Marty Interviews Bill

Marty: Hey, Bill. How are you today?

Bill: I'm good, Marty. Been looking forward to this. There have been parts of me that have wanted to practice by rehearsing and looking at questions. I knew you were going to ask me and I deliberately did not do that. The answers I give you are fresh.

Marty: Awesome. That's a good way to be.

Marty: Okay. Let's dive right in. You know what? I know that

Marty: you've done other things. You've had other careers. When did you first become a coach and how did that happen?

Bill: I officially began to think of myself as a coach in, I believe the spring of 2011. How it happened was I was very dissatisfied as a mortgage loan officer.

Bill: I had been a loan officer or also referred to as a mortgage originator for about nine years. Up until the mortgage meltdown in 2008 and 2009. And there was a lot to be dissatisfied with at that time. Because of the meltdown, nobody trusted mortgage originators, loan officers. Of course they shouldn't have.

Bill: There was a lot that had been revealed about my industry. That was the ugly underbelly of the industry and a lot of people had gotten hurt and burnt by the meltdown so it was difficult to be associated with the industry and to feel good about That's number one number two Because values had crashed so badly and there were so many foreclosures on the market There wasn't any business for loan officers.

Bill: Nobody was borrowing money. Nobody could borrow money if they wanted to And we started treating our customers our borrowers as suspects rather than clients In other words, the questions that we would ask them, the documentation that we asked for was two, three, four layers deeper than it. Oh, my gosh.

Bill: Wow. It was an extreme reaction to the liberal policies that had led to the meltdown. So I didn't like being a loan officer and I didn't really believe that I could continue. So in 2008. I put my last $1,500 down on a training program to see if I couldn't breathe some life into my mortgage originator career.

Bill: Cause I didn't know what else I would do. And and it worked for the next three years. I did really well from, because I took this training, I changed employers. I applied what I'd learned in the training and I started generating income that beyond well, beyond anything that I could ever generate before as a mortgage officer.

Bill: Well, There was a month that. I was handed a paycheck that was two and a half times bigger than my highest affirming aspiration. I used to do affirmations. I, Bill Tierney will earn X number of dollars in a single month. And I'd write that 25 times a day. And I did that for two or three or four months.

Bill: And then I got so busy, I stopped doing it. And then four months later, I made that amount of money. And then a year later, I made two and a half times that amount of money. And when my employer handed me that check, I was waiting to feel excited about making that much money. And nothing happened. Whoa. Yeah.

Bill: In fact, something happened, but not what I expected. I closed the door to my office, and I looked at that check, and I thought about all of the stress, and all of the sleepless nights, and all of the conflict that I had been engaged with real estate agents and borrowers. And I said, it's not worth it.

Bill: Here it is. This is two and a half times what I wanted as a pinnacle achievement. And I don't want to do this anymore. So I walked into my boss's office and I said, I want to give you notice. I'm not going to do this anymore. He was shocked.

Bill: I ended up going to a different actually I went to work for a bank, continuing to be a mortgage loan officer, but believing at that time, this was misguided, but I was believing at that time that the reason I was so stressed out was because of the processes employed by that particular employer that made things that much harder than they needed to be.

Bill: I see. In fact, it was industry wide, and I hoped a different employer would make things a little easier to be with. So I went another three years at that rate or, another year or two at that rate. Just headed toward coaching? Yes. So I was so discouraged by the mortgage industry that I decided really what I want to do is be a therapist.

Bill: . Yes. Yes. And so given my high school diploma, I just needed a little bit of a journey to complete before I could be a therapist. I figured, if I was going to school full time, it would take about 6 years. I couldn't go to school full time because I still didn't have any income without, so I needed to continue as a mortgage loan officer.

Bill: I tried it for a couple of quarters, loved school, saw that it was, that I just didn't have the money to pay for it, so I gave up. And was discouraged that I wasn't going to be able to be a therapist. It was going to take me 10, 12, 15 years to become one. And I was already 55 at the time. One of my friends said you got to go see my coach, Carlos.

Bill: Why would I do that? Was my response. The answer was because you need to be a life coach. I said, why do I need to be a life coach? And she said, because you're, you'd be really good at it. You'd be a really good life coach. Why do I need to talk to your friend, Carlos? Because he's a great life coach and he can tell you what it's all about.

Bill: I said, no, thank you. Because in my mind, a life coach was a joke, seriously, being a life coach was just a joke. So she persisted and pushed. By the third attempt, I said, fine, okay, I'll go talk to Carlos. And I had a one hour conversation with Carlos and became convinced that I wanted to be a life coach.

Bill: Yes, it was an amazing experience. What Carlos did was what you talked about last week when we talked. He listened to me. I felt listened to, understood, and appreciated in a way that I don't think I'd ever felt in my entire life. And I thought, if this is what life coaches do for people, I want to do this for people.

Bill: How do I learn how to do this? And that's how I became a life coach.

Marty: What was it that she saw the friend who pointed toward Carlos? What did she see in you that had her say you are, you ought to be a life coach?

Bill: That's a great question. I would have to ask her directly. I don't know. Apparently she saw what I couldn't see.

Bill: Okay. Yeah. By the way, one of the things that she said to me about why I should talk to Carlos was because Carlos made her new things that she didn't wanna do. , that was a double No. For me, no. Then no. No. I don't want not, I don't want somebody telling me to do what I don't want to do ,

Marty: of course not.

Marty: Who would? .

Bill: So why

Marty: coaching? Why not? I get that therapy would've required. A lot of, a lot more, formal education than you wanted to go into, but there was something similar about these two. They're not the same. We've discussed that

Bill: here. Yeah, I see where you're pointing the, so in 1982 I got sober in a 12 step program and I continue to participate, fully engaged for about 35 years.

Bill: That started back in 1982 and ended just about 5 years ago. Up to that point in my life in 2011, at that point, I was sober 29 years. Is that right? Is the math right on that? Yeah. I was sober 29 years, and during that time, I had been. Apparently, my friend saw something in me that this, that the new people that came to this 12 step program saw, and they asked me to sponsor them.

Bill: And what I found was that I really enjoyed sponsoring men and it's a sort of mentoring. And I began to realize that coaching is similar in some ways to mentoring. Yeah. So I think that's why it was, that was such a good fit as well.

Marty: What did you enjoy about it?

Bill: The satisfaction of being able to see the lights come on.

Bill: Yeah, I've got, there's a guy that still calls me every single year. And he says, that day at the coffee shop after the meeting, when you pulled out that napkin and drew that circle for me and explained to me about my power and what I don't have power over. He said that made all the difference. I stayed sober.

Bill: And now I've built a life that I love and that would not have happened, Bill, if you hadn't drawn that circle for me. Gotcha.

Marty: So now you've been doing, you've been doing coachings for how many years then?

Bill: 12, roughly. I'm in my 13th year.

Marty: And I know for a fact that you've had different focuses, different methodologies.

Marty: Lots of different clients. If the Bill Tierney of today, we're going to give some advice to the Bill Tierney of 12 years ago, just gotten into coaching what would that be?

Bill: Go to therapy.

Bill: The reason I'm laughing about that is because I'll see if I can abbreviate this story, but it took me about four years working part time as a coach to set aside money from that I earned from coaching. To be able to afford to pay for coach, formal coach training. So I was working part time as a coach only based on the experiences I was having with Carlos, the guy that I had originally talked to, I hired him to be my coach.

Bill: And I just watched what he did and then tried to duplicate that and learn from him until I could save enough money to pay for coach training because it was quite expensive. I see. At the end of the one year coach training program that I participated in. I was so discouraged and had lot and had so much self doubt.

Bill: What I learned from coach training is I'm a really shitty coach. That's what I got. That's what that was my takeaway. The parting shot. And I know that the trainer didn't intend this as to be hurtful, but it landed as really hurtful. And when I basically, I said to her, why am I, have I spent a whole year here?

Bill: And I feel so like I have so much self doubt and think that I'm a crappy coach. Is that what this program is designed to do? And she said, of course not. Bill, some people need therapy. And I just, oh, that might as well have been a dagger to my heart. What I heard was there's something wrong with you, Bill, that you're not getting what we provided you.

Bill: You're not able to let in what we provided you. No, I was hurt. I was pissed. And I sat on that and, complained about it for two or three months to anybody that would listen and then realized, Oh, she's right. She's right. The reason I wasn't able to let anything in 12 weekends out of the previous year was because I was so triggered by the training itself that there was no way I could let it in.

Bill: I needed therapy. So lucky for me, I got therapy. So my message to my younger self would be save yourself a whole lot of suffering. Go to therapy and go to internal family systems therapist. IFS therapy. Specifically because I'd been to therapy for years. If I, if current me went back to 2011, me and said, Bill, go to therapy, I would've said, no, thank you.

Bill: I've already done that. But then hopefully I would be able to explain to my younger self no. You haven't done this. This is internal family systems and not too many people know about it yet in 2011, not that many people know about it yet. But get on the leading edge. Go to IFS therapy, heal your trauma, heal your past.

Bill: And become more of the person who you actually are and less of the person that you're trying to be. Yeah, and

Marty: so now, from the go to the other perspective, that fresh coach, trying to work part time and get trained at the same thing coaching what device. What would that, what would you have asked of your current self if you could have back then?

Bill: Oh, so as younger part time coach, part time mortgage loan originator, actually full time mortgage loan originator, what would I have asked? Your current self. My current self. I had so much self doubt. Is this going to work out? Am I just wasting my time? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing?

Bill: Will I ever be successful? I would have wanted to know all of those things. And what would

Marty: your current self have said if your old self had asked you

Bill: this? I think it would have sounded something like this. You are going into business for yourself, Bill. And there's two major parts of going into business for yourself.

Bill: One part is doing the business. But more importantly is getting the business. You don't want to have to do the things it takes to get the business because you haven't healed your past. So go to therapy.

Marty: We're back in therapy. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill: IFS specifically IFS. And then once you've done that work, what you'll notice is that you're not only willing.

Bill: But see with clarity, how important it is that you develop the ability to do marketing, to attract, to talk to people, to do what it takes to build up your business. You're going to be, I would say to myself, you're going to be a great coach because you are going to go to training. By the way, I went to other much, many other trainings and they've, those trainings have all helped me out.

Bill: I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on training. It helped me become a better coach and I would have told myself that spend the money on therapy, spend the money on training, practice, get better, do your own work. That's probably more key than even the first thing I said, rather than the business advice of there's two parts of business that would also been do your work, go to therapy again.

Bill: Yeah.

Marty: So that sounds like a key to your philosophy of coaching. If we could shift to what is, this question of what is your basic philosophy of coaching? It sounds like this doing your work at that and maybe in an IFS way is central, is it?

Bill: Absolutely. So do your work means to me, do your work in therapy.

Bill: If therapy is what you need. Do your work in therapy long enough so that you don't need therapy anymore and now you can shift into coaching. Do your work with the support of a mentor or a coach once you have the internal capacity to do that kind of work. Not everybody is ready for coaching. A lot of people actually need to do, they need to heal their past because there's, imagine a continuum that, and on one end of the continuum is the need to heal the past.

Bill: And on the other end of the continuum is self realization somewhere in the middle is where most of us live. I lived on the side of the continuum where I was doing everything I could just to survive life.

Bill: I needed to heal my past once I had done enough of that work, then I could see I could actually see possibility that I previously couldn't see it all. That's when coaching is really appropriate. I don't believe I'm 68 years old now. I've been sober for over 40 years. I've been I don't know how many hours of therapy I've done.

Bill: I don't know how many trainings I've done or books that I've read. But if doing my work gets completed, when I reached the top of the mountain, I just arrived at base camp. Now, yes, yeah, and it's been great. What a trip it's been. I'm looking up at the top of the mountain thinking, God, can we, when can we start?

Marty: For our listeners, could you give us an example of how this actually works? This with the client, an actual example, if you could, you don't have to divulge who it

Bill: was. So you're asking me. How do I work with clients? I'll give you an example of that.

Marty: So we can see this philosophy in action.

Bill: Let me say another thing about the philosophy first, and then I will, okay? Here's why we need to do our work. It's because we've forgotten who we are. The work is to move everything out of the way, that's in the way of recognizing and realizing who we are. But we're not going to do that in a steamroller.

Bill: Take charge of your life forceful way. That doesn't work. That's just another trade off. We're going to trade off sacrificing this part of my life so that I can have that part of my life. No, that doesn't work. I believe that each of us at our core have all the resources and everything that we need in order to be who it is that we're here to be.

Bill: But as long as we're under the impression that who we are isn't enough or it's too much, not lovable, not good enough. That gets in the way of full self expression. Full self expression means That we have done the work we need to do so that those parts of us that would believe otherwise that we're not good enough and don't deserve a good life, finally understand, finally get the update that who we are is all we need.

Bill: That's my job as a coach is to help clients get there. Okay.

Marty: To that update, so to speak, like you are plenty. You're all of those internal conversations you picked up that doesn't tell us the truth about who

Bill: you are. Yeah, they're valid. And let's get curious about how those, that internal dialogue started in the first place.

Bill: Why. Why do you have the thoughts that you have? Why do you have the emotions that you have? Why do you have the impulses you have? And why do you do the things that you do? How does this get

Marty: started with the client? How does the conversation begin?

Bill: What I do with clients is I just ask them, if coaching helped you, how would you know?

Bill: Just one question. If it,

Marty: so this is before you ask them if afterward, you're going to say this did something for you. What did it do?

Bill: Yeah. From your current perspective, what do you hope to be able to say as a result of hiring me as your coach? Got it. Okay. And so that could be any number of things.

Bill: And I know you're asking me for a specific example. I don't have one fresh in my mind, but let me, so let me just draw, give me just a second.

Bill: I worked with, I'm going to say it in past tense, and I'm going to use a different name. I need to have a name. Marvin. Let's say his name's Marvin. Okay. All right. And I worked with Marvin. Marvin was a rising star in his corporate job. Didn't believe that. He actually deserved to continue to rise and yet at the same time felt a drive to continue to try to rise.

Bill: Going after promotion after promotion and every time he got promoted, he did great. But inside he felt like any day now they're going to figure out what a fraud I am. That they have just promoted the wrong guy and that I'm an imposter. Oh, okay. The unintended consequences of that were that he was constantly looking for validation and approval.

Bill: He needed to check in indirectly with people to make sure that they loved him, that he, that they were happy with him. Yeah, he was very insecure and they loved him because he was willing to do whatever they wanted him to do in order to get approval. And

Marty: he was willing to do all that in order to get those out of boys.

Marty: So it's this ever tightening

Bill: circle. He had just divorced his 3rd wife. He was estranged from his adult children, and they loved him at work because they could count on him and rely on him. He could work 10, 12, 15 hours, whatever it took, six, seven days a week, highly successful, just making all kinds of money.

Bill: And all the while, inside of him, what we discovered was this little boy that. Was hurt because dad wouldn't take him fishing and mom was mad at him almost like he was his dad So mom was mad and critical and dad just wasn't there You know, I hear people saying things like that's in The past is in the past, but the truth is we bring the past with us until it's resolved.

Bill: This little boy never did get what he needed from dad, and he never did, and he got what he didn't need from mom, and needed to, what I did is I used the internal family systems model, IFS, to one part at a time, and then we're all made up of these sub personalities, and many of these sub personalities, or parts, take on extreme roles in order to help us survive and get past.

Bill: Very difficult times in our life. Sometimes it's trauma. Sometimes it's just a slight, but there are times in our lives that are difficult to be with. And so what we do is we file them away as if they never happened. We push them away and we keep on moving forward in life. Thinking that it's in our past and we should be over it, but we're not over it until we are.

Bill: IFS helps us get over it would be one way to say it, but more accurately, IFS helps us to embrace it, acknowledge it, understand it, appreciate it. And then heal it and as a coach healing is a word that many coaches will say, Oh, we don't go there. We don't do that. That's for the realm of therapists and psychologists.

Bill: I was trained right next doctors. I was trained right next to therapist in the IFS model. I'm a certified IFS practitioner. So I know how to do this. I don't do it all the time because my focus as a coach is on results. I'm noticing time, so I want to let

Marty: me ask you about that last go, because I know that you focus on results and you're talking about what's very closely related to therapy and, completing on the past tie those two together.

Marty: Why would you say that this approach to coaching is going to be better at getting results than some

Bill: other. I can tell you it's better than what I did before. I think I was pretty good at helping people before. I used a lot of things like the work of Byron Katie, which is similar to the cognitive behavioral therapy model.

Bill: And I would use accountability and just a lot of different, really traditional life coaching tools. When I discovered IFS, I saw that there was something different and powerful about this, but didn't know quite how to integrate it in a coaching way. So now what I do is I walk people through a process that I call the self led results.

Bill: Process and I have people identify the result that they would like to achieve a change or improvement that they'd like to make in their life. I have them identify the problem or problems that would solve. And then measure how challenging they anticipate it's going to be to make this change. The fact that somebody would bring a problem, whatever problem they've identified, to coaching and say, this is what I want coaching to do for me, tells me that whatever they've tried up until now has not worked.

Bill: They don't know how to make the change or else they wouldn't be

Bill: Paying somebody to help them. We identify what they want, and then we identify the cycle that they're now stuck in that gets them results that they don't want. We identify the parts of themselves that keep them locked into that cycle.

Bill: We work to understand and appreciate those parts for what they're trying to do to help. As ineffective as it is, it usually is very ineffective and brings about just about the opposite of what they're trying to accomplish. Because at the end of the day, you They're trying to solve problems that don't exist anymore.

Bill: Gotcha. But present life reminds these parts of ourselves that enough of those past problems that these parts think that they still need to be solved. So they take over. They hijack us. So think about this guy. He, this guy didn't want to go through three marriages and be estranged from his kids.

Bill: Of course. He thought that what was going to happen was he was going to get approval and money by putting everything he had into his corporate job. And he hated his life. He hated his life until he did some coaching and he was able to restore relationships with his kids and. So on and so forth.

Bill: So

Marty: is there anything else either about you or about your coaching or about coaching in general that you want

Bill: us to know?

Bill: Let's say in coaching with coaching in general, if you like me, you, the listener, the watcher of this podcast episode. Believe that coaching is a joke. Check it out for yourself. Go get, go pay for a session. Have a conversation with a coach. Not everybody's a good coach. You might even have to have a conversation with one or two different coaches.

Bill: Watch the different episodes of this podcast. We're going to give you lots of examples of different coaches and their styles. Some styles might work for you. Other styles may not. But try it out. I have a coach. I've always had a coach as long as I became a coach, and sometimes I've had both coaching and therapy.

Bill: I would just say that whatever there is that might be in your way, you're probably not aware of what that is yet. You can become aware of, with the help of a good therapist and or coach, depending on where you are in that continuum I was referring to. But do your work. It would be, if I was giving, going to give anybody advice around coaching or personal development, it would be to do your work and get some help.

Bill: It's a lot faster. The stuff that I've learned in my 41 years on my personal development journey. I've got condensed down into a coaching program that helps people get there much, much quicker in months rather than years. Tell us about that program. That self led results program that I was telling you about earlier.

Bill: Once we've identified that cycle. Now, we work with the parts that make up that cycle. Once they feel understood and appreciated, they begin to relax. And as they relax, that cycle falls apart and almost organically and natural. We the results that we start getting because the cycle has fallen apart align with.

Bill: What it was that was identified as the result that was desired in the first place.

Marty: All right. So coming full circle, just share with us something else that you're up to in life that you're excited by just so we get a better sense of who you are all as a rounded

Bill: person. Three years ago, my wife and I were visiting my son on with the island.

Bill: And he asked me if I wanted to throw some corn hole bags with him in the backyard. I love, love, love my son, love hanging out with him. I don't care what we're doing, whether we're watching a Mariners game or throwing cornhole bags in the backyard or what, or just sitting on the couch playing guitars together.

Bill: I said, sure. And we went back there and I fell in love with the game of cornhole. So since then I bought a cornhole set here at home and my wife and I, every chance we get, we go out in the backyard and we throw cornhole bags. Now we've played in a few tournaments and we continue to challenge each other to get better and better.

Bill: So now that, that is besides work. And I call it work, although it doesn't feel like work to me, besides coaching, which I love. I'm writing a book right now. I'm continuously upgrading and writing new programs. I love working with my clients, but outside of this office where I do my work at home over Zoom with my clients.

Bill: My wife is out here doing her job. She works from home as well. And when she gets off and when I get off tonight we'll, weather allowing, we'll go out and throw some cornhole bags, have some dinner together. And yeah, that's my life and I love it.

Marty: It sounds beautiful. It sounds great. Thank you for all the insight and the enthusiasm that you've given us here

Bill: today.

Bill: Thanks for the questions. This has been a delight to be able to answer them. Thanks for asking them. You're welcome. All right, Marty.