Each week, we interview proven leaders from our network, to learn from their experiences, and share their Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience stories with you.

• Our mission is to promote the accomplishments of our guests
• Highlight the companies where they work and the services, and products that they offer
• Share success stories from their experiences and, most importantly
• Provide strategies for job seekers and advice to talent seeking to accelerate their careers.
  

Today’s guest is Jess Lilly, Founder of Jess LIlly Coaching.  I met today’s guest at the Small Giants summit earlier this year and we have become fast friends since that time. After pursuing teaching and academic advisory in a few different environments, she has dedicated her career to coaching purpose driven entrepreneurs. She brings a whole new meaning to leading from the heart.

Jess shared many great insights including:

• Her experiences with Teach for America, burnout in teaching, and the shift to higher education and academic advisory roles.
• The importance of a purpose-driven approach, contrasting her coaching style, focused on self-discovery and authenticity
• The core values and concepts behind her coaching practice, her experiences as an entrepreneur, and reflects on the implications of AI in the coaching industry

Purpose-Driven Coaching: Insights from Jess Lilly’s Non-Linear Career

[00:00:05] Ron Laneve: Hello and Welcome to Episode 36 of the Bell Falls Search Focus on Talent podcast. I’m your host, Ron Laneve. Each week we share the career stories of tech experts and marketing mavens, operational gurus, and sales leaders. To illustrate how they have navigated the nonlinear career path.

[00:00:24] Ron Laneve: I met today’s guest at the Small Giants Conference in Detroit, a few months ago,

[00:00:29] Ron Laneve: we’ve become fast friends ever since that time. After pursuing a teaching career and academic advisory in a few different environments, she has dedicated her career to coaching purpose driven entrepreneurs.

[00:00:42] Ron Laneve: She brings a whole new meaning to leading from the heart.

[00:00:45] Ron Laneve: I’m very excited to introduce Jessica Lilly, founder of Jess Lilly Coaching.

[00:00:50] Ron Laneve: Jess, thanks for being here.

[00:00:52] Jess Lilly: Thanks for having me, Ron.

[00:00:54] Ron Laneve: My pleasure. I’ve been excited for this for a while. So I appreciate you sharing your story with us. As we talked about one of the things I like to focus on is the concept of the non linear career. Clearly as you and I have talked and share our stories a few times, you’re a great example of that. Can you walk through, at a high level how you started in teaching and, how that path progressed? And then, how did that evolve into coaching?

[00:01:17] Jess Lilly: That’s a great question. I want to give you a little context. Which is I was raised by my mom, lifelong social worker. She is actually now in the process of retiring. And my father has been a computer programmer and consultant self employed for the majority of his career.

[00:01:39] Jess Lilly: So looking back, of course, I see how much of an influence these human beings have had on me. I’m like, Oh, wow I really have synthesized kind of this entrepreneurial, authentic self employed path that my dad had and this deep caring for people and supporting people that my mom brought.

[00:01:58] Jess Lilly: The way that my career unfolded was I knew just as a young person that caring for people and supporting people is my gift. That’s what I care most about. It’s what I spent my time doing. I had this perception that If you love people and you care about people and that’s what you want to do professionally, you had very few options.

[00:02:18] Jess Lilly: You could be a teacher or a social worker and everything else has nothing to do with people. I just had this kind of narrow view. So when I graduated from college, I did the program Teach for America, which takes high performing students and sends them into high needs classrooms throughout the country. They connect you with also a master’s program. So I was getting my master’s degree in secondary math education while being a teacher at the same time. So I was quite a lift being a 22 year old Jessica Lilly, newly graduated sent right into a high school classroom and Hey, work it out.

[00:02:57] Jess Lilly: So my first my first teaching job was in DC public schools. Then after a few years in DC public schools, I worked in St. Louis public schools. You can imagine that 22 year old Jess faced a lot of challenges in those settings. So I feel like I’m speaking about it a little euphemistically.

[00:03:15] Jess Lilly: Let me get out of that mode. I learned so much about myself and the world through the process of going from a sheltered upbringing and a university environment to being, in some really difficult, challenging environments, teaching kids who had been through so much in their lives.

[00:03:40] Jess Lilly: And I learned very quickly that I didn’t have the tools to appropriately manage my own energy and care for myself to sustain what I was doing in the classroom. I’m a very empathetic person. I will throw myself under the bus if it means other people will be okay. And I feel like I’m not alone in that. There’s a lot of caring, loving people in the world who think they need to be martyrs in order to serve their purpose or serve others. That really doesn’t work. So I burned out very fast in teaching.

[00:04:15] Jess Lilly: I taught for about four years and then I shifted gears into higher ed where I was an academic advisor. When I was a high school teacher I had 115 students at a time. When I shifted gears into that one on one relationship space, I was like, ooooookay, this is a glove that fits this glove fits my hand.

[00:04:35] Jess Lilly: Especially because I like really creating a lot of depth in relationships. One of my favorite things about being a teacher and being an academic advisor was really supporting people in seeing their own greatness and basically doing anything in my power to support their empowerment and their sense of possibility and belief in themselves. And the belief that there are more choices and options and support is available. So that theme of support, especially when I was an academic advisor really started to come to the surface.

[00:05:13] Jess Lilly: There are two really influential things that happened for me. One is I started meeting coaches. And I was like, who are these people? I will have what she is having. I met coaches and there was something about their energy, their presence, the way they listened, the way they held themselves and cared for others. Okay, there’s something to this. So that was one thing that occurred during that time in my life. And another thing that occurred was I went to a conference where Ari Weinzweig, the founder of Zingerman’s the community of businesses, Zingerman’s, I saw him do a keynote speech.

[00:05:51] Jess Lilly: Zingerman’s is like the foundational example that Small Giants was built off of. He did his keynote about the 12 natural laws of business. He is this guy, he’s always wearing like a black t shirt, messy hair. He got up on the stage and he was talking about therapy. I was like, wait a minute. This business leader, this business guy who’s famous around the world for being this like exceptional business leader is standing on the stage being vulnerable, talking about therapy and talking about loving people and caring about free choice and community.

[00:06:29] Jess Lilly: It blew my mind a little bit and I said, Oh, you can actually love people through business. Caring for people and helping to develop people is not limited to just a few types of jobs that actually it’s a way of being. It’s a set of beliefs and it’s an energy. That set me on a course. I gave myself permission to pursue coaching after some fears and trepidation. I signed on for a year long coach training program accredited by the international coaching federation. And that kind of set me on my path. I started that program in 2017. And the rest is history.

[00:07:09] Ron Laneve: Okay, so it sounds like, I always get fascinated by the mix of, I’ll just say choice or intention versus, luck or serendipity. So it sounds like a mix of both ? A little bit of, as you progressed you started to the one on one nature and the supporting nature was something that attracted you, but then I’m sure Experiences like seeing Ari impacted you also in a way that kind of rounded that out, right?

[00:07:35] Ron Laneve: And that would be maybe the serendipity part of it. Is that fair?

[00:07:38] Jess Lilly: It’s so fair. And I think that there’s a third component, which is where are you in your cycle of growth? And I’m calling it a cycle of growth very purposefully because looking back, I saw Ari And I met those coaches when I was really at a low energetically self esteem, I I was hitting a wall.

[00:08:07] Jess Lilly: What I had been experiencing was being in jobs where I was not being paid enough to really make ends meet. So as an academic advisor, I also tutored on the side. I played around with being a Lyft driver. Like I was not making enough money, not being valued for my gifts and not valuing myself sufficiently for my gifts.

[00:08:32] Jess Lilly: I also I had been in a therapy environment of some kind for a while to address symptoms of depression and anxiety. And I hit this wall. My therapist was like, Oh, you’re good now. Like you’re grad, like here, I graduate. I hear I graduate you from therapy. And I was like, Wait a minute. I’m a more joyful person than this.

[00:08:54] Jess Lilly: This cannot be the best that I can do. And so there was also this fertile soil of my own being, where I was in my development, my inner story, where I really needed a change and yearned for a change. And that’s when I was really receptive To those kind of serendipitous moments.

[00:09:15] Ron Laneve: I liked that. I liked the reception part a lot.

[00:09:17] Ron Laneve: That makes a lot of sense. And it’s funny. You mentioned the people sometimes gloss over the messy parts of their growth and development, because those are actually the most impactful moments of who you become and who you are and who you want to be. That’s, it all comes down to that.

[00:09:32] Jess Lilly: Yeah. And actually that’s one of my, one of my favorite. Metaphors, that I use with clients is to compost. Compost that shiz. Compost it! It’s, it is important material for your development. It is not an accident. It is not a mistake. It’s not a problem. use, really transmute that pain or compost it.

[00:09:59] Jess Lilly: It’s different than carrying around resentments. Actually getting support around your emotional pain about what happened or what didn’t happen, whatever, that’s, it’s you got to actually take care of yourself and heal so that you can benefit from the gold that you sift through.

[00:10:19] Jess Lilly: I’m using a lot of different metaphors at once, but you want to sift through the pain for the gold, but you can only really take that forward if you’ve done the healing necessary. Otherwise you’re going to be walking around with a lot of unresolved baggage.

[00:10:34] Ron Laneve: I Have a lot of friends that are coaches All have a similar passion and drive and attraction to being a coach, but are all slightly different.

[00:10:44] Ron Laneve: They all have their own niche and focus.Can we talk about Jess Lilly Coaching and you specifically and what that is? And maybe unpack the concept of being heart centered too, since I’m sure that’s core to it.

[00:10:57] Jess Lilly: Absolutely. I like defining who I am as a coach by contrasting it a little bit with how other people see coaching. Basically there’s, there are folks who are very performance oriented. I think most people when they think about coaching, they think about sports and the whole idea is to win the game and to be the best player at that game.

[00:11:22] Jess Lilly: I think that there’s a ton of folks who that’s their kind of Take on coaching that it’s about maximizing your performance in some kind of game. A lot of times it’s a game that already exists. Okay. I want to win at business. I want to win at rugby.

[00:11:37] Jess Lilly: The way that I see coaching or my interest in coaching is actually to support people in a process of self discovery and creativity where you are defining your own game and winning that game no matter where you go and what the players are, what the circumstances are that you’re going to win your game.

[00:11:57] Jess Lilly: That’s how I hold purpose. Purpose is about really deciding what you care most about and why you’re here on the planet Earth. Playing that game, and being yourself while you do it. So it’s really about, it’s way more about self discovery and inventing your career, inventing your family life, inventing your your internal experience and really having that be the foundation of your vision of greatness and continuously striving and practicing to move in that direction. Which is very which I think is very distinct from win that game out there.

[00:12:38] Jess Lilly: Another really key feature of my take on coaching is that I genuinely don’t know what’s best for you. I genuinely don’t know. I do not know. So the most effective coaches or really the definition of coaching is showing up from a place of curiosity and not knowing. So there’s a lot of people in the field that are actually consultants who use coaching skills. What I mean by that is they’re showing up with a certain subject matter expertise of, these are the best ways to run a small business, or this is the best way to be this type of leader, this type of person.

[00:13:22] Jess Lilly: They’re going to instruct you and teach you and train you on their subject matter expertise, and also ask you some questions along the way and help you integrate that information for you. That’s actually not how I hold coaching. Coaching is very much showing up as an equal partner. When my clients ask me Jess what would you do?

[00:13:49] Jess Lilly: I’m like, look, you and I can get together for a colleague chat and I’ll put on my colleague hat. I’ll put on my buddy hat. I’ll put on a different hat. But right now I’m actually wearing a coach hat. And so I’m going to support you in discovering what you already know to be true. And I’m curious why you want to know my answer instead of your answer.

[00:14:08] Ron Laneve: Is that a just Lily fundamental concept, probably a bad word, or is that, ICF mantra?

[00:14:19] Jess Lilly: Or I would say it is. a Jess Lilly coaching thing that is aligned with the iCF.

[00:14:25] Jess Lilly: So the ICF has these eight core competencies of coaching, and one of them is embodies a coaching mindset.

[00:14:33] Jess Lilly: That’s one of the core competencies. And so of course, what does it mean to embody a coaching mindset? One of the core coaching mindsets is The client is the one who knows.

[00:14:46] Ron Laneve: Yeah, I love your the comparison to consulting. Although now it’s one of those things that now that you describe it, that’s pretty obvious, but I’ve never thought about it that way or realized it that way.

[00:14:59] Ron Laneve: It’s easy to call lots of consultants coaches, and I’m sure they are to a point, but your right it’s coaching within their expertise. And I love that explanation. That’s great. So then was there more to that? Sorry, I cut you off.

[00:15:13] Jess Lilly: There’s always more. You have to cut me off. I will talk until the cows come home about coaching.

[00:15:19] Jess Lilly: I’m like the biggest coaching nerd. Please cut me off.

[00:15:22] Ron Laneve: So who are your ideal coaching clients?

[00:15:24] Jess Lilly: I’m so glad you’re asking me that. Okay, so this has been a really funny thing for me because I was for many years trying to make this simple because who doesn’t like it when things are simple? And in some ways it is simple, but it’s not I work with these folks in this industry who are in this job and blah, blah, blah.

[00:15:47] Jess Lilly: There are two very important features of the people I love working with. One is that developing others is a part of their purpose on the planet earth. That I work best with people who are champions and coaches in some capacity themselves. So even if that’s not the number one thing in their job description, fundamentally they love showing up and helping other people achieve greatness.

[00:16:18] Jess Lilly: And the second thing is that they believe in the inherent goodness and worth of all people. That’s funny because you’re like, it doesn’t everyone think that, but no, a lot of their, the fundamental belief that there is goodness and inherent value in all people butts up against sometimes limiting beliefs that people operate from, such as.

[00:16:45] Jess Lilly: Oh, these people I work with, they’re a problem, they’re an obstacle, they’re in my way, or whatever. Even if, on some level, they’re like, yeah, people are good, these ones over here, I work best with people who are like, you know what, even if I’m having a conflict, Or even if I have a lot of differences here with this person, I fundamentally believe that there is goodness here and that we can reconnect. So those are my those, again, those don’t help narrow down like this is where they work and this is what, this is the hat they wear, but those are the people I work best with.

[00:17:24] Ron Laneve: But it’s individuals. versus corporations and teams and I dunno, disc assessments and, team building and leadership and all that other stuff.

[00:17:34] Ron Laneve: It’s do some of those things, but it’s more on a one to one individual basis.

[00:17:39] Jess Lilly: Yes, it is mostly one to one. I also another part of my coaching practice is I do some coach training. So what ends up happening is I’ll be coaching someone. For a year or two and they’ll be like, you know what? I actually want to learn coaching skills But I don’t want to go become a professional coach.

[00:17:57] Jess Lilly: Jess. Will you mentor me or train me? So I will wear that coach training hat.

[00:18:02] Jess Lilly: And that is also a part of my background is after I did my own training, I joined the leadership team of the coach training program I was involved with. So I started doing, delivering the coach training program and supervising coaches.

[00:18:16] Jess Lilly: And I just, there was something that clicked into place for me that helped me have my teacher self integrated with my coach self. And that was a really, that’s been a really nice fit.

[00:18:27] Ron Laneve: Would you say is the most misunderstood, opinion or thing about the coaching profession?

[00:18:31] Jess Lilly: Yes. So one misconception is that if you are being coached or if you are seeking coaching, it’s because there’s something wrong with you or you have a problem.

[00:18:49] Jess Lilly: Because we have, I think, and again this is a bit of a generalization, but there’s a bit of a skew or a bias socially around support is only for people who are having real trouble. It’s actually funny. I was thinking this morning, I went on a walk and I was thinking about this. That, that thing that people say about you put your oxygen mask on first before others. The funniest thing about that whole metaphor is that it says, take care of yourself first if your plane is crashing! You’re literally having it’s but otherwise don’t put on your mask first. It’s just, there’s some there’s some weird thing about support where it’s no, you can go it alone until you might die. It’s my, my mission of my coaching practice is to create a world Where support is plentiful and seeking it is celebrated.

[00:19:46] Jess Lilly: I don’t know what I’m such a verbal processor. If I didn’t have coaches and therapists and friends and supporters, all of my wisdom would be locked inside of me. If it doesn’t come blah, blah, blah, out of my mouth, it’s not coming out. Oh, and not everybody is that way. So I think that conception that coaching means there’s a problem or coaching means you’re failing. I think that is being reinforced by how corporations are deploying coaching. But that’s not inherent in the art and methodology of coaching.

[00:20:20] Ron Laneve: I think a lot of people equate coaching to therapy and there’s, I’ve had therapy, right? Every, I think a lot of more people are more open about talking about it.

[00:20:29] Ron Laneve: And to your point, therapy seems like something you go get when there’s a problem, right? And I think That so that point is pretty interesting. And I’m glad you brought that up. What about the conception of this is probably a bad term. What about having multiple coaches?

[00:20:42] Ron Laneve: Is that okay?

[00:20:44] Jess Lilly: Oh my God. That sounds like a blast. I think that’s awesome. I think having multiple coaches, if you can afford it, if you have a reason, do it. I think that working with multiple coaches is wise. because coaches have different styles and energies. For example, my energy a lot of really high functioning, energetic overachievers love working with me because in the process of our partnership and our conversations, I help them slow down, get gain a ton of awareness and compassion and make choices really deliberately.

[00:21:27] Jess Lilly: So my energy and who I am as a person. is suited really well to that process of reflection and choice and discernment. And then sometimes people need that activating energy of you’ve been sitting around too long, go get it. Get out there, play the game, like that kind of energy.

[00:21:45] Jess Lilly: And so I think it’s really valuable. And not to say I can’t do that too. But I think that There’s a lot. I personally have been coached by many different people, lots of different settings. And I don’t know. I also am a fan of having a coach and having therapy or some kind of like healing support because sometimes If you’re being coached and you’re in this process of growth and transformation, it can kick up emotional pain and wounds that kind of require more of a therapeutic approach.

[00:22:18] Jess Lilly: Okay. You asked me like, can you have more than one coach? And I’m like, yeah, have a million coaches live your life.

[00:22:25] Ron Laneve: But they could, you could have different coaches that focus on different things, correct? Is that fair to say, right? And maybe that’s where the consultant comes into play, the more what about so small giants, I got recruited there by our good friend, Heidi Baumgart.

[00:22:39] Ron Laneve: And, it’s fun to be recruited once a while. She’s really good at it. But I walked in there blind. Just getting excited about her energy around it, not really understanding at all what it meant to be purpose driven and I know you and I’ve had this conversation before.

[00:22:54] Ron Laneve: Can you explain to anyone listening to this, what does it really mean to be a purpose driven company? And what’s really the basis behind small giants.

[00:23:05] Jess Lilly: So I think being a purpose driven company, it me, it means very simply. That you are, you have created a business and you’re pursuing business goals for more than profit. You have a purpose, you have a mission that is beyond making money, period. So that’s like in the most foundational, simple terms.

[00:23:38] Jess Lilly: But what I also think is that there has to be some kind of focus on the environment you’re creating for everyone who shows up to contribute. So that there is a people oriented commitment. alongside some kind of meaningful mission. And that the idea is that it would be to make the world a better place in some way and to make the experience of work meaningful, rich, and healthy for everybody who shows up to be there.

[00:24:13] Jess Lilly: And really, I think that One of the features of folks who identify with small giants is

[00:24:24] Jess Lilly: a real respect for what people give when they show up for work. They’re giving their gifts, they’re giving their energy, they’re giving their time, they’re giving their trust. And so when you have leaders who either neglect that or take it for granted, the all, the outcome of that Is a very transactional and resentment filled environment where people are like, I am literally just showing up to do the bare minimum.

[00:25:01] Jess Lilly: We’re going to interact in a bare minimum way and that, that might be a little, I might have just created a little bit of a hyperbolic such, description, but I do believe that there are transactional workplaces and developmental workplaces. And as long as you know where you are, and there’s alignment, like some people want a transactional workplace.

[00:25:23] Jess Lilly: They’re like, I’m not showing up to work to grow. I’m showing up to work to get a paycheck. And some people are saying, you want to know what actually where I spend my working energy. I want it to be a place where I’m developing myself, expressing myself and giving my gifts in whatever way.

[00:25:40] Ron Laneve: Yeah the other thing I came away with a couple of things 1, the, it seemed that the individuals on these teams and in these companies, both literally.

[00:25:50] Ron Laneve: And figuratively feel an immense sense of ownership in their company, right? And the literal part is the, employee stock option plan or the whatever, the employee ownership that that they talked a lot about. But then the, obviously the figurative part is pretty clear, but that, that was pretty strong to me.

[00:26:06] Ron Laneve: And then also it’s. It was also interesting and how profitable these companies actually were when they operate this way. You don’t have to be a cutthroat step on the back of the next person to rise to the top type of environment to be a successful company. Which was another thing I walked away from.

[00:26:22] Ron Laneve: And, I feel I felt good about because I was trained another way all my career. And I wish I had been exposed to that a long time ago.

[00:26:31] Jess Lilly: I’m so happy that’s what you got from the experience, because I think that It is hard to have faith in things where there’s so much counter evidence.

[00:26:45] Jess Lilly: There’s so much evidence of a win lose As opposed to no, we can actually all be. We can all do the work. We can be ourselves. We can be together.

[00:26:58] Ron Laneve: Yeah, and we can trust each other. We don’t have to worry about. Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing.

[00:27:05] Jess Lilly: Trust. Yeah. Trust.

[00:27:10] Ron Laneve: And it’s also interesting how a lot of those companies, although they have values and preach those values, don’t necessarily, it didn’t feel like they went out of their way to craft a value, to craft a set of values and, quote unquote, put them on the wall or the website.

[00:27:23] Ron Laneve: The values are just who they are and how they are every day.

[00:27:27] Oh my God.

[00:27:27] Ron Laneve: And that was just so relieving to me to see and exciting at the same time. So thanks

[00:27:33] Jess Lilly: for sharing. Yeah, that piece where values are not a performance. It’s an expression of the truth. It’s an expression of what’s being embodied. And there’s always a gap.

[00:27:46] Jess Lilly: We can’t be our values in every single moment of every single day, but are people seeking to close that gap and be an integrity in whatever, and not to look good. It’s not, the purpose is not to look good. Not to look bad, but like the purpose is it’s outside of performance entirely.

[00:28:06] Ron Laneve: All right, two more questions. Clearly you’re pursuing what you love, right? You have this passion for coaching and that makes what you do every day a lot easier, right? Than going to a job because you’re not but you’re also an entrepreneur now, right? Did you, I don’t know, how do you think about being an entrepreneur?

[00:28:23] Ron Laneve: Do you like being an entrepreneur? I know you like coaching, but, running a business and selling stuff and marketing stuff is a whole other ball of wax. Walk me through that experience. What’s that been like?

[00:28:35] Jess Lilly: I am, I would say I am a reluctant entrepreneur, but I’m so in love with coaching and I’m so in love with who I get to be and what I get to experience as a coach that I’m like, I can learn new skills.

[00:28:52] Jess Lilly: I can grow, I can be vulnerable. I can show up and be on video with you. Go out and have your comfort zone, right? So the process of being an entrepreneur for me has been really about, because my my vision for my business is to be. referral based to have a waitlist and eventually have an application process to work with me.

[00:29:15] Jess Lilly: My, my vision is not growth scale. My growth is about doing exceptional work. With my ideal clients in a way that makes an extraordinary impact. And so that means I need to be building relationships and delivering extraordinary experiences for my clients so that I’m getting warm referrals.

[00:29:41] Jess Lilly: As the, like the majority of what I’m up to in terms of, finding new clients and that is not sticking to that and really committing to that. Talk about what you believe is possible and not possible. Sometimes it’s no, Jess, go become an Instagram person. Go be an influencer, right?

[00:30:00] Jess Lilly: Like you see coaches out there giving advice, top 10 tips for this and that. And I’m like, It’s just not aligned because my primary concern is my role of coach. And so I’m learning how can public speaking and sharing ideas, how can that complement my role of coach rather than take me out of the role of coach and put me into the realm of I don’t know guru or teacher or the woman with the answers.

[00:30:33] Jess Lilly: I don’t want, that’s not how I want people to relate to me. And I don’t so my behaviors as an entrepreneur, I’m very sensitive to, does this help me be a more effective coach or does this get in the way of me being an effective coach with this person? So that’s why I take very seriously.

[00:30:52] Jess Lilly: And he any referrals I receive or any something I really love is shared educational experiences with people, like for example, going to the small giant summit, it’s being in relationship with people and creating what I call that web of contribution where it’s seeing everyone. I don’t see the people I meet as.

[00:31:12] Jess Lilly: Oh, that person’s going to hire me. I see that everybody has potential partners. Like for example, when you and I got together, I was like, I’m going to meet Ron. He and I have a lot of shared values. We both showed up at small giants. I didn’t know that you were going to be like, yo, come on my podcast.

[00:31:27] Jess Lilly: And so letting things emerge naturally has been my, my, my aim as an entrepreneur. But again, that’s not like a recipe for fast growth.

[00:31:39] Yet. Yep.

[00:31:40] Jess Lilly: Yet. So who knows?

[00:31:44] Ron Laneve: Gotcha. I love that. And I love that you are, you know who you want to be, you know what your business, you know what your, you want your business to be and you’re comfortable with that.

[00:31:53] Ron Laneve: And I, I think again, just a little self reflection, I was probably, pushed significantly to, to grow scale, and, lost sight of the. The value that we were delivering or that I wanted to deliver to my clients and probably lost some relationships due to that.

[00:32:09] Ron Laneve: So I appreciate that more than,

[00:32:11] Jess Lilly: And I also want to say, talk about not skipping over the messy part. Let’s not, I’ve had a ton of experiences where. I, I showed up out of alignment with that and felt like, Ooh, that just is not, that doesn’t feel good. I don’t know. I just never want to be in a convincing sort of energy around coaching because coaching is such a personal, it’s not a consumer product, it’s personal.

[00:32:35] Jess Lilly: It’s about a choice. To do really hard self reflection and growth with support from this this Jess Lilly person or whoever it is you hire. And so it’s a very different process than trying to buy a car or something. So I try to really be sure to not be in a convincing and not trying to feed that model of, You got a problem.

[00:33:02] Jess Lilly: I got a solution. Like I, I don’t want to be,

[00:33:05] Ron Laneve: it’s going to take nine sessions.

[00:33:07] Jess Lilly: Yes. It’s going to, I will get, yeah, exactly. That’s it. That’s another funny thing about coaching is that a lot of times there is this pressure people feel to make guarantees. Yes. If you work with me, then these are the outcomes you can expect.

[00:33:23] Jess Lilly: And it’s that’s a tricky game because it is. You’re supporting someone in their development and you can’t actually make those promises to them. It’s about what promises are they going to keep with themselves and you’ll you will be there along the way. So again, another thing that being an entrepreneur, there are these tropes that I try to step outside of.

[00:33:45] Ron Laneve: Gotcha. All right. Last question. Are you using AI in any interesting, unique ways? Everyone’s experimenting with chat GPT and co pilot whatever, I’ve had a few guests that have, mentioned a few specific tools that were cool. I shared anything in your bag of tools.

[00:34:04] Jess Lilly: Okay. So I’m not using AI. Okay. However, I will be very curious to see because people, there are companies and places and people using AI for coaching and that the AI is asking the questions or whatever. It’s an AI coach essentially. And so I am wildly curious. It’s how that

[00:34:33] Jess Lilly: shifts what people want and need from the human being coaches and how much the fabric of relationship and the connection and what you can build and the trust that you can build with someone and how much those relationship skills and not giving people tips and tricks because people can be like, yo, give me, Hey AI, give me the tips and tricks.

[00:34:59] Jess Lilly: getting the support from a person to integrate the learning and practice it and embody it and move the needle for your vision. It’s just very different. So I am not using AI, but I will be on the lookout for how will AI change. It will change the coaching industry. It already has, and that’s going to be interesting to, to stay tuned about

[00:35:21] Ron Laneve: more later.

[00:35:22] Ron Laneve: More later.

[00:35:23] Jess Lilly: Yeah. Next time I come on the podcast, I’ll tell you all about what I’ve seen and learned.

[00:35:28] Ron Laneve: All right. Jess, I really appreciate you sharing everything about your background and career and evolution and especially about all the coaching experience. Thanks a lot for being here.

[00:35:38] Jess Lilly: Thank you.

[00:35:39] Ron Laneve: Talk to you soon.

October 14, 2024