back in the 1990s, you certainly did fall into the epitome of what we consider coaching, you know, especially, you know, getting involved with Franklin Covey and then being coached by Marshall Goldsmith, after that initial 15 minute sort of coaching session there with Marshall, did you then seek out his coaching, long term or for a longer period of time?

Bill 37:56
No, I had not, because I wasn’t his niche. He actually is just for executives. And here I was just moving out of director of innovation and into my third month of being a coach on my own at Sol Sol and I had a full practice, I built a bridge, I still had three children at home, I had a mortgage, I needed to provide insurance. So I took 18 months before I left Franklin Covey to, to build my business on solid ground, make sure I had a full clientele.

Lyn 38:27
And I actually transitioned so that I was earning the same amount of money a little bit more, because I had to pay for my own benefits this time. And I it was scary. I this is one reason that I work with a reinvention. I know what it’s like to, to have your hands shake and to be frightened.

Lyn 38:44
On Sunday afternoon, that tomorrow, Monday starts again. And it’s all up to you, you know, those new hands that you know so well, are the hands and the heart and the soul that’s going to lead your business. And I also am a believer that when you find what your truth is that you want to bring into a business if you are entrepreneurial, or sociopreneurial, when you find that essence, you build your business on it, you have greater chances of success, especially if you have the aptitude to be a free agent to be an entrepreneur.

Bill 39:16
Yeah. I love the fact that you bumped into Marshall. And how about, you know, taking opportunities when they present themselves? A beautiful invitation from Marshall and then 15 minute discussion with Marshall and vagos the next reinvention of your life. It’s just brilliant that even though you didn’t take Marshall on as a coach permanent while not permanently but on a longer term, sort of situation.

Bill 39:46
That one coaching question that he asked you was enough to make such a profound change in your life and it just goes to demonstrate and what a amazing privilege that we have as coaches And, and the real importance of knowing how to craft the most beautiful questions, you know, less is more.

Bill 40:08
And then getting people down a completely different journey than where they began and reinventing themselves and finding a new career and new experiences and, you know, new ways to make money and to see the world in a different place. I just think that’s just fabulous.

Bill 40:27
Thank you so much for sharing that story with Marshall. I know Marshall, from you know, the different things that I’ve seen online about him and read about him. But to actually speak to somebody who’s had an experience with Marshall sort of takes it takes that to the next level. It’s really brilliant.

Bill 40:48
He’s a very generous man and a great example to a lot of us as coaches of how to freely give of yourself because I know it’s my story. It’s one of 1000s and 1000s of others that are probably nodding their heads if they’ve run into martial to the degree that I have.

Badass

Bill 41:06
Yeah, it’s good work. It’s amazing. As I continue to read through your bio, which I didn’t read the whole thing. In the opening, I thought I’d leave some stuff for us to discuss I noticed that there’s a couple of references here to you having a reputation as a badass tell me a little bit about that.

Bill 41:34
Well. So we just talked about Marshall, who was a coach for me for a moment, and also I was mentored by him and then by his trainers, not considered Marshall a mentor. But what happened to me was, gosh, I’m 56. Now, when I was 49, people started calling me a badass. And I didn’t know why.

Lyn 42:01
And I thought, you know, this is as intriguing as when I was wondering what to call souls. So if they’re calling me a badass, what is it that they see in me? That makes them say that because I see people like Albert Einstein is a badass. I see somebody like Rosa Parks here in the United States is a badass digger. I think Richard Branson’s a badass.

Lyn 42:25
And I don’t see anything, you know, on five, three. I, I weigh in 117 to 120 pounds. I don’t have any tattoos. I don’t ride a Harley. You know, motorcycles? never beat anybody up sort of thing. Like why would they call me a badass? Well, I found out what they were looking at as I asked questions and study was somehow I had become formidable in their eyes.

Lyn 42:55
And the people that were calling me a bad ass for people who were affiliated with my co-team, or in a group from the Jim Jones tribe. And Jim Jones GYMJ o n e. s, playing off what happened in the jungle in Africa, with a j aim to me as Jonestown. There’s a young man named Mark Twain, who started this project to see if he could help transform individuals, though, from all the years of being an extreme alpinist. So have to look up extreme Outfitters.

Lyn 43:35
But if you look up extreme mouth, and it’s literally today, in this very moment, if you Google that, the first two pages are going to be about Mark Twain. And Mark is a formidable man. He most people would would recognize Mark’s work if they know Jim Jones of the extreme fitness or if they’re mountain climbers, they would know his name, because some of his mountain climbing records still stand.

Lyn 44:02
But he’s known out of Hollywood as well, because he’s worked on movies such as 300 movies, getting the Spartans, those men that look so ripped and cut. Yes, rapidly transformed actors and there aren’t steroids. That’s real fitness, that’s real strength that you’re seeing there. Those men could lift the weights, pull the chains, and be the Spartan man that you imagined them to be. And also the women who worked on the new Superman with Henry Cavell.

Lyn 44:32
So he’s a story that has captured this tension for authentic genuine strength and power and endurance. So I was coaching him after the 300 300 movie, because of course, you know, I work with these entrepreneurs that want to go the next level and he had to reinvent his career because the way he’d been doing business he couldn’t continue. He was getting too much pain.

Lyn 44:56
And we need we had, you know, some basic objectives. He needed to Have a new person come in and manage the day to day, we needed to get his content into training modules so that he could start certifying and training other people. Then we also needed to set him free so that he could be the strategist and the thinker. He’s just a brilliant man, brilliant mind, a dynamic individual.

Lyn 45:17
And so after we coached, he turned to me and he said, Lyn, that was, that was a great experience. Thank you. I would like to be your coach now. And so here I am age 49. He’s inviting me into the Jim Jones family to train in this elite project, he calls it his gym. And from that, I became transformed. I know people see me now and they go, gosh, I must have always been happy.

Lyn 45:47
Well, I was always active, but I really had hung up the athlete had been an athlete in high school, played basketball and some other sports. But I was doing a double body deadlift, I actually had 170 pounds, lifted 245 pounds in a deadlift, overhead squat, over 130 pounds.

Lyn 46:10
I decided to take on from the transformation that he’s helped me physically, to take on a fear of mine, which was I almost drowned as a child. And I was a non swimmer as an adult. So it kind of clamped him out of the closet to myself about that. And they trained me and in my first triathlon, my first sprint triathlon, I took second in my age group. And I’ve been taking metals ever since.

Lyn 46:32
And so there’s this part of me that entered into the lab and the challenge with Mark because my heart and my head and my gut encouraged me. And I’ve been listening to those as my guiding tools and knowing what was right for me and what was not.

Bill 46:49
So I entered into the gym jonesville. And I’m still there, I’m still working out. I’ve moved from sprint triathlons, to Spartan races, to now I want to fence. Because I want to stay generative, I want to keep learning, and I’m also a student of what I coach, I’m a student of human performance and how to support people to get pink.

Lyn 47:09
And it was a year after you went through, I think it was 2013 that Susan and I, my partner and I flew to Australia. And I started to mBraining. And it has become such a huge tool in supporting people who see me and say, you’re a badass or you’re fermentable. And I want to be like you like, and they want me to coach them. I use the mBIT as a means by which we help them find their truth and live it.

Bill 47:39
Yeah, that’s certainly what it’s about, isn’t it? I I really like that being able to sort of be the facilitator of some space for somebody to find their truth and live it rather than me tell them what the truth should be. Because I never, it never resonated with me, every time I went for a discussion with somebody to get some advice about what I should do.

Bill 48:01
Never really worked out to be what I wanted to do, they couldn’t see things from my point of view. And, and that was something that used to frustrate me tremendously at the time, but I didn’t realize that I was potentially seeking advice from people that were not skilled in guiding people that had those type of questions.

Bill 48:25
Right. And, you know, I was given some good mentoring. I interviewed a few of the individuals in our, in our mBIT family. Billy Emery was one of them, and found out just how generous the group was. And so I talked to them before I came down to Melbourne and they told me if you have a chance volunteer, and Marvin was my coach, as I went through the certification, I had you know, I got to feel it from one of the Masters’s hands.

Lyn’s mBIT practice

Lyn 49:01
But one of the things I’d like to share with you, Bill are a couple of experiences so people that are listening can see maybe how mBIT gets used in my practice because I don’t have formal mBIT sessions unless somebody asked for one, I make them aware but we use it as an integrated part inside coaching.

Lyn 49:22
So I have a well-known on because a lot of coaches confidential won’t share this but I’ve had a well-known author and thought leader here in the states call me really in a heartbreaking gut-wrenching moment which is perfect for the mBIT right. And she said Lyn. I’m supposed to be in Boston in two days, and it’s tearing me apart. I can’t leave my family.

Lyn 49:47
I can’t go out on the road one more time. They bought my book they want me to speak. I don’t know what to do. So we did some balance breathing which is a mode of breathing that brings coherence and very quickly which is nasal breathing. I just said, let’s just do 30 seconds of it.

Lyn 50:02
And then let me ask you some questions. So she did 30 seconds kind of calendar, no automatic, autonomic nervous system down. And we didn’t have time for the full two minutes. But then I asked her questions about what her heartfelt what her head could see happening, coming back to the heart, what her gut was sensing back to the heart, and I won’t give this specific questions.

Lyn 50:22
But at the end of this, I said, So now, what happens, and she said, based on what I’ve just heard myself, say, I cancelled and I send somebody else. And she’s, I don’t care that I’m going to lose $2,000. But she said, I can’t do this to myself. And that felt so good to hear myself say this and know that it was my truth.

Lyn 50:43
So she really threw the hammer down and made a tough decision in a pinch. Just this week, I had a leader of a nonprofit come in. And we have gone through some communication behavior test, we believe we use the disc with her, we use the stand out to understand her strengths. She understands what our core values are.

Lyn 51:02
So have a free course on Udemy, that anyone listening can send their clients if they want the clients to quickly understand what their core values are. So they understand what’s coming from the language of their heart. And that is a Udemy. It’s called a B true by Soul Salt. And so she had done all of this and she came in, and she said I just don’t feel validated.

Lyn 51:24
I don’t think the kind of leadership that I have is valued anymore. And he said, Well, what is your leadership? He says, Well, I’m not sure. And he’s okay, take some deep breaths, we got her into some breathing patterns. And then I took her through the end of it.

Lyn 51:35
Now listen to this, this is I have some of the notes in front of me. The first question was, what is your heart tell you is important to know about your leadership style, and she said, I am kind. And we wrote that down on an mBIT worksheet that I have. And I’m happy to share my worksheets with anybody.

Lyn 51:55
Anybody that’s been trained in mBIT will know what these worksheets, you know, how to use them. And then the next question was something like, okay, knowing that as you look into the future, how do you see yourself leading from this place? She said, by saying nice things, by collaborating with other people by being of assistance, by having empathy and by supporting other people, Mm hmm. Then I move back to the heart really quickly.

Lyn 52:22
And I said, so. What do you value most about what you just heard yourself, say, she said, I am willing to stand in front of people behind people on the side of them, I am willing to be a buffer from them. And that’s how I lead and her voice was gaining more confidence. And then I said, interesting. So when you connect, then you get a sense of your depth, deep self identity, listening to your leadership, what can you say about that? What are you sensing? And she said, I’m easily seen as genuine. There’s no bullshit.

Bill 52:56
And I said, Well, what are you most motivated by that message says that I can find harmony and be mindful in my decision making. And I went back to the heart, and I said, Okay, your hearts heard all of this. How does it synthesize all this information? He said, I’m a sort of leader, the stands up for the humanity of people who has staying power, who uses kindness.

Lyn 53:18
I have that kind of leadership. And then I asked her, so can you see any place in this world today where that is valuable. And at the same time, I pulled off my bookshelf, which was right by the desk where we were sitting, I have a strategies table where we can sit together, I pulled resonant leadership, and primal leadership.

Lyn 53:40
And some of Daniel Goldman’s work from emotional intelligence off the off the shelf and said, these books tell us that the emerging significant pattern in leadership is those who lead from the heart. You just told me about your leadership and how it comes from the heart. She had tears in her eyes, she grew about three inches in stature and confidence in her and she and this is kind of where I live, you know, people want to be a badass.

Lyn 54:06
The key here is, is the convergence of your confidence and your passion. When you get facilitated like that, where you can actually feel what is your truth so that you can live it. And she was just walking on air when she left? Yeah. And that was maybe the last 10 minutes of our session.

Lyn 54:24
So at the mBIT for me, is a brilliant tool. I thank Marvin oka I thank Grant Soosalu, for having the tenacity and the courage and the vision to synthesize this information in neuroscience that’s been coming from so many directions and use their ingenuity to put it together in such a way that now nobody else has to be your guru. You can be your own.

Lyn 54:50
That’s what I ultimately stand for. And I think a lot of us in our community, Stanford that I know I I recently had the chance to go to Amsterdam last year and I met with Tom McGrath. The editor for worldwide coaching magazine, which is a brilliant magazine, anybody that wants to be connected to that community get a subscription. And then I got to meet with our brother in crime with who you have actually interviewed. And you probably know who I’m talking about.

Lyn 55:18
Wilbert Molenaar.

Lyn 55:20
Yes. I got to meet Wilbert in person. And I think I’m sending somebody over to his bath certification in England, as a potential client of mine. But I want him to get his certification first. And so we’re growing drove into Amsterdam at me the very last night I was there.

Lyn 55:42
And I, you know, I could tell kindred spirits of this neuroscience opening people up and helping them find their answers rather than be taught or guided or mentored. Where there’s, again, a rule for all those things. But at the end of the day, we each have to make our decisions. And we each have to find our own path, we have to follow our own path. Yes. Any other path leads to somebody else’s dreams, not ours.

Bill 56:07
I just love to be your own guru philosophy. I think I’m going to write that down. And I think I’m going to use that somehow, every single day, be your own guru. It’s just amazing. That is exactly what I aspired to be. And I aspired to be for a long time, I just didn’t know that it was possible for very many years, until I started to realize that, you know, I have power, I am capable, I am able to be taught, nourished, encouraged by people that think like me.

Bill 56:41
And that perhaps started down the journey a little earlier than I did. So to hear you say that, again, is just again, cementing, you know, in my mind that we all need to be our own gurus, we definitely need to be but we also can be. And that’s the most important part that we can work towards being our own gurus.

Bill 57:01
Yes, we really can. We so can, you know, I want to give a shout out to one thing that mBIT’s done for me is definitely I’ve never felt the presence of an international group before even though I’ve been a member of WABC and the ICF. And I’ve attended conferences at both those from both of those groups.

Lyn 57:21
It wasn’t until I came to Australia, I’ve been in Amsterdam, I sat in the class with Nikki Webb when she was first trained. And then Cheryl Christensen, the just the generous soul that she is, she came in and was assisting a group that I was, was being trained through, then going to Amsterdam, connecting with Tom of the magazine and meeting Wilbert.

Lyn 57:43
And having Lorna come into my home actually stayed with me twice to do the coach training. I feel like for the first time, I’ve actually now have an international group that I actually belong with that I resonate with my head, heart and gut level from the soul level. And I really want to just do a shout out to those who I’ve been able to connect with through that group and say, thank you for being the sort of individuals that you all are.

Bill 58:10
Yeah. They would all love to hear that, or I’m sure and I’ll make sure that they do get to hear this episode when we upload it. And then it goes live. Thank you for saying that. That’s been brilliant. I want to come to the end of our interview, because time is against us. I’m curious, Lynn, for coaches out there who are fairly new at coaching, regardless of where they’ve picked up their skills from that are not currently being coached or haven’t had some coaching of their own. What would you say to coaches like that?

Lyn’s advice

Bill 58:46
Oh, great question. And I do say that I’ll have people come in and want me to mentor them or they want to be my apprentice, and I send them on their way and to go get coaching before I would even train them. So if you’re thinking about becoming a coach, hire a coach, pay money for a coach, invest your time, your energy, your blood, sweat, and tears to go through coaching so you understand what the dynamic is from the inside out.

Lyn 59:13
Then go get certification, get training that makes you a viable and a formidable individual within the coaching field, but only have a coach when you’re trying to go to the next level. I always have someone who is either mentoring or coaching me to something beyond where I am, I pay for coaching. I pay for mentoree I am a product of my product.

Lyn 59:40
And if I’m going to go to the next level, sometimes I’ve even had more than one. You know there have been times when I was working on speech and I would have a higher speaking coach or if I was going to the next level and say my triathlon I would hire a swimming coach. So whatever it is, if there’s a particular area Your life, you, as a coach, always make an investment on having that area of your life be supported by someone who is coach like or an actual coach, be a product of your own product and service.

Bill 1:00:14
Now beautiful words, I found that very helpful myself. You know, since discovering coaching, and struggling through setting up and running my own business, you know, more than 10 years ago in the variance, in the very early years, I didn’t realize I was going to be that hard. And I didn’t know the coaches existed. And I gotta say, the first three or four years were a lot harder than they needed to be.

Bill 1:00:36
And once I discovered that, there’s more than one way to get things done, I was able to really enjoy the process of being in business rather than almost regretting making the decision of reinventing myself and going down the path of running a business because there was too much to learn there was too easy to lose money and not be successful, especially when you haven’t had the skills and grown in that kind of an industry in the past. So awesome. Wise, beautiful words there. Lynn, thank you so much for your time today. Before we go, how can people find you if they want to get in touch?

Lyn 1:01:17
Oh, thanks. And Bill, thank you for what you’re doing, I must say that you again are like those I have found within the community very generous and wanting to help other people. I think your podcast is a valuable tool. If people want to get in touch with me, they can send a direct email at [e-mail]. I’m also personally on Instagram, I’m on Pinterest, I’m on Twitter, and Facebook.

Lyn 1:01:50
And also my company Soul Salt is on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, all of the above. So anyway that someone would like to connect and if they want to get to me quickly input. Soul Salt you’ll either come to me or my assistant, my my coordinator, Shannon who schedules all my time. And I would be happy to be of benefit to anyone who has more questions.

Bill 1:02:16
Well, thank you so much for your time and your beautiful words. I really do appreciate your time and making yourself available for the podcast. I wish you all the success in the future. And I really look forward to continuing getting to know you more in the coming years.

Lyn 1:02:33
Yes, Bill, we may have to have you come up and teach one of the trainees at some point here in the US.

Bill 1:02:38
Oh, almost do anything for an mBIT training. And I another experience with other people. This is part of why I do the podcast, I just really enjoy meeting new people learning from them, understanding, you know how things can be done differently. And also connecting to people from that point of view of Hey, you know what, you’re not the only one out there that thinks that way.

Bill 1:03:03
So when I when I find somebody that’s like minded, even if it’s in the slightest way, I really like to, for lack of a better word latch on and try and try and get, try and get some of their wisdom and try and feel like I’m not alone. And that’s really what my my program is about.

Bill 1:03:24
And I want to make it possible for other coaches from any community to just get an understanding that that they can really benefit from mBraining the way that I have. And the way that I know many other people have we we very rarely get a well, a bad word about the mBraining model. And when I say very rarely, I’m yet to hear a bad word in the last few years.

Lyn 1:03:53
Yeah, it’s a great program.

Bill 1:03:56
Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. You know the reason why mBIT coaching is so unique is that the mBIT coaching model coaches to the clients that head brain, gut, brain and heart brain. It’s not just the brain and community that calls our heart and gut brain. Many doctors and researchers around the world are doing the same.

Bill 1:04:16
And the reason being is that recent discoveries in the field of neuro cardiology and neuro gastroenterology have shown that the heart is not just a pump, it has up to 120,000 neurons. And the gut is not just some stinky plumbing. It actually begins at the back of the throat and finishes at the bottom of the anus.

Bill 1:04:39
The gut has somewhere in the vicinity of 500 million neurons, which is the same amount of neurons as a cat’s brain. So when you engage an mBIT coach, you are getting someone that is skilled in helping you discover what your heart desires and what you truly value, the action you need to take and how to listen to your gut.

Bill 1:05:00
How to engage the creativity of your head to find creative ways of achieving your heart’s desires. If you’d like to know more about me coaching, get in touch, we can meet in person or via Skype. Go to billgasiamis.com and fill out the contact form, and I will be in touch look forward to meeting you.

Intro 1:05:26
The presenters and special guests of this podcast intend to provide accurate and helpful information to their listeners. These podcasts can not take into consideration individual circumstances and are not intended to be a substitute for independent medical advice from a qualified health professional.

Intro 1:05:44
You should always seek advice from a qualified health professional before acting on any of the information provided by any of the transit lounge podcasts. This has been a production of thembrainingshow.com check us out on Facebook and start a conversation at facebook.com/mBrainingshow. Subscribe to each show on iTunes and check us out on Twitter.

Intro 1:06:09
The mBraining show we’d like to acknowledge and thank mBIT international for their support with the show wants to know more about mBraining? visit www.mbraining.com.

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