Jeremy Guttenplan, MBA 09 — Coaching Others To Live Their Best Lives

(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)

[00:00:00] Sean Li: Welcome to the OneHaas Alumni Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Li. And today, we’re joined by Jeremy Guttenplan. Jeremy is a double bear. He holds an MBA from Haas and a bachelor’s in engineering from UC Berkeley. He is currently a leadership and transformational coach, consultant, and former executive with over 20 years of experience in financial services and technology. Jeremy is the founder of Leading Your Life Coaching, where he has guided hundreds of high-achieving professionals and entrepreneurs to bridge the gap between their current reality and their vision for the future. Welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.

[00:00:48] Jeremy Guttenplan: Hi! Great to be here.

[00:00:50] Sean Li: So, we’d like to start these conversations with my favorite question, which is hearing about your origin story. I’d love to hear, you know, where you grew up, how you grew up, and we’ll start there.

[00:01:01] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah. So, I, I was born and raised in California, you know, went undergrad at Berkeley, lived in the Bay Area for a long time, and at some point I fell in love with New York and decided to move across country. And that’s where I met my wife. And we now live just outside of New York in Hoboken with two kids.

[00:01:20] Sean Li: What inspired you to go get a degree in engineering for your undergrad?

[00:01:24] Jeremy Guttenplan: I mean, when we’re in high school, who, who really knows what they want to do in life? I don’t believe anyone who claims they know, but what I… I knew I was good at science and math, and I knew that my grandfather and my uncle were both engineers, so I figured engineering might be a safe bet.

[00:01:44] Sean Li: And did you end up going into engineering at all after school?

[00:01:48] Jeremy Guttenplan: Well, I used it. I worked as a data scientist. And, and that definitely used, you know, the industrial engineering and operations research skillset, lots of statistics.

[00:01:58] Sean Li: You know, how do you go from engineering to coaching? Because in my mind, engineering’s very numbers oriented, right, very focused on problem solving, right? In my mind, at least, it doesn’t feel like it’s a people job, right?

[00:02:14] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right.

[00:02:15] Sean Li: So, so, really curious to hear, you know, kind of, the path that, you know, you get started in with a degree in engineering, then how that, kind of, moved over to where you’re now.

[00:02:26] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. All of it involves problem solving. All of it involves pulling together dissimilar information and pattern recognition. And there’s actually a lot of common skill sets across… You know, I was in data science and data analytics and risk management. I was in strategy. With a strong data background, I just love solving problems and I love, I love figuring things out. Really, that’s what it is.

It’s a curiosity. It’s not about solving problems. It’s about understanding and making sense of things. You know, there’s a lot of reasons I became a coach, but one of the reasons I’m good at it is I’ve always been good at that pattern recognition and being able to recognize things that are common across people, across products, across data sets. I didn’t expect to end up here, but here I am.

[00:03:21] Sean Li: Well, kind of, on that note then, do you mind sharing a little bit more about your work experience, kind of, what you did before leading up to coaching?

[00:03:28] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah. Before coaching, you know, I graduated into the dotcom bust. There weren’t a lot of jobs in engineering or technology. I ended up working for Fair Isaac. I was developing FICO scores. That was my first job out of college.

[00:03:43] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:03:43] Jeremy Guttenplan: I was on a, a very small team that impacts hundreds of millions of people. It was, kind of, cool. That wasn’t the right fit in terms of culture, you know. As a first job, it was a bit conservative. And I wanted more autonomy. I wanted to use my brain creatively. And this was a very structured thing that was done a certain way, you know. So, I moved on to other jobs where I was really discovering what I was good at. And, you know, my next job, I worked for Wells Fargo for several years.

One of the best things that come out of, of that job was recognizing that the people around me in leadership all had master’s degrees, MBAs, some of them, even PhDs. And that, kind of, pushed me to go back to school and get that second degree that I never knew I wanted. That alone was pretty life changing, you know, graduating from Haas, not just the things I learned, the people I met and the experiences I’m having. And funny enough, there’s even three people from Haas that I’m coaching today, two of them from my class. So, it’s really come full circle.

[00:04:44] Sean Li: That’s amazing. I think you’re spot on that engineering, you know, very heavily oriented on, like you said, problem solving or just figuring things out, right?

[00:04:53] Jeremy Guttenplan: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:53] Sean Li: And problem solving, I think, is, is such a great skill. As an entrepreneur, I feel like that is the entrepreneur’s job is to find problems and create solutions for them-

[00:05:04] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right.

[00:05:04] Sean Li: … and monetize.

[00:05:06] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right.

[00:05:06] Sean Li: And so, how did you come across coaching, obviously, as a career, but even as a, a skillset to develop? I’m really curious how that, kind of, came about.

[00:05:18] Jeremy Guttenplan: You know, I would get into these jobs that’d be very specific, very narrow focused. And I had, I had a way about me that I would create a T shape out of every role I’d end up in. So, you know, where they wanted me to do a certain thing and go real deep on something, I learn everything around it, connect all the dots together, you know, and make it really broad also.

[00:05:41] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:05:42] Jeremy Guttenplan: You know, I’d, I’d generally master the one thing they wanted me to do pretty quickly, and then I’d get bored and want to figure everything else out. And I was doing that in every job I was in. And I think that’s what led me into strategy and, and then eventually into product management because that’s how you’ve got to operate, right?

I don’t know how much you know about product, but, you know, good product managers are generally really good at a couple things and, kind of, decent at everything else. Like, you just have to know a little bit about everything. They need to be able to learn things quickly and get curious and, and leverage all the information and all the intelligence around them to, kind of, put puzzle pieces together-

[00:06:21] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:06:22] Jeremy Guttenplan: … and see opportunities other people can’t see, see solutions other people can’t see. You know, it’s… You’re not the creator, but you’re, like, compiling it together in a really innovative way. You know, a good product manager is leveraging all the people around them, really. And that’s a skillset. So, it is very much a people job. And I was far more comfortable in that than I’d ever been in, like, a data-focused job.

So, I, I, I learned that much about me being in product. And what I found was I was spending more time coaching and developing my team than I was dealing with leadership. And this is even when I was, you know, VP level, executive level, where a product leader’s job is… it’s, kind of, everything. And that’s part of the challenge is there’s always something they’re not doing well because they’re expected to do everything and fill in every gap. And it’s a difficult job.

To do it well, you’ve got to be good at the politics. And that was something I was never, I was never really built for. And it’s not that I didn’t know what I needed to do. It’s that I really had, like, an allergic reaction to inauthenticity. I was always far too honest. I would say things that would often be taken the wrong way or get me in trouble. And, you know, it was just like, come on, can I just do the work? Can I just produce results? Can I build an awesome team? Why do I need to play this game with leadership? This is silly.

[00:07:48] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:07:49] Jeremy Guttenplan: And I found that that was the one aspect of product that I just didn’t like was having to be savvy politically. Now, I love coaching other people in it because I’ve been through it. I’ve learned everything the hard way. I’ve learned so much from my many experiences. And some of them, at the time, felt like failures, but had it not been from those experiences, I wouldn’t be delivering the value to my clients that I do today. So, add another layer and that’s… I met my wife, we got married, and we got pregnant.

And I found myself becoming a father. And this was back in 2016. We had a son. I wanted to be a father, but I was also afraid I wasn’t going to be a, a great one. And there was a day that it hit me that, you know, I’m having a son and I’m going to be his male role model. And it was like a bucket of ice water got dumped on my head. It just woke me up. It woke me up out of this… Whatever life I had been living up to that point, it wasn’t what I’d want my son to look up to. I didn’t see myself as a role model. A lot needed to change. And a lot of that was about accepting myself.

[00:09:01] Sean Li: Right.

[00:09:02] Jeremy Guttenplan: And for a brief while, I felt a bit lost, and then I found this training program. I did a lot of work, personal development work. It’s all about going from the inside out, you know, focusing on what’s getting in your way at the deepest level-

[00:09:17] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:09:17] Jeremy Guttenplan: … because everything else is an extension of that. Everything in your life is an extension of those inner beliefs.

[00:09:22] Sean Li: Right.

[00:09:23] Jeremy Guttenplan: And I started doing the work. And I… the more progress I made, the more I fell in love with doing the work. The more progress I made, the more I, you know, felt proud to be my son’s father. And I have two sons now. So, it’s… Two years later, we, we had a second. So, along the way, I knew that I loved developing my teams from the corporate world. I knew that I loved figuring things out and connecting pieces together and recognizing patterns and producing solutions.

And now, I was also getting really good at this other work that was not work specific. It was life specific. And I started volunteering as a coach in this nonprofit here in New York. It’s called the ALTRU Center. And I was watching people fly. There were lots of coaches and a big range of abilities across the coaching team. And I consistently was told I was doing a great job as a coach. I was consistently getting feedback from the people I was coaching. And I, I just couldn’t deny that this was something I was really good at.

[00:10:26] Sean Li: Right.

[00:10:26] Jeremy Guttenplan: So, I, kind of, just found my calling on the side while on my corporate path. You know, I had, I had gotten into product management by this point. And it just took a couple, a couple more situations in the corporate world that put so much stress on me and my family that I just… I said, “No more.”

[00:10:47] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:10:48] Jeremy Guttenplan: “And no amount of money is worth this.” You know, I, I could run this business as good as any of these people.

[00:10:54] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:10:55] Jeremy Guttenplan: Why am I not running my own business? This is silly. And that was the start of it. I finally walked away. And, you know, I’d been coaching on the side. I’d been doing some consulting on the side, some advising. I finally believed in myself. I got to a point where I was more afraid of going back to another toxic political environment than I was failing starting a business.

[00:11:17] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:11:18] Jeremy Guttenplan: And so, you know, I was both moving towards something and also away from something at the same time. And that can be a pretty powerful combination.

[00:11:27] Sean Li: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s an amazing story. I think everyone, you know, goes through these moments, I don’t know if they’re called reckonings, but you know, where I feel like, especially MBAs, you know, it takes a level of awareness, or any kind of graduate student, to put yourself and go back to school, right?

[00:11:45] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah.

[00:11:45] Sean Li: It takes a, a degree of confidence without attitude, as we call it here at Haas, to have that awareness that there’s so much more to grow in terms of who we are, not just our careers, but, you know, where… like, what do we want to do with our lives and things like that. And one of the, the beautiful things I encounter on this podcast all the time, which I love, is, you know, I, I went into the MBA thinking I had this huge chip on my shoulder, and then you realize everybody has a chip on their shoulder. And, and-

[00:12:16] Jeremy Guttenplan: How big of a chip-

[00:12:17] Sean Li: … you know, that’s…

[00:12:17] Jeremy Guttenplan: … you know, that’s the difference.

[00:12:18] Sean Li: Yeah, but everybody from, you know, a new grad to the oldest grad I’ve interviewed, you know, probably in their 70s, everybody still has a chip on their shoulder because the reality is they’re a student always. There’s always something new to be learned. And, and there’s always something that we feel like we haven’t yet learned or that we, you know, we have yet to do.

It’s a beautiful thing, but, you know, depending on perspective, it can also be demoralizing sometimes because, you know, it’s, it’s the whole, like, grass-is-greener situation, but at the same time, right, it’s good that there’s grass that’s greener because then that, that pushes us to learn, right? So, it’s finding this fine balance.

[00:12:57] Jeremy Guttenplan: So, it’s funny you use that term. So, I, I love that you’re bringing up growth. There are a couple things that I picked up on that, you know, if I was, if I was in a coaching session, I wouldn’t let my client get away with it.

[00:13:07] Sean Li: You can mini coach me. I think give the audience a taste of what it’s like.

[00:13:12] Jeremy Guttenplan: Well, you know, first of all, this idea of the grass is always greener. That is something we feel naturally. Most humans have felt that feeling before. Now, where it’s coming from, it’s coming from this isn’t enough, but that will be.

[00:13:30] Sean Li: Right.

[00:13:31] Jeremy Guttenplan: And that this isn’t enough actually comes from something even deeper. I’m not enough. So, when that has you in these moments of insecurity, these moments of fear, these moments of discomfort, you know, where you’re doubting yourself, that’s when your brain is in survival mode. It’s in protection mode. You know, I don’t like to use the term ego. I use, I use inner critic. Your inner critic is running you in those moments.

And your inner critic believes all those things the child you made up when you were young. And a lot of us have the I’m-not-enough belief, whether that’s the core-limiting belief or just one-off, you know. That’s a very common one that I come across. And yeah, in, in these moments of weakness, we do fall into that trap. It’s part of the human condition So, coaching is not about right or wrong, good or bad. There’s nothing bad or wrong about that. Coaching is about noticing it, asking yourself, “Is this getting me what I want, like, what I really want, what I say that I want?”

[00:14:34] Sean Li: Right.

[00:14:34] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right now, I might want to be right about something, but what do I really want? And so, that’s, that’s what I ask my clients is, like, getting you what you say that you want, you know, thinking that other thing’s going to be better than this thing. You know, the answer is always no. And it’s an interruption tool to see that, “Hey, wait a minute, I have everything I need right now. In this moment, I am already whole complete, perfect human. And I can still aspire to be an even greater version of myself.” So, it sounds contradictory. We like to say, “I’m grateful for all that I have while in pursuit of all that I desire.” So, I’m good with me right now. And it used to be. I’m good with me right now, right?

[00:15:24] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:15:24] Jeremy Guttenplan: And yet, I’m always in a growth mindset.

[00:15:28] Sean Li: Right.

[00:15:29] Jeremy Guttenplan: I’m always looking at myself, “Okay. What worked? What didn’t? What am I doing that’s effective? What’s not effective?” And I’m constantly making adjustments. That’s what coaching is about. It’s just making adjustment after adjustment after adjustment until, until the behavior pattern just completely shifts, but you got to do it a little bit at a time. This isn’t something you change overnight. This isn’t… Like, no, there’s no quick fix.

[00:15:55] Sean Li: I love it.

[00:15:56] Jeremy Guttenplan: That’s why most of my coaching engagements go at least, you know, nine to 12 months, like, pretty much minimum.

[00:16:03] Sean Li: Yeah, that’s amazing. What’s the difference between coaching, mentoring, counseling, right, like, therapy? Like, what is coaching? And how does that differ?

[00:16:14] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right. There’s a lot of people out there who call themselves coaches who are really advisors. If you’re telling people what to do, you’re an advisor or you’re a consultant. People who are giving you career advice, people who are saying, “Hey, do this with your resume. You know, this is how you network. This is how you do…” those are career advisors, advisors. They’re not coaches, And the distinction as the coaching world has it is… and I’m sure there’s a better way to say this, but coaching is about asking questions.

Coaching is about drawing out your inner wisdom and your answers, your truth, because I don’t know the answer for you. I didn’t grow up the way you grew up. I didn’t grow up in the same place. I’m not the same age. I don’t come from the same family. I don’t have the same income, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Your worldview is not the same as mine.

[00:17:02] Sean Li: Right.

[00:17:03] Jeremy Guttenplan: So, what I think is right for me probably isn’t right for you. You know, maybe there’s a thing here or there that, oh, hey, here’s something that worked for me. Maybe you could try it, and it might or might not work for you. But you’ve got to start from the person. Now, when you have a whole bucket of tools to draw from, as a coach, I have clients try different things and see what, what does work, but what I don’t do is tell them what to do.

Now, I have it on occasion. I have clients say, “Hey, I really need some advice right now. I really want to hear your opinion.” That’s not a coaching moment. There are times I will turn it back on them and say, “Well, what do you think?” So, that’s coaching versus advising. Teaching, and I do train people, teaching and training are, are another thing. That is, “I have new information that you don’t have. Let me educate you.”

[00:17:56] Sean Li: Right.

[00:17:57] Jeremy Guttenplan: A lot of my training is introducing things like in, you know, in the transformation world, we talk about distinctions. Like, here’s two different ways of looking at something. I’ll give an example.

[00:18:07] Sean Li: Yes, please. I was just going to ask.

[00:18:09] Jeremy Guttenplan: You know, if someone’s whining and complaining about something, and of course that’s my interpretation, they’re whining, but-

[00:18:15] Sean Li: Right.

[00:18:15] Jeremy Guttenplan: … I’m hearing whiny voice, that immediately tells me they’re in their victim state. Their inner critic is on, and they’re being a victim of something. Being a victim means you’re at effect of others and not in control yourself. Like, you are at the effect of those around you. That’s being victim. I am powerless, so I’m going to point the finger and blame and complain because I’m powerless. That’s the perspective of victim. It’s not true or false.

It’s just a perspective. Now, you could take the same facts and step into accountability and responsibility. So, accountability is what did I own, if we’re talking about a past event. Like, what parts of that did I influence? Where did I make choices or not make choices that helped create those events? There’s no fault. It’s just what can I own, and then what can I learn from it? So, back into growth mindset.

[00:19:09] Sean Li: Right.

[00:19:10] Jeremy Guttenplan: How do I learn from this? How do I get different results by, you know, approaching it a different way? Then that’s taking responsibility. So, you learn from it. That’s the accountability. And then you step into it, responsibility. So, victim versus accountable, those are two perspectives. They’re two sides of the same exact coin. And you can choose how you see the event. An event is neutral, right? We’re on a podcast right now. That’s a fact.

[00:19:36] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:19:36] Jeremy Guttenplan: We call it a podcast. We’re on this thing we call a podcast. Is it good? Is it bad? That’s interpretation. I don’t know, you know.

[00:19:43] Sean Li: Everything, yeah.

[00:19:45] Jeremy Guttenplan: So, that’s teaching. What I just did is I taught you a concept. That’s training. And I will do that, I’ll put on trainer hats sometimes, because I want to have a shared language with my clients. I want to be able to say to them… or I want them saying to me, “Yeah, I, I sound a little victimy right now, don’t I?” Like, I want them saying that. It’s great to have this common language where they can start to see themself and actually put words to the things they’re observing that we both agree on. So, then there’s therapy.

Therapy is different in that therapy is almost entirely backwards looking, at least historic therapy. There’s a lot of modern versions of therapy that have these fancy new names. And I’m going to be honest with you, they’re coaching. A lot of them, it’s just coaching. That’s all it is because it’s forward looking. Coaching is goal oriented. Coaching is understanding where I am and where I want to go and then what’s getting in the way, what’s in the gap. That’s coaching.

And yeah, we’re going to go into your history because I want to know what are your limiting beliefs because that’s what’s getting in your way now. So, we still need to understand that stuff, but what we’re not going to do is live in your past. What we’re not going to do is sit around dwelling on past. We’re going to look at the past, get some insight from it, and then use that insight to figure things out in the present.

[00:21:07] Sean Li: Okay.

[00:21:08] Jeremy Guttenplan: So, coaching is very much present and future looking. And therapy is very much past looking. It’s let’s resolve some trauma. Let’s understand something that happened to me or learn tools to stop ruminating on that stuff, which I think coaching is more effective for that because, again, we’re forward looking. We’re replacing it with something else.

[00:21:28] Sean Li: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so, it sounds like mentoring would probably be in line with advising then.

[00:21:35] Jeremy Guttenplan: Mostly. I mean, mentoring sometimes is coaching. Sometimes, the, the mentor is being a leader and empowering their mentee, right, asking them questions, having them figure out the answers. That would be a really powerful version of mentorship. And that is coaching.

[00:21:52] Sean Li: Right.

[00:21:52] Jeremy Guttenplan: Some mentors just want to tell them the answers. And sometimes, those answers are helpful. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s knowing when you’re supporting a person and when you’re not, when you’re being a crutch or disempowering them.

[00:22:05] Sean Li: I know this is, like, trade secrets, but I’m, kind of, curious, you know, how do you switch that judgmental mindset off as a coach? And I ask this because I brought a lot of books about this. And, and judging is, is a human instinct, right?

[00:22:23] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yes.

[00:22:24] Sean Li: I think wanting to give advice or to tell people is a result of that, of that judgment. Like, you just want to tell them what you feel like is right, right? Are there any mental tricks that you, you do to be a good coach where you, kind of, recenter yourself or be like, “All right. Let me ask… figure out the question that want to ask you,”-

[00:22:43] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right.

[00:22:44] Sean Li: … and not bias that question either.

[00:22:46] Jeremy Guttenplan: Well-

[00:22:47] Sean Li: That’s a leading question.

[00:22:48] Jeremy Guttenplan: … you just gave yourself the answer. I mean, recentering yourself is the number one way to do this. You got to stay mindful and present. So, we’re humans. And as you said, it is a survival instinct to judge. That’s what our inner critic is doing. That’s why we call it the critic be because what does a critic do? Just sits around and judges stuff. What is it judging? It’s judging is that safe? Is that safe? Is that safe? Is that safe?

It’s trying to keep you safe. It’s trying to keep you alive. When you start to notice it doing that, when you’re clearly not in a life-threatening situation, you can interrupt it. So, it’s not that you’ll stop judging. It’s about interrupting the judging. And rather than judge yourself for judging, you say, “Oh, there I was being human again. Let me get out of my head and into theirs.”

Like, as a coach, the secret is always it’s not about me. Let’s make this about them. What I think doesn’t actually matter. Like, I sometimes tell myself this, “What I think doesn’t matter.” I’ll say it out, out loud, and my clients will… I don’t know if they notice me saying it or not, but that’s a tool I use. When I catch myself wanting to give them advice or judging, I’ll be like, “You know what? This isn’t about me. What do you think, or what would…” you know. And, and I redirect it.

[00:24:03] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:24:04] Jeremy Guttenplan: It’s a really important question you ask because coaching doesn’t work if there’s no trust. And for someone to trust, they’ve got to believe it’s a judgment-free zone. And so, I’ve got to create that container for my clients to get the most value they can get. I will often share my own stories that I feel they could relate to so that they feel… not to make it about me, but to help them not feel alone, to show them that, hey, we’re all human here.

[00:24:35] Sean Li: Right.

[00:24:35] Jeremy Guttenplan: I’ve been at this work for years and I still catch myself doing things.

[00:24:39] Sean Li: Right.

[00:24:40] Jeremy Guttenplan: I’m still human. I still have young children who I try not to yell at and-

[00:24:45] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:24:45] Jeremy Guttenplan: … I catch myself doing it sometimes.

[00:24:46] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:24:47] Jeremy Guttenplan: I mean, you know, we still have triggers. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about excellence. It’s about noticing yourself doing it and making the adjustments.

[00:24:58] Sean Li: Right. So, Jeremy, for anyone listening, it’s not like coaches come to find you, right? You have to go have some level of awareness that you need coaching, and then you need to go find your coach. What do you recommend for people who may not even realize that they need a coach when they, they do need one?

[00:25:18] Jeremy Guttenplan: The process of landing on coaching, I mean, there’s no right or wrong way. I’ve seen it happen. I’m constantly surprised at how we end up in coach-client relationships. Like, it very seldom looks the same between two people. There are people that have thought about it for a long time and then someone mentions and they’re like, “Okay. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll have a conversation,” and then they decide to do it because they’ve been thinking about it. It was something they’ve thought, “Oh, maybe I want this.”

There’s already some openness going into that conversation and there’s already some trust because we share someone in common. There are people who are just struggling. They’re just… I mean, this is a lot of people. They’re struggling. And maybe I’ll end up having a conversation with them. And those who are open to not want to struggle anymore will say yes.

Some of those who don’t believe they can ever not struggle, they’re just so insistent on being right about those beliefs, they say no. They don’t sign up. And some of them just aren’t coachable. Some of them aren’t coachable yet, you know. It’s just not the right timing. They’re not there yet. There are people who are struggling, and a friend says, “Hey, have you thought about…” Right?

And that’s the spark. It happens all kinds of ways. I have people coming to me. I randomly meet people. I get introduced to people. It, it happens a lot of different ways. I’ll find myself catching up with someone from Berkeley. And next thing you know, we’re coaching together. It’s not like I’m out there selling. I’m just really passionate about it.

[00:26:45] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:26:46] Jeremy Guttenplan: And when someone’s open to it, they start asking questions. You know, you want me to tell you more? I’ll tell you more. And next thing you know, we’re coaching.

[00:26:52] Sean Li: You know, you, you just mentioned some people aren’t ready for coaching, right? I don’t know if it’s better to describe someone who’s not ready for coaching or someone who’s ready for coaching. Like, what, what are the qualities or what, what are the things that you, you notice about people who are ready for coaching?

[00:27:09] Jeremy Guttenplan: Well, if there’s some level of self-awareness, then that tells me they’re more likely to be coachable, if they’re willing to be vulnerable, if they’re open. You know, they can be struggling and still be really curious about what I have to say, or they can be struggling and be totally well righteous and arrogant about, you know, they’ve got to fix it themselves.

I have people tell me all the time, “You know what? Let me just get some of my life in order and then I’ll be ready for this.” And I just find that so funny. And, and it’s happened dozens of times, by the way. You know, “Let me go just fix a few things first and then we’ll start coaching.” You understand the problem with that, right? Like, you’re the one who got yourself here. You’re not the one who’s going to get yourself out of this alone.

[00:27:55] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:27:56] Jeremy Guttenplan: And that’s exactly what coaching is for. It’s support. It’s not because you can’t do it. It’s because you’re going to get the result you’ve always been getting until you have someone actually putting a mirror in front of you and helping you see yourself-

[00:28:09] Sean Li: Right.

[00:28:10] Jeremy Guttenplan: … then your results can look different because your behaviors will start to shift.

[00:28:14] Sean Li: Right.

[00:28:14] Jeremy Guttenplan: It’s really, really, really hard to do this work on your own. And it’s almost worse the smarter you are and the further in your life and the more successful. What I’ve found is people who are really successful are deathly afraid to change anything.

[00:28:29] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:28:30] Jeremy Guttenplan: And they might be miserable. So, the success is just a facade. It’s okay. They have a lot of money and a big title, but they’re not happy. There’s no freedom. They’re not living.

[00:28:41] Sean Li: Right.

[00:28:42] Jeremy Guttenplan: But they won’t change anything because, well, their way has gotten them this far and they’ll go to the grave that way. And like I said, it’s funny. A lot of the-highest achieving people just completely reject things like coaching. They see it as weakness. They’re so used to doing everything themselves. And if they were really willing to look, they’d see they had a lot of help along the way.

[00:29:04] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:29:05] Jeremy Guttenplan: They’re just not always willing to see it.

[00:29:07] Sean Li: Totally. I’m starting to, to see it, and as I’m listening to you talk about this, the people at the top of their game, we’re talking, you know, Serena Williams, you know, Kobe, you know, when he was alive, like everybody, they had coaches, you know. All these top elite athletes, right, they still have coaches. Now, you would think they know what to do, you know, because, because they’re the best of the best-

[00:29:31] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah.

[00:29:32] Sean Li: … but they even continue to have coaches, not just in the athletics department, but, you know, probably personal life as well. What makes us think, you know, that we don’t need coaches?

[00:29:40] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah.

[00:29:40] Sean Li: And part of it, too, for me, personally, you know, for finding coaches in whatever area, you know, that, that I’m pursuing, like, whatever area that’s new that I’m pursuing, is short cutting. You know, like, I want to save some time. Like, I could figure this out, I could brute force this, but I could also just pay someone to learn from them-

[00:30:05] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah.

[00:30:05] Sean Li: … to learn some, you know, techniques, whatever it is. This is an investment in myself and saving me time so I could spend more time with my family, you know, versus-

[00:30:16] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah.

[00:30:16] Sean Li: … trying to brute force this stuff.

[00:30:18] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah. It’s a shortcut.

[00:30:20] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:30:20] Jeremy Guttenplan: It’s a huge shortcut. Absolutely. I hired a business coach about a year and a half ago, Brendan Burns. He’d love that I gave him a plug. And it was random the way it came across, but, you know, I listened to his podcast. And there were things he was saying that were just so authentic and genuine. And it was… there was a lot I was good at, but I knew I wasn’t good at sales. I knew I, I didn’t like sales. I had an allergy to it. I didn’t want to sell myself. And there was some stuff holding me back in that arena. And I knew that that was going to hold back my business.

[00:30:51] Sean Li: Right.

[00:30:51] Jeremy Guttenplan: I would have figured it out. I mean, I was already making money even before I met him, but I also knew that if I could create a path even just remotely similar to his, I’d just shed years off of the trajectory. You know, it would just completely change the game. I would save years of my life struggling and get to a successful business a lot faster. And I have. It, it worked. You know, I went all in, and I believed in myself. And being a small business owner, as you probably know, like, there’s a lot of ups and downs.

[00:31:24] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:31:25] Jeremy Guttenplan: And having someone there both for your ups and your downs, like, both to help you see your accomplishments, help you double down on what’s working, but also to help make sure you’re picking yourself up when you’re down, like, “Hey, you’re doing the right things. You’re just in a, you’re just in a down street. Get back to fundamentals.” Right? It’s like what do they do in basketball when they, they get into an officer? Get back to fundamentals. Nothing fancy is going to solve your problem.

Get back to the basics. Get back to what was working. And I love that you used… I mean, I hate to talk about Kobe. I mean, he’s not around anymore, but, you know, you look at athletes who maybe really, really excelled when they were young, and I know he was one of them. And when they’re not coachable, you know, when they’re big egos and arrogant and not playing team, they only get so far. And a lot of them will eventually figure it out.

They’ll eventually figure out that, “Wait a minute, maybe I don’t know everything. Maybe I don’t have all the answers.” And the moment that shift in the humility happens, their trajectory completely changes. I mean, we, we saw it with him. We’ve seen it with a lot of athletes. Kobe was horrible to play with when he first entered the NBA. I don’t think-

[00:32:33] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:32:33] Jeremy Guttenplan: … anyone wanted to be on his team, but he turned into one of the greatest of all time because he started to see what he was doing and he started to gain the humility and, and learned to play team and learned to actually listen to others. And you could see the arc, right?

[00:32:49] Sean Li: Yep.

[00:32:50] Jeremy Guttenplan: And you see that with a lot of people at the top of their game. They might have been so exceptional in a certain way that they got really far, farther than anyone else can get, but there’s still a limit if they don’t allow anyone to support them, they don’t-

[00:33:05] Sean Li: Right.

[00:33:05] Jeremy Guttenplan: … they don’t learn to see themselves and step into that growth mindset.

[00:33:08] Sean Li: So, another question, burning question, that I have, Jeremy, is the financial aspect of hiring a coach, right?

[00:33:15] Jeremy Guttenplan: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:16] Sean Li: I don’t know for everyone if that’s, you know, top of mind or in the back of their mind, but I remember when I was looking for a coach, it was in my mind. And part of the reason is I didn’t really know what I wanted to get out of it-

[00:33:29] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right.

[00:33:29] Sean Li: … right? And so, without, kind of, like, a what is the end goal, what am I paying for, how long is this going to take, sort of, thing-

[00:33:36] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right, right.

[00:33:36] Sean Li: … there’s, there’s just this uncertainty. Whereas a personal trainer, you know, it’s I want six pack abs, you know, in three months, right? It’s, it’s like I know what it is that I’m, that, “I’m paying for.”

[00:33:48] Jeremy Guttenplan: Right.

[00:33:48] Sean Li: What would you say to help someone, kind of, work through that mentally, especially as business school people, right? I mean, it’s…-

[00:33:56] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah.

[00:33:56] Sean Li: … money is, a lot of times, top of mind.

[00:33:59] Jeremy Guttenplan: There’s value there for anyone who’s open to it. There are people who aren’t clear on their vision, and that’s what a coach can help you with. A coach can accelerate your journey to your freedom, your happiness, your fulfillment, whatever that is. You know, whether it’s in your relationships, whether it’s in your job, whether it’s with your finances, your relationship with money, the sooner you take care of these things, the more of your life you’re going to live, right, the less stress. You might even live longer because you’ll be putting less stress on yourself.

[00:34:28] Sean Li: Right.

[00:34:29] Jeremy Guttenplan: You’ll most likely live longer. So, there’s just very basic, like, that’s little start there, but then there’s sometimes very tangible things, too. Like, “Hey, I want a promotion and a raise.” Well, great. If working with me gets you that promotion even one cycle earlier, just one, let’s just say it’s one cycle earlier, it’s six months earlier than it would have been otherwise, how much money is that?

[00:34:51] Sean Li: Right.

[00:34:51] Jeremy Guttenplan: That’s way more than paid for me.

[00:34:54] Sean Li: Right.

[00:34:55] Jeremy Guttenplan: And I did. I just had… I think three of my clients got promotions in the last cycle, who weren’t even expecting it. Two of them definitely weren’t expecting it.

[00:35:03] Sean Li: Right, right.

[00:35:03] Jeremy Guttenplan: Or, you know, and, and I do help some people when they’re between jobs depending on what they’re looking for, but someone who really wants to coach with me, but they’re between jobs and they’re like, “Oh, but I can’t be spending money right now,” what if I save you two weeks of a job search?

[00:35:18] Sean Li: Right.

[00:35:18] Jeremy Guttenplan: What’s two weeks of income?

[00:35:20] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:35:20] Jeremy Guttenplan: I bet my fee is less than that.

[00:35:23] Sean Li: Right.

[00:35:23] Jeremy Guttenplan: What if I save you three months? Now, the ROI is insane.

[00:35:27] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:35:28] Jeremy Guttenplan: And the whole trajectory of your life might have changed. Like, you can’t even calculate because we don’t know what would have happened otherwise, but, I mean, we’re talking about changing your trajectory.

[00:35:37] Sean Li: Right.

[00:35:38] Jeremy Guttenplan: It’s hard to put a price tag on that. I charge a very reasonable amount. I mean, I do know coaches that are, kind of, astronomical in what they charge, but there’s a reason they do because the return on the investment can be so big and they know it, you know. I try to keep it in a place where people can more easily say yes. My business coach says I should raise my price. It’s an argument we’re constantly having. But yeah, you, you got to look at the ROI. What’s the ROI of saving a marriage?

[00:36:09] Sean Li: Right.

[00:36:09] Jeremy Guttenplan: What’s the ROI of meeting the love of your life? One of my clients had only been in toxic relationships before coaching with me.

[00:36:16] Sean Li: Right.

[00:36:16] Jeremy Guttenplan: That’s all she knew. And I’m primarily a business and career coach, but again, it’s all mindset work. It’s all coming from the same place.

[00:36:23] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:36:23] Jeremy Guttenplan: And coming out of our coaching, her finances were in better shape, she was happier in her job, and she was dating the love of her life, who she’s still with, and I’m guessing is probably getting engaged soon.

[00:36:34] Sean Li: Yeah. Then also, what’s the ROI and just having peace of mind, being more present with those around you, especially, you know, us with our families?

[00:36:45] Jeremy Guttenplan: I mean, when you look at the value, it gets to a point where you’re just like, “Okay. I can’t afford to not do this,” if you’re-

[00:36:50] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:36:51] Jeremy Guttenplan: … if you’re really willing to look. Now, there are people who’ve had a lot of support, and they’re on a great trajectory. And some of those people even hire coaches because they want to continue on that trajectory. It’s very easy to fall off. It’s easy to get sucked back into, you know, the, the unconscious drift that our society lives in.

It’s easy to get sucked back into, you know, all the crap that’s happening in the world and fear. And there’s always work to do. So, if there’s someone you connect with that you feel like you’re on the same page, you feel that there’s trust, and you understand each other, you won’t know until you give it a try.

[00:37:25] Sean Li: Right. I love that. My last question is, obviously, how do people find you?

[00:37:31] Jeremy Guttenplan: You can find me on my website, leadingyourlife.co, working on getting the .com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jeremy Guttenplan, I’ll be in the Haas Network, and on Instagram, Leading Your Life coaching, if you want to give it a follow. Look, I’ll finish with my pitch. Basically, what I do is I provide executive leadership coaching for high achievers, high-achieving professionals, high-achieving entrepreneurs, who want to elevate themselves.

They want to advance their careers, and they want to grow their businesses. I go far beyond strategy. I work very deeply with my clients to develop leadership presence, decision making, and personal effectiveness, so that they lead with confidence and create meaningful success in all their life. And I have a, a couple slots open if you’re interested.

[00:38:15] Sean Li: I love it. You know, one thing, and I’m a huge jokester, with dad jokes, obviously. I can’t help but notice that we’re talking about life planning, right, right, like coaching and, like, life trajectory and things like that. And the fact that your last name is Guttenplan, which I think in German is, like, good plan.

[00:38:35] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah, yeah. Somewhere along the line. My, my family added a T, but yeah, it’s… Yeah. I’ve, I’ve had people point that out to me before. So, isn’t it perfect?

[00:38:46] Sean Li: Yeah. Okay. It literally just hit me. I was like, “Oh, that’s so funny.” Anyway, well, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was such a pleasure having you and having this really wonderful discussion around coaching and just the importance of it. So, really appreciate having you on today.

[00:39:03] Jeremy Guttenplan: Yeah, me, too. I really, really enjoyed this. And of course, go Bears.

[00:39:07] Sean Li: Go, Bears!

[00:39:08] Jeremy Guttenplan: All right.

[00:39:08] Sean Li: Thanks again for tuning into this episode of the OneHaas Podcast. If you enjoyed our show today, please hit that Subscribe or Follow button on your favorite podcast player. We’d also really appreciate you giving us a five-star rating review. If you’re looking for more content, please check out our website at haas.fm. That’s spelled H-A-A-S.F-M. And there, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter and check out some of our other Berkeley Haas podcasts. OneHaas Podcast is a production of the Haas School of Business and produced by University FM. Until next time. Go, Bears!