S3 Bonus - Toku McCree on Building Genuine Client Relationships

Welcome to the Zen Habits podcast, where we dive into how to work with uncertainty, resistance, and fear around our meaningful work. This is for anyone who wants to create an impact in the world and cares deeply enough to do the work. I'm your host, Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog.

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Hi everybody. Today, I am honored to be joined by a guest expert, and a friend of mine, Toku McCree. Toku is someone I met over a decade ago, around 2011 or 2012, something in that range. He became my friend, later my coach, and eventually just a friend. We were also business partners. He’s someone I consider a brother and a really good friend.

He was a Zen student as well, who lived in a Zen monastery for a while. He left and built a six-figure coaching business. He then started a thing called the Coaching Dojo, which trained coaches, and later Coaching MBA, which teaches the fundamentals of building a coaching business.

He’s now coming out with a book that I’m excited to dive in with him about. It’s for coaches, but actually, I think it has so much to do with how we’re living our lives and has some really interesting perspectives. So, I'm excited to dive in with Toku, let’s go into the interview.

Leo

All right, well, bringing on Toku. Toku, we go way back.

Toku

Way back.

Leo

Yeah. You've been a friend, a business partner, a coach, you know, just a colleague. We have so many different ways to describe our relationship, but now we can say you’ve been a podcast guest.

Toku

New aspect. My favorite aspect of our relationship was when we were in the motorcycle gang together. I really liked that. I like all the new shapes of our relationship.

Leo

Fellow Zen student would be another.

Toku

There we go, fellow Zen student. Yeah.

Leo

Also amazing-looking dude. I don’t have the beard, but we have similar hairstyles, and… no, we both look really good.

Toku

It’s that slick aerodynamic look.

Leo

Thank you for coming on the podcast, and welcome.

Toku

Yeah. I’m really happy to be here. It’s great to do this. It’s so interesting to be here and talk with you in this way, because I’m so used to just chatting on the phone and connecting. So, yeah, we get to keep some of that magic here, 'cause one of the things I love about our friendship is we always have such interesting conversations.

Leo

All right, we get to now record it and share it with others, which is a new thing for our conversations. So, the reason why I invited you to this podcast is because we were talking about a book that you’re creating, and I think it’s actually going to be launching soon. I don’t know. When is it launching?

Toku

It’s going to be launching in spring of 2024. So probably like February, February, March-ish.

Leo

Spring of 2025.

Toku

Right. Yeah. Spring of 2025. I can’t, I have not invented a time machine yet.

Leo

So we were talking about that just on a regular phone call and I was fascinated by the concept of the book. And then you were also sharing a little bit about how you came about the book and how you’re writing the book. And so I was like, “Oh, this is such good stuff. I want to capture it and share it with people.” And I think there’s a lot of wisdom and value in the approach you’re taking in the book itself, and I wanted to explore all of this.

And so that’s, that’s... So, you know, a little bit of this is going to be some shameless promotion of your book, but I have no shame in promoting things that I think the audience will really love. I wish I had a copy in my hand to wave around and say, “Look, this is what it is.”

Toku

I know I should have made a backup for you.

Leo

But I actually was an early reader of another book that you were writing, and I know the value that you bring, so I completely trust in what this book is gonna be.

Toku

Yeah. And I’m excited to share it. It’s something that I’ve taught about a lot over the last eight years. I’m finally putting it into, like, book format so people can use it and refer back to it. So I’m excited to do that.

Leo

Okay. So let’s actually start by just sharing a little bit about the book. Do you have a title already?

Toku

Okay. What is it? Yeah. So the book is called Coaching Beyond Yes and No.

Leo

Coaching Beyond Yes and No.

Toku

Yeah. And it basically is this… so I’m a coach, and I do executive coaching. I was Leo’s coach at one point and I worked with a lot of founders and entrepreneurs. But early on in my career as a coach, I realized that our industry, the coaching industry, has a big problem, which is that there’s a lot of complaints about the industry. People are always like, “Oh, there are so many shysters and so many bad people.”

And I wanted to be this force for positive change. So I took a lot of what I had learned and taught myself as a coach and started sharing with other coaches. And so the book comes from that. Like, I know there are probably a lot of not-very-good coaches out there, but I think that my experience of coaching is that coaching is this incredibly powerful tool that can really help change people’s lives.

And so I want to give those coaches that really care about the work they do, that have high integrity, that don’t want to do this fly-by-night, Instagram-fancy thing, like really want to help change people’s lives—I want to give them the tools to be successful. And I didn’t see a lot of people doing that out there in the space. So that's sort of the origin story of how I started to work with coaches and where is book comes from.

Leo

Yeah, and we haven’t mentioned the Coaching MBA and the Dojo and all of that, but you’ve actually been teaching this with coaches for years now.

Toku

Yeah, I’ve always been interested in, like, how do I—this is a question that goes beyond coaches—how do I do the work that I love in a world that doesn’t always value the things, or I don’t perceive always values the things that I value, right?

So my first career was in the music business, and a lot of the times, you know, it values expediency and fame. And I asked, “How do I show up in that world in a way that really honors the art form of music?” Well, at the same time, the industry is very different from that.

And so when I got into coaching, I started to ask, like, you know, there’s a lot of pressure, a lot of voices in the coaching world about like, you gotta do marketing, gotta use these high-pressure sales tactics, in order to get people to change.

And to me, it felt really antithetical. It’s like what I’m supposed to be doing as a coach is to empower the person in front of me to make the change they want in their life. How can I use manipulative marketing practices and manipulative sales practices to get them? Like, it feels totally wonky, right? Like, I’m going to trick you and manipulate you, and then you’re going to be really empowered to change your life. Like that’s totally wrong, right?

Leo

Yeah, bad start to the relationship.

Toku

Exactly. So I just got really curious, like, how do I… I’ve studied a lot of, like, sales and marketing. How do I take the things that I know work in that realm and make them really transformational?

And so the book is really about… I mean, the first part of the book basically deconstructs all these myths or ideas we have about how selling has to be, right? And then the second part of the book teaches this methodology that I call coaching beyond yes or no, which is really about how to have a life-changing conversation with someone.

Because ultimately, if you really believe in the power of coaching, or, you know, let’s say you’re a consultant or you do Reiki, or, you know, maybe you’re a guidance counselor—like, you’re having these life-changing conversations. How do you have that conversation in a way that’s really effective but also really honors the person that is in front of you?

And my experience of doing that is that, like, I’ve created a lot of success as a coach, I’ve signed a lot of clients, but I’ve done it in a way that when people get off the phone, hopefully, I’m not perfect, right? But when people get off the phone with me, they feel like our interaction was an interaction that really honored who they are, honored what they want in the world, and not like I’m using these tricks and techniques to get them to buy something, only then to help them, right? Like there’s no bait and switch, no, like, ends justifying the means. It’s like I’m trying to live my values through the entire process.

Leo

Thanks for sharing that. And, you know, having been a person in those conversations with you, I can attest to that. And for people who aren’t coaches, who are listening to this or who aren’t trying to sell anything, I promise you, we’re going to get to something that I think is really powerful for whatever you’re tackling in life. But I wanted to give a little bit of background to how you’ve been teaching this in the real world with coaches and then now how you’ve poured that wisdom into this book.

I have a couple of questions about that before we move on to the more generalized wisdom. First of all...

Toku

Can I say something quick about the generalized wisdom piece?

Leo

Yeah, absolutely.

Toku

I think what’s been interesting about how I wrote the book is the process I went through to sort of deconstruct what I wrote—what is the sort of common belief about a particular thing or how you have to do something, and then found my own path to do it aligned with my values. I think that process is really universal, so I’m excited to talk to you about that.

Because I think that while I applied it to this particular thing, which is sort of selling for coaches, I use it all the time with my regular clients who aren’t coaches. It’s like, “How do we take the belief of ‘I have to show up like this to be an effective leader,’ ‘I have to show up like this to be a good husband,’ or ‘I have to show up like this in order to get my school district to change’?” And it’s like, “No, actually, you don’t have to show up like that.”

If you look at how you actually want to be, and you show up in that way, you can be much more effective at getting what you want done in life and you feel better, right? You feel better in the process. You feel aligned in the process. So, while the book is about the specific topic, there’s an underlying philosophy that I’m excited to talk to you about.

Leo

Yep, that’s exactly what I was alluding to. Yes, thank you. Before we move on to that, I wanted to just ask a couple more questions or touch on a couple of things really quickly. So, Coaching Beyond Yes or No—I think you might’ve shared that this is it connected to the Rumi quote?

Toku

No.

Leo

No, it's not. Okay. In my head...

Toku

You mean, “The fuel beyond good and bad”?

Leo

Yeah.

Toku

No, it's not connected. I love that quote, though. So maybe it’s a subtlety, but no.

Leo

Okay, that’s what it evokes in me. Coaching beyond yes or no—there’s something beyond right and wrong.

Toku

Well, yeah, the title comes from this… I mean, it comes from the story of how I created it. Early on when I started out as a coach, I was really struggling to be successful. I’d read a lot of books, I read most famously The Prosperous Coach, which a lot of coaches have read. Parts of that book are great. I love how simple it makes the sales process. There are some things that it misses, but I think the fundamentals of that book are really solid, and I got a ton from it.

And so I was on this call with a woman I met at Camp GLP, which our friend Jonathan Fields used to run. He used to run this thing called Camp GLP. I met this woman there. She was like the perfect client for me. She was creative, wanted to start a business, and had a good job so she could afford coaching.

So I did my best, you know, and our coaching sessions were amazing. She was having all these insights. It felt really good. We got into the sales process, and I was like, “Okay, I’m proposing.” I really, really understood what she wanted, and I reflected that back to her. Then I described how we’d work together, and I said my price—which was not a lot of money at that time compared to what I charge now. And she got really scared and really nervous.

In my head, because I’d read these sales books, I was like, “Oh, I need to start handling her objections,” but it just felt off. Maybe there was a way that we had been having the conversation, but it just felt off. It felt weird. And I could tell, like, I felt like I was going to lose her. Like she was just going to say no.

And it wasn’t just that I was upset that I was going to potentially lose her as a client. I was just so excited about the things she wanted to do in her life, and I thought, “Man, it’s going to be such a bummer if she doesn’t do this thing.” I know it’s not on me, but I thought, “She’s got this opportunity to make this very clear commitment right now, and what if she doesn’t do it?”

And so that’s when I said to myself, “Look, what if I just kept coaching her? Instead of doing the sales techniques, what if I just kept coaching her?” The reason why the book is called Coaching Beyond Yes or No is because what happened after I said, “What if I just started coaching her?” is we started talking about the things she was really afraid of—like her fear of failure, what if she made this investment and I ripped her off? Or what if she didn’t do the work that I wanted her to do?

All these little fears that were actually stopping her from making this change. None of that stuff came up until there was money on the line and I was asking her to hire me. She had to make a commitment, right?

Before, it was just like friends talking about going on vacation—“Oh yeah, we’re going to go to Bali. It’s going to be great.” But until you go to book the plane ticket, it’s not real. So the reason why the book is called Coaching Beyond Yes or No is that I realized often this conversation we have after we ask someone to make a commitment can really be this incredibly powerful, life-changing conversation if we view it that way. That’s what I hope the book helps people see.

Leo

I love that. Thanks for sharing that.

Okay, so let’s get to the empowering context that you’re creating around sales. How did you arrive at this, and how can we generalize this to other parts of our lives? Let’s start with how you arrived at it for this book, and I think you’ve already touched on that.

Toku

Yeah, it started with this conversation I had with this woman. She ended up signing up and was one of my first clients at a higher rate. I started doing this same thing again and again, like, “Oh, I’m just going to keep coaching people no matter what happens.” I’d hear things like, “Oh, I’m worried I can’t pay for it.” And I’d say, “Okay, great. You want to talk about what that looks like?” or “It sounds like money’s in the way; let’s move money out of the way.”

What I realized was that as I started doing this and getting better, I kept meeting other people who were like, “I hate selling.” That was the thing. I think for all of us in our lives, no matter what job we have, there’s always that thing we say, “I hate dot, dot, dot.” I hate meetings. I hate Slack. I hate commuting. There’s always something. I started to notice in the coaching industry that it was, “I hate selling and I hate marketing.”

I thought, “These people want to change lives, and coaches are supposed to be really good at seeing things from your perspective,” but they were really stuck in this particular way of looking at the world, that selling is manipulative, greedy, pushy, high-pressure, selfish. And, what I saw was that in my sales conversations, I felt generous and kind and trustworthy, and I was being successful.

Most people feel like there’s a trade-off, right? You can either be high integrity and have good values, but then the world screws you over, or you can be sneaky and cagey and manipulative, and then you win, but you feel like crap about yourself.

In this one realm, I was like, “I don’t think you have to make those trade-offs.” And so, in my coaching, a lot of the times what I do with people is I have them identify whatever that thing is. Like, “I hate meetings.” I’ll say, “Okay, well, what is it about meetings that you hate?” They’ll respond, “Well, they’re really boring.” And I’ll ask, “What have you done to make the meetings more interesting?” or “How do you show up to the meetings? What’s your intention?”

What we start to realize as we have the conversation is that the barrier to them coming up with a solution or making change is often just the calcification of the belief itself. The idea or the story they tell about the thing that they hate calcifies that idea. And as soon as you say, “This thing is awful and will never get better,” then it’s never going to get better because you can’t think about it creatively at all.

And so, the first part of the book breaks these myths down, but I think what I would say to people in general is, whatever your thing that you hate is, start by writing out, “What are the things that I think are true about this that could just be myths?” For example, “Meetings have to be boring. Meetings are a waste of time.”

Then ask, “Are those true? Could we turn those into myths?” No, some meetings are really interesting. Some meetings are really, really helpful. So, it’s not that they have to be boring and a waste of time. They’re just a result of a choice that people make.

Leo

Okay, so with selling, it’s like, “Selling sucks. Selling’s boring. Selling’s dirty or manipulative.” And what you’re helping them do is to examine those myths they might have about selling. Then, what would be next after they identify the myths?

Toku

So then, for me, it’s helpful to identify where those myths come from. So, for example, in the book, the first part I talk about is: why do we think that selling is greedy? We start to look at, “What are those situations in which people sold to us where it felt greedy?”

One example I use in the book is how I like to go shopping at markets in Mexico and South America. I’m used to the American culture where the price is the price, and there’s no haggling, you know? But in other cultures, there’s like a haggling, there's a thing. And so, there's no prices on things. They are telling you the price. So, you don’t know if you’re getting the regular price or the tourist price. You're just not sure. There’s a feeling of, “I might get ripped off; they might take advantage of me.” That creates a defensiveness. It creates this adversarial feeling.

So, part of it is when I started to understand, “Oh, this is what’s going on, like why this feeling of greediness happens, because I don’t know if they’re making something up.” Then, part of what I need to do when I’m talking to my clients is be really generous but also forthright about what’s going on and how I work. I need to be clear about my price. I don’t think coaches should post their price online.

For example, with pricing, I never price anything that I sell as “49.99” because it feels manipulative. Psychologically, we think of it more like “4” than like “5.” But when I see something that’s “99,” I’m smart, and so are most people—they know they’re being manipulated.

So, when I quote my prices, they’re always whole numbers, like $1,000, or $450. I always try to use a whole, round number because to me that communicates, “Look, I’m going to be upfront about the price. I’m not going to try to trick you with a ‘.99’ or ‘.88.’ I’m communicating this really clearly to you.” So you feel that I have this honesty and integrity.

To me, I’d rather communicate that honesty and integrity with my pricing than try to trick people. So once you have these myths down, like “Meetings are boring,” for example, you start to look at where that idea comes from.

You might notice, “Well, I’m sitting in on a lot of meetings, and it feels like they never go anywhere,” or “I had a boss with a droning voice who talked all the time.” Or, “I was in meetings and it always felt like there were side conversations, and we are not really addressing the main thing.”

By starting to look at or understand, what is the behavior, what are the experiences that tell me this is true about this thing? and what would it be like to have these experiences, to create this without having those experiences.

In the book, I say, “What’s the antidote to this myth?” For greed, the antidote is honesty and generosity; for pushiness, it’s relaxation and spaciousness; for deceptiveness, it’s being very forthright and trustworthy. There are natural antidotes to these behaviors, but to find those antidotes for the thing that you hate, you have to identify the myth and then figure out where does the myth comes from.

We talk about in history like “Oh, this myth came from this thing that happened", and they were trying to explain an earthquake. So, they invented, you know, somebody throwing lightning down from heaven—that’s why there are earthquakes, the gods are throwing lightning at us, right? So, starting to look for the origins of the myth and understand them, because then that often becomes the ingredients to figure out what we have to shift about those particular things.

Leo

Okay, so I’d love to look at how to actually shift it. But I'm going to name, just for the audience, different places where I’ve heard people talk about their kind of, “I hate selling,” but in different places in their lives. I’d love for people to play along and try to see what’s true for you and what you could shift.

So, for habits, it can be like, “Ah, meditation is boring,” for example. or “Exercise is sweaty and uncomfortable.” It's just like, “Oh, it’s this thing that I have to do; I know I should do it, but it sucks.” There’s a lot there. So, there’s a bunch of things in that area. Often, another one that's really big for people who listen to this is finances. Like, “I hate doing my taxes. I hate doing my budget."

Toku

"I hate money. I hate dealing with money; it’s so stressful and hard and confusing.” Yeah.

Leo

Yeah. Let’s see, what else? You know, sometimes people have a hard time focusing on what they might think of as hard, important work. There’s this feeling of, “I know I should be doing that, but it’s really hard, and I feel like I’m not up to it, so I’m going to go play solitaire or watch YouTube or whatever it is.”

Toku

One thing I get a lot is, “Oh, I want to start a blog or write a book, but writing is really hard; creating content is really difficult.”

Leo

Yeah.

Toku

I had a woman on a Coaching MBA call, talking about how she had this idea that, “If I’m not on Instagram all the time marketing my business, I’m not going to be successful.” She went away to this retreat in Mount Shasta and came back, opened social media, and after a week in the woods, she was just like "I can't look at this"...

Leo

Gross.

Toku

So she started posting less, but what she did post was things that felt really authentic to her. She might see a pretty flower and post that, or share things that brought her joy. Her business grew because the way she was showing up on social media was totally different. It wasn’t like, “I’m doing the social media game and gaming the algorithm.” Instead, it was, “I’m posting things that are joyful and who I am.” People really responded to that.

There’s this common knowledge of what we “have to do” to be successful, and I think this is true with habits too. People have this idea of what it takes to create a habit—it tends to be rigorous, intense, and hard. And sure, sometimes you do have to be disciplined. But a lot of the people I know who are successful at changing their habits have a much gentler, fluid approach to the whole process.

And I think that’s a lot of what this book talks about in relation to sales. But the truth is, a lot of it’s just going, like, “Oh, this feels very try-hard. This feels very hard. How do I not make this so hard?” Right? And I think, often, when we think about habits or any kind of change, we fall into this dichotomy where it’s either, like, really hard and I’m nailing it with the 45-minute morning routine and the perfect green smoothie, or I’m just lying on the couch covered in ice cream, watching Real Housewives of Whatever. But actually, the real sweet zone is kin of in the middle.

Leo

Let's not disparage reality TV.

Toku

No, I love reality TV. I didn't disparage shows. I didn’t say anything about I’m Too Hot to Handle—because that’s my guilty pleasure.

Leo

Oh, is that it? Okay, okay. Mine is Love Island.

Toku

Oh, Love Island is good, yeah.

Leo

So, okay. You mentioned social media—I'll just add a side note here—I had a very disempowered relationship with social media for a long time. It was like this evil thing, you know, like Facebook was this thing unleashed upon the world, and I thought I’d never go on there. But then I realized, first of all, that was holding me back from what I was trying to create in the world. And second, why did it have to be that way? I was decided it was going to be that way.

So just to back up your point about social media, I decided, “Oh, it could be a place where I get to go and create, or be creative, or play, or serve people in a powerful way.” So yes.

Toku

Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m about to go back to Mexico City. I'll been living in Mexico City for three months, and one of the things I was reading online is that people in Mexico use Facebook for everything. We often look at places, like parts of Africa or the Middle East, where cell phone technology enables people who don’t have a lot of money to do banking or connect.

None of these things are inherently good or evil. It’s a lot about the context and how we choose to use them. What I notice about these “I hate” things, particularly in the coaching industry, is that coaches will say, “I hate that, that, that,” and then there’s this feedback loop. If people at your company say, “I hate meetings,” then everyone complains about meetings, and no one does anything to change the meeting culture at all. They just complain and complain.

Leo

So, if you’re in a meeting, you’re going to be forcing yourself through it, not enjoying it because you already know that they suck.

Toku

Exactly. And then, what’s it like to be in a meeting where everyone hates meetings, and no one wants to be at the meeting? That’s going to be horrible! Maybe it’s true your company has too many meetings, and maybe you can’t change the culture. But I was going to write a book at one point called No More Shitty Coaches. Then I thought, “Wow, what a crappy way to talk about the industry I’ve dedicated my life to.” Saying that all coaches are shitty.

So, I made a vow that day that every time I write to coaches, I’m going to thank them for being coaches. I’m going to tell people proudly that I’m a coach. I was talking with someone who didn’t want to call herself a life coach, and she said, “It gives me the ick.” I said, “I don’t love the term life coach either, but what if we just said it with pride? I’m a life coach; I help people change their lives.” It’s just a thing in the world, and we can start living it differently.

I don’t feel any shame or embarrassment over telling people I’m a coach because I love what I do. Sure, some people might think I’m cheesy and that what I do isn’t important, but I know what I do is important. I can stand by that.

So, if you’re in a culture where there’s this “I hate whatever,” one way it can start to change is for you to embrace the thing you hate and find a way to live into it. Or if it’s a thing that really does matter—like racism, for example—you’re allowed to hate racism, then leave that situation or change it. For these things that don’t have an inherent moral value, like meetings aren’t inherently immoral—they’re just meetings—I think there’s an opportunity to transform them.

Leo

What I want to reflect about the approach you’re sharing here is a couple of things. One is the freedom in it. We’re not stuck in the calcified beliefs you mentioned. In these examples you’re sharing, I really get that sense of, “Oh, I get to choose a different way of being in this kind of situation that, in the past, I might’ve chosen to hate or make really suck.”

And then the second thing I want to reflect on is the creativity. It feels like you get to write whatever story you want. And I just really love that approach.

Toku

Yeah, I think it’s really powerful. And for me, the reason why—even though the book is about sales—the opportunity it presents is, of all the things in the world, we have this almost universal agreement that sales is a “bad” thing. Almost everyone, except for salespeople, probably thinks sales is awful and they hate salespeople.

It’s funny because in the first part of the book, I tell a story about this guy—I keep wanting to call him Zach, but I think his name is actually Ryan. I had to ask my ex-girlfriend what his name was because I couldn’t remember, but I call him “the world’s best sushi waiter.” His name is Ryan. I thought his name was Zach at first, but I changed it to Ryan.

So, Ryan works at this sushi restaurant in Salt Lake City called Takashi, which is the best sushi restaurant in Salt Lake City. It’s actually a really good restaurant, and I always try to get him as my server. And every time I go in, I don’t know what I’m going to order because I’ll just say, “Well, Ryan, what do you like? What are you into?” And he just excitedly tells us about the sushi—like, “You’ve got to try this,” and explains what it is, why he likes it, and even the order to have it in. He just gets us so excited about sushi.

And what’s really cool about Ryan is that he’s 100% selling sushi. I spend way more money every time I go to Takashi when I have Ryan as my server. I order things I would never order on my own. But even though I’m spending more and he’s getting me to buy stuff I wouldn’t normally buy, I’m always super happy about it. I never feel pressured or like he’s taking advantage of me. He’s not slimy or pushy or greedy. He’s really, really generous.

But if you look at what he’s doing, he’s actually doing the things that really good salespeople do—he’s just doing it from this different place, from a different perspective.

Leo

Because he loves the sushi.

Toku

Because he loves sushi. It’s authentic. He believes in it. And, what’s more important, he doesn’t treat me like a paycheck. He treats me like someone else who also loves sushi—which I do.

Leo

Oh, that’s amazing.

Toku

And so we start to engage in this collaborative conversation about how I can have a really amazing experience at the sushi restaurant. And as a result, I do. And again, he benefits. Not only does he get a higher tip because I spend more, but I also tip him higher because he’s so good at his job, and the restaurant makes more money.

So, it’s benefiting them too, but my experience isn’t, “I’m being sold to.” No one wants the experience of being sold to, because we define being sold to as, “I’m being tricked, pushed, manipulated, or handled.” Instead, I feel enriched, connected with, and like he’s on my side.

The whole book kind of talks about that—like, how do we make sales, which is normally a very adversarial process, collaborative? How do we get on the person’s side and work with them to make a plan to change their lives? So for me, another step you can take is to start looking for examples where this isn’t true.

What I noticed is that a lot of times we have this complaint, and then we only see the examples where it’s true. Like, “All meetings are horrible,” but then we ignore the meetings we like. We’ll say, “Well, that wasn’t really a meeting,” even though we got together and had topics.

Leo

We’re filtering it.

Toku

Yeah, like, “Exercise is always sweaty and painful,” but then we’ll go to the trampoline park with our kids, jump on the trampoline, and have a great time. It’s not painful; we’re a little sore, but it doesn’t really bother us. But we discount that, saying, “Well, that doesn’t count—that’s not exercise.” And I’m like, well, I assure you, jumping on trampolines with children is exercise. It’s very tiring, right? Definitely exercise.

So, we tend to identify the negative thing and then look for all the examples that match it. One powerful thing to do is just look for examples where basically the same thing is happening, right? So, with sales, someone’s helping me make a decision, encouraging me to take an action that I might not take on my own, maybe because I have some limitation or block around it, and it benefits them financially. They’re going to make money because, let’s be honest, when we sell something to people, we typically make money from that.

I think part of the issue is when we try to pretend we’re not going to make money. Like, you are going to make money—that’s how this works. But you need to be clear that this doesn’t drive you; you’re actually driven by something else. So we look for examples like that.

For me, when I started writing the book, I asked, “What are situations where people are selling to me, but it doesn’t feel like sales?” Ryan’s a great example. I’ve also been to shops where people help me pick out clothes and find things I like. They 100% work on commission; they 100% make more money if I buy more. But it doesn’t feel like I’m being sold to.

So, when we find these other examples, we start to have models of, “Oh, how could we do this differently?” or, “What does it look like when this thing I’ve defined as bad, hard, or challenging isn’t actually that way?” I’ll pause there.

Leo

Okay, really—I love that. Finding “Ryans” is amazing, by the way. I don’t even know him yet, but I feel like I know him. So, I’d love to throw out a couple of examples and walk through them with you.

Toku

Sure.

Leo

So, here’s one. We might need to look at this one a little closer, but a common belief I hear is, “I’m not good at being consistent with things.” They have that belief, but there’s probably something underneath that. So, how would we start with that for someone who has that belief?

Toku

Well, we’ve got to start by understanding what it means to be consistent. For example, every living human being is very consistent at breathing—100% consistency, right? Or eating—also 100%. Well, there are some people, but for most of us, if we don’t have an eating disorder, we’re very consistent with eating. And we have a high level of consistency of talking to our friends. Like, right now, I’m playing Breath of the Wild on Switch. I have no problem with consistency there—I play a little in the morning, a little at night. I’m very consistent with it.

So, it’s actually not true that people aren’t consistent. It’s just that there are particular things they feel inconsistent with.

Leo

So, something where they might feel like it's more of an “ick” kind of thing.

Toku

More of an "ick". Part of it is looking at, “What’s the difference between the thing you’re consistent with and the thing you’re inconsistent with?”

For me, Breath of the Wild is really interesting to play, or I like eating. It's fun to eat. I'm actually a very consistent cook because I like cooking. I really enjoy the experience. So, if there’s something you’re struggling to be consistent with, you could start by asking, “What’s the myth I have around this that makes it unpleasant?”

So, what’s something your audience wants to be more consistent with?

Leo

There are a bunch of things, but let’s go with one I hear a lot: “I want to get up every morning and write.” Writing is a big one—very relevant to a book writer too.

Toku

So, one practice I use as a writer is called “morning pages,” from a really great book called The Artist’s Way, which I highly recommend. It’s an incredible book that actually integrates elements from recovery work, like the 12 steps in AA, because the author is in recovery. It’s this interesting crossover between creativity and recovery work.

So, the practice of morning pages is simple: you get up and write three pages. It doesn’t have to be good; it doesn’t even have to make sense.

Part of what stops us as writers is, “I don’t know what to write,” or, “What if it’s not very good?” Or, “I’m unclear in my thinking.” Because we have those feelings, we end up not writing at all. But with morning pages, anything you write is fine—even three pages of complaining about writing counts.

So, what’s cool about morning pages is that it breaks down some of the myths we have about writing, like “Writing needs to be good,” or “Writing that doesn’t produce something publishable is a waste of time.” It sort of flies in the face of that, because you just write.

My handwriting is so bad I can’t even go back and read my morning pages—it’s just chicken scratch, but I still do it. And when I do that, I get over that resistance and eventually get into the flow of writing. It’s like a lot of things—once you’re in the flow, it’s much easier.

So that would be one place to start: look at the myths you have about writing, like “Writing is hard,” “Writing has to be good,” or “I’m not a good writer.” And then start looking at times in your life where you actually enjoy writing.

I was talking to somebody today in our Coaching MBA, and she said, “I don’t love this. I don’t love following up with people.” I said, “If you went and had a really nice tea with your friend, and she bought you a really nice cup of tea, you’d have no problem writing her, right?” She goes, “You know, you’re right. I wouldn’t have any problem with that.”

So I said, “Then you have to make following up feel like that. If it feels like, ‘I’m doing a marketing thing and following up with people,’ it’s going to feel weird. So, how do you make it feel like you’re writing your friend a nice note after you’ve had tea? How do you make the whole experience like that?”

So, with writing, for me... my big transformation in writing came when I realized that I don’t write to produce; I write to think. The way my ideas get better—maybe it’s because I studied philosophy—is because I’m writing to make my ideas better. So, my goal with writing is almost never about producing something, unless I’m writing a book, which is why that gets harder. Most of the time, I just want to explore an idea on paper.

And once I do that, it becomes very easy for me to write because I’m not trying to produce a piece of content. I’m not trying to write to impress anyone—I’m just trying to think through something, and the writing helps me do that. That, for me, is the context shift that makes it easier to write, but you have to find your own context shifts for that.

Leo

Let’s imagine you do have a context, like, “Writing is thinking for me” or “Writing is a way to express what’s in my heart in the moment”, or whatever it is. As soon as you identify that, I'm sure it’s just like flipping on a light switch, and now...it just is that?

Toku

Part of it is then to notice when you slide into the old myth. It’s like with any change, right? "Notice when you slide into the old myth and then choose the new direction." So, part of it is to be aware of that. And then a lot of it is the way you show up to do that thing.

So you can give yourself a little practice or exercise: "Every morning, I’m going to write a stupid story. I’m going to tell a stupid story about my day." And the idea is you don’t feel any pressure to write a stupid story—no one’s going to read your stupid story. So then you just write it, and then you’re like, “Okay, I got that done.”

So part of it is to identify or create some sort of practice that helps you step into that mindset. So it’s not just that you think about it and change it. But for me, a lot of times, I’ll be like, “Okay, what idea am I trying to better understand right now?” and I’ll kind of write that or think about that, and then I’ll start writing about that particular thing.

Or I was writing a blog for a long time, and I got very stagnant. I was really struggling to keep writing the blog, and a friend—our friend, Phil, Phil Powis, the marketing wizard—he recommended that I start my blogs with a personal story, to tell a personal story. And I found that was a much easier way to start my blog.

Because then I was like, “Well, what’s something that’s happening to me that I want to talk about?” And that was just really easy. And then, often, as I was writing the story, I’d be like, “Oh, here’s the lesson in that story,” which was great for me because I was getting a lesson from my own story. But then other people found it really interesting.

But it just changed the context. Before, in my context of writing a blog, I was like, “I’ve gotta write a thought piece about something, you know?” And then I’d go read Leo’s blog, and he’s such a good writer, and I’d be like, “Oh, I can’t write like that.” Then I’d read Seth, and Seth writes these short things, and I’d think, “Oh, I can’t write like Seth.”

Leo

Can’t compare yourself to Seth.

Toku

Sometimes I’ll look at Malcolm Gladwell, too, and think, “Oh my god, I’ll never write like these brilliant people.”

Leo

What’s the myth there? “I have to be as good as them”?

Toku

“My writing has to be as good as all the writers I admire.”

Leo

Oh, what a bar.

Toku

Or, “People only want to hear from Malcolm, Leo, and Seth.”

I was actually realizing this when I was working on the book. I always had this idea of... you’re very good, you’re very pithy in your writing. You’re very economical. And I started writing my book, and I kept getting longer. I wanted this to be short, but it kept getting longer and longer. And I thought, maybe that’s just not the kind of writer I am. I do think there’s value in editing, but I realized in my teaching that what my students light up about is when I tell these metaphors. Metaphors are efficient in a way, but they paint a picture.

A lot of the value in my work is in translating certain concepts to make them easier to understand. I’m translating a lot in this book—these concepts from sales, which tend to feel adversarial or manipulative, to a context of transformation where you can really help change people’s lives. And so I use a lot of interesting metaphors when I do that.

The metaphors aren’t brief; I actually like to paint a scene. One metaphor I use is, when you’re selling with someone, it’s like you’re the mountain guide and you’re sitting next to them, and they’re saying, “I want to climb the mountain.” You say, “Cool. Why do you want to climb that mountain?” They say, “I’m going to see a Yeti, pet a mountain goat, and have a snowball fight.” And you say, “Oh, awesome. What’s going to be hard about it?” They’ll say, “It’s going to be cold. I might get scared because I’m afraid of heights, and we have to sleep outside. It’s dark, and an animal might get us.” You say, “Okay, cool. How are we going to work with those?” And then you ask, “Do you want to climb the mountain? I can help you.” That’s how a sales conversation can be.

It’s not super efficient, right? It’s not economical when I go into all those details, but I think that’s what people like about my writing. Part of the process has been realizing, “I’m not Seth, I'm not Leo, I’m not Malcolm. I’m Toku. I’ve got to write like Toku.” So I have to trust that what’s coming out of me is what needs to be there and notice.

There’s also a myth in there, like, "My writing needs to be different to be good." But actually, the best writing, when you read it, is that person’s voice and unlike anybody else’s writing. It’s the voice. There’s a way Mary Oliver writes a poem—nobody else writes like that. You can write in her style, but you can tell it’s Mary Oliver.

For me, there’s that myth that it needs to be like somebody else’s. And more and more, through the writing process, I’ve discovered: What do I want to say? Or, how do I want to write this? Of course, there are good writing techniques to apply, and I hone and work with an editor. But a lot of it has been self-discovery—what am I supposed to be saying? What does this art want to say? And that, for me, has been a way of deconstructing that myth.

Leo

Ah, I love that so much. Interesting side note—my pithy writing style was drilled into me. So it’s not actually something I realize I’m doing. I wrote for about eight years at a local newspaper, writing multiple articles a day with a limited word count. And when you have to write a lot every day with a limited word count and a limited amount of time, you learn to write very pithy—very short, very brief, and concise. So I can churn that out really easily now, but it’s not a choice. It’s what’s been drilled into me.

Toku

It’s the result of your training, right?

Leo

Exactly. Yeah.

Toku

A hundred percent. I was talking to my friend Matt, who wrote a great coaching book called This is Coaching. He told me, “Oh yeah, your writing’s poetic.” And I thought, “Oh, my writing is poetic.” But it’s different. And interestingly enough, my writing background was in philosophy papers. Those are not simple—they’re big, complex arguments.

You can see it in my writing; I actually have to edit out a lot of “ands” and “buts” because philosophy papers are these big, long treatises where everything leads into everything else. So my writing tends to flow into itself. The other thing is, I did a lot of creative writing growing up and wrote tons of poetry, especially angsty poetry as a teenager. So, of course, that’s what I got trained in—that was my style of writing. And naturally, that’s what comes out.

Leo

Okay, so let’s go back to the writing example. Let’s imagine I’ve identified the myths, and maybe I’ve identified a new way I want to show up for the writing.

Toku

Well, there’s one other step, which is this process of identifying what the antidote is or what the example is. So, the other place to look is: where are places and times where writing feels easy for you, right? Maybe it’s writing emails, or maybe you’re really good at writing thank-you cards.

Then it’s like, well, what’s actually going on that makes it easier in those situations? Because that’s how you start to find the antidotes. A lot of times, I know people who say, “I’m really bad at writing,” or, “I’m bad at creating content, writing blogs.” And I’ll ask, “Well, are you bad at texting your friends?” And they’ll say, “No, it’s really easy. I text my friends all the time.” Okay, so what’s going on when you’re texting your friends? They’ll say, “Well, it feels personal. It feels relatable. It feels like I’m just asking questions and being curious.”

Great. So how do you bring personality, that personal touch, into your writing? How do you bring relatability? What if you did your writing as if you were writing a text message to a friend, like a series of text messages?

There’s this guy, Young Pueblo—all his things are like little texts. I don’t know if he literally texts them, but they read that way. Or I heard The Prosperous Coach, for example, was taken from a bunch of little emails they’d written. So it was all email marketing copy converted into a book, which is why it’s so short—because it’s a bunch of little emails. You wouldn’t write a super long email.

So a lot of this is looking for places where writing is easier for you, and then asking how you can take the lessons or experiences from those places and apply it.

So, in the book, for example, I talk a lot about how, if you look at what you’d want in a traditionally good salesperson, you’d say a good salesperson is curious, they’re patient, they’re a good listener, and they ask great questions. Well, what does a coach do? A coach is someone who’s curious, a good listener, and asks great questions.

So, it follows that coaches should be really good at sales, right? But they’re just not applying their skills correctly. And so the book basically talks about how to use your skills as a coach to do this—what I call “creating commitment,” which is another way of selling.

For most people, my guess is there are skills they have in one part of their life that would make this other thing a lot easier—they’re just not applying those skills appropriately.

Leo

Okay, so let’s imagine you’ve identified that, and I start to practice it. Let’s say I develop a morning writing practice and I start showing up. You mentioned bringing awareness to slipping back into the old myths, but a lot of times when people practice this, there isn’t that awareness. Instead, it’s just, “Ah, this feels really hard, and I don’t like doing it,” and they reach this conclusion: “This isn’t for me. I can’t do this; I should stop.”

What would you say to someone who’s feeling that way, which is probably a lot of discouragement, because it’s the opposite of what they wanted to feel?

Toku

I do think that if you can do it, it’s much easier to make a commitment like, “I’m going to write in a way that’s not hard, and I’ll notice when it starts to feel hard.” That kind of setup is helpful. You know, every time I sell, I ask, “Where in this process does it feel adversarial, like me versus them?” Then I think, “How do I make it not adversarial?”

So, there are some principles. In the book, one of my principles is, “Always get on their side.” If you ever feel like you’re not on their side, figure out how to get there. It should never feel like, “I’m trying to get you to buy, and you’re trying to defend your money.” That’s messed up. Instead, it should be me and you next to each other, looking up at the mountain, saying, “Do you want to climb the mountain together?” And they might say, “Yeah, but I don’t know if I trust you as a mountain guide.” So then, “Okay, great. What would you need to trust me?” That’s the kind of conversation we’re aiming for.

What I think people do is, they don’t address the underlying myth; they just try to push through. They think, “Writing is hard, but I have to do it anyway,” rather than asking, “Why do I think writing is hard, and how do I make it more enjoyable?” The first sign of struggle can actually be a cue for curiosity: “Okay, why did this just get hard again?”

If you set up some accountability or ask yourself, “Was it hard today? What made it hard?” that level of curiosity is great. But if you reach the point where you want to quit, the first question I’d ask is, “How can I get support before I quit?” Often, when we’re ready to quit, we’re so wrapped up in our own story and perspective that it’s very hard.

Leo

Hard to see, yeah.

Toku

Whenever I want to quit something, the first thing I do is reach out and get support—just talk about it. That’s one place to start. Then it’s like, “Okay, how do I not quit but also change this?” I think that’s a great question.

And, you know, there are all these things people suggest, like making a deal with yourself to write for five minutes. But I thought, “How can I completely change this without quitting?” Let’s say it’s a morning writing practice, and I’m supposed to do morning pages, but I hate them. I think, “They’re a waste of time. I don’t want to do morning pages.”

So, what do you do? What if we completely change it? Like, every morning I’ll write a haiku. Or a silly story about a dog every morning. You just come up with ideas. And if you notice, “Oh, I can do that,” then you just do that, right? A lot of this is about how, as we start to change our lives, we come up against homeostasis.

There’s a great coach, Sean Phillips, who has this diagram of a circle, where everything within it—good and bad—represents our comfort zone, our “known zone.” Outside that circle is discomfort and the unknown, but it’s also where all possibility lies. As we move away from our normal, we get closer to discomfort because we’re nearing the unknown. So, there’s a natural desire to reset and go back.

Often, when we feel the most uncomfortable and want to quit, we’re right at the edge of our comfort zone—on the verge of something new. It’s natural to want to go back. But if you can stay close to that edge, or at least not go back as far, you’re closer to the change you want to make.

And again, I think often our solutions to these myths become myths themselves: “I have to do morning pages every day,” or “I have to write like Leo.” Or if I’m going to finish a book, I think, “I have to write consistently every day.” For example, I was working on my book for a month in Mexico, then came back and had a program launch, so I stopped writing the book. I had this idea that if I can’t write consistently every day, it’s not going to be successful.

If I have that attitude, I’ve already failed because I haven’t been writing consistently the last two weeks while doing the launch. Or I can go “Well, os that actually true?” I know people who come back and forth to their projects. Maybe the thing I have to do is just not quit writing for really long periods of time. Two weeks is fine; a year, not so great. So, is that true? What if I just start writing the book again? How do I change it so I don’t have to quit?

Leo

Okay. Well, we’re actually out of time, even though I could talk with you about this all day long.

Toku, I just want to say thank you. This is a valuable set of lessons, a valuable perspective shift that I think can be applied anywhere. If you’re someone who’s trying to sell something, this is really valuable, but no matter what you’re resisting, no matter what you’re feeling some ick about, this is really valuable.

So, thank you for bringing this to us, and good luck with this book. Definitely let me know when it’s out in spring of 2024—no, 2025.

Toku

You’re going to have the book, Leo. I went back in time and published it.

Leo

I’m holding it in my hand now. I’d love to share it with people. I’m excited for you.

Toku

Yeah, I’m excited as well. And I’m excited for coaches to have this technology. Really, anyone who sells anything and wants to do it in a way that doesn’t feel adversarial and crappy—it’s great.

And yeah, for me, I’m just happy that the book’s going to be out there. I want it to be successful, but ultimately, I realized this phase of my life is about making cool stuff. I just want to make cool stuff and get it out there.

Leo

Amazing. Well, thank you, Toku. Thanks for being a guest and taking the time.

Toku

Thanks for having me on, man. It’s always great to talk to you.

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