109: Finding and Asking the Right Questions with Toku McCree

Pete Mockaitis
Toku, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Toku McCree
Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to talk to you today and your listeners, and have a good conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I am, too. And you have one of the most interesting career stories of any of our guests here. So could you give us… you could probably spend a few hours talking about this. But could you give us maybe the couple of minute version overview of your journey from being a stage manager for rock bands, to living in a Zen monastery, to business coaching?

Toku McCree
Yeah, I could talk about it for a few hours. I actually had over 30 jobs by the time I was 30 years old. So on top of those three jobs I had bunch of other strange little jobs. Probably among the strangest was I ran a Sumo chicken boxing ring. It was a fair game where people got dressed up in chicken suits and got into this inflatable ring and put on huge boxing gloves and would kind of fake-fight each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, what country is that in?

Toku McCree
That was in the United States.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Toku McCree
It was in Tennessee. I see that sometimes where people go, “You were… did you do chicken fighting?” I was like, “No, I didn’t do chicken fighting. That’s a whole different thing,” so. Yeah, I grew up in Nashville, went to college at George Washington University, studied philosophy, and moved back to Nashville and worked on the music business for a bunch of years. I had a lot of different jobs. I worked as a manager of artists development for a distribution company. I worked for about a year and a half as the stage manager and entire tech for a band. But people my age won’t probably know, people younger may not know a band called The Gin Blossoms. So I got to live the roadie lifestyle which was fun and interesting and exhausting and super exciting and also super boring all at the same time.
And then I did a merchandise for a country artist named Phil Vassar for about a year.
And then I moved out from Nashville to Portland, Oregon. Got a job working out there in a music venue, and within a month caught my boss stealing from the bands. She was changing the ticket count numbers. And I know it was really awful. And so I confronted her, got fired, lost my job, and at that point I was like I’m kind of done. I was done with the late hours, I was done with dishonesty. Yeah, I was kind of done with the music business, and didn’t really know what I was going to do next.
And I met a guy at a party, I was 28 at the time, he was 23, a guy named Lowe, Lowe Hope was his name, and he just seemed really calm. And I see, “What was this guy’s deal? I got to know what’s going on with him?” And started talking to him, and he said that he had been living in a Zen monastery. And so I asked him a bunch of questions. When I always tell people I lived in a Zen monastery they always ask lots of questions for me. And so I asked him a bunch of questions, and he said, “Hey, if you’re really interested you should come and try out meditation.”
So I started meditating in October of that year. September, October, November, one of my first weekend retreats, the end of November, one of my first week-long meditation retreat. And then by January the next year I moved into the monastery and I really thought I was going to be there for three months, and ended up staying for two and a half years. And so that’s a whole story in and of itself.
And then I left the monastery. I really debated that, whether or not I wanted to become a Zen priest, decided I didn’t, decided I wanted to become a teacher. I became a pre-school teacher for about three or four months, didn’t like it, left pre-school teaching, got into personal training because I was doing triathlons at the time. Personal training to mindfulness coaching, and then mindfulness coaching to executive coaching.
So, that’s, in a nutshell, the journey. And, of course, any one of those little transitions – music business to monastery, monastery to pre-school teaching, to personal training – I could talk about any of those at length because they were all kind of fascinating and interesting transitions I made, the choices to go from one to the other. So that’s my story in a nutshell.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun, and thank you. And it reminds me a little bit of David Allen, Episode 15, whatnot, in terms of having a ton of different experiences and being able to chew on that and synthesize that in this miracle stuff, in his case, which became the Getting Things Done methodology. So I’d like to hear, you know, from your varied experiences, have you picked up a couple universal, you know, patterns, principles, observations when it comes to being awesome at one’s job?

Toku McCree
Sure. Sure. I mean, I think the first one is to kind of let go of the outcomes. I find that the biggest changes, the way we are most effective at the work that we do is when we actually are going for a goal to becoming from a goal. So instead of focusing on, “This is where I want to be,” or, “This is the exact kind of success I want to create,” which is fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s a certain value in knowing where you’re coming from, what you’re bringing into your business and to your life.
And so I was just talking with a client earlier today about, “What’s the question you want your business, your career, your job to answer?” And for me that question is, “How can I be of deep and fundamental service to others?” And all of the jobs that I’ve had have answered that question one way or another. Pre-school teaching certainly answered it. The music business answered it in a way. And so it’s the question that you ask that’s actually more important than the outcome.
So the first one is really figuring out, “What is the question you’re asking with your life, that you’re trying to answer with your life?”

Pete Mockaitis
So the process, I’m curious, when you arrive at that question, it’s sort of like it’s a question, I imagine, it would have a couple properties to it in terms of it inspires you, it makes you, you come alive and you feel rejuvenated, reflected upon it. Is that fair to say? Or how else would you say it might be some indicators that, “Nailed it. That’s the question”?

Toku McCree
Well, I think you might practice with two or three different questions before you find the right one. And you know I think it’s, for me, the real test is you know the question you would keep asking even if you never fully answered it, because in a way lifelong purpose isn’t something you can simply answer. So my question, “How can I be of deep and fundamental service to others? How can I help others walk the path and leads to deep truths by helping them access their innate abilities, wisdom and compassion?”
That question, I could just keep asking it. I could do it as a coach if I started a business. I could do it another business, a side business. I have a side business now where I do that trains coaches. That answers that question a lot. Even the way that I show up with my family or friends is a way of answering that question. So it’s got to be a question you’d be willing to ask even if you never figure out what the answer was. I think that’s the biggest test.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you.

Toku McCree
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So tell us then, in your current practice here, you’re the CEO of Unexecutive, which is a cool name. What is that name meant to evoke or inspire?

Toku McCree
Yeah, it’s so funny I played with so many names. And the number one reason why I chose this name is I had a couple of friends I really respected in the world of blogging and entrepreneurship, and they both just really liked that name. So I had a lot of names I played around with. For me it’s, I do executive coaching but I’m not like a lot of other executive coaches. So I don’t do a typical 360 review process, I don’t have you rate the five areas of your life on a scale of one to ten, and we’re trying to move your relationships from a three to a four.
For me, what I really look at is everything as a leader, as an executive, as a creative, as an innovator, all comes from your being, the way you show up as a person. And so if we can improve the person that you be, we naturally improve all the things that you do. And some people talk about like inner game versus outer game, and I think there’s a kind of a third category which is being game. And if you really change the person that you are it has a really big impact not only on your thought processes and your beliefs, but also has a big impact on the way you interact with people, your abilities to lead others, and also your abilities to innovate and stay at the top of your game.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very cool. So then, I’m curious to hear, that what might be some key questions or practices one should take if we don’t have the fortune of hiring you as our coach in order to do some great development here?

Toku McCree
Sure. Sure. I think the first one is really to find your edge and lean into it, especially with people who are already pretty good or even great at their jobs, or great at what they’re doing. There can be a tendency to kind of rest on your laurels, or to stay within the golden cage that you’ve created for your success, and that can be really dangerous.
And so you need to figure out whatever your edge is and really lean into it, and that’s going to be different for different people. Some people it’s going to be the edge of taking lots of action, and for some people it’s going to be, the edge is going to be resting. Like my goal for this year in my business is to make the same amount of money as I made last year but work about half as much. And that’s really an edge for me. It’s super easy for me to work and fill my calendar up. It’s really edgy for me to take a step back. So I think that’s one of the first pieces is to find your edge and really lean into it.

Pete Mockaitis
So you say edge. So I’m thinking, so I think of that word more so as an advantage or strength, or more so as in, “Ooh, this is the boundary. This is the uncomfortable place.”

Toku McCree
Yeah, it should feel a little scary and a little uncomfortable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Toku McCree
I always tell people that when you hire a coach you should feel a little intimidated to work with them. If you don’t feel intimidated, if you don’t feel a little uncomfortable working with them they’re probably not the right coach for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Toku McCree
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Understood. Okay. Well, so now I also want to hear, you know, you also, in your work, tackle the question, “How do people bring their best selves forward in every moment?” And I’d love to hear what have been among some of the most recurring answers to that very question?

Toku McCree
I mean, I think knowing this question and continually practicing and asking this question over and over again is, perhaps, one of the most powerful ways. So I definitely recommend that practice to people about really getting clear about what your purpose is and really asking that question around your purpose again and again. That’s definitely one. I think the other one that is really helpful is there is this really beautiful balance you can strike between accepting yourself fully as you are while also seeing all the places you need to improve.
I would say people tend to be a little better at one than the other. Some people are really good at seeing all the positives, how are things great. And some people are really good at seeing all the problems. And as much as you’re able to expand your mindset or point of view about your business, yourself as a leader, your perspective on your job, to include both the goodness of the way things are right now, a deep gratitude for the way things are right now, while also including where those opportunities for growth are, and not having one discount or to take away the other.
That’s going to give you the best opportunity to grow as a human being and show up as your best up all the time because you’re not trying to move forward out of a place of shame or disappointment, and at the same time you’re not blind to all the things about yourself you need to work on.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I think that’s well said. It’s not the shame or disappointment that’s propelling you. I think I have a challenge sometimes. It’s like I can be complacent in the sense of, “Yeah, it’s really great. Is there a real need to push forward on this dimension?” So how you tackle that one, coach?

Toku McCree
Yeah. Well, I mean, tackling with you might be different than how I might tackle with someone else. I’d be curious. I’m going to turn the tables on you, change interviewing as a coach. I’m curious for you. What is it that makes you stay in that place of complacency?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what makes me stay there? I think it’s this notion that I think that I have sort of limited hours and it’s, I guess if I’m complacent in a matter, I feel like it does not warrant additional investment. And maybe that’s true. Maybe it doesn’t, but maybe I’m kidding myself.

Toku McCree
And what if you could create the growth or change that you want but you didn’t have to invest more time?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds great.

Toku McCree
In what you’re saying there’s an underlying assumption that, “This particular kind of change is going to cost me time. I don’t want to invest that. It’s going to take too long. It’s going to take too much effort.” And that might be true, right? It depends upon the change. But what we tend to do is we kind of have this certain sense of assumption we believe about our life or about the things that we want to change. And actually those are not always necessarily true.
I mean, I really feel confident that the keys of this next year in my business is finding a way to work less instead of working more. And that’s very counterintuitive for a lot of people but where I’m at as a coach, I already have more clients interested in working with me that I could ever possibly serve over the course of the year.
And so it’s important for me to slow down to make sure I’m serving my current clients even better and that I’m actually doing the really deep work to stay on my top of my game as a coach. So for you, I mean, that’s the challenge or invitation I’m going to give to you is you look at these areas you’re complacent and really ask, “Well, if this didn’t take a lot more time, what could I do in this area? How could I improve in this part of my life?” And maybe, “Okay, maybe it will take a certain amount of time. What is it I’m doing now that’s actually unnecessary that I’m kind of waiting to end so that I can start this next phase of my journey?”
And what would happen if you leaned into your areas of discomfort and leaned into the edge of your practice and were able to let go of some of those things that were no longer serving you so you can create the space you needed to do the work you really need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Thank you.

Toku McCree
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’ll let you on that separately. Well, so a fair bit of your work, you talked a bit about mindfulness. Could you tell us what exactly does that term mean and how could it help folks be more awesome at their jobs?

Toku McCree
I mean, mindfulness is just simply paying attention to what is. You know we tend to do one or two things around the problems in our work, or the areas we need to improve. So one is if we just ignore the problems. We think, “This is just the way I am. Nothing is going to change. This is the way my job is, the way my career is, the way my industry is.” And we kind of tend to just ignore those things.
And if we can use mindfulness to bring awareness to those things, without necessarily needing them to change, we start to see possibilities of the way that they are true, or we start to see, like, “Oh, I’m looking at this particular way but that’s not the only way I could look at it.”
And the reverse is true as well. Sometimes we might look at things that are problematic and get really, really upset about them and we make them worse, we add a layer of story to them. And if we can use mindfulness about just being able to see and be with what is, instead of adding that extra story we can say, “Hey, this is a setback,” and then we can start making decisions about how we want to respond to those things.
So I think people have this idea about mindfulness it means having with a blank mind, or being like sitting on a beach and saying, “Om.” But really mindfulness is the practice of being with what is.

Pete Mockaitis
So could you give us a couple examples of sort of mindful versus not-so mindful, behaviors or approaches to anything from eating to walking to being in a meeting?

Toku McCree
Sure. I mean in a business context which is, I mean, I can certainly talk about it in a regular context which is there is a way you could wash a dish really slowly, and that’s one way of being mindful of dishwashing. Or you could wash dishes really quickly and be really present with the speed, be very attentive with the speed with which you’re doing things. So not necessarily about being fast or slow.
In a business context, specifically I had one client who, he had a business partner and his business partner was kind of always letting him down. And he was always complaining about this business partner, “Oh, why is he like this? He won’t even change.” And I finally said to him, I mean, like, “Hey, why don’t you just accept him, that this is how this guy is?” Because he was kind of complaining about it but the guy, it was really clear to me the guy was never going to change. Like that was who he was. He wasn’t interested in changing.
He has a certain amount of strength that’s really good for the business but he kept being put in positions where he had to do all this stuff he wasn’t very good at. And my client was like, “Why can’t he get better at it? Why can’t he just work at it?” “He probably can but right now he is who he is. So what if you started from the place of just fully accepting who he is, really observing who he is, and then seeing, ‘How can we use him and his brilliance and strength in the right way of this organization?’”
And so that’s a way of using mindfulness to really pay attention to who’s on your team, who you’re working with in your business and understand who they are instead of wishing they were someone else. Really just seeing them who they are and then making really good powerful strategic decisions about how to use them best in the organization. What’s amazing is he kind of moved him around the company a little bit. He had him took away the things he knew he was never going to do well at, and focused him to be much more client-facing which was what he was really brilliant at, and things really improved.
And then what was amazing is as soon as he started accepting him, actually this business partner started really investing a lot in improving himself because he felt really accepted by the CEO. He felt very like, “Okay, I’m okay. He trusts me.” And that trust is what enabled him to have the strength and the courage to look at some of these things he wasn’t addressing in his life as a professional.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so you’re saying it starts with a mindfulness to pay attention to what is there as opposed to just kind of going off like knee jerk reaction, “Oh, this is annoying.”

Toku McCree
Yeah. Well, it’s just simply you start with just, “What’s actually going on here?” We get so caught up in the, “Here’s what’s happening,” and then we get caught up in the story about what should be happening or what we wish would happen or how it could be differen, and that’s great. It’s great to think about how things should be different but to really, to be successful in business and your job you have to have a place where you pause and say, “Okay, this is what’s going, and I’m willing to accept what’s going on to being with. And then once I accept what’s going, then I’ve got an opportunity to change what I’m doing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Thank you.

Toku McCree
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I read a bit on your site. You’ve made mention to the three levers of being that create change. Very intriguing turn of a phrase. Can you unpack those for us?

Toku McCree
There’s some growth levers that are really key that I use for my clients. So the first one is really patience. I see patience as really a key to deep spiritual growth. There’s a famous line by a Zen master that says, “Patience builds samadhi” Samadhi is just being in the mindful state.
So I think that if you’re going to be successful at being great at your job, being great at your career you have to learn patience, patience with yourself, patience with others. It’s a great place to start with patience. That’s definitely one that’s important.
The second is practice. You need to be engaging in practices. Our tendency to read a lot. Like two people I know, people are like, “I read 20 business books a year, or 30 business books a year.” I’m like, “That’s great. What are these business books that you’re putting into practice?” You’re going to be much better off if you read one book a year and actually do the practices they recommend in that book rather than reading 20 and putting nothing of those things into practice. My Zen master used to say, “Insight and 2.50 will buy a cup of coffee.” And so it’s great to see things that are going on but you have to take those things and put them into practice.
And then the last one that’s really key for me is this practice of taking risks. And it’s a lot about this learning into the edge of your practice, leaning into the edges of your comfort zone. And there’s a great quote by Rumi, the quote is, “Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” And I think that that quote, especially for people who are already good or great at what they do is really, really important, because if you want to go from being great at what you do to extraordinary at what you do you have to be willing to stay on that 4% edge of growth that will really push you that can be in this place of continuous improvement.
And if you aren’t willing to do that, if you kind of go, “You know I built this success, I’m just going to try to protect it,” then you stagnate and you kind of lose your bird, you lose your cool. It’s the reason why so few musical artists have careers that last a lifetime is because it’s really hard to stay on the edge of your creative and professional genius.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now you said 4%. So whenever I hear a number my ears perk up a little bit. What is that 4% edge referring to that ratio?

Toku McCree
Yeah. So there’s, I’m totally going to forget the name of the book. There’s a book that looks at extreme athletes, so people who are like skydivers, base jumpers, and what the author of this book talks about, it might be called Four Percent, but he talks about for those people, there’s a 4% lean into the edge of growth that they do. Any more they die, right? If they go 10%, 20% improvement they just get killed. And then any less they kind of don’t stand thereat. So for them it’s 4% growth.
And what I found is that people who are really successful, and are continuously growing over their lifetime, they’re making a 4% improvement quarter after quarter, year after year. The people who try to do too much tend to burn out and crash, and the people that do too little never really make any progress.
So, often the shift that we need to make to improve ourselves at our job is not a 50%, 75%, 100% to pit it. It’s just 4%. It’s a small little shift in what we’re doing and what we’re thinking. You know, for me, my 4% shift this year is just to slow down a little bit.
And I do this work with Curtis, I run a program called Samurai Coaching Dojo with my business partner Christina Salerno who’s another amazing master coach, and what we do with coaches is we help them find that 4% edge of improvement for how to improve their coaching practice. And what I found is, both as a coach as well as a business leader, if you can figure out what that 4% of growth is for you, and lean into it, you can create a high level of excellence over a long period of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And let’s overly fixate on 4% in terms of what’s numerator, what’s the denominator.

Toku McCree
Sure. Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
But I guess I’m thinking, so that would be saying like you’re going to eat healthy meals 4% more often.

Toku McCree
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Or you’re going to go and sort of reflect 4% more minutes over the course of a week. Is that the idea there?

Toku McCree
Yeah, it’s the idea that it’s really subtle. And also it’s, we tend to focus on a lot of big huge shifts, right, but actually don’t, they aren’t the shifts we need to do. There’s another quote someone says, “You can never get enough of what you don’t need.” And the truth is that a lot of times the really difficult truths we need to face they actually have the biggest impact on our business, are really small shifts, but they’re shifts that are really fundamental. They’re at the kind of baseline of the way we look at ourselves.
So even the shifts that we talk about, for you the shift of what if the change in these areas you’re going complacent. What if it didn’t require more time? That’s not a huge shift. It’s not like, “Actually you need to completely change. You need to be a vegan. You need to shave your head and move into and do all this stuff.” It’s just this one little shift.
What if you change this one little thing about the way you thought about the areas you’ve grown complacent instead of thinking about, “Oh, my God. This is going to take so much time”? What if you thought, “What if this didn’t take very much time at all?”
And so it’s that little shift of thinking, it’s really small, that has actually a huge impact. And so it’s both this idea of pacing it out over time and also being very careful about these big grandiose changes, because often the things that make the biggest difference are actually very, very subtle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. What will you tell me, Toku? Is there anything you want to emphasize before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Toku McCree
No, I feel this is great conversation. I love talking about this stuff, so I feel good.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Good. Well, could you share with us, for starters, a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Toku McCree
Well, I definitely think I shared, I think I shared already my favorite quote, but I’ll say it again. It’s a quote by Rumi, it’s, “Forget safety. Live what you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”
And that quote means so much to me because it’s so easy for me to get caught in the trap of trying to do everything right. And that quote really directs you to the fact that the extraordinary comes from the place of not doing something right but being willing to put everything on the line to create something that has never been seen before.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a piece of research?

Toku McCree
There’s a whole book actually called Mindless Eating, which is fascinating. All about the psychology we use around food, and I read it when I when I was personal trainer. It really shows how much the environment affects the way we are. We put a lot of value on willpower but in truth environment has a really big impact. So there’s a whole series of studies in that book that I would just highly recommend.
And whether you’re into dieting or you just want to read a book, a fascinating book about human psychology, it’s definitely one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so it’s a study. And any other favorite books you’d like to highlight here?

Toku McCree
Probably my favorite book on coaching is the book called The Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler. People ask me, you know, “How did you build a six-figure coaching business in 18 months?” And I go, “Well, I’ve read the The Prosperous Coach and I did what it said. And people go, like, “It can’t be that simple.” And I’m like, “Well, it actually can be that simple. It is that simple.” The problem is that most people don’t do what the book says because what the book says is very simple but it’s not easy to do. It’s that book, I definitely recommend that one.
And then the book Deep Work by Cal Newport is probably a favorite book I’ve read this last year in 2016. It really advocates for creating the time in your day and your life and do the deep work that helps you be the best practitioner in your field you can possibly be.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite tool where that’s a product or service or app or thought framework you turn to again and again?

Toku McCree
Favorite tool? Oh, there’s so many of them I really like. Probably my favorite tool is, I really like, there’s a time-tracking software I use called Time Doctor, and it has and gives you a really good overview of what you’re doing and how you’re spending your time. I think the two things we tend to misallocate most often or not paying up enough attention to are time and money. And money is a little bit easier to track because we have accounts, we can hire a bookkeeper, but time can be really difficult to track.
And I just love the Time Doctor app. I not only use it for my own time tracking to keep track of what’s going on in my schedule but I’ve also used it to track times of virtual assistants and personal assistants, so it kind of serves both purposes, and I just love the layout and the functions of it. It’s a really powerful tool for productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, personal practice of yours that helps you be awesome at your job?

Toku McCree
Probably my favorite habit is, though I’m imperfect at it, is the habit of practicing empathy first. So we tend to, when people express things to us, we tend to want to give advice, we tend to want to offer sympathy or collusion which is like, “Hey, this guy sucks. I’m good. He sucks, too.” And what we need to do most of the time is willing to really listen with empathy and just reflect back.
And so there’s a great book on it called Nonviolent Communication that kind of teaches you to practice reflective listening, but that’s a habit that served me great as a coach and actually something I teach to most of my clients because it helps in all of their relationships and their life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular, you know, quote from you, a Toku original, or an articulation of some of your teachings that seems to particularly resonate and get people a nod in their head and take in notes?

Toku McCree
Is there a Tokuism?

Pete Mockaitis
If you will.

Toku McCree
If you, a Tokuism. Yeah, this is such a great question and it always stumps me. Maybe other people collect my quotes better than I do. I would say, yeah, I mean, like what I said at the beginning of the show, it’s life isn’t about the answers that you get, it’s about the questions that you ask. And I think that that’s been really key for my growth and something that I teach to my clients as well. If you asked the right questions your life can be very meaningful no matter what your career job looks like.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, Toku, what would you say is the best way for folks to get in touch with you, or learn more about what you’re up to, or what you have coming out soon?

Toku McCree
Yeah, so you’re welcome to check on my website unexecutive.com. You can sign up for a newsletter. I don’t have any sort of bribe or free giveaway. I think if you want to sign up so you can read my content, and if the content doesn’t work for you that’s cool. I don’t want you just signing up for a free PDF. So that’s definitely a great place.
If you’re a coach really looking to up your game, I created this program called the Samurai Coaching Dojo that breaks through the coaching bubble. There’s this, what happens is we train as coaches and we go into our coaching sessions and no one really knows what’s going on there except for you and your clients. And I’ve been amazed at how much coaches really struggle to know, “Am I doing the right things in my coaching sessions? Can I be more powerful? Why am I not enrolling more clients?”
And so created this program called the Samurai Coaching Dojo that’s all about breaking through that coaching bubble and giving you direct feedback on, “Here’s exactly what you need to do to improve your coaching,” and as a result make a lot more money and save a lot of time as a coach.
If your coaching isn’t amazing it doesn’t matter how good your marketing is, you won’t sign up clients. And so we ran 16 people through the program in September, and we’re opening up again to at least 16 more slots coming up in March here. And the people’s results have been amazing. People signed $10,000 clients in the midst of the program, or a couple $25,000 clients end of the program, all from really gaining the confidence they need to say, “Hey, I’m a great coach and I’m willing to charge great fees,” because they get that really direct feedback on their coaching work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. And do you have a final challenge for call-to-action you leave folks with who are seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Toku McCree
Yeah. You know, your life is really short. It’s incredibly short. Surprisingly short. So whatever you do, whatever your job is make sure you take the time to really invest fully into asking the right questions and really looking at, “What is the legacy I want to leave? What is the kind of work I really have been put on this earth to do?”
And if you’re in a job that isn’t answering that right question for you then leave it as quickly as possible, leave it intelligently, leave it as quickly as possible. And if you are in that right job, stay on the edge of growth and genius. Lean into that 4% edge because it can make a huge difference in how much you enjoy your work and the kind of life that you live.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, Toku, this has been such a treat. Thanks for sharing and making the time. Keep on rocking.

Toku McCree
Thanks for having me on and I hope your listeners got something valuable out of it.