Episode 2 – Unlocking Your Inner Leader with Kristoffer Carter

Todd Bertsch: 0:16

Welcome to the Bolt Podcast. I’m Todd Bertsch, your guide on this exciting journey of personal growth. Together, we’ll explore real-life examples of how small shifts can create massive results, through growth tips, life hacks and strategies to supercharge your mind, body and soul. So if you’re ready to unleash the inner bolt within you and become the best version of yourself, then let’s ignite your growth today. I’m excited to introduce our guest for today’s show, Kristoffer Carter, better known as KC.

Todd Bertsch: 0:54

Kc is the CEO and founder of Epic Leadership, a training organization for conscious leadership which has created a daily meditation practice for thousands. He is the author of Permission to Glow, a spiritual guide to epic leadership, which guides his team’s coaching of Fortune 100 executive leaders at Amazon, AT&T, exp Realty, Edward Jones, flywheel Digital and many more. His work has been featured in Men’s Health, fast Company, on Good Morning Washington and the Good Life Project podcast. He serves on the board of directors of Yoga Alliance and teaches at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and lives in Akron, Ohio. Listeners, you are in for a wild ride today, so buckle up and enjoy my conversation with Kristoffer Carter. Casey, it is so good to see you, man. Welcome to the Bolt Podcast.

Kristoffer Carter: 1:50

I can’t think of a better name of a podcast that I would want to be associated with, so thanks for having me here. It’s really exciting to be here.

Todd Bertsch: 1:57

Yeah, cool. You know, you and I share a lot of the same passions, right? We’ve had several discussions Break dancing I was just going to start with that.

Kristoffer Carter: 2:10

That’s my favorite part of you, right.

Todd Bertsch: 2:12

Break dancing. A lot of people wouldn’t know that about us. We have that passion, personal growth, obviously Coaching and lightning bolts.

Kristoffer Carter: 2:20

Yeah, lightning bolts. We both are huge fans of lightning bolts.

Todd Bertsch: 2:22

Gotta Bolts. We both are huge fans of Lightning.

Kristoffer Carter: 2:23

Bolts. Gotta love them Right. What does it mean to you? Why the bolt?

Todd Bertsch: 2:27

Oh man, I mean, ever since I was a kid I loved Lightning Bolts, like the cartoon Flash. Yeah, he was my guy because he was unique, different. He was on every episode. Like you said in your book back then, if you didn’t sit down on Saturday morning at 8 o’clock, you missed it. Right, but Justice League Flash was just brought in every now and then as this cool cameo and the speed.

Todd Bertsch: 2:49

So I was always short. I had to compete by speed only. Yeah, so that was one of many reasons. But when I was in breakdancing it was also part of my logo. My tag was Windmill Wizard with the lighting bolts. Windmill Wizard with the lighting, yeah with the lightning bolts Windmill wizard with the lightning. Yeah, this is the best Right. I love it. So, um so, yeah, so I guess this was kind of meant to be on our show.

Kristoffer Carter: 3:14

I’m so excited. Um, this is going to be an epic conversation. That’s how we do as advertised Right.

Todd Bertsch: 3:17

So I understand you know, knowing you and talking with you for a while, that you had a really great career and then you at one point pivoted to executive coaching, Like what was the reason for that change in your career path?

Kristoffer Carter: 3:34

Yeah. So you know, I think coaching what I always say is coaching chose me before I chose it. I would sit down on an airplane when I was a salesperson I worked in advertising technology sales and I would travel the country to sell to clients and I would sit down on a plane and people would sit down next to me and tell me all their biggest fears and tell me their biggest dreams, and I didn’t know what they were doing that for or why it was happening. But I thought this is interesting. There’s something about me that’s open and curious and maybe creates a safe space where people could tell me these really sensitive things. And eventually that led to me training people inside the organization.

Kristoffer Carter: 4:15

I became a confident and a coach for the CEO of that company. When I joined that company, we had 40 employees. When I left eight years later, we had over 900. And now that’s a billion dollar plus company that’s about to go public. I mean, it’s been on a huge trajectory, and so I started learning a lot about team dynamics and coaching executive performance and it just became one of these things where it was so obvious that my path was appearing before me that all I needed to do was to get the training, get the practice and then eventually make the leap into doing it for myself full-time. So I always said that I couldn’t really improve on them as a full-time employer. They were just amazing. They won a lot of awards for culture, they took great care of us and I’ve tried my best over the last nine years to honor that commitment and so far I’ve been pretty lucky.

Todd Bertsch: 5:03

That’s awesome. Yeah, the last nine years to honor that commitment and so far I’ve been pretty lucky. That’s awesome. You know, I too, and I call that a special gift, because not everybody has that gift. Where you know, I’ll go and I’ll be at the grocery store sitting down at a random place, and these random people will just come up, sit next to me and start opening up and tell me their whole life story and I’m like I don’t know you from.

Kristoffer Carter: 5:23

Adam, but I’ll listen. Right.

Todd Bertsch: 5:25

So, and that is all about coaching right, Just listening, being an active listener.

Kristoffer Carter: 5:31

People think that coaching is just a skillset you know, a tactical skillset which it is, and it’s important to have training, but also it’s a heartset. It’s it’s a frame of service of, of, of an ability to hold space for people and turn their content, or the river of words that they’re sharing with you, into action. And I’ve been really blessed with mentors that have helped me think about that piece, which, to me, is the real gift of coaching.

Todd Bertsch: 6:00

Yeah, so how long have you been coaching?

Kristoffer Carter: 6:03

Yeah, so professionally on my own for nine years.

Kristoffer Carter: 6:04

Yeah, so how long have you been coaching? Yeah, so professionally on my own for nine years, okay, and then prior to that I had about four and a half years of just concentrated practice inside that organization. So, yeah, I’ve been really fortunate. Coaching is still a very new, emerging field, and the stat that I share with people is that, according to the International Coaching Federation, roughly 90% of coaches today make $45,000 a year or less coaching. That’s how new it is, because I have so many children I have three and we’re a family of five. When I launched out of my corporate career, I needed to not only approximate my sales salary but start working on improving upon it and building an actual volume of business. So it was kind of the perfect pressure cooker of motivation that, if I was going to go pro, I wanted to figure out how to scale a coaching practice, and so there’s a lot of things I’m happy to get into with that, because it is important to me that it’s not only a passion but it’s also a very viable business.

Kristoffer Carter: 7:08

I mean this is what pays for my kids’ college. This is what pays for our life.

Todd Bertsch: 7:11

Yeah, and it’s interesting. I’ve been doing research on just life coaching in general. Right, there’s all kinds of different coaching. At the end of the day, it is kind of life coaching.

Kristoffer Carter: 7:20

It’s all life coaching. Executive coaching is life coaching From a holistic perspective.

Todd Bertsch: 7:23

Yeah, and it is one of the fastest growing markets out there, but there’s a lot of people that can’t make the money and a lot of what I’ve heard and read is it’s all about the sale and the marketing.

Kristoffer Carter: 7:37

It is A lot about the sale and the marketing and what you find because of that. There’s a lot of snake oil and charlatans in it. You know people that just want to. You know who wouldn’t want to call themselves a coach. It gives you, you know that, a level of prestige and the air of mastery in some way. Like who am I to coach a C-level executive? I didn’t go to school where they did. I don’t have, I don’t have 7,000 people reporting up to me, but once you have that skill set, there is a degree of power that it gives you.

Kristoffer Carter: 8:06

So what I see in social media is a lot of people just wanting that, without doing the work or the training to support it. And the work and the training is what actually creates. I mean marketing absolutely helps. I mean you know the power of marketing better than anyone but the raving fan service of transforming lives. You’re going to have enough clients to sustain you if you back up what you promise, and so that has always been my strategy if there was one was just to deliver the results, and then you will get referred as the person that gives the results.

Todd Bertsch: 8:37

Right, and that’s always the best form of business Totally Best. Form of marketing yes. Best form of mouth and referrals yeah, totally Best form.

Kristoffer Carter: 8:44

Marketing yes. Best form of mouth and referrals yeah, and I always feel like I’m running experiments in the marketing side of things, but the one thing that absolutely always works is referrals from people that love you.

Todd Bertsch: 8:53

Yeah, people that love you, those brand ambassadors Totally, yeah, I love it. And I love one thing that you said, too, about you have to do the work. Yeah, I listened to the Learning Leadership Podcast. You have to do the work. Yeah, and it’s those reps right.

Kristoffer Carter: 9:10

Yeah, the 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell, you know my daughter is a professional musician. We talk about it all the time. It’s not about singing pretty or writing the best songs, which absolutely helps. It’s about falling in love with practicing. And when I tell my kids and I tell all my clients, the same thing is that you better find something you love to do, because you’re going to be working your ass off regardless. And fortunately I found something. I found a path in life in my mid thirties that just felt like what I was here to do and I’m I’m not afraid to just sit down and crank the work involved to, to build the practice. Yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 9:44

No, that’s awesome, man. I love it. It sounds like you’ve definitely found your lane right and it’s a beautiful thing, and this is what we do in coaching right and just in general is try to steer, guide people into that fulfillment you know that life, that dream that’s going to make them happy and doing what they were meant to do, why they were meant to be here. Uh, that’s cool that you’re able to find that place.

Kristoffer Carter: 10:09

Yeah, thanks. You know it’s, it’s a gift and I I I don’t take it for granted.

Todd Bertsch: 10:20

Yeah, that’s cool. Um, one of the things that I noticed in your bio and you say it several times and I just want to dig into it a little bit because I’m really curious when you talk about your training organization, Epic Leadership, you specifically mentioned conscious leadership.

Kristoffer Carter: 10:31

Yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 10:33

And I love that, but tell me what that means. And why?

Kristoffer Carter: 10:36

Yeah. So leadership has grown into one of these kind of fluffy topics, like it means everything and it kind of means nothing because it’s so vague. Right, right, right. And the way I see conscious leadership, the main distinction is that we are at an unprecedented level of change in our world right now. The military calls it VUCA. It’s volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. These four horsemen screw with us mercilessly. And what I have found over and over, it’s the organizations and the leaders in those organizations who are willing to create a higher level of consciousness, higher level of awareness, to navigate those forces, because the old way of doing things will not work. You know, we can’t just command and control, for example, like we did in the industrial age or the agricultural age, our military systems of hierarchical structure. They evolved out of these things. Like you get down that mine shaft or there’ll be hell to pay. Well, knowledge workers won’t do that.

Todd Bertsch: 11:33

I mean, you have employees, you know they’ll be like I’m out of here, I don’t have to do that.

Kristoffer Carter: 11:37

Right, so so. So the consciousness piece is about raising leaders emotional intelligence, about reading the room, about communicating at a higher level of refinement so they can really get across the vision that they have, versus just blurting and barking at people of what to do. But it’s a challenge and, honestly, I don’t always call it conscious leadership, because some organizations just won’t buy that. I’ll call it what they need to call it, I’ll call it coaching or leadership or whatever. But they’re going to get the medicine that they’re going to get. Like a lot of what I do is just I build the Trojan horse, I wheel it up to the gates and once it’s inside, they’re getting yoga, they’re getting meditation. They’re getting conscious leadership. Right, epic leadership.

Todd Bertsch: 12:17

Epic leadership.

Kristoffer Carter: 12:18

Yeah, and I prefer the name epic leadership. But it’s up to me to help the market define what that is. And what that is is conscious leadership mixed with taking big, bold, lightning bolt level risk, you know, to do the bold thing even though it’s not the popular thing.

Todd Bertsch: 12:33

That’s epic leadership. Yeah, and that’s tough. Yeah, that’s tough.

Kristoffer Carter: 12:37

Oh, people live to stay in their comfort zone. That’s where they have earned their little safe corner of the world, and so organizations are the same way and pushing people outside of that. That’s where all the growth is, and so our job as coaches, I believe, is to kind of lure people out there onto the leading edge of their capabilities, and to me, that requires higher levels of consciousness, just because you have to be able to see that. How terrifying that is, acknowledge it and still do the work anyway. Right, but without the awareness, without the consciousness, you’re just going to be trying and failing, right absolutely no.

Todd Bertsch: 13:13

This is great and I love. This is a great segue into kind of our next topic, this higher level of consciousness meditation yeah really wanted to talk about that. I know that is near and dear to your heart, both personally. Professionally, you’re involved in organizations. You lead these amazing retreats. It’s a big part of your book big part of your life and you know I’ve been really trying to get meditation into my life into my routine for probably three years now and struggle with it. Um, I just finished reading the 5am club by Robin dude is freaking amazing.

Todd Bertsch: 13:52

Um, but what I loved about what he said and just about you know, own your morning, elevate your life. You know getting up before the distractions, right Before anybody else, when it’s quiet, when the birds Before the world gets its hooks into you, right. You know, the birds are chirping, they’re waking up, so that’s kind of started to work for me. And no, I’m not even close to probably where you’re at and a lot of your clients are at, but I’m trying right and I’m trying to build a habit get it into a routine.

Todd Bertsch: 14:24

I’m taking no-transcript was kind of relating what my experience has been, and I think a lot of our listeners probably struggle with this too, like they’ve heard about it, you know how wonderful it can be, but I also feel like it can be pretty scary too Cause yeah, you know, I think about meditation, all these different levels. You know how does somebody get started, you know, and then also, what are the benefits? Why, why are you such a big rabbit? I?

Kristoffer Carter: 15:16

I think we’ve got to start with the benefits so people understand what’s at stake and how easy it can be and should be, cause I think our culture just gets it wrong with what is meditation. People, I think, are so afraid to try it and fail because they think it’s to have a clear mind. It’s almost impossible to have a clear mind. Meditation is the time you spend clearing the mind and then bringing the attention back. And when I do this with my hands, I’m showing the reps that we’re doing with what is the real muscle we need, which is our meta attention. We are strengthening our meta attention muscle. Every time our mind wanders, which is what it’s supposed to do, we bring it back, you know, and then, as we do this, you experience bigger gaps of silence and peace and all that, but until then you just want to spend the time building that muscle and peace and all that, but until then you just want to spend the time building that muscle. And one of my favorite examples of this was I used to live over in this neighborhood on Casterton Avenue and I forgot one day my meditation habit had developed so deeply at that time of my life my kids were little. I’ve been struggling, like you and like many people since the pandemic, because all of our routines got just obliterated when the kids came home, when the world just started working in a different way. So rebuilding those routines is kind of where I am at, too Like right now.

Kristoffer Carter: 16:32

I used to be an hour a morning religiously for many, many years. One hour of meditation that is crazy, yeah. And what I did is I traded an hour of sleep for an hour of meditation because all the research shows that it’s more restorative than sleep anyway. So I would sleep six hours, get up and meditate an hour and I felt better than when I was sleeping for seven hours. And then it also started transforming my life in radical ways and I think the biggest benefit of that is that your awareness grows as you strengthen that meditation. So you just make better choices in the checkout line with people who are high drama or no drama with whether I drink the second drink or not or quit drinking. And my career started evolving because I was just becoming so much more guided by purpose. So when you feel like you’re off purpose or out of alignment, you’re a meta attention grab and says you know, don’t do the predictable safe crap anymore, do what you want to do and so that those many years of meditating in hours, what really accelerated the transformation of my career? I did quit drinking, I did start running marathons. I did start, you know, a lot of my heroes became my peers and it was freaky and still intimidating. Like when I look back and I hear some of my bio, I think, how did this happen? And it’s because I surrendered every morning for an hour and let life, god, spirit, whatever that force is for people, I let it have its way with me and make me more on purpose. And that work continues. You know, sometimes I feel like I’m on purpose continues. Sometimes I feel like I’m on purpose, other times I feel like I’m a mess.

Kristoffer Carter: 18:08

But the day I was going to mention was that I forgot one morning that we had scheduled Amish roofers to come re-roof our home and every single morning I had this habit routine down. I went up into my basement office, I lit a candle and that’s the cue for the habit loop. So when I light a candle, I know that I’m committing to an hour of meditation and this was how hardcore my habit was at the time. I lit the candle, I sat and I heard the truck pull up and I heard Amish workers storm our roof and start ripping shingles off and pounding nails and booming, booming, booming. My kids, one one, crawled up into my lap, shaking and crying and saying Daddy, what’s happening? And I said I’ll be down to breakfast in an hour. But what I did to get through that is, I would tune into a worker over on the far corner of the roof and I named him in my head Ezekiel, and the rhythm of his hammer was getting me through it and so I was meditating to him. I was meditating to this whole experience. So as dust was falling, as glass was shaking, I felt, you know this. It was a powerful experience for me, because this is why we meditate, because the world does that on a daily basis.

Kristoffer Carter: 19:16

And then we have a choice you know Viktor Frankl’s quote I use it in every training I do around meditation between stimulus and response. There is a space. In that space is our ability to choose our response. In our response is our growth and our freedom. So the meditation practice is just to stretch out those moments. So we’re not just action, reaction. You know, our kids frustrate us all the time. Our work, if we’re being honest, life frustrates us all the time. But how do we want to respond? Do we want to fly off the handle, like maybe we learned at home as a kid, or do we want to just take a step back, breathe, pause and choose a better response? So in that in that morning, I thought this is really interesting and I think on our best days, when life goes sideways, we could just take a step back and say, wow, this is really interesting. What do I want to do with this? And that’s what meditation gives us.

Todd Bertsch: 20:04

Wow, man, that’s a lot to unpack. That was beautiful yeah.

Kristoffer Carter: 20:12

Well, really, but that’s I mean I, but I think about it and I had to write it in the permission to chill section of the book. Is that? Why do we chill? We are, we are a um, a culture of, uh, high performers, high achievers, capitalist society, go, go, go. Time is money and the radical notion that we can pause and actually get better work done. That’s interesting to me Because then it’s not about action, it’s about right action, and right action has guided my life. I don’t have time for half the crap I do in my life, but if I’m guided by right action. That is why we meditate.

Todd Bertsch: 20:43

Yeah, yeah, you’re speaking my language. I did an episode on the power of the pause button.

Kristoffer Carter: 20:50

Oh, I love it.

Todd Bertsch: 20:51

I mean, you and I are so insane, before I even got to the book, with the permission to chill with the icon of the pause button, and I struggled with the pause Patience really Right which is essentially, I think, the undertone.

Kristoffer Carter: 21:05

I’m a known impatient person, so I grew up my whole life like that.

Todd Bertsch: 21:09

My mother was like that. I got that from her but also got some good qualities, you know it. Really, in some ways I was super driven, you know, but I had a horrible attitude, a horrible temper and I was just short-fused. I went from one to ten like that. There was no gap, as you say right. There was not even an opportunity to chill. I certainly didn’t give myself permission to chill. But going through during COVID, going through the PQ Positive Intelligence program by Shirzad, that changed my life by adding that pause button into my life, oh my God, I’m a whole new person. You know, driving down the street and somebody cuts me off, I used to flip them off my wife drive her nuts.

Todd Bertsch: 21:56

Like what are you doing? And now I’m just like whatever you know it doesn’t bother me.

Kristoffer Carter: 22:00

They’re clearly having a bad day.

Todd Bertsch: 22:02

Yeah, and who knows? Maybe, they’re going to the emergency room. You don’t make assumptions, you don’t know what people are going through. So I love the pause button, I love it and it will change your life forever. And it is. It is permission to chill, and I love how you coined that, you know your story is so similar.

Kristoffer Carter: 22:19

I met this the TV host, tom Bergeron. He hosted Dancing with the Stars for 14 years he hosted.

Kristoffer Carter: 22:25

America’s Funniest Videos for 14 years. I wrote this ridiculous song about Tom Bergeron last year and I got to meet him through that. He was moved by it, but in the middle of it what I realized his secret sauce is that he got into transcendental meditation for like the past 40 years and he had anger issues and his wife basically gave him an ultimatum. She said if you want to be married and stay married to me, you must work on this anger thing. So he chose transcendental meditation, but that’s what he credits with getting him on multiple shows, hollywood squares, all these things like his ability to juggle so much and his gift as a host is to just be in the moment with anything that happens Right and that comes from that just higher awareness and his ability to pause every day.

Todd Bertsch: 23:10

Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I don’t think I would be where I’m at today without going through that practice. Yeah, right Both personally and my life, I mean it’s changed. My marriage has changed. It’s sustained. My relationship with my kids, with my team, the way I lead Right, the way I lead my organization.

Kristoffer Carter: 23:22

That’s why it’s the first in the book, because it is the foundational thing. When leaders are willing to make that space of time to work on their meta attention, they’ll make better choices, treat people better, and those people want to stay with them longer.

Todd Bertsch: 23:33

Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, I think it’s a great segue into this amazing book Permission to Glow.

Kristoffer Carter: 23:42

Man, what a great book.

Todd Bertsch: 23:43

I will say everything about the book. Now, I’m a traditional graphic designer, so I look at books a little bit differently than probably the average person, as, as as you do, I’ve read many books. A lot of books are just very typical, right? You just text book heavy text, it’s the same, garamond, whatever, and you just go through and there’s chapters and and, uh, there’s no real excitement with your book and even the coaching habit which I think I could tell there was some influence, right. Oh, same designer.

Kristoffer Carter: 24:14

Yeah, my friend, michael, who wrote the coaching habits, a hugely successful coach. He sold almost 2 million copies of that book. But the same uh, we have the same publisher. Okay, and when? When I was working with that publisher and signed the contract for the book, I specifically asked if the team led by Peter could work at the same team that worked on Michael’s book could work on mine, because I loved how they distilled such a complex topic into just fun, bite-sized, actionable nuggets. And you know, very few of my clients will take the time to read a book cover to cover, they just they’re. They have so many things to do. So I wanted the book to be fun and friendly and easy, but there’s a lot to it and and so, yeah, a lot of that. It factors into the design.

Todd Bertsch: 24:57

Yeah, it’s a work of art really, I mean you can go through. I mean literally. There are beautiful illustrations throughout the book.

Kristoffer Carter: 25:03

Well, that is one of the things I’m most proud of.

Todd Bertsch: 25:06

I love that last with the fader the illustrations at the back.

Kristoffer Carter: 25:09

This was a good friend of mine who works for Earthquaker, designing their pedal casings.

Kristoffer Carter: 25:14

He draws from Marvel Comics. That’s right, yeah, and he delivered food for House of Hunan into his 40s and we were all worried about him as friends, like when’s this guy going to? He has kids. Like when’s he going to get a job? Job. But what we didn’t know about Matt Horak was that he was sending his artwork away to Marvel Comics since he was a kid and they called when the dude that drew Punisher passed away and he got to start drawing Punisher. He started drawing Spider-Man, deadpool, and I was really lucky to get him to draw the interior of my book. It was like a total. I wanted that.

Todd Bertsch: 25:48

Marvel level energy to it. Yeah, absolutely yeah. No, it was great from cover to end and just the way that you broke out the chapters and there’s quotes and I was thinking about on the write-in today, it was like every page was like a little surprise. Yeah, you know, I wasn’t sure what I was going to get, Although there was definitely kind of a formula, but it was still a surprise. I’m like oh cool.

Kristoffer Carter: 26:10

Well, this is the weird thing about writing a book is that I just work here. You know, the best stuff happens kind of through us, you know, and there’s parts of that book a client had a real huge challenge around boredom, like they were starting to just make bad choices whenever they got bored, which is very common for a lot of us and I thought, oh my gosh, I can’t think of a better book to recommend than my book. Weirdly, right now, because I wrote extensively about this, that boredom is an opportunity for awareness, and so I had I opened it up to that page and it was like the perfect page and a half that she needed to move forward in her work and I thought this is the magic of doing that work is that you. You put together things. I wanted to make coaching more accessible to people. It’s a very privileged service. Not everyone could afford a coach or an executive coach and so I wanted to. I wanted to make a 16 or $17 option for people to have a primer on what it means to be coached.

Todd Bertsch: 27:05

Yeah, no, that’s great, and you launched this in 21?.

Kristoffer Carter: 27:09

Yeah, the end of 21.

Todd Bertsch: 27:10

So during COVID.

Kristoffer Carter: 27:12

Yeah, tail end.

Todd Bertsch: 27:13

So how long did it take you to write the book?

Kristoffer Carter: 27:15

Yeah. So what’s fascinating about it is this is a case study for coaching right here. Is that my coach, Christine Sachs. She’s a Jedi level coach. She is that, my coach, Christine Sachs. She’s a Jedi level coach. She trained me, she trained my wife. She works for Accomplishment Coaching. She also has her own coaching practice in New York City.

Kristoffer Carter: 27:29

She knew that it was my dream for 20 some years to write a book. And so what happens? When we have that dream we think about like we need to go off to a mountain and write numerous drafts and then get a publisher. It just seems so big and daunting, right, and so big and daunting, right. And so I had the publisher interested and on board, but the publisher said when can I see a draft? And Christine coached me into saying I will have a draft done six weeks from today. And I had not started and I thought, pressure cooker, right. But that commitment to my coach and to my publisher made me turn in a draft that I was actually pretty proud of. And then the clock starts a year of revisions. So I probably wrote a total of 80,000 or 90,000 words. We chiseled it down to 23,000 words that are well-designed, and it was all about just the coaching commitment to do it, and it was all about just the coaching commitment to do it.

Kristoffer Carter: 28:25

But what was fascinating with that with Christine, is that she wanted me to have a breakthrough as an author, and this is something I work with on my clients every day. So if I saw myself as an author, the book would be easy to generate. If I saw myself as some working stiff in O’Hare or wherever that writing a book was daunting or above me or you know too much or I was, the imposter syndrome would take over. Right, like who am I to do this? Right To write a book about conscious leadership?

Kristoffer Carter: 28:51

I grew up in the suburbs of Brunswick, you know, and she had me declare this breakthrough and one day I was writing, I finished writing, I was sitting at my coffee table, I finished, I responded to a few marketing things for the. They were starting to work on the book launch six months in the future. I responded to those and I closed it and I got this like body buzz and I thought these are the things that authors do. They write great stuff, they show up, they close their laptop, they respond to a few marketing things and I’m launching a book and I literally put my finger in the air and I thought I had this breakthrough. I’m an author and as soon as I did that, one of my best friends, jonathan Fields he’s been a mentor for a while, he’s one of my favorite bestselling authors has a huge podcast, the Good Life Project he messaged me in that moment, as soon as my finger went in the air. It was like bing. I look at my phone and he said I heard you’re writing a book. Welcome to the club.

Todd Bertsch: 29:42

Oh my God, that is manifestation. It was.

Kristoffer Carter: 29:45

And I thought and from that point forward, the book process I was an author, I embodied it, and so when I did a 12 city book tour, when I’m out speaking about my book, when, when the companies buy a thousand copies of it for employees, I don’t have any imposter syndrome, I think, hell yeah, I did that because I’m an author and I can’t wait to do the next one. And but I share that because that those are the breakthroughs that coaching creates for people to change their identity. And once they shift their being, they shift what is possible to create. So, as they see themselves differently, a whole new level of results can open up. And I was not able to create a book for the first 20 years, but once I had the breakthrough, it was pretty easy.

Kristoffer Carter: 30:25

Right, it’s all about timing right Season in life Season in life and just the willingness to see things differently, to see it not only as possible, but it is my mission and my joy and my privilege to create this for the world, and that’s what made it a lot easier.

Todd Bertsch: 30:40

Awesome, that’s awesome man. I love reading it. So what’s next? Kind of felt like there might be another book or a series. There’s a series, yeah For each permission.

Kristoffer Carter: 30:51

I’m working on the Permission to Chill book right now.

Kristoffer Carter: 30:53

This book is the overview of the Four, the four permissions framework permission to chill, permission to feel the fields, permission to glow in the dark, permission to glow in the light. And I thought there wouldn’t be anything cooler than having a five pack of those over the next 10 years. And so I want to write a more exhaustive book on meditation and um, that one will probably be the easier one, cause I taught meditation longer than I’ve been a coach. And then what I’m terrified of is the second book Permission to Feel the Feels. That is to me the scary hard work you know, to look in the dark corners of your emotional space and to share that authentically. Some people are naturals with that. I’m not one of those people. It always feels radical to remember I have a heart in there somewhere. So I’ve been thinking that through, but all I could do is work on the one that’s in front of me.

Todd Bertsch: 31:41

Gotcha.

Kristoffer Carter: 31:42

So any timeline Not yet Not yet I’m in the season of life, a lot of reinvention but I sense that similar breakthrough coming back around again, which is, if I did that in a six-week draft, I just need to sit down and do it and put it on the timeline.

Todd Bertsch: 31:57

Okay, yeah, awesome. I love at the end too, when you talk about the seven compassionate laws of change yeah, simple, right, in theory. We see those a lot in several other practices, but I love the idea of those. You walk us through those, yeah, totally.

Kristoffer Carter: 32:15

So, um, the reason I put those in there was that the book doesn’t matter if people don’t apply it. Um, I love this quote. I forgot who said it was that, uh, information without without inspiration, without action, is just entertainment. So I love inspiring entertainment, but I need people to take action, because that’s the coach in me. So I wanted to help people understand that it’s going to be hard, it’s going to suck and you will win the game, but here’s how we win the game and you win it.

Kristoffer Carter: 32:46

This is something that I think a lot of our rah-rah achiever culture got wrong. I was a huge fan of Tony Robbins. I’ve walked on fire with the dude. I was into Brian Tracy, stephen Covey, like I loved personal development in my early twenties, I was obsessed.

Kristoffer Carter: 33:00

But what I think they missed out on from like the eighties into the nineties was self-compassion, that we can’t just ride ourselves like a crappy little horse jockey, saying more and more and more. We have to love ourselves while we do it and acknowledge ourselves for making the effort. And to me, what I witnessed with my coaching clients is when they grease the gears with that self-compassion, they move into self-acceptance, self-respect, and that is a different. It’s just a different being, and so the seven laws are just all about how to unlock compassion. As we go, there’s a model I don’t know if you might remember this from college, but in psychology there’s what’s called the competence model and we move from this place of unconscious incompetence where we don’t even know that something different is out there. Then, once we’re bold and want to make a change, we move into conscious incompetence, and this is the hard part. This is where people hire a coach and it’s our job to help them cross the desert, because it’s brutal, because you know every day how bad you suck at this thing and you’ve got to keep going. You know what I mean. And then, if you cross the desert, by an act of God, you get through it.

Kristoffer Carter: 34:07

Then you move into conscious competence, which is great. You are aware that you’re doing the thing like wow, I am an author, I can do this, holy smokes. But that’s’re doing the thing like wow, I am an author, I can do this, holy smokes. But that’s not even the end game. You’re looking for unconscious competence, the things that you’re great at today, that you don’t even think about anymore Running a business, creating a great design those aren’t work for you, those are play, because you don’t think about it. The reps, the reps. You’ve done the reps Exactly, exactly, but where most people give up is in two. The second stage, which is conscious incompetence Just not fun, I think. In the book I joke that it’s like streaking through the cafeteria.

Kristoffer Carter: 34:52

Yeah, I laughed, not fun to suck. So I was coaching a team of C-level leaders last week and I asked the CEO, in front of his group, I said are you open to being coached in this room in front of all your peers? And he said yes, and I thought this is going to be a great couple of days because if they see how vulnerable he is and how willing he is to be, so I had to not reprimand him, but I had to pull him back to the table numerous times and in doing that it helped all the other leaders see how to work with him but also see that they could do that with their teams. And it’s that’s, that’s powerful.

Todd Bertsch: 35:25

It starts at the top, it trickles down.

Kristoffer Carter: 35:28

So if you see the leader of the organization yes being vulnerable and willing coachable, being coachable like the big punchline finishing statement of the book is that we all have this, I got this thing, and it’s good to a point, and it comes out of that achiever consciousness. You know, I got this, you got this girl, we got this, you know, and that’s great, that’s confidence. But that has no, it’s nowhere near as powerful as the unlimited potential of we got this. And when you lock into that what that team achieved by seeing the CEO release that I got this crap, crushing it how are you doing Crushing it? Are you really? When he released that and got into the we got this, they could create exponential value for all the stakeholders. And that’s Ted Lasso in a nutshell. That’s any team dynamic stuff, and so that’s what the permissions are here to unlock.

Todd Bertsch: 36:19

Glowing the light. Yeah, glowing the light, that’s collaboration.

Kristoffer Carter: 36:23

Collaboration, getting over all the competition and surrendering into full collaboration, uplifting others. That’s what we’re here to do. I believe that’s what our creator would want for us to get over ourselves and to help one another. You see that in every true spiritual doctrine across the globe. The third permission which is probably the most fun because it has the lightning bolt permission to glow in the dark. That’s why people hire a coach they want to do the big, brave thing, even though they’re terrified to do so. You know, there’s a lot of things I do, dude, that are just like. They make me shudder to think this is going to be.

Kristoffer Carter: 36:56

You know, I performed a three minute rock opera at my friend’s wedding the other day. I officiated the wedding and then the reception. I wrote them a three minute rock opera and I performed it and before I did it I was mortified, like who am I to do this, right? But once it starts rolling in the tunes and the beats and I start doing my thing, I think this is what glowing in the dark is, because, despite the ever-present fear, I’m choosing to bring light and love and power, and I think on our best days as leaders, that’s what we get to do, right.

Todd Bertsch: 37:24

And what’s the worst that could happen?

Kristoffer Carter: 37:25

Right.

Todd Bertsch: 37:26

You’ve just pushed yourself to the limit. Like you said, that’s when you achieve your highest.

Kristoffer Carter: 37:30

The fear is always there. You know, I think of Olympic ski jumpers when they fly off that. What would that feel like to lean off the skis, sailing down a hill through the air that high? I mean, how do you practice and learn that? Well, probably by having a lot of, a lot smaller jumps while you’re scared out of your mind. You know, and working with that fear to move past the comfort zone, more by more and more and more. You know, we see, we saw at the Olympics all summer. You know, these people doing the highest pole vault in history Just astonishing feats, because they’re pushing the limits of what’s possible, right, yeah.

Kristoffer Carter: 38:02

And they have a lot of practice.

Todd Bertsch: 38:04

We could probably spend a whole episode on. Olympians, and the meditation practices and the rituals.

Kristoffer Carter: 38:10

The power of the visualization. Michael Phelps before Simone Biles, one of the most winning Olympians in history. He won the race before he jumped in the pool. Right, you know, he won the race probably during breakfast at some point, because he knew how many eggs to eat. He knew how many steps to the car, steps from the car into the locker, locker to the like. He was just a machine of winning.

Todd Bertsch: 38:42

So by the time he jumps in the pool, it’s like the competitors can be there, but he’s going to do his thing, which is win Right. That’s awesome. It is awesome and absolutely amazing. So I’m a true believer, in kind, of the holistic approach. I know you are too. Can you share some like personal routines, hacks, tips or tricks that you’ve done over the years to to really kind of enhance your transformation, your journey?

Kristoffer Carter: 39:03

Yeah, I think, well, I’ll share the things that people thank me for, because I’m always in awe of it, Like we just work here, right, so we know what kind of works for us. It might not always work for everybody else, but I think any practices that encourage embodiment, so you get this from working out. I’m sure you get this from just crushing windmills on the dance floor when you feel one with your body and you’re in a moment and in a flow. Yoga for me is that, uh, I love I do my series of sun salutations. I did them in my office. I do them in my office between clients. I do I and we.

Kristoffer Carter: 39:32

And we do that yoga not to just make our bodies more limber but to make our psyches and our minds more limber, open us up, and in doing that, in conversation, I could be more present and I could access things that I can’t just access with my mind. And so meditation, yoga, I love green drinks and lots of water, anything that we could put in our bodies, that our bodies use as fuel, versus just they need to process, you know. So I don’t eat perfect, but I do stay conscious of how the fuel that I put in my body will impact. My job, which is my job, is to be fully present for people. So I give, I let anything go during dinnertime, but during the day I almost fast and eat light and run on green juice and water, because that’s a clean machine that can serve people better.

Todd Bertsch: 40:23

Clean machine. I love that. So, on that same topic, what about habits? I’m a big believer in habits. Habits run our life pretty much. Is there any habit in particular that you’re looking to create or you’re working on or tweaking right now?

Kristoffer Carter: 40:39

Yeah, you know I’m always trying to get back into ones that serve me well in the past. You know, when I was, when my kids were young, I was marathoning and I want to do that again. I didn’t. I didn’t. I haven’t had the time for that level of running for many years. So it’s a big commitment for the fall. As the as the weather starts to break and get cooler, I want to be out running again.

Kristoffer Carter: 40:57

Four to six miles a day that was always my sweet spot and at my peak I was running four miles under like 30 minutes or under, almost every day. And now I’m a 48-year-old man. I look back. I’m like, how did I do that? But I do know that I can get back there. I’ve met runners who are way older than me that were qualifying for Boston, that do that. So I’d say running, because running was so good for my mental state and I ran more for my mind than I did for my body, and so I want to get back into running. Um, my meditation practice is I is I kind of rebuild. This is to not only do get back to the hour in the morning for me, but to um add a half hour in the evenings to bookend the day. Okay, um, the the yoga. The meditation I practice is a yoga based meditation, so it’s very spiritual. It’s about communing with God, so you’re getting a twofer, exactly.

Todd Bertsch: 41:50

Right.

Kristoffer Carter: 41:51

It’s almost like going to you know. You know you could get that in an hour of meditation. You feel like you just spent an hour in the temple just just sitting with spirit, and that’s that makes for a great day, you know. But when? But when you close your day down with that as well, to like, uh, complete all of the challenges of the day, to honor what worked, to be grateful, to set up the next day, that then you get this compounding power and that’s what I’m ready for.

Kristoffer Carter: 42:18

I think at this stage of my life, in the path that I practice in Self-Realization Fellowship, there’s a lot of retired yogis that are doing three to six hours on Sundays of meditation on top of that regimen. Wow, I know that’s incredible. I know it’s incredible. And I did go to a retreat that they hosted back in May and I had that beautiful gift of meditating five to six hours a day for a few days and it was transformative. I mean that one concentrated week could change your entire year and I felt like a different person coming out of there. And, dude, you know the energy I have, like I could not sit still for like five minutes when I started. I have uncomfortable levels of energy. Mother nature’s like slow down. Are you Speedy Rabbit? Oh, Speedy.

Kristoffer Carter: 43:05

Rabbit, totally yeah, speedy Rabbit is like the anti-permission to chill. Yeah, that that is me. All those are me, speedy.

Todd Bertsch: 43:12

Rabbit.

Kristoffer Carter: 43:12

Game Face, Phantom Pest Control, Freak Dark Star, they’re all of us.

Kristoffer Carter: 43:16

But but yeah, I I tend to move quickly and so to just shed those layers and I think our goal as parents and human beings is to be more present as we get older, to hold our grandbabies one day, and to not be so pulled in all these directions. I’m actually considering a tie to a habit. I’ve been meeting a lot of powerful friends who are way busier than I am, who are going back to flip phones, giving up their smartphone, and I’m really considering that because I want to train and encourage my children to call me, to have a relationship with me, versus just texting. I don’t think that’s a real relationship. So these are things I’m thinking through. I’m revisiting James Clear’s work around habit. His stuff is phenomenal. Atomic habits.

Todd Bertsch: 44:02

Yeah, and I love the design of his book.

Kristoffer Carter: 44:04

Oh, I was reading yours, just it was.

Todd Bertsch: 44:05

it was really well designed.

Kristoffer Carter: 44:07

Another Ohio guy, yeah Right.

Todd Bertsch: 44:08

There’s something to be said.

Kristoffer Carter: 44:10

Masterful dude around habits. He’s amazing. But I I want to get back and, um, I want to uh focus a lot of my fifties turn 50 next year on simplifying everything, pairing down, making it more about meditation, family, some running.

Todd Bertsch: 44:25

Minimalist, minimalist. I see a lot of people doing that. I’m kind of heading down that trail too. Yeah, I love being a maximalist.

Kristoffer Carter: 44:32

I was a maximalist for years. I love all of my toys, but I just want to simplify and take my, you know, use my van to work from wherever I want to work from, and just make it about the relationships. That’s what sustains my business. Anyway, I’m still not an adult. I don’t grow up. It’s a trap, but I’m turning 50.

Todd Bertsch: 44:50

It’s insane, yeah yeah, been there, did that during COVID. It was not fun.

Kristoffer Carter: 44:56

Well, you’re timeless. I I’d never, I don’t know Like. For some people, it truly is a number.

Todd Bertsch: 45:00

Yeah, it is yeah truly. So a couple of just kind of close out questions here what’s your favorite quote, because I know you’re big on quotes. Oh my gosh, it’s probably going to be a tough one, yeah yeah, there’s a lot Favorite quote.

Kristoffer Carter: 45:14

I’ll tell you one I’ve been using a lot lately. It’s very simple, it’s Bob Marley. Bob Marley, rastafarian, one of the best musicians of our century, united his people, spiritual leader on top of a musician. But his philosophy that he lived by was you’ve got to start somewhere or you get nowhere. You’ve got to start somewhere or you get nowhere. It’s all about the power of habit.

Todd Bertsch: 45:37

Totally.

Kristoffer Carter: 45:39

And it’s all about that conscious incompetence. You know that you’ve got to be willing to suck. You got to be willing to just get started, you know. That’s why I like seeing the start of a new podcast Like these. Things are invigorating because we have these in our head for years. Until we do them, we don’t know what’s possible. Right, that’s cool.

Todd Bertsch: 45:57

Yeah. I have a few, but I want to share this one that I got from your book which I’ve been going over this since I read it, so it’s by the poet Ovid.

Kristoffer Carter: 46:08

And.

Todd Bertsch: 46:09

I just love the dripping water hollows out a stone, not through force, but through persistence.

Kristoffer Carter: 46:16

Oh my God did that speak to me on so many levels. I know, I know.

Todd Bertsch: 46:19

It really is all about that.

Kristoffer Carter: 46:21

Yeah, water always wins in nature and it’ll go through granite. And I think I use that in the context of if you build a habit, it’s not about the length of the time you meditate, it’s about five minutes every day, no excuses, because of the consistency will build 10 minutes, 15 minutes. For many, many years I meditated 15 minutes a day and then it became an hour and now I want to do more and it’s because, yeah, that consistency is everything.

Todd Bertsch: 46:48

Okay, great, great quote. Yeah Right, I’m so glad I got that quote. Um, what are some of the books you read now, or is there a book that you would recommend to our yeah?

Kristoffer Carter: 46:58

So the Aside from your own, yeah, at the top of my list always. The book that changed my life bar none that I’ve gifted to more people is by Paramahansa Yogananda Autobiography of a Yogi. It’s a spiritual classic. It came out in 1946. Interestingly, steve Jobs read it every year of his life from the time he was 17 to when he passed away, so he read it over 40 times. He gifted it to everybody at his funeral. If you can imagine who was coming to Steve Jobs’ funeral, they all left with a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi and the central premise of the book is that the human consciousness is truly unlimited and you can reach these heights and expand the whole container through just diligent, regular practice. You know whether that’s meditation or anything, and it was just. It’s just been so inspiring.

Kristoffer Carter: 47:44

So I’m always rereading and revisiting that book on some level. Uh, I have been uh revisiting atomic habits lately. Um, you know, some of my clients have just written incredible freaking books. I coached uh Laura McCowan, a phenomenal author, around, uh, around sobriety and cleaning up our habits. She wrote her second book. It’s called Push Off From here, incredible book. I’ve been doing a lot of trauma work and recovery work this year and that’s been a huge godsend is Push Off From here and it’s amazing. I finished this book and I felt like she dedicated her dedication in the back of the book includes me because I coached her and she talks about how uncomfortable and painful and annoying our conversations were because I had to push her.

Todd Bertsch: 48:26

That’s how you do the work Exactly To get to that result.

Kristoffer Carter: 48:29

If anything, you know we could try to make it fun. That’s part of my shtick, Right? But it just made me laugh so hard when I’m like you just made me look like the worst, and it’s in a book I’m enjoying, which is just funny yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 48:43

That’s cool. Yeah, I love books. I love the idea. I always try to gift a book as well. Yeah, I was going to get one for you. Have you read by Robin Sharma, the Monk that Sold His Ferrari? No, oh my.

Kristoffer Carter: 48:55

God, I love. The title alone Sounds insane.

Todd Bertsch: 48:58

Right, it is literally. It is you. It’s a fable.

Kristoffer Carter: 49:00

It’s phenomenal Fun.

Todd Bertsch: 49:02

Great read. Everything that you’re about this book is about.

Kristoffer Carter: 49:05

So fun, let me gift that to you.

Todd Bertsch: 49:08

I had a copy and I gifted it away and I wanted to have that here for you. So that will be the book that you get. So, yeah, I’ll be curious to get your thoughts, but you absolutely appreciate it.

Todd Bertsch: 49:17

That sounds amazing, robin is that dude is just phenomenal yeah, like no wonder he is one of the top yep red and uh requested speakers in the world, like just wow so, kc, one of the things that I have worked on over the years and I’m sure you have too, and I’m always curious how other people handle this because, like you said, you’re a very busy guy. You, you get a lot, you’re, you’re so good at so many things. There’s things happening, yeah Right. And life and family and kids how do you manage a good work-life balance?

Todd Bertsch: 49:50

I know there’s not a silver bullet, but I’m always interested and curious about how people in your position entrepreneur. Um. How do you manage that? Any tips.

Kristoffer Carter: 50:00

Yeah, the framework I’ve used for years was that I always believed that work-life balance was impossible, that it was all about work-life integration, and so I divided my life into five core areas. I call them the non-negotiables my soul practice, my vitality or body health, my relationships or family. My art, which I’m a songwriter, I’m coaching my daughter’s band, I’m really into the arts and then work. And so what happens with most of us is we make work the little black hole sun at the center of the universe, and everything else is like up for grabs, and that was not acceptable to me. So, but if I integrate these things together, something interesting happens, because work becomes the power amplifier for all the things that come before it. So a great day for me is when I get to touch or honor all five of these things, where I do my soul practice, I take care of my body, I nurture my relationships, I create something I’m inspired by. It doesn’t have to be huge, just something little, like a blog post or social media post even. And then, when I take that into my work, amazing things happen and the money flows. And when I’m doing that, I’m less in that anxiety space of like what should I be doing and what am I stealing time for? Like, I don’t have time to play that game anymore. Does that make sense? Yeah, so, as we integrate these things, like like people ask how my daughter got so successful at a young age.

Kristoffer Carter: 51:21

I made a commitment years ago that I was going to integrate art and family. So all of our guitars are tuned up and they’re laying around so the kids could practice them, make it visible. My new living space, my new office, it’s everything I’ve learned about all these things. So it’s like this integration station so I can wake up. You know, another powerful habit is like I make my bed first thing. I forgot the army guy that gave that great talk. Yeah, because it’s one little accomplishment for the day and it’s just like clean space, clean mind, and that starts setting up. Like, once I do that, then I do my soul practice, then I get into, then I start running the non-negotiables and then my life feels in balance.

Kristoffer Carter: 52:01

Okay, I love that, yeah, but sometimes, like when you have a huge deadline, you have to blow it all out and just do work, or just do one thing or another. You know.

Todd Bertsch: 52:09

Okay, do you track it at all? Like? Is there a percentage Like 20% to each one of those pillars?

Kristoffer Carter: 52:14

I wish I was that guy but I run on vibes. So like I, there are people like Tim Ferriss is amazing with tracking his level of data and all that. I will never be wired that way. So I run on. I assess by how well I feel, how my relationships are progressing, like I could see all these things blooming and developing when I’m just watering them steadily, You’re being conscious of the time right.

Kristoffer Carter: 52:37

Yeah, I am, I am, and you know, a perfect day for me work-wise is I have no more than four coaching clients and their spec. When I look at my schedule it looks like a spacious ladder, so I have space in between those to do some soul practice, to reset, and then it’s, it feels spacious, and then I see I have this creative block in the morning, I have a wrap up creative block in the afternoon and anywhere in there, because I’m my own boss, I could be ripping pushups, going for a run, riding my scooter, doing the things that excite me.

Todd Bertsch: 53:05

Right, you are giving yourself some blocks though.

Kristoffer Carter: 53:07

Yes, there’s a lot of structure in there. There’s some, yeah. Yeah, like if I didn’t have structure, I would be a all over the road, gotcha, okay, so that’s what I do.

Todd Bertsch: 53:16

I think we’ve talked about my tracking and how crazy, yeah, I’ve got a daily journal Excel spreadsheet. I know.

Kristoffer Carter: 53:23

But that’s me right, yes, and everybody’s a little bit different and it works for you, that’s why I’m so curious how people because it is, it is it’s still an ongoing challenge.

Todd Bertsch: 53:31

I don’t feel like I’ve mastered it or ever will, but just the fact that I’m being conscious of it. Yeah, I’m being intentional about these are the non and I love how you said that the non-negotiable.

Kristoffer Carter: 53:41

They have to exist. Those are the things.

Todd Bertsch: 53:43

time with my family, number one, yeah. So if I’m not getting that time, that quality time not the quantity, it’s just the quality right, those moments and being present Right, then what’s it all for? What’s it all for?

Kristoffer Carter: 53:55

Exactly Right.

Todd Bertsch: 53:56

Because you know I’m not living with regrets. Yeah, you know I read um. If you’re familiar with Marshall Goldsmith, oh yeah, he’s amazing. Yeah, I love his book on the Aaron life and he’s, you know, he’s coached. You know, like you all these, he’s a coach of coaches.

Kristoffer Carter: 54:10

He’s the master right.

Todd Bertsch: 54:11

All these executives.

Kristoffer Carter: 54:11

Michael Bungay-Stanier from the coaching habit is is Marshall’s number one coach in the world at the moment. Like Michael’s, doing more for the profession of coaching than anybody else in the world right now. He’s like Marshall’s guy.

Todd Bertsch: 54:22

And Marshall’s an institution. He’s been around for many, many decades, right, yeah, okay, awesome, I didn’t know that connection. But yeah, marshall, you know he talks about in his book the Earn Life, which I love and highly recommend. He talks about all these interviews that he’s had, basically all these case studies of all these people, these high-level international CEOs of big brands, right, and at the end of life, you know, the end of the row, retirement, or when they get to that position. You know he asked them do you feel successful? Do you have any regrets? And nine out of ten of them huge regrets. And the one thing that you can’t buy is time, right, right, you can do all that. You can have all the money in the world, you can buy every single toy, gadgets, whatever you want. You cannot buy back time.

Todd Bertsch: 55:14

So, that’s why I feel like work-life balance, tracking it, having a gauge on it, is really key, because time flies by so fast and next thing you know you’re 50, approaching 60, approaching retirement, like, oh shit, I wrote, my kids are now having their own kids and I just lost that time. You know whatever that is, the, the recital or the, you know the. The meaningful life is all moments.

Kristoffer Carter: 55:40

Baseball game, it’s all meaningful moments and here’s something I really love about you from what you shared is that you’re not tracking it for you. You’re tracking it for the people around you to keep you in integrity with your kids and your wife and your constituents and your employees. You know what I mean and that’s the service-based part of coaching and that’s a beautiful thing. You know, like if we were just mindless achievers just tracking like what are we Terminators?

Todd Bertsch: 56:06

You know what I mean? Yeah, right.

Kristoffer Carter: 56:08

But if we’re doing this for our people, you know that’s the real work, you know.

Todd Bertsch: 56:13

So I was going to ask you how do you define success?

Kristoffer Carter: 56:16

Well, I’ll share my favorite definition first. It’s from Earl Nightingale. It’s from like the Earl Nightingale was a personal development dude, like back in, like the.

Kristoffer Carter: 56:23

Think and Grow Rich era, you know, like the 30s, 40s. He defined it as success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, and I love it because there’s no, it’s truly a one-size-fits-all, meaning that you might have a different worthy ideal than I do, but as long as you’re progressively realizing it, that is success. And I think it’s important for people who are achievers to notice when they’re doing the thing, because that creates more success. It’s not when I get to that mountain over there will I be successful. That’s the fallacy most people fall for and then they never get there and they never feel successful.

Kristoffer Carter: 57:07

So I like that definition for that reason and I tend to use some version of that definition, I mean, I like my personal definition. Is it feel I feel successful when I am awake in my big honking dream. You know, like when I, when I realized like I’m doing this and having this conversation with you today and it’s a Friday and am I working here, you know like that is success must be happening somewhere to allow that, you know. And so awake in the big honking dream feels like my definition of success.

Todd Bertsch: 57:33

And I try to tell, I try to coach my kids to understand that, Like just you’re going to spend so much time working, Find something you love to do. You’re passionate about.

Kristoffer Carter: 57:45

that’s going to have an impact, that’s going to make a difference in the world, in the community, and serve others in some way and, like you, connect what you do to the universal good, and then the world just takes care of you and the money follows. The money is a symptom of feeling successful. It’s like you’re not going to be a miserable striving turd and then end up feeling successful someday.

Todd Bertsch: 58:11

I’ve never seen it work that way. It kind of ties back to and I asked you what one of your favorite quotes was and one of mine and it ties into how I view success. It’s by robert burn the purpose of life is the life of purpose and like mic drop seriously like that, just so to live a purposeful life and to do what you love doing. Everything else is going to take care of itself yeah, right, so I love it.

Kristoffer Carter: 58:39

I think you know some of the purpose stuff has been misconstrued that you have to find your purpose before you could get started and all that. And it’s not true, because sometimes you have to fall in love with things that you didn’t like at first. There’s aspects of my business that are just as not fun as my corporate life was Right. However, by and large, I’m in the seat creating purpose for others and and carrying out my purpose, and that feels yeah like that is success, right?

Todd Bertsch: 59:05

yeah, I mean I’m 53 and I’m just hitting my stride baby, totally just a child y’all.

Kristoffer Carter: 59:11

It’s just about getting started embrace the journey.

Todd Bertsch: 59:13

Exactly that’s what I’ve been taught. That’s been my mantra for the past couple years. Just it’s just a journey, right yeah, the infinite game as years. Just it’s just a journey, right yeah, the infinite game, as Simon said.

Kristoffer Carter: 59:22

Oh, it’s amazing stuff the infinite game. And honestly, it’s the people that start a second or third act that are the ones to watch. Like. We love these stories of the young wonder kid that walked on the planet and knows what they’re here to do and does nothing but that the prodigy or whatever. But there’s an amazing book for women called A Glorious Freedom by Lisa Congdon. She was a coach. She started her art career after the age of 40. She was a school teacher. She now has like 500,000 Instagram followers. She designed all the art for the last presidential inauguration. She wraps buildings of Lululemons with her artwork. She’s done all this since the age of 40. She’s amazing.

Kristoffer Carter: 1:00:01

And so it’s just to remind us that we could discover these things about ourselves. And there’s no limit. You know, and my financial guy what he always says that makes me feel better about myself is that sometimes we sacrifice the big retirement fund when we leave corporate. But I have this assurance and inward knowledge that there will always be more clients for what I do because it’s so valuable and powerful. And he said you’re lucky to have a job where you literally just have to talk and use your brain. So he’s like you could do this into your nineties and love it. I’m like I would love to be doing this in my nineties. I don’t see it ever waning or stopping, you know. So it’s like you have 30, 40, 50, you know what I mean.

Todd Bertsch: 1:00:37

There’s so many years to be doing that work.

Kristoffer Carter: 1:00:39

Right, yeah, and then, and then you’re applying everything you learned by running multiple businesses and you know towards it that there’s there’s no great time to start this, it’s just that you start.

Todd Bertsch: 1:00:48

We’re going to wrap here KC with the permission to glow. Everyone needs to get a copy of this. Kc has given me the permission to read the permission slip to chill in the book, which is really powerful.

Kristoffer Carter: 1:01:03

So that’s what I’m going to do for myself, for kc and our listeners so, and and just to add a little context to this which I think will be helpful for the listeners absolutely is the point of this piece is to get him to commit to it at a different level. You heard him say that it’s a struggle to create a really consistent meditation practice. But when we connect to the commitment at a much deeper level, the habits tend to follow. So that’s the goal of the permission slip.

Kristoffer Carter: 1:01:26

Yeah, yeah, when you say it out loud, when the universe hears you, it starts giving you resources and accountability to follow through on what you said. Yeah, so this is speaking it into existence.

Todd Bertsch: 1:01:39

So here we go Permission slip to chill, because I deeply love myself, everyone around me and all that is I, todd Birch, am giving myself the permission to chill, not only in this moment, but in all moments moving forward, especially when I need it most. I am committed to creating space within and around me. At all times, I choose the radical, defiant act of slowing down, of seeking and finding stillness. I will create any and all habits I need to honor my commitment to chill. When I fail, I will pick up right where I left off. I expect this journey to be challenging at times, so I have zero attachment to the process. When my path bends fully vertical, I am willing to climb.

Todd Bertsch: 1:02:31

My work is to repeatedly give myself this permission as many times as necessary, starting now. In doing so, I am allowing and receiving all assistance. I release any predictable resistance as it shows up. From this moment forward, permission to chill is granted, and so it is. That’s how we end, dude. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. You are on your way to growth, transformation and joy. If you find this episode helpful, please like and share with your friends and, by all means, please leave a review. You can also view the show notes and subscribe to the Bolt Newsletter at toddbertsch.com. Remember, real change takes time. Start small and watch the growth take shape.