Speaker 1: If you think of self actualization as closing the gap
Speaker 1: between what you value and how you show up, that's
Speaker 1: a really powerful lens to use coaching through. Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Alexi Roboshow
Speaker 1: to the show. Alexi is the co founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of Better Up, a mobile platform that brings together world
Speaker 1: class coaching, AI technology, and behavioral science to deliver sustainable,
Speaker 1: positive change. Alexi is also the chairman of Youth Leadership America.
Speaker 1: They have collaborated with leading companies including Disney, Google, and
Speaker 1: Hilton Hotels to coach and mentor future leaders. Alexi holds
Speaker 1: a BA in Political science and nonprofit Management with summa
Speaker 1: cum lati distinction from the University of Southern California. In
Speaker 1: this episode, I talked to Alexi about the future of coaching.
Speaker 1: There are countless ways to practice coaching, but Alexi believes
Speaker 1: coaching must be rooted in science based techniques and reliable outcomes,
Speaker 1: which is precisely what they do. A Better Up coaching
Speaker 1: is not a replacement for theirs, but it can help
Speaker 1: individuals become more resilient and purposeful in their daily lives.
Speaker 1: We also touch on the topics of self actualization, flow, languishing, imagination,
Speaker 1: and Alexi's vision for the future of coaching. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation with someone who is really on the
Speaker 1: cutting edge of the science of the coaching profession. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can imagine. There are many many coaches with
Speaker 1: all different sorts of claim certificates and qualifications, and what
Speaker 1: I really like about Alexi is that he makes sure
Speaker 1: that his coaches are up to date on the latest
Speaker 1: information and knowledge that can help all people thrive. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I'll bring you Alexi Rubbishaw Alexi, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad to finally chat with you on the Psychology Podcast. Likewise,
Speaker 1: it's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Well,
Speaker 1: you know it's an honor for me too. I love
Speaker 1: what you're doing it better. I'm such a fan, as
Speaker 1: you know, and I want to know more about the
Speaker 1: man behind it. I want to know more about you.
Speaker 1: Today we're focusing on you, and you know, i'd like
Speaker 1: to start with a little bit about how you even
Speaker 1: got interested in the coaching profession to begin with. Is
Speaker 1: this something that's been a very long time interest of years? Sure? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's about seven hundred people behind it now.
Speaker 1: But I will say Scott, we are a huge fan
Speaker 1: of yours too. I still remember when we were like
Speaker 1: a ten person company, Eddie and I voluntelling the entire
Speaker 1: team to listen to the Psychology podcast every week so
Speaker 1: we can learn more. So thanks, thanks for continuing to
Speaker 1: do this and sharing so many insights over all the years.
Speaker 1: So coaching, yeah, I was really I guess fortunate in
Speaker 1: retrospect to stumble into coaching at a pretty young age.
Speaker 1: So I had somebuddies in high school who got really
Speaker 1: excited about leadership development and what we called at the
Speaker 1: time life skill development. And you know, they were reading.
Speaker 1: They were reading everything from Napoleon Hill to Steve Covey
Speaker 1: to whatever books we could get our hands on. And
Speaker 1: my buddy John had this, I think what turned out
Speaker 1: to be a present prescient idea to start an after
Speaker 1: school club where we did peer to peer coaching and
Speaker 1: found local business and civic leaders as mentors to help
Speaker 1: us at this intersection of leadership and life skills. And
Speaker 1: so I was probably around seventeen at the time and
Speaker 1: that became a huge part of my life. So nights
Speaker 1: and weekends I would be volunteering. We turned it into
Speaker 1: a five h one C three nonprofit and throughout college,
Speaker 1: throughout my young professional career, I was nights in weekends,
Speaker 1: continuing to coach and mentor at that point Millennials and
Speaker 1: then eventually gen Zers as they went through these similar
Speaker 1: years in high school. And so Eddie, my co founder
Speaker 1: and better up, his little sister, went through the program.
Speaker 1: We had been friends at USC, but reconnected when he
Speaker 1: started coaching and mentoring nights and weekends with me with
Speaker 1: these students, and so that was kind of our baptism
Speaker 1: by fire, so to speak, in the world of coaching.
Speaker 1: And how in a roundabout way, I eventually ended up
Speaker 1: stumbling on psychology, positive psychology, and you know, all the
Speaker 1: stuff we're able to do today in the world. Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: what is coaching? How's personal coaching different from sports coaching? Sure?
Speaker 1: I think it is very core. I mean there's some similarities.
Speaker 1: I think at it's very core. A coach is typically
Speaker 1: an expert at really a structured process of inquiry that's
Speaker 1: focused on you making forward progress to your goals in
Speaker 1: alignment with your values. And a coach is not telling
Speaker 1: you how to do it. A coach is giving you
Speaker 1: that feedback, they're giving you that accountability, They're giving you
Speaker 1: that support to really ask yourselves question. There's a socratic
Speaker 1: component to coaching of really like, hey, the answer is
Speaker 1: and within you, Scott. My job as a coach is
Speaker 1: to unlock that answer. What that answer is? Is your
Speaker 1: answer right? It's not me to give you the answer.
Speaker 1: And yes, I think really good coaches do this with hundreds,
Speaker 1: if not thousands of clients in their career, so they
Speaker 1: can pattern match, they can you know, I know early
Speaker 1: when I was being coached, it was helpful to understand, Hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't unusual what you're going through. Other people have
Speaker 1: gone through this same passage. They've come out with these
Speaker 1: types of outcomes, or they've made these life choices. But
Speaker 1: that's where coaching is different from mentorship, let's say, or
Speaker 1: even therapy or high school you know, soccer or football coaching.
Speaker 1: It's not inherently instructive. It's actually inquisitive at its core,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a it's a combined partnership to really
Speaker 1: help you answer these questions in a profound way for yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I often hear sometimes the word co facilitation used or
Speaker 1: a coactive process. I know there's a that's a whole
Speaker 1: there's a whole brand out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of brands out there in the
Speaker 1: coaching world. How do you know which brands are good
Speaker 1: which ones aren't? How do you I mean, would you
Speaker 1: say they're all great? I would not say that. I
Speaker 1: would I think there are just so many amazing coaches
Speaker 1: out there. We do find that, you know, unlike something
Speaker 1: like therapy that is regulated by in the US by
Speaker 1: state and you know, boards, coaching doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: regulatory body, and so it means that it's a low
Speaker 1: barrier to entry. There's there's nothing stopping you today from
Speaker 1: launching up a website and saying you're a coach. There's
Speaker 1: nothing stopping me from doing that. And depending on the
Speaker 1: type of coaching, maybe that's okay. But what we find
Speaker 1: when we you know, to the heart of your question,
Speaker 1: what we really advise people look for is what you
Speaker 1: want is reliability and repeatability in coaching, and that's what
Speaker 1: evidence based approaches bring. And so there are increasingly more
Speaker 1: schools of coaching, ways of coaching that are being informed
Speaker 1: by evidence based psychology and other behavioral sciences. And those
Speaker 1: aren't being used in a clinical setting. Coaching is not therapy,
Speaker 1: nor should it be therapy or replace therapy. But using
Speaker 1: the science of positive psychology, the science of behavioral economics
Speaker 1: sports psychology is a common one to pull from. There
Speaker 1: are still really like research back techniques and strategies that
Speaker 1: What that means when you're working with the coach who's
Speaker 1: trained in that is you're more likely to see the
Speaker 1: outcomes that are being espoused and you're more likely to
Speaker 1: have transparency into how you're improving and growing, which for me,
Speaker 1: as someone who is looking for help in my career
Speaker 1: as a young professional, still continuing to work with the
Speaker 1: coach was so important to be able to like empirically
Speaker 1: measure how I'm improving over time as I'm making this
Speaker 1: time and this money investment in doing something like coaching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about the better business model.
Speaker 1: You have so many different types of coaches right over
Speaker 1: a better up. You can't pinpoint and say, well, we're
Speaker 1: all part of the conflag eleation model or whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: just made a short thing. Yeah sure, yeah, so we do.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of coaches. We're very large. I
Speaker 1: think we're the largest mobile network in the world, but
Speaker 1: we have over three thousand. Yeah, it's I mean, thank you,
Speaker 1: It's taken us eight years, but you know, the team's
Speaker 1: done a fantastic job. Yeah. So we're about three thousand
Speaker 1: coaches globally today and we do coach across different subject
Speaker 1: matters area to your point, and everything from leadership development
Speaker 1: really with a focus on the intersection of you know,
Speaker 1: inspiring leadership or center leadership all the way to things
Speaker 1: like sleep or nutrition or coaching for new parents, and
Speaker 1: so in each of these different verticals we really try
Speaker 1: to seek out or where we don't feel they're sufficient,
Speaker 1: try to create some of these more evidence or science
Speaker 1: backed approaches to coaching. And so in our traditional you know,
Speaker 1: executive coaching skill set that's often used in the leadership development,
Speaker 1: we're looking for folks who have some of the more
Speaker 1: pre eminent international certifying bodies and then we actually help
Speaker 1: up level and upskill them in some of the latest
Speaker 1: research in science coming from you know, these labs that
Speaker 1: you pen where you're very familiar to Harvard, to other
Speaker 1: institutions that are really trying to apply this in the workplace. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the coaches come from different backgrounds what they all have
Speaker 1: in common is the standard is the standard paths related
Speaker 1: to training. And then at Better UP, I think one
Speaker 1: thing we need we do is they're using standard measurements
Speaker 1: and models, which allows us to understand how people are growing,
Speaker 1: help people as a coaching compare yourself to folks who
Speaker 1: may be in similar industries or in similar growth journeys.
Speaker 1: But most importantly, it actually helps us give feedback for
Speaker 1: the coaches themselves on how they can become more effective.
Speaker 1: And I think this was the big kind of meta
Speaker 1: obstacle in coaching is historically it's been a black box intervention.
Speaker 1: You're my coach, Scott, we go into your office together,
Speaker 1: we have a great session, but did that really work over?
Speaker 1: Time is pretty subjectively mediated by how do I feel?
Speaker 1: My feeling like I get better as opposed to be
Speaker 1: I would say, hey, we're actually measuring these behaviors and
Speaker 1: we're able to comparatively look and see how you're improving
Speaker 1: to people who are making similar investment. And so that's
Speaker 1: really helped us create this feedback flywheel both for the
Speaker 1: coaches but also for the coachee or the member as
Speaker 1: we call them here at Better UP. I love that
Speaker 1: model and I also love that you continually offer them
Speaker 1: education for their education and the latest skills in the science.
Speaker 1: I love that so much, you know, I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how much I love that. Wonderful wonderful. Now, have
Speaker 1: you noticed a shift in the past couple of years
Speaker 1: to a need for more of a mental health A
Speaker 1: lot of people suffering at work right now? And I
Speaker 1: want to make very clear that there's a distinction between
Speaker 1: coaching and therapy. Yes, coaching shouldn't serve that purpose of
Speaker 1: what therapy serves, but how can you still make a contribution?
Speaker 1: And have you noticed a greater need in the past
Speaker 1: couple of years that coaching profess that coaching profession can
Speaker 1: fill that need? Absolutely? Yeah, So to the first part
Speaker 1: of your question, Scott, we have seen a shift. So
Speaker 1: the biggest and most precipitous shift, which isn't surprising when
Speaker 1: we think about what's happened in the world in the
Speaker 1: last two years, is we saw topics and conversations related
Speaker 1: to wellbeing themes increase as a percent mix of coaching
Speaker 1: conversations and focus areas people say growth goals in the application,
Speaker 1: as well as coaches actually code their sessions so that
Speaker 1: they can remember what was talked about, and we're able
Speaker 1: to in a safe way anonymize and aggregate that data,
Speaker 1: and that's been the biggest shift. Now we've also seen
Speaker 1: career continue to be an important topic, so it's not
Speaker 1: like career in career advancement has dropped out, But what
Speaker 1: we've seen is that topics related to well being have
Speaker 1: really shifted higher related to some pre pandemic themes which
Speaker 1: would have been very common, which were often like things
Speaker 1: like communication, career state, constant. But we've seen that shift
Speaker 1: and to your point, I think this is where coaching
Speaker 1: can really shine. You know, if we think about therapy,
Speaker 1: and we were fortunate enough to with one of our
Speaker 1: shared you know friends, Martin Seligman, write a piece on this.
Speaker 1: You know, if we think about therapy, therapy is a
Speaker 1: clinical intervention. It's really there for acute mental illness in
Speaker 1: many ways and to help treat and address mental illness.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't design for prevention. It wasn't designed to, Hey,
Speaker 1: how can we help people cultivate almost in the way
Speaker 1: of fitness or hygiene or if you think of like
Speaker 1: a physical trainer versus doctor, who's the physical trainer on
Speaker 1: that spectrum of our mental healthfulness or our flourishing. And
Speaker 1: that's where I think coaching can be really fundamental. It
Speaker 1: can help us cultivate these practices and skills which allow
Speaker 1: us to build our resilience, allow us to have better
Speaker 1: focus and energy, and actually allow us to almost have
Speaker 1: a stronger psychological immune system. To use the analogy, and
Speaker 1: that's not a medical intervention. That's like a personal trainer
Speaker 1: at the gym. Can I go to a doctor a
Speaker 1: cardiologist and say, Hey, I'd like a workout plan. I
Speaker 1: don't know, no one ever tries it, but maybe a
Speaker 1: cardiologist would be like, I guess I'm qualified to give
Speaker 1: you a workout plan, Scott, I'm an MD. But they'd
Speaker 1: probably be like, you don't need me for a workout plan, Like,
Speaker 1: go get a physical trainer. They're more accessible, they're fractioning
Speaker 1: the costs, and they focus on weight training and prevention.
Speaker 1: If you have a heart problem, call me. And So
Speaker 1: I think what's happening in society is there's this opportunity
Speaker 1: unity to, in a very honest way and a very
Speaker 1: safe way, say hey, what is therapy? What is the
Speaker 1: role of therapy? But just because something relates to our
Speaker 1: mental health, does not mean I need to go or
Speaker 1: should go to therapy. And that's not to say, by
Speaker 1: the way, that many therapists aren't doing coaching. In fact,
Speaker 1: when you break it down, many therapists are mixing and
Speaker 1: coaching in their practice, and that's appropriate. A therapist should
Speaker 1: and can coach. A coach should not and cannot do therapy. Right,
Speaker 1: So there is a you got to be careful which
Speaker 1: direction you go. But what a coach can do is
Speaker 1: help in stress management. A coach can help on reframing,
Speaker 1: catching automatic negative thoughts. A coach can help on thinking
Speaker 1: about what someone else's side of the same facts and
Speaker 1: story are and how that may make them feel. So
Speaker 1: there's a host of practices a hope. A coach can
Speaker 1: help on accountability. Are you taking your stats? Are you walking?
Speaker 1: So much of behavior change we know even the pitfall
Speaker 1: of so many people's experience of therapy is actually compliance
Speaker 1: and follow through. That Actually coaching can be a really effective,
Speaker 1: low cost and more accessible means of providing that physical
Speaker 1: fitness trainer to our prevention, onto our overall health. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: And I'm interested in things not just physical health or
Speaker 1: even mental health, but I'm interested in things like self actualization?
Speaker 1: Dare I say, and I think that this is something
Speaker 1: you care about too, is how can your coaches at
Speaker 1: better up in the workplace and other sector society. But
Speaker 1: let's focus in the workplace for a second. How can
Speaker 1: these employees self actualize more? Because you can have very
Speaker 1: happy employees that aren't self actualizing, right, and you can
Speaker 1: have people with mental illnesses that are that are self
Speaker 1: actualized right. So both things are possible, so they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily the same thing. So how are some coaches at
Speaker 1: better of helping employees and managers help their manager employees
Speaker 1: as well as help the managers themselves they need help too,
Speaker 1: you know, self actualize. Well, I'm glad you brought this
Speaker 1: up so fun fact, Scott, like the first thing I
Speaker 1: ever worked on with Better Up, I was already kind
Speaker 1: of toying with and tinkering with the idea in my head.
Speaker 1: But when I started to write things down, the first
Speaker 1: thing I ever wrote on is, Hey, here's a crazy idea.
Speaker 1: How come there's no company or brand that's focused on
Speaker 1: scaling self actualization? And for me, the answer was the
Speaker 1: way to do that behaviorally would be through coaching. But
Speaker 1: the goal for Better Up was never to be a
Speaker 1: coaching company. The mission of Better Up is to help
Speaker 1: people live their life with greater clarity, purpose, and passion.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't such a mouthful, we would have just
Speaker 1: said to help the world self actualize. But we tried
Speaker 1: to break it down a little more experientially of what
Speaker 1: that feels like when you're doing it. But nothing could
Speaker 1: be nearer and dearer to our heart than in some
Speaker 1: ways the spirit of Abraham Maslow related to we are
Speaker 1: trying to at its core fundamentally help people self actualize.
Speaker 1: So I'll I'll just say that at the start, a
Speaker 1: lot of alignment there, and I'll put in a plug
Speaker 1: for you because you deserve one. If you haven't read
Speaker 1: Scott's book Transcend, you need to go read it. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: A I would call it a radical retreatment of Abraham Maslow,
Speaker 1: and I think in a really fun way disabuses a
Speaker 1: lot of the cultural literacy around what Maslow is thought
Speaker 1: to have said but probably didn't actually say, as well
Speaker 1: as applies in a really relevant and dynamic way. What
Speaker 1: does this mean behaviorally for my life? Like? What can
Speaker 1: I actually take away from this high falutant idea? Of
Speaker 1: self actualizing and how do I show up in the
Speaker 1: world in that way? So awesome read we love it
Speaker 1: here at Better Up. I love the sailboat versus the pyramid.
Speaker 1: If you read the book you'll know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: So check it out. Thanks Alexi, I didn't pay you
Speaker 1: for He's not paying me to do this. By the way,
Speaker 1: we're just both maslow heads, all right, as we like
Speaker 1: to say, a Better Up. Yes. So work's a huge
Speaker 1: part of this. As you know, Abraham Aslow spent the
Speaker 1: last part of his career in Menlo Park studying work.
Speaker 1: And this is like the core. One of the core
Speaker 1: insights that we were trying to bring to life with
Speaker 1: Better Up is this idea that management done well may
Speaker 1: be for the modern human and the most scalable way
Speaker 1: to bring flourishing and self actualization into the world. In fact,
Speaker 1: Maslow has this beautiful portion. You're familiar with the resays
Speaker 1: I've given up in therapy as a tool for that.
Speaker 1: Most people aren't going to go. When they do go there,
Speaker 1: don't stick with it. We know all the problems. Now
Speaker 1: that's different if you're going for a clinical diagnosis. So
Speaker 1: we need to be careful how we characterize that. But
Speaker 1: for most people, his point is they go to work
Speaker 1: and they go home, and that manager impacting their life
Speaker 1: in a positive way is one of the most powerful
Speaker 1: intervention leverage we have. And so to your question, how
Speaker 1: are we doing this? Well, we have to ask what
Speaker 1: is self actualized? And there's a bunch of stuff in there.
Speaker 1: But what really good coaching does, both if you're a
Speaker 1: direct report of a manager or if you're the manager themselves,
Speaker 1: is it helps people, first through a process of self discovery,
Speaker 1: ask these intentional questions of like what do I value
Speaker 1: in the world? How do I want to show up?
Speaker 1: And the sad thing I realized in my life is
Speaker 1: no one at work was asking me as an executive
Speaker 1: to ask myself that, and no one at work was
Speaker 1: training me as an executive to think that it was
Speaker 1: in my might and best interest to ask my team back.
Speaker 1: I manage productivity, but I was in a creative economy,
Speaker 1: but the latent management model, I still had what's productivity?
Speaker 1: And the reality is, if we want to talk self actualization,
Speaker 1: so much of it starts with who are you, what
Speaker 1: do you value? And are you showing up in alignment
Speaker 1: with those values? And whatever philosophy of coaching you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Almost all coaching starts at that intersection right there, of Scott,
Speaker 1: what's important to you in life? And what you'll find
Speaker 1: is most people don't know. Most people beyond some vageties
Speaker 1: of family, which is really important, they can't articulate why
Speaker 1: they value this. Do you actually value your job? Is
Speaker 1: your job important? Or is your job a mean to
Speaker 1: the ends to spend more time with your family? Big question?
Speaker 1: And so going through this structure process, you know Martin
Speaker 1: Seligman Chris Peterson have the via character strengths. Going through
Speaker 1: this inventory of what are your values that you care
Speaker 1: about starts to paint this pathway in this journey of
Speaker 1: If you think of self actualization as closing the gap
Speaker 1: between what you value and how you show up, that's
Speaker 1: a really powerful lens to use coaching through. Wow. Wow,
Speaker 1: I've never her to quite put that way before. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how better works on peak experience? Love it well?
Speaker 1: I think you know David Yaden's a mutual friend, right,
Speaker 1: I love him? Yeah, I love him. So we've done
Speaker 1: a lot of the great chapter in Peak Experiences in
Speaker 1: Scott's book, but there's a full literature emerging around. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of this for psychology geeks go goes back
Speaker 1: to William James, so we work on them. We start
Speaker 1: probably on the spectrum with flow, so flow theory right,
Speaker 1: and I think for many people in a work context,
Speaker 1: in a performance context, I think flow is a great
Speaker 1: conveyor belt, revolving door on ramp, whatever metaphor you want
Speaker 1: to use into the peak experience spectrum. And what I
Speaker 1: think you're getting at Scott, but correct me is the
Speaker 1: difference is peak performance can still feel very extreme. It's
Speaker 1: something you do, it's outside of you. The peak experience
Speaker 1: is actually about being immersed in something greater than yourself.
Speaker 1: And this is I think one of the counterintuitive gifts
Speaker 1: of Maslow and the whole humanistic Frankel, James frank All,
Speaker 1: the humanistic tradition of psychology, which is the counterintuitive truth
Speaker 1: is you self actualize by focusing on other people. If
Speaker 1: you focus on your own self actualization, you're probably just
Speaker 1: going to be miserable and really unhappy. In my experience,
Speaker 1: been there, done that, it's a miserable place to be.
Speaker 1: If you focus on being part of a purpose bigger
Speaker 1: than yourself, immersing yourself in work that gives back to humanity,
Speaker 1: or even just your ecosystem, your neck of the woods
Speaker 1: of humanity, your community. What you find is you lose
Speaker 1: yourself in the work, you become immersed in the work,
Speaker 1: you enter a flow state. But to your point, you
Speaker 1: encounter a potential peak experience, and the end result of
Speaker 1: that is overdoing that for a long time, maybe a lifetime,
Speaker 1: maybe just a few years, maybe a decade, is you
Speaker 1: really start to become more truly who you can be
Speaker 1: in terms of closing that gap between your values and
Speaker 1: how you're showing up. So I'll pause there, but you
Speaker 1: tell me, I mean, that's how we think about it, beautiful.
Speaker 1: I do treat peak experiences as synonymous with self transcendent
Speaker 1: experiences that I do. I do, and the peak experiences
Speaker 1: just a phrase, mazleuse so, and I like to kind
Speaker 1: of keep using that language. But he did often refer
Speaker 1: to the phrase transcendent experiences. He didn't say self transcending.
Speaker 1: He said transcendent because he viewed transcendence as I do,
Speaker 1: as more of a synergy, like a synergenistic not a
Speaker 1: not a transcending of the self, but a merging of
Speaker 1: the self with the world in such a synergenistic way
Speaker 1: that you're bringing your full powers to the table. But
Speaker 1: what is automatically good for you is automatically good for
Speaker 1: the world. So just by your being in the world,
Speaker 1: you are making the world a better place. That's how
Speaker 1: I view transcendence. And and in that model, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's uh, you're not like diminishing yourself at all. I
Speaker 1: love that. Yeah, yeah, okay, So to get real philosophical
Speaker 1: with you, Scott, is it fair to say the latent
Speaker 1: mental model he's using is this like dialectic? Is this
Speaker 1: like off Haven, This is like the synthesis? Is there
Speaker 1: like a Hegelian little thing in there in that? Well?
Speaker 1: For sure? Yeah, for sure. Uh. And in fact, he
Speaker 1: had a phrase call he called dichotomy transcendence, which he
Speaker 1: said that the transcenders, by the way, that's what I call.
Speaker 1: I have like an eight week online course, a transcend course.
Speaker 1: And when grad one of my team members taking it,
Speaker 1: yeah she's Karen Karen Lai. Yes, yeah, she's loving it. Yeah, wonderful.
Speaker 1: So I have this transan course and when they graduate,
Speaker 1: we called him, You're now a transcender. So Transcender's major
Speaker 1: feature is having this dichotomy transcendence where you stop seeing
Speaker 1: the world in terms of in this black and white
Speaker 1: term that you know, you're either good or evil, you're
Speaker 1: either selfish or unselfish, even male female, Like you know,
Speaker 1: we've all you know, republican democrat. You should go down
Speaker 1: the list of all the things in our society that
Speaker 1: at that at a higher level of consciousness, you actually
Speaker 1: can see how they're all part of a larger hole.
Speaker 1: So yes, philosophically, it's related to what you just said,
Speaker 1: but it's also just related to this notion Maso called
Speaker 1: dichomic transcendence. And I think Masill at its base actually
Speaker 1: saw himself as a philosopher. That's my feeling after reading
Speaker 1: so much of his diary and things. He started off,
Speaker 1: you know, experimental psychology really rigorous, and then they got
Speaker 1: to a point where he was like, screw that, life
Speaker 1: is short. I'm gonna wax you know, profane about all
Speaker 1: this stuff. But I think that's true in so many fields,
Speaker 1: like the best I feel like the best thinkers in
Speaker 1: so many fields really are natural philosophers, natural scientists when
Speaker 1: you break it down right, like they start to transcend
Speaker 1: no punintended, the vertical of psychology, and they're really just
Speaker 1: answering through that lens fundamental questions about what is the world,
Speaker 1: what's the human experience? How do we fit into it?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think of Martin Seligman as another one.
Speaker 1: It's like he's a scientist, he's a clinician by training
Speaker 1: his science, but he's also kind of a philosopher and
Speaker 1: a lot of his stuff, And so I think it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful when people, to your point, they're not bound
Speaker 1: by those labels and they're not bound by those dichotomies,
Speaker 1: and they're actually really asking these deep, profound, conscious questions.
Speaker 1: You get beautiful answers. Yeah, I think I actually segues
Speaker 1: into a question I wanted to ask you about all
Speaker 1: the places where this kind of innovation can happen and
Speaker 1: kind of thinking outside the box. So they have to
Speaker 1: be the academy. You know, you're obviously not the academy,
Speaker 1: and you're innovating in the coaching space, if I may
Speaker 1: so say so, we're trying. So I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts on how you know the nonprofit space even
Speaker 1: the for profit away. Are you so horrible. Want to
Speaker 1: make money, you know, and help the world. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't, I don't you know, work down
Speaker 1: on for profits unless sure corrupt? Yeah, you know, what,
Speaker 1: what can they do to really innovate this field? So
Speaker 1: they don't. You don't have to think like, oh, I
Speaker 1: need a PhD in coaching psychology to make any impact.
Speaker 1: In fact, that might make it less likely you'll make
Speaker 1: an impact. But who knows? What are your thoughts? I
Speaker 1: have a lot of thoughts. So so Eddie and I
Speaker 1: were doing And this is why it's I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 1: It strikes near to my own experience. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts now out they're my thoughts, so they
Speaker 1: may not be the right thoughts, but I consider i'm
Speaker 1: interviewing you for the Psychology podcast or here here I am,
Speaker 1: so I did this in the nonprofit world, so I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I think it's about intentionality, and it's
Speaker 1: about viewing what is the mission of the organization you're
Speaker 1: starting or you're part of, and what is the structure
Speaker 1: that best serves that mission? And one of the questions
Speaker 1: we had to ask. I found myself asking when building
Speaker 1: better up on and just even starting to do the
Speaker 1: envisioning on it, it was like, should this be a
Speaker 1: for profit business? I was doing this with Eddie and
Speaker 1: the nonprofit space, and we ended up where you were,
Speaker 1: which is actually because we wanted to drive more innovation.
Speaker 1: We actually believe the for profit model was better, and
Speaker 1: coming from the nonprofit it felt a little at first.
Speaker 1: It was I would't say it felt a little dirty,
Speaker 1: but it was just like, really like, is it gonna
Speaker 1: Are we going to deviate from our goal? And I
Speaker 1: think I had to eventually just internalize and be like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can take capitalism by its head or
Speaker 1: its tail, like wouldn't shouldn't it be the case that
Speaker 1: if a business is innovating and creating more human value
Speaker 1: in the world, it makes more profits? Like why do
Speaker 1: I assume that can't work in that way? And so
Speaker 1: I think what it requires, though, is a core part
Speaker 1: of your mission or charter is this realization that when
Speaker 1: we advance science not just for better, but when we
Speaker 1: share that science we do a ton of publication, we
Speaker 1: win and everyone else wins. And so I think that's
Speaker 1: something that we've tried to stay with high integrity towards.
Speaker 1: Is Yes, I don't know how any PhDs working better up.
Speaker 1: It's at least over fifty. I mean it may be
Speaker 1: near one hundred at this point. We got a lot
Speaker 1: of doctorates, a lot, we write a lot of grants.
Speaker 1: We sponsor a lot of professors and research departments at
Speaker 1: leading universities, and we make that knowledge available. We do
Speaker 1: peer review journal articles, we write HPR articles for the
Speaker 1: business world, and so I think the answer to your
Speaker 1: question is, yes, you can innovate. I actually think in
Speaker 1: some ways business can be a better platform when you
Speaker 1: need large groups of people, when you need quick access
Speaker 1: to data. Businesses can be a great platform to do
Speaker 1: research on what it requires from the business. Though, is
Speaker 1: I think a really authentic understanding that this is not
Speaker 1: a distraction from your purpose. This is synergistic to your purpose,
Speaker 1: and you're advancing your purpose as a corporation and humanity
Speaker 1: at the same time. And that's why you make that investment, right,
Speaker 1: You're not using all the money to buy a yacht. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it. But even in your value chain, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like we work with Sonya Lubermerski, we work
Speaker 1: with Martin Seligman, we work with Adam Grant, like we
Speaker 1: work with me. We work with you on you're on
Speaker 1: our science board. We work with David yayden right, And
Speaker 1: I remember we've had these moments with researchers like you
Speaker 1: and David. Actually I think we're working on one paper
Speaker 1: of the team was with him, and to your point,
Speaker 1: they couldn't believe how quick we were able to date
Speaker 1: the data for this psychological scale we were building, and
Speaker 1: you know, they were kind of comparing, like, Wow, in academia,
Speaker 1: we'd have to go get a bunch of college freshmen
Speaker 1: to come to a psych lab to do this thing.
Speaker 1: And with a platform like better Up, we can get
Speaker 1: this out to hundreds of thousands of members to do
Speaker 1: this by themselves or with their coach. And I think
Speaker 1: in that data set it was like truly like a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour turnaround to collect the data. And I
Speaker 1: just remember looking at this room full of researchers from
Speaker 1: Ivy League universities who were like, we've never seen something
Speaker 1: like that in our entire life. And so I think
Speaker 1: we all win. And social I mean, you know, so
Speaker 1: much of social science is really based on college freshmen.
Speaker 1: If we're being honest, I joke, but it is. Isn't
Speaker 1: it cool that we're not actually to be able to
Speaker 1: base it on middle age people in the workplace while
Speaker 1: they're in situ in the workplace, not when they're at
Speaker 1: a university reflecting on the workplace. It's extraordinarily exciting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt, and it's it's going to be more generalizable,
Speaker 1: trust me, and just focus in college freshmen, like most
Speaker 1: like evolutionary psychology researchers on college freshmen, and then they're
Speaker 1: generalizing to human meeting patterns across human history, and it's like,
Speaker 1: do you really want to do that based on frat boys?
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: not like the college freshmen work. Yeah a college freshman, Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not good. It's not good. So I love what
Speaker 1: you're doing. I love what you're doing. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about coaching philosophy for a second. What to
Speaker 1: what extent do you do your coaches over there take
Speaker 1: a human centric approach to coaching because I, as a
Speaker 1: umanistic psychologist, care very deeply about Carl Rogers' principles of
Speaker 1: unconditional positive regard of active listening, the idea that in
Speaker 1: a therapeutic context, the relationship is the most important thing.
Speaker 1: How does that Some of those ideas transfer over transfer
Speaker 1: over to the coaching world over there. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot, for lack of a better word, philosophical
Speaker 1: or spiritual alignment. I think everyone should watch some of
Speaker 1: these car Roger tapes, right, I mean, I think they're
Speaker 1: just not even even managers. Right, He's obviously doing it
Speaker 1: in a clinical setting, But this idea about the regard
Speaker 1: for one another mutual regard. We look a lot at
Speaker 1: some of the research related to the alliance that came
Speaker 1: out of therapy, but the strength of do I feel seen?
Speaker 1: Do I feel heard? Do I feel respected? So the
Speaker 1: answer is very humanistic in orientation, very human centric. We
Speaker 1: use different frameworks. We've used the stuff from the alliance.
Speaker 1: We actually used to when we first feel better. That's
Speaker 1: how we measured. We use those item scales to measure
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of sessions is just like literally like the
Speaker 1: most evidence based research we look at, you know, we
Speaker 1: like act so we look at some of the you know,
Speaker 1: we're applying at non clinical settings, but taking some of
Speaker 1: the spirit and the principles from that, we look at
Speaker 1: attachment theory. There's a bunch in there, and then we
Speaker 1: do look at kind of the canon, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, of some of the research that's come
Speaker 1: out around pods of psychology based coaching interventions, and there's
Speaker 1: some good work on how you can take everything from
Speaker 1: the gratitude exercises to character strengths and inventoring around that
Speaker 1: and incorporate that. But if I had to describe better
Speaker 1: US coaching as like a philosophical thing, I would say
Speaker 1: it leans heavily. It's strengths based, it's a coactive approach,
Speaker 1: and it's centered around the human Great. That's great to hear.
Speaker 1: You know so many people right now. It's not that
Speaker 1: they're having mental health issues, but they're also not particularly happy.
Speaker 1: They're kind of languishing right They're kind of like people
Speaker 1: are kind of just like not excited about life right now.
Speaker 1: Can coaching move you from not negative fifty to zero,
Speaker 1: but from zero to five, ten, fifteen, forty, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: turns out it can. I mean, I think Adam Grant,
Speaker 1: another one of our Science for members, did the World
Speaker 1: of favor when he wrote that New York Times op
Speaker 1: ed on languishing, and I mean, you're we had been
Speaker 1: reading Corey Key's work. You had probably read it too
Speaker 1: as a psychologist, So Adam, I think, really gave voice
Speaker 1: and added, you know this kind of like what to
Speaker 1: do about it? Layer to this body of literature related
Speaker 1: to languishing, and what we find in our data says
Speaker 1: about fifty percent of the American workforce over the past
Speaker 1: years has been languishing. Not surprising, again, given everything everything
Speaker 1: that's happening, I wish we had been measuring this before
Speaker 1: the pandemic because my latent suspicion is it may have
Speaker 1: not been that much lower before, right when you look
Speaker 1: at some of the engagement in the workplace data. But
Speaker 1: the reality is when you look at what I think
Speaker 1: Adam did so aptly, is what are like the micro
Speaker 1: interventions to unstuck yourself. It's a lot of what we
Speaker 1: talked about, and coaching is very helpful at it. It's
Speaker 1: about cultivating resilience. It's about focus and finding flow states
Speaker 1: to make work easy, to make work energizing. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of this is really about helping people remember
Speaker 1: and stumble back upon it can feel like you're stumping.
Speaker 1: It should be intentional what it is to be psychologically
Speaker 1: engaged and get that flywheel of like everything from Goald
Speaker 1: attainment to I'm making progress. You're really at the core
Speaker 1: when I see languishing, you have a low sense of
Speaker 1: locus of control, often low sense of agency that you
Speaker 1: can unpact your environment. And so I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it is like kind of like relubricating that wheel.
Speaker 1: And coaching is so powerful there because you read that
Speaker 1: article from Adam. These they're like very palatable, digestible baby steps.
Speaker 1: But I've been there. I have been measurably languishing. When
Speaker 1: you're in it, they feel like huge leaps. They do
Speaker 1: not feel like baby steps. And that's where I think
Speaker 1: a coach can be a really caring but also a
Speaker 1: disagreeable giver to use the give and take framework and
Speaker 1: help on helping you bridge that gap. You know, how
Speaker 1: do we structure your time Alexi so that you're you
Speaker 1: get a flow state? Even if the coach isn't explicit about, well,
Speaker 1: that's what they're helping you do. They know, like really
Speaker 1: one of the great elixirs, the great cures for languishing
Speaker 1: is flow. So how do we help you slip into
Speaker 1: flow states? And how we design your work this week
Speaker 1: or how we design the next couple months of your life.
Speaker 1: Then you get in that flow state and you're alive.
Speaker 1: You're alive, and you're like, well, I haven't felt this
Speaker 1: alive in months, and then it's like, okay, how do
Speaker 1: we replicate that? That becomes the coaching conversation. What was
Speaker 1: it in that flow state, Scott when you did that task?
Speaker 1: What made you feel like, Okay, how do we scale
Speaker 1: that feeling of aliveness? And you do that over months,
Speaker 1: over weeks, and what you find is you start to
Speaker 1: make a measurable difference. I mean, we see people improve
Speaker 1: their at resilience one hundred and thirty percent sometimes in
Speaker 1: the first year of coaching. And it's because not because
Speaker 1: we have any like special powers. It's because we have
Speaker 1: that in tinsionality and that follow through and that accountability
Speaker 1: from an expert coach. Amazing. How do you measure a
Speaker 1: rate of change of resiliency? Yeah? How do you get
Speaker 1: acquire that number? Yeah? So we love the Fred Lusen stuff,
Speaker 1: hero sydecap, right, we're big fans of sydecap. We now
Speaker 1: use some of our own items. When we first started,
Speaker 1: the first assessment in better Up was literally psychological capital.
Speaker 1: I remember going in there and buying all the individual
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, for users, buy all the licenses,
Speaker 1: and every time we had the new users, we had
Speaker 1: to buy more licenses. And we've modeled now we use
Speaker 1: some of our team has come up in our own
Speaker 1: whole person model with some they are reliable, they work,
Speaker 1: you know, they measure similarly a side cap with our
Speaker 1: own item scales. But essentially we've been inspired by the
Speaker 1: work that Fred Luthen's and the team did on For
Speaker 1: those of you who aren't familiar, Hero is hope, self efficacy,
Speaker 1: resilience and optimism, and it's one of the most workplace
Speaker 1: researched measurements of really these psychological resources or your ability
Speaker 1: to perform and show up in that way. And so
Speaker 1: we take the inspiration and the model from his work.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. Well, tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: Better Up labs. What's coming out of those labs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so better Up labs I mean, in some ways to
Speaker 1: your earlier question, if done well, all of Better Up
Speaker 1: is a lab, right, Like, we're creating products, we're innovating.
Speaker 1: But we have a special group of better uppers here
Speaker 1: at Better Up who are researchers who focus on taking
Speaker 1: the data that we're generating, using the product, using the coaching,
Speaker 1: using all the interventions and experiences we're working on and
Speaker 1: doing research on that to yield that knowledge for the
Speaker 1: scientific community outside of Better Up and publish that and
Speaker 1: so other people can benefit from the work we're doing together.
Speaker 1: So Better Up Labs is really it's a research lab.
Speaker 1: It's also a brokerage with leading research things like the
Speaker 1: Positive Psychology Center at you pen Sonia Lubermirski's Center at
Speaker 1: UCR doing some of the research there. Scott, we've worked
Speaker 1: on things together. I mean I'm not qualified to work
Speaker 1: on them, but the team has worked with you ontivity, yep, creativity.
Speaker 1: So some of the latest stuff they've been working on.
Speaker 1: They've worked on everything from purpose at work loneliness at
Speaker 1: work actually which ended up being prescient because we did
Speaker 1: that right before the pandemic. The most recent work has
Speaker 1: actually been on psychological perspection, which Roy Baumeister, Martin Sellingman
Speaker 1: have been doing research on for years. We call that
Speaker 1: future mindedness and business speak. We find that resonates with
Speaker 1: business leaders morning better I think so I like perspection personally,
Speaker 1: but people in auto completes perspective half the time and
Speaker 1: then people get confused, so call it imagination. That's a
Speaker 1: good question. So we that's what I called it with
Speaker 1: Marty at the Imagination Institute. Yeah, maybe we should. I
Speaker 1: think what we found is business leaders still wrongfully equate
Speaker 1: imagination with fluffy, soft ideas those goals if it only
Speaker 1: stays in imagination exactly, they view it as like a
Speaker 1: funnel stage. As the top of the funnel, I want
Speaker 1: the output. And I actually think John Seely Brown is
Speaker 1: one of our science board members that used to run
Speaker 1: zoox Park, has a great phrase which is pragmatic imagination.
Speaker 1: This is what you really after. But whatever reason, we
Speaker 1: call it future mindedness. And that's been the latest research
Speaker 1: and essentially it's found where your questions are headed is Hey,
Speaker 1: it's a skill set people can learn and be coached
Speaker 1: on related to better creative outputs, better imagination. You can
Speaker 1: practice imagination, as we say it, better up and you
Speaker 1: can get better at the practice of imagination and a
Speaker 1: big part of that are skills related to, you know,
Speaker 1: not falling in love with your best idea, being objective
Speaker 1: evaluating it. So the latest research you can read about
Speaker 1: it at better up dot com is on future mindedness.
Speaker 1: In this intersection of imagination, creativity and performance in the workplace,
Speaker 1: which is what we're finding is really resonating with what
Speaker 1: businesses and so many people their professional life or struggling
Speaker 1: with right now in a supply chain constrained world, a
Speaker 1: macroeconomic downturn, yet the need to come up with new
Speaker 1: solutions is higher than ever before. Yeah, So when businesses
Speaker 1: think of creativity, does the word innovation resonate with them more? Again,
Speaker 1: just for some reasons why imagination doesn't resonate with them
Speaker 1: as much? Does everything have to be so goal oriented
Speaker 1: in life all the time for most business leaders? Sadly, yes,
Speaker 1: but if they work with a better coach, they may
Speaker 1: discover the en Counterintuitively, sometimes just letting things be you
Speaker 1: will actually make more progress. But yes, I think innovation
Speaker 1: is often thought of as the whole practice, like the
Speaker 1: whole kit and kaboodle. The life cycle is innovation imagination,
Speaker 1: And again I don't think it's right, but I think
Speaker 1: imagination gets pinned towards the start of that process. It's
Speaker 1: like blue sky thinking, let's be imaginative, and then it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: but we got to ship something and that's not imagination.
Speaker 1: And to your point, actually it is. It's a life
Speaker 1: stage of imagination. As JSB would say, it's a whole
Speaker 1: different type of thinking. It's abductive reasoning. It's not deductive,
Speaker 1: it's not inductive. It's that Sherlock owned site thinking where
Speaker 1: you interpolate and fill in the gaps. That's actually the
Speaker 1: job to be done, and that's in the middle of
Speaker 1: that funnel, and we underappreciate that. But semantic, you know, semantically,
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of reasons, people just anchor
Speaker 1: imagination as step one of a multi step process instead
Speaker 1: of realizing it is the entire process. Yeah, now you
Speaker 1: personally you've done coaching. Yeah, Like, can anyone hire you anymore?
Speaker 1: You're like untouchable. No, no no, no, I'm unqualified. I don't
Speaker 1: meet our I don't I'm no longer qualified to be
Speaker 1: a coach and better up, which is probably a good
Speaker 1: thing for the world. So Yes, in the earliest version
Speaker 1: of the product, Eddie and I were in the earliest
Speaker 1: version of the product, you got two coaches. You got
Speaker 1: a clinician who was doing coaching on well being, not
Speaker 1: in a therapy capability, but they had that background. You
Speaker 1: got a business coach, and Yes, in the first version
Speaker 1: of the app. Eddie and I were two of the
Speaker 1: five business coaches you could have gotten. I still work
Speaker 1: with a coach. I work actually with the coach that
Speaker 1: helped inspire better up so on eight plus years with
Speaker 1: that coach. And then I also work with so she's
Speaker 1: off the platform, she predates the platform. Then I actually
Speaker 1: work with one of our executive coaches. We have an
Speaker 1: offering for senior leaders. I work with one of the
Speaker 1: coaches on that product. Within the product as well. So
Speaker 1: as I have to say, I need a ton of coaching.
Speaker 1: I used to actually have three coaches, but it just
Speaker 1: personally got too much to manage, like three coaching conversations,
Speaker 1: so I dropped down too. But yeah, I need a
Speaker 1: lot of help Scott. So, yeah, I'm good coach. Are
Speaker 1: you Are you ICF certified? I'm not. No, that's why
Speaker 1: you don't qualify. That's why I don't qualify it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you can be board certified, and there's a you
Speaker 1: can be there's a European one. Now there are other things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're all the equivalent of ICY after their per organizations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't unfortunately got Now do you miss do
Speaker 1: you miss coaching? Like actually having clients personally one on one.
Speaker 1: Do you miss that? Well, my clients were about you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen to fifteen when I did it, so until we
Speaker 1: did better up, So I do. I still mentor, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there's some coaching that happens internally
Speaker 1: with younger staffers and team members. I coach a lot
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs, although it's not it's you know, they would,
Speaker 1: It's more like mentorship. There's some coaching in there because
Speaker 1: I know some of the coaching skills. So I think
Speaker 1: that keeps my you know, that keeps it close to
Speaker 1: my heart. So I don't like mismiss it, but I
Speaker 1: love it. I have had to in my own work
Speaker 1: and my own coaching realize that the best use of
Speaker 1: my time at this stage is not an hour of
Speaker 1: me coaching someone one on one. It's an hour of
Speaker 1: me continuing to scale better up where hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people in that hour can be coached. And but yes,
Speaker 1: I mean this feels like a coaching conversation in some ways,
Speaker 1: like we're and I love it. It might ask me
Speaker 1: powerful questions you always always, Scott, I think of coaching
Speaker 1: it is, so yeah, I do, I do miss it,
Speaker 1: but I've I've made my piece that I had to
Speaker 1: kind of hang up my cleat, so to speak, and
Speaker 1: I'm able to still channel that through mentorship, and I
Speaker 1: think in a way that keeps that part of me
Speaker 1: still turned on it, like lights are on there and
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm still doing some work. So what
Speaker 1: what do you see as the future of coaching? What's
Speaker 1: what's what are you most excited about? I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's embeddedness. For me, It's like I've always
Speaker 1: said this, I don't know if you're here a Star
Speaker 1: Wars fan. I am, but okay, great so fun fact,
Speaker 1: I have a baby do on May fourth, so may
Speaker 1: the fourth be with us, so we're looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: But the doctor was like, I hope you're a Star
Speaker 1: Wars fan. I was like, oh, one hundred percent, it's
Speaker 1: your due dates May fourth. I was like, awesome, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I often use this analogy, and no one's there yet.
Speaker 1: I think better up's the closest. But we're still We've
Speaker 1: got a lot of work to do, which is what
Speaker 1: we all really want is Yoda on our back in
Speaker 1: the swamp, right. We want coaching embedded in our context
Speaker 1: and so so much of coaching. And this is what
Speaker 1: frustrated me with going to therapy and coaching early on
Speaker 1: is it was a destination I had to go to,
Speaker 1: and so much of context and so much of potential
Speaker 1: learning was lost in that journey. And the time you
Speaker 1: go once a week for fifty minutes six days occurs,
Speaker 1: I kind of forget what happened and then I'm spend
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of my session reviewing with the coach. And
Speaker 1: so the whole goal of Better Up has yes, been
Speaker 1: to expand access, but really to micro tithese coaching so
Speaker 1: that it can be woven in your context. So for me,
Speaker 1: the future of coaching, the through line here is embeddedness.
Speaker 1: How do we embed coaching where it's not just bounded
Speaker 1: in one on one sessions, but it can be through text,
Speaker 1: it can be through interactions, It can be woven in
Speaker 1: your life context in a way where you're pulling it in.
Speaker 1: It's not intrusive, it's not you know, pushing you, but
Speaker 1: you're able to call on content you need it. Yeah. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's the future and we're not there yet,
Speaker 1: but likew cool to be if you go to your
Speaker 1: Alexa and start having a coaching conversation with someone, right, Wow,
Speaker 1: But then that opens it up to a whole even
Speaker 1: more of a wild rest of unregulation and unregulated coaching.
Speaker 1: As long as alexis certified, well, Alexi would use a
Speaker 1: service like Alexa would go rount you to a better
Speaker 1: up coach. Alexa's just Alexa's just a wind Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: It's just it just becomes the hardware. But imagine if
Speaker 1: you know you, you, you and your spouse have an
Speaker 1: imprecise interactions like to say or something, you and your partner,
Speaker 1: you know, get in a fight, and imagine if you
Speaker 1: you know you, you're not talking to your coach for
Speaker 1: seven days. Well already, with better UF, you could talk
Speaker 1: to someone immediately, which is a huge innovation and that's
Speaker 1: just powerful. But imagine if you didn't even have to
Speaker 1: go to your phone. It could just be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're in your room. It's like hey, Alexa, I want
Speaker 1: to talk to someone about this. And you have that
Speaker 1: skill and that's like, okay, what do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about? Just how to fight with my partner? All right,
Speaker 1: let's get you a relationship coach right now, just right
Speaker 1: here in your cozy chair, you don't have to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Let's debrief on that conversation and talk about that. So
Speaker 1: we're we're not there yet, but I think for me
Speaker 1: that embeddedness, not for the sagram embeddedness, but for the
Speaker 1: sake of the immediacy and the fidelity of learning. That
Speaker 1: feels real. That to me feels like what we should
Speaker 1: be doing with technology. Yeah, the potential there seems really exciting.
Speaker 1: And you know, especially when the meta verse gets more
Speaker 1: developed or even augmented reality, imagine like you know, you're
Speaker 1: walking around with these these embedded glasses in your brain
Speaker 1: that allow you to augment it, and then you get
Speaker 1: like advice on like let's say you on a date
Speaker 1: with a girl or something, and you have like a
Speaker 1: dating coach who's like able to talk in your brain
Speaker 1: about what to say. I don't know, I have an imagination, Alexi,
Speaker 1: I have. I love it. I love it, Alexi. I
Speaker 1: want to end this interview by saying, I truly truly
Speaker 1: respect you and your work you're doing. A big fan
Speaker 1: of Better Up. Would not have had you on the
Speaker 1: podcast if I wasn't. But I'm also a big fan
Speaker 1: of yours and the principles which and values upon which
Speaker 1: you apply in your life broadly. So thank you for
Speaker 1: being on my podcast. I really appreciate it. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me Scott you. I reciprocate everything you said. You
Speaker 1: have truly been like a luminary in terms of We've
Speaker 1: learned so much in building better up really from your
Speaker 1: podcast and your episodes, and we've really enjoyed the collaboration
Speaker 1: with you personally beyond that, So thank you for the
Speaker 1: opportunity to share our story and excited to keep building
Speaker 1: the future together and using our imagination. Yes me too.
Speaker 1: I look forward to getting this episode out there. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If
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