Episode 6 Guest Dr Saba Hasanie
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarf, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years, I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach, and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups, and more.
and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveler, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent, and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses.
The executive coaching business is tough. And I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes, and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. [00:01:00] You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable, and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are.
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Ellie: Hello. I am very fortunate to have the wonderful Saba Hasanie, Dr. Saba Hasanie. In fact, and I was there while she did that doctorate and let's not drop that for any reason. I'm very fortunate to have her here and I'm going to give her a bit of a formal introduction before we dive in. So. Dr.
Ellie: Saba Hasanie is an entrepreneur, an MD, an executive coach, a practitioner scholar and a leadership expert. She is originally from Canada, but has lived in Asia and particularly Singapore for 14 years now. Her career has [00:02:00] been extensive and diverse and she's worked across North America and Europe and Asia.
Ellie: She is also, she has some pretty impressive coaching creds. So she is. On the Forbes global coach expert panel, she is a published author of academic research, and I believe has a new book on the way later this week, and as a keynote speaker and of course, a brilliant coach, which I can attest to from my own experience, Saba has worked with some of the biggest and most progressive brands in the world.
Ellie: And she is not only committed to being a coach and coach business owner, but also developing coaches. And supporting the progression of the coaching industry as a whole. She is a MCC master certified coach from the ICF, which I think she left off her formal bio, which I've just added in there. But also has a very rich personal life.
Ellie: She's the mom of two beautiful, young, amazing women. She's an avid traveler and is going to Peru in [00:03:00] May. But beyond that, so I know Saba pretty well. So Saba and I were business partners.
Ellie: For, for a number of years she is my friend and she is a brilliant, extraordinary coach and business person. Sabra and I have always had a shared fascination , and I would say she is very much more an expert than me on this, in how our backstory impacts how we show up.
Ellie: And our experience. And in particular, Saba has a program coming up soon. A new cohort is opening. And the program is called the biographical dimensions of leadership using BDMM, which is Saba's brilliant model called the biographical dimensions of meaning making.
Ellie: So. As we go through today, I definitely want cyber to talk about this course, because I can guarantee a lot of listeners are going to be interested, but I also want to use some of this idea of the importance of knowing ourselves and knowing [00:04:00] how our experiences have impacted Thank you. How we are in the world today I
Ellie: want us to relate that to what it's like being a coaching business owner and Saba has been a coaching business owner for a long time.
Ellie: So with that frame in mind, I'm going to finally stop talking and I'm going to say Saba, what is your corporate to coach story?
Saba: Awesome. Thanks Ellie. And it's so good to be with you always. So my corporate to coach story I'm going to start probably in a non traditional way and I'm going to take you all the way back.
Saba: I was raised, so I grew up as a second generation immigrant in Canada, and so my story and my upbringing cannot be decoupled. And what I mean by that is that so much of my identity, because I had pain around, Being a minority, being different, looking different, never really setting in, fitting into anything.
Saba: My value as a human being became what I could do. [00:05:00] And so therefore my career journey was one that moved a lot. And it was one that was, you know, kind of fixated on forward progression, moving, gaining seniority money credibility. All of these things. And so the first kind of decade plus plus was all about chasing something that I was trying to look for that made me feel like I was a value.
Saba: So I started my very first professional job was a professional recruiter for a telecom company. And I love this job because I got to hire people and I got to bring people a lot of joy, right? Like there's nothing more satisfying than that. But it also felt really powerful. Like it was a really powerful role, right?
Saba: You get to give people the start of their careers or move their careers forward or continue to accelerate their careers. And so anyway, so I love that job. But it, it was like a sales job, really. It's like a sales job being a recruiter. So I then ended up going into [00:06:00] marketing. And then marketing, I kind of did a small sales job.
Saba: And then I came back into HR, but much more on strategic planning and organizational development and org learning. I liked it, but I didn't love the work and it kind of felt a bit boring in the sense that I'm like, I want to be making the big decisions. I want to be with the movers and shakers. I want to like, again, right.
Saba: Like my, so much of my identity. was tied up in not who I was, but what I could do. So I decided to leave a really successful corporate career. Where I was kind of like the youngest manager at the level that I was, I was like right underneath the executive vice president. And you know, I was like 25 at the time, but I was like, no, I could do more.
Saba: So I went, did my MBA. And then I spent the next five years in management consulting after my MBA. And that was Probably the best and the worst experience of my life, the best experience in that I learned so much and my ego was so satisfied because I got to work on, I was doing M& A and I got to work on projects that were literally in the [00:07:00] newspaper and I got to work with the board of directors and the CEO and I got to do all of these really amazing things.
Saba: But the cost to me was exorbitant. Like I was working 90, 100 hour weeks, I was traveling. All over the world. And while it sounds glamorous, it's horrible, right? Like you have no work life balance and you are constantly made to feel like you're not enough. So I experienced coaching them. So I got my first professional coach at that time.
Saba: I also went into therapy for the first time. Well, the second time in my life, and that was exponentially important. And then because I had such a positive experience with my coach, I did my first round of coach training Never with the intention that I ever wanted to be a coach But just because I was like this is so useful in helping people process differently And you would have really emotional conversations during m& a deals, right?
Saba: A lot of stuff is coming up So it just felt like a really useful tool to have as a consultant Anyways, fast forward after five years of doing that, I got a chance to move out to Asia with [00:08:00] my husband. And so I needed to find a job and I needed to kind of re Figure out who I was. And I was also a first time mom.
Saba: So I came out here with a three month old child. So I knew I could never go back to the world of consulting because it was just not sustainable. And when I came to Asia, just a few years prior, the six mandatory workday. So we used to have to work on Saturdays and management consulting had just been removed.
Saba: So as you can imagine, I was like, okay, there's no way I am going to get work life balance in that field. So I ended up going and working full time. For a consumer goods company, I was an internal consultant for them. And one of the first jobs I had to do was hire coaches. They were looking for coaches for all of the MDs in the region.
Saba: And so then I got to figure out really, really quickly who's out here and who's doing work. And there was like basically two models. There were, we were either exporting. coaches in from Australia from the UK are from the U. S. And they were models that I was very familiar with. So kind of blending psychology and performance [00:09:00] optimization together.
Saba: Or there was a lot of models that were born and bred Asian companies, which were amazing, but they were very performance optimized and there wasn't a lot of psychology in it. And so, you know, as they say The mother of invention is necessity. I said, well, there's not a lot of people doing both of this and really focusing in Asia and really trying to develop Asian talent and what that means.
Saba: So that's kind of how I started my coach journey. And that was about 14 years ago. And I haven't looked back since. So,
Ellie: so this was a bit of a, like a jump in feet first, this is what I want to do. And so there was no gentle transition.
Saba: No, there was nothing gentle about it. Did you have any doubts? Oh my God.
Saba: I still have doubts, Ellie. Like, I feel like that's just being human, isn't it? I think that I was an accidental business owner, for sure. And I was an accidental coach in some ways in the beginning. [00:10:00] Because my entrepreneurial mind was like, this is a business opportunity, so you'd be crazy not to go for it.
Saba: But it is the most, there is nothing more humbling. Than trying to sell yourself and you don't have the protection of a brand or anything around you. It is just you. And so every time you hear a no, it's not just a no to your service. It feels like it's a no to you. It's like a, you're not good enough for your no.
Saba: It felt so deeply personal and, and there wasn't a transition. It wasn't like I was in a corporate job for a few years and building up my infrastructure financially and building up my credibility. It was. One day I was in house and the next day I was running a coaching business. It was just so painful in the first couple of years.
Saba: And, you know, we can talk about what that looked like, but also I wouldn't trade those first couple of years for anything in the world, because I think what I learned as a business owner, and you and I have talked about this so much, right? Like what we learn in those first few [00:11:00] years, I think really is the difference of what keeps us in this game over the longterm and yeah, why we do the work we do now.
Ellie: Absolutely. When did that sense of purpose kick in? Right. When it comes to, why you wanted to do this work? Cause, cause I, I hear like for you, it was in the start, it was not quite opportunistic, but it was like, this is a really great opportunity. This is a business opportunity, but knowing you, I know that there is a lot of meaning that, that you have in the work that you do.
Ellie: So I'm wondering how did that kick in?
Saba: Yeah. So it was, it kicked in in really gentle, beautiful ways and really painful, punch you in the gut ways. One of the things that I always struggled with, and this goes back to my story is I was raised by an Indian father and a mother who had really strong Persian background.
Saba: One was very religious and spiritual. The other one was agnostic. And I always was conflicted with what this age Asian identity in [00:12:00] me meant. And then I grew up in North America and Canada. And when I came out to Asia, it struck me so dramatically because I always felt different. So I never totally fit into Western culture.
Saba: And yet when I came to Asia, I realized how Western centric my mental models were. They were so Western centric, like, cause I've been raised and taught and educated in that environment. And then the other thing I found was that, especially in Singapore, which is such a beautifully diverse and wonderful society, there was a very strong divide between expats and locals, and it was almost this sense of like, when it came to development and leadership and growth, it just felt like we were leaning on non Asian voices to help us figure out how do we do.
Saba: Asian leadership better. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. Like what is happening here? It made sense in that Asian leadership is a very multicultural intersection, [00:13:00] but, but something felt like, how do we create Asian voices in an Asian perspective on leadership? And those of us who've been out here, and I don't think it means that you have to be Asian.
Saba: It just means that you have to steep yourself in the culture. You have to be able to understand how the culture emerges. What are the. The drivers of the evolution of societies and why people have certain values the way that they do. And so for me, the calling was how do I bring a voice to that minority perspective, which is the Asian voice, which just like does not exist in academic research at all.
Saba: It certainly didn't 14 years ago. It's getting better now, but it is nowhere near what it is relative to Western perspectives. But it's like, how do we find That voice. How do we find an Asian voice? How do we create leadership models that fit for us in this part of the world? And how do we value who we are and the complex stories that we bring?
Saba: To how we lead [00:14:00] right and it felt like to me the story of who we were and the pain and the trauma and the, you know, whatever we went through was somehow segregated or we had to overcome that to be leaders. And for me, that is the essence of who we are right are the stories of that kind of finding identity and finding meaning and finding.
Saba: Our voice through failures. It's not separate, right? That doesn't exist outside of our leadership. That's what drives our leadership. And so we needed to find ways to access that voice more consistently so that leaders could be more of who they really are, rather than trying to play a role or project something they think they should.
Ellie: Yeah. Wow. And, and I mean, the thing that strikes me about that concept is how it operates for us as coaches on two levels, right? Which is, this is our own experience that we are having that we cannot separate from the work that we do and how we show up both as coaches and business owners. But equally in the work we do, , this is operating for our [00:15:00] clients constantly and, and oftentimes they are leaders.
Ellie: And so, yeah, I really, I really love that perspective and have always loved the sophistication of the way that you can articulate that and understand it. And obviously that led into your research. So tell me a little bit about, so you start your business. Then what, what's the story
Saba: from there? Yeah, I start the business and like maybe some, I don't know if it was a very naive approach, but you know, build it and they will come right.
Saba: I assumed that was going to happen. It did not. Yes.
Ellie: This is a common theme, by the way, this is a common theme. I think every, every coach I speak to has a build it and they will come.
Saba: But they don't. And they don't. Darn. Wouldn't it be so nice if we lived in a world that did. So yeah, so, so I built this thing, thinking that I had a very sophisticated view around the intersection and the interplay.
Saba: And then I had to try to figure out how to sell this thing. And so what was really interesting was that my network at the [00:16:00] time was, professional services, right? Because that's what I knew. Those are the people I had spent time with. And so I reached out to a lot of ex mentors. I reached out to other people who were now doing business in this part of the world.
Saba: Because keep in mind, my whole network was North America. It wasn't really in Asia. And so my first client, really interesting, was an academic institution. So really prestigious academic institution. They paid me pennies. And I'm not going to say the because I do not want to in any way make them feel like anything about it, but it was really basically someone doing me a favor.
Saba: They're like, listen, you know, I think you must be smart. You worked in consulting for a while, so come and work, but I'm not going to pay you a lot because you haven't been doing this for very long. And my first gig was to help these young leaders. So these were university students. And I guess at that time there were like 20, maybe 21, but probably 19, 20.
Saba: And it was giving them psychometric assessments and helping them figure out who am I, what is the I in me. And I think what was [00:17:00] amazing about that is it solidified for me very quickly, Oh my God, this is magic. Because having these young people find a way, now I didn't have a lot of sophistication How I talked about our journeys and our ways of being.
Saba: But what I did see is how empowering it felt to someone to take something that they did and turn it into a data point and say, Oh, so this is me. And it's okay to be me and me can be utilized in really effective ways. And yeah, there's, there's pain to it. Are there, there's difficulties in it. There's development thresholds.
Saba: There's a power in it as well. And I was like, that's so fascinating. So I was instantly hooked. Like my first project I was hooked. I was like, this is absolutely what I want to do. And for the first time in my professional career, I knew that that was it. But my goodness, Ellie, those first few years, I literally was begging people to let me do work.
Saba: I would. You know, maybe just to get it counted as billable hours, be like, buy me a coffee, pay me 50 bucks. You know, it was, [00:18:00] it was really just for me to learn the art and learn the craft of what we were doing, find as many opportunities as possible. And I had to surrender a lot of my ego during that time.
Saba: Because remember my story, my story was my self worth is defined by what I do. And what I did as an entrepreneur was defined by how much money I made. I wasn't making any money. And so are very little money. And so there was, it was painful those first couple of years, I never felt enough. I always questioned whether what I was doing was the right path.
Saba: But from a purpose standpoint, I never questioned it from a value standpoint in terms of like, am I doing the kind of work that when I leave this earth, I will feel proud of? Yes. But now I got to figure out. How to, you know, make money at it while doing this really important stuff. So that was kind of the first couple of years that was painful, but like I said, I would not replace it for anything in the world.
Ellie: So I have a massive spoiler, which is that [00:19:00] Saba has a very successful business now. So tell us, how did you get there? Like what's the, secret sauce?
Saba: Well, the secret sauce is you and people like you. I think one of the things that I realized very, very early is that doing this on your own is really hard.
Saba: And I am someone who, Elle, you know me, right? Like I like to talk about everything and process and reflect and, and so there's nothing more isolating than being an entrepreneur and doing it by yourself. Like, who do you process and reflect to? What I realized is that I needed to surround myself with people who number one, inspire me.
Saba: So you know, like you, I know we share a similar mentor and Louise Kovacs and,, other mentors that have come in the business. So it was around surrounding myself with brilliant people who've kind of been there, done this and can help me find some patients and processing and all of that. And then it was partnering with.
Saba: Unbelievably capable people like yourselves who are so much richer and so much better than me in so many different ways. [00:20:00] And we could be yin and yang to each other, right? Like, I could see things that you didn't see. You saw so much that I didn't see. And that is just what allowed us to build a business that I think over time became This value proposition that was hard to deny.
Saba: I think that over time and being in the industry for about 15 years, I also kind of realized like how the industry assesses good coaches versus non good coaches. I actually adamantly disagreed with how the industry valued them. And so it was like network, network, network, meet as many people as you can and figure out how these people are defining themselves as coaches.
Saba: What are the. Programs they're taking what are the personal learning journeys are going on and what that ended up creating is just I ended up with an amazingly powerful network. And so for me, it was never about setting out to build a beautiful, amazing brand that was you know, going to do whatever in terms of commercial outcomes.[00:21:00]
Saba: To me, it was like, let's do amazing work with the most amazing people who do this work and the rest is going to come. And I think that that is basically what happened was through incredibly powerful networks, through incredibly amazing coaches, we grew together and we learned. with the business and we were smart enough to adapt the business as we were learning more and more.
Saba: And so we didn't get stuck in like, it has to be this or it has to be that. And, and I think that was probably the greatest catalyst to getting us where we are is just not doing it alone and, and recognizing how much you have to learn from others.
Ellie: That's such a great, a great lesson and certainly something that I'm super passionate about.
Ellie: And, and, and he's what I'm trying to, you know, build with the collective is a group of coaches growing and learning together from each other. Tell me in, in that journey from those first couple of hard years until it's sort of the, the flywheel started moving a little bit more smoothly. [00:22:00] How did you get those first big.
Ellie: Full fee paying clients, you know, that, that step from, you know, coffees and 50 bucks an hour, which everyone I talk to is, is experiencing through to that, that, you know, that, that big corporate client, that's going to sort of shift the dial.
Saba: Yeah, yeah. It's that's a great question. So, you know, if I, if I think about kind of in my head, you know, those first big fee paying clients I just think about, okay, so what were the prerequisites?
Saba: Like what happened? So first and foremost, it was network. So someone that I knew who had, you know, gotten to know me through a training program. So it wasn't even, you know, this commercial leader who knew me, she met me in a training program, a coach training program. And she's like, I just like your vibe.
Saba: And she's like, I used to work for this company. I'm not working with them anymore. They're looking for an internal coach to do coaching and run [00:23:00] these leadership development programs all across Asia. And she's like, I'd really like to just put your name forward. Would you be up for it? And I was like, Oh, I was completely overwhelmed.
Saba: I was completely intimidated, total imposter syndrome. But I was like, yeah, sure. So, so first of all, network. So Ellie, like the purpose that you're on right now and the work that you're doing. I mean, I, I feel like I get emotional when I talk about it, but it is so instrumental. Your network means everything.
Saba: So for me, the first big job, network, right? Someone who, who was a coach, right? And was learning coaching, had met me and she introduced me into this company. And then in the company, one of the things that I learned, because now I'm like on year three, probably, of like really bad stuff. Cycles of payment. I knew enough about what competitive rates were.
Saba: So I knew enough about like what my mentors were charging. And I knew enough about what coaches who were, what I would say, comparable in skillset, but for whatever reason I hadn't broke through, I was like, that's it, I'm charging what they charge, not my mentors, [00:24:00] but I'm charging who I consider my equals in the industry.
Saba: I'm going to charge what they charge. Because for me, going from 50 to what that rate was felt like. I can't do that. I can't justify, that's insane. So I decided to say I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm not gonna base myself on that beginner rate. That's not me. That was me when I was trying to build my relationships.
Saba: I need to start thinking about what are people who I consider my equals, my peers in the industry, what are they charging? And then have the courage, and I will tell you, I was shaking when I put this first one out there, right? My first proposal. I was like, they're gonna laugh me out of the room. There was a little negotiation and then that was it.
Saba: And it was like single percentage points away from what I had originally said. And it was in that moment that I realized you never get another chance to start the benchmark. You never get another chance to establish. The bench, right. It's like negotiation 101. Yeah. So what I was realizing as I was operating in a world where I was [00:25:00] like, how do I bring 50 to 100 and 100 to 150 and 150 to 300?
Saba: I was like, no, I'm leaving that. And I'm going to say, what is the bench based on my qualifications, my experience and my capabilities? What are some of the people that I admire in this industry charging? I'm going to set it there. And then you find out very quickly where the company's appetite is, right?
Saba: And they're going to give you feedback. They're not going to hide anything from you. But I also realized that I was underselling myself so often right out of the gate that I was leaving money on the table. The corporate, the corporate's not going to say, Oh, why are you charging me so little? Why don't you charge me more?
Saba: They're going to be like, great. Now I can have you four times as much as I thought I could. And so that was kind of the start of the realization of value. And then since then, my pricing model has always existed on charge what you believe the value of this work is, not what you think is the appetite of the person to pay for it, or your perspectives, because your [00:26:00] perspectives are never going to be accurate because you don't know what the perspectives of corporate are charge.
Saba: the value, right? Charge what you think the value of the work is and charge based on the capacity and the capability of the people that you're working with to do this work. So a lot of the coaches that we work with are veteran coaches, like, people who've been doing this for decades, they have high value, they deserve to be priced out at high value.
Saba: And it's my job to ensure that I do that as much as possible. So disconnect kind of like my ego, my emotions, my own imposter syndrome, whatever it is. and think about impact and value. The other benefit I had is I come from professional services. So I always knew that what you, what you get at the end of the day and salary, all of these things, companies are willing to pay for value.
Saba: If you can add value to them, they are willing to pay for it. So I did have already mental models in my head. around how to scale that [00:27:00] value proposition. The early years, I didn't have enough confidence in myself to do that. But that moment is what changed for me. And then since that moment, I've always like, you know, again, my pricing philosophy, charge what I think the value of this work is, and then we will find.
Saba: Or equilibrium where the client will be. Oh my God.
Ellie: I love that. I love that so much. And I know that a lot of people listening to that are going to be both confronted by that idea and also greatly reassured. Because I'm also pushing people to say. Don't don't price yourself at this incremental, baseline up approach, think about what it's worth.
Ellie: Think about what your benchmarks actually are rather than, this arbitrary belief of your worth. So the question of worth comes up a lot when, when we talk about pricing and I love that you're talking about value, what is your advice to a coach who is I'm not [00:28:00] worth this amount that I'm charging, or how could I possibly charge this amount?
Ellie: What would you say to them? Not so much in terms of what they should do, but how could they think about that a little bit differently, or how could they interrogate
Saba: that belief? Yeah. It's a great question. Cause again, I still think I, Think about these things all the time. Me too. Me too. You and I spent so much time when we were running a business together thinking about these things.
Saba: I think that, you know, for me, it's really about stepping back and understanding how do I rationalize and make objective what feels like a highly emotional process. And it's like the same thing that we do with our clients all the time, right? When they're negotiating salaries and when they're doing all of this stuff, it's like Get, get some data, get some data and anchor yourself to some benchmark industry standards.
Saba: Yeah. And when you do that, immediately you realize the delta between how you are valuing yourself versus how the market is valuing you. And I just want to be [00:29:00] clear, be very very clear that you're not talking about what coaches are making, because we've got skilled providers who are paying pennies. Right.
Saba: And so there are a lot of coaches who are like, Oh, is that then the benchmark, right? If that coach is only being paid a hundred dollars, that means that's what I should be charging the market because you and I know those providers are not charging the client that. No, that's right. So the benchmark should be what they're charging, not what they're paying the coach.
Ellie: Yeah, exactly. And so for me, it's about becoming. more aware and knowledgeable about what industry standards are for coaching. And this is really, it's not hard to find this information, right? You got to do, maybe you have two, three, four conversations, you know, get to the source data very, very quickly. And so for me, it's about, don't think about it from any other benchmark, other than what is industry norms and every country has a different industry norm and even the cities, right.
Saba: To your, you know, different cities will have different issues. Yeah. So educate yourself on what industry standards are. [00:30:00] And then think about, so how am I valuing my service relative to those industry benchmarks? And so, you know, do my people and do I have very unique value propositions that is so unique to the general market?
Saba: I'm doing something niche that therefore commands a premium. Or I'm doing something with a different perspective that therefore commands a premium. Am I looking for, you know, scale? So therefore I, I'm willing to offer a discount. So then you take that data and you apply it to your business model and you say, okay, so what is it that I am doing?
Saba: What makes me uniquely qualified to sell? And how am I going to differentiate that in front of the client? And then always remember that price that you put in the proposal, that is the starting conversation for you to understand what is the true data point for that client. And if you start it low, you miss the chance to actually figure that out.
Saba: So for me, there's almost like you start at a premium because you'll never get another chance to renegotiate. Start at a premium, it [00:31:00] means that you create space for yourself to still have a profitable outcome. But then you also get a really strong sense of where clients are and more often than not you're surprised at how much can be put on the table.
Saba: I mean, Ali, you and I have done this so many times together, right? It's like, you're surprised and you're like, Oh, look at that. And your instinct would have been to kind of cut it by 25%. Yeah. And then in the end, you're almost like so relieved you didn't because. They're willing to pay. They ended up somewhere
Ellie: higher.
Ellie: Exactly. Yeah. And, and, and I think one of the benefits I think that comes from either being in partnership or being in a network of other coaches is that ability to challenge each other on, you know, it's like I'm feeling tempted to discount. Yeah. And to have someone say, no, hold, hold, hold. You can do it.
Ellie: And, and really, I guess, support each other in that way because I, I remember, you know, many times you giving me that prompt to say. Do you think you're maybe underpricing and, you know, sometimes I'd say, do you think we could put a bit more in there or, you know, could we expand the [00:32:00] scope in this way?
Ellie: And so I think there is huge value in that. I had a deal clinic yesterday with the members of my impact coach collective, and we were, you know, really talking about that and we were talking a lot about pricing and the value of bouncing these numbers around in a group was, was huge. And yeah, and that is that benchmarking, I think that, that you talk
Saba: about.
Saba: Yeah. And then I think the other thing, now I didn't know this at the time because obviously when I was starting my career, I just didn't have enough clients. Now we've been blessed with 180 clients. And continue to grow that number. Thankfully with the blessings of this universe, we continue to grow that number.
Saba: But one of the most important data points that I get from my clients is I want to know how your employees are valuing coaching relative to all of the other L& D interventions that you are making. And so I want us to remember that you are talking about clients who are spending [00:33:00] hundreds of thousands of dollars on one person to go to an exec ed program.
Saba: And you are, you know, you are doing investment development programs at an individual level that are at six figures, individual level that are in the six figures. But then when you go to the clients and you say, what are the interventions that these people are valuing the most? Coaching is almost always top three, almost always.
Saba: So again, it's like, We talk about value is like, okay, what is my per session price? And am I worth that? But we also have to remember that coaching as an intervention for leadership development, and as a developmental opportunity for leaders, I would say that most leaders who have experienced coaching will, will say that coaching was by far one of their greatest catalysts.
Saba: for professional development. Yeah. So when you think about it that way, that means that you were saying coaching is more valuable than my exec ed program or than my master's or that. And we think about how much tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars we're investing in [00:34:00] that. When you have that reference point around what we do in coaching, good coaching, I think that helps you understand why coaching is priced the way it is.
Ellie: That's a great benchmark. And when you say exec ed programs, just for people who might not know that terminology, does that mean like your MBAs, your sort of, you know, sort of those more qualification or education leadership programs that people go off and do? Is that? It
Saba: can be, it can be, but it's also when you can go to Harvard for a six week program to learn how to be a more complex thing.
Saba: Thinker, or you can go to an Ivy League school or one of the really reputable schools. And it's not about getting the degree or the diploma. It's about taking a short executive education program that is anywhere from one week to six weeks or eight weeks where you steep yourself in a singular kind of competency.
Saba: And then you just, and, and those [00:35:00] programs. are priced astronomically. Yeah. And, and we do it because we think it's going to help us and they do. And I'm not taking anything away from those programs, but it's like, this is what coaches I think fail to realize is that our benchmark is not just other coaches.
Saba: Our benchmark is what are all of the things companies are investing in to build capability in their leaders? And there are some programs that are astronomically priced and it's like, and if you know, and this is the other important data, know with your clients, like if they're offering coaching, they're probably offering a whole suite of other things.
Saba: Get them to figure out what are employees valuing the most and if coaching is what they're valuing the most, then from an investment point of view, if you are not investing somewhere in the same bracket as that, Yeah,
Ellie: that is such a good point. That's a good point. And it also can even, you know, maybe make us breathe a little easier to say, well, if they're paying 50 to a hundred grand [00:36:00] for, for one of these programs, then if I'm charging 10 to 20 to 30, 30 K for, a quite intense coaching program.
Ellie: Then I don't need to have quite so much hesitation when I pitch that. And I don't need to be quite so concerned about that. And
Saba: it's human nature, right? We see the world from the lens that we see it. But for me, it's about, and again, I wouldn't have had this. Unless I had done this enough, but that becomes my benchmark is like of your total investment in leadership and development as an organization, where are you spending that money?
Saba: How much are you spending in that money? And how does coaching measure up to all of those interventions? And Most of the time coaching is top, right? Top one, two, or three. And so for me, that's my benchmark now.
Ellie: So what strikes me as, as you're sharing this, this is obviously a conversation that you're having with the buyers of coaching services, right?
Ellie: So this is part of your. sales conversations [00:37:00] in a lot of cases. Talk to me a little bit about, about your approach to
Saba: selling. Yeah. Okay. So big question, big question. Well, it's a big question. And I always feel a degree again of imposter syndrome around this, because I've worked with people like yourself and Louise, who just have such rich, Sales knowledge and background.
Saba: And, and I have always said, like, I do not feel like a salesperson and I'm, I'm working on that narrative and I'm changing that a lot, but, but I think whenever you start with like, what is your sales process? I always kind of feel like, do I have one? It's
Ellie: very simple process, maybe an
Saba: approach, an approach.
Saba: Exactly. So my, my very simplified approach is. First, just listen, right? Don't go in trying to pitch something. Don't go in trying to sell my, you know, this program. Don't go in with any of that. Go in and listen for where's the pain. Like, where is the pain for [00:38:00] this client? And sometimes they come in with very clear ideas of where they think the pain is.
Saba: And then again, you and I've experienced this. Experienced this hundreds of times. We will go in and the client will be like very clear. Like, this is what I want, this is what I want you to design. And we would just ask a few more questions surrounding that, and all of a sudden we realize we're somewhere else completely different.
Saba: Yeah. And so for me, the first. And any kind of sales approach is you have to listen before you convince yourself that you know what they need. And then by listening, what you're able to do is really distilled down to what are the, for me, I talk about what are the core pains, right? Like what are the core pain points that that company is feeling and how do they want answers?
Saba: Now, the other thing that is going to sound very. not intuitive, as also knowing when you are the right intervention and when you are not. Some of the longest standing clients that I have are the ones who I said, listen, I'm not the right person for you, but I know who is. And they will never forget that conversation.
Saba: Yeah. And they will [00:39:00] come back to you. I promise you they will come back to you because it's very rare that someone would say that. So, so it's about recognizing when you're the right person for them when you're not. It's about building the confidence and the respect to know how that's going to work. And sometimes it's about telling them, listen, you're not ready for me.
Saba: You're not ready for coaching. You're not ready for this intervention. If you did a few other pieces in the system first, Your ROI will be immediately much higher. So sometimes it is about kind of telling the client, maybe you need to do other things or do things in conjunction with to maximize this investment.
Saba: But again, it's about recognizing, can you truly fit. what they need. And if you can't, don't try, like, you know, be honest about it, still own it. So don't be like, okay, I can't help you. Good luck, own the sales process, right? I will bring in the right people, make sure you partner appropriately and continue to stay involved in the sales cycle.
Saba: So don't just give it away. But, but recognize that you're really trying to answer their need. And then I [00:40:00] think that that builds you respect and credibility, and then they will come back to you. So I think that's part of it. And then the other thing. you know, which is kind of both our value proposition and our Achilles heel is that we are big on this version of customization, which is like, we are not great at selling things off the shelf.
Saba: Ellie, you know, you, I do, you know, this better than anyone. And so that has been a huge part of, I think what has kept us relevant for clients is that we are constantly adapting our methodology, our approach, and the types of programs we offer because we are learning as we are going into these organizations and growing with them.
Saba: And that's why we have clients who've been with us for like 10, 12 years and remain, you know, very high revenue generating clients. Because we're adapting our offering with the needs of that organization and expanding our capabilities and expanding all that. Now there's a cost to that, [00:41:00] right? And so I'm not going to pretend like there, you know, that is the right solution.
Saba: And I absolutely would not suggest that for everyone. And every business is different, but I think it's about you measuring relevance and like, how do you stay relevant? And that's kind of. Where my whole personal professional development has come from in the last kind of 15 years under this coach umbrella is like, how do I keep investing in myself?
Saba: So I stay relevant to the changing needs of the industry, the environment I'm in and continuing to do what I can to improve the service offering that I'm giving. Cause as, cause 15 years ago, coaching. Was still not completely, you know, non existing, but it was very much an offense if infancy and people didn't really get it.
Saba: Now, most of the time when I'm selling coaching, the person who's buying from me is also a certified coach. So they know very quickly what is nonsense and what is not nonsense and what makes you [00:42:00] qualified and doesn't. And so again, and you know, this, like I'm all about investing in self, investing in your professional development.
Saba: Because now the noise is very clear. Like people can, it's not just enough to have a certain, you know, certification or that. These people who are buying coaching are also coaches themselves. So they know how to figure out really quickly whether you know what you're doing or not. So you have to keep investing in yourself to make sure that you can adapt to the needs of the market.
Saba: Yeah,
Ellie: I think that's, Such a good point and probably leads us nicely into a discussion about what you're doing. So you have a program, the biographical dimensions of leadership using BDMM. Tell us the story of building this program, because I know the backstory a little bit, but I think that that, that would be really interesting for people to hear.
Saba: So the backstory starts with me, right? Which is like, I never fit. I never really understood who I was and probably had really unhealthy. Drivers around my performance, [00:43:00] my behavior. And I think what ended up happening in the first couple of years as I took a lot of really diverse training programs, I started studying a lot more in psychology.
Saba: And then I took a program by the late Paul Brown, who had this program called the science of the art of coaching. And. One of the things that started manifesting for me is I'm like, wow, okay, lots of people feel like I do, like lots of people feel like they don't actually know how to rationalize a lifetime of experience into why I do certain things.
Saba: And then what I was also learning with all of the psychological training that I was getting and there are some amazing programs like, you know, the, the Sydney U program which I know you've taken and many of our colleagues have taken. for having me. Talk about how do we bring psych psychological frameworks into coaching.
Saba: But my view was is that a lot of it was psi. A lot of it was positive psychology. A lot of it was looking at psychological phenomenon in theory and blending it with coaching. [00:44:00] What was not happening is psychotherapeutic approach approaches in coaching, which is actively asking people about the histories and their background.
Saba: Yeah.
Ellie: Well, in fact, in fact, we're taught not to write, we're actively told that basement door lock shut and that's nowhere we go. And, and I mean, I'm like you, I don't think that's helpful. And yeah.
Saba: Yeah. It's like, never go in the past, never go in the past, never go in the past. Right. That's it. Everything is anchored on the present and the future.
Saba: And so. And so I just felt like that was broken. That was so broken. And so I became in the, the only word to describe it as obsessed with this notion. I'm like, why don't we do it? And so then when I took that program with Paul, I was like, Paul, why isn't this in the vernacular and the curriculum? Like, why don't we do it?
Saba: And he was coming from a neuroscience perspective. I was coming from a psychology perspective, but we were both of the belief that this stuff of your history matters. And so the more and more I tried to find different programs that would help me figure out avenues towards it, I really, they just didn't [00:45:00] exist.
Saba: So through Paul's encouragement and the encouragement of my wonderful friends and supporters and people like you, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go figure this out. So that's why I started my doctorate. Never thinking that that was really what I wanted to do. But it was like, to me, this is missing in how we train and develop coaches.
Saba: It's like, how do we work with client histories and figure out what's happening? And then one of the first projects I did before I actually started the official, you know, research end is I did a study with like. 35 coaches, some of the best coaches that I've ever experienced. And also world renowned coaches.
Saba: Like I was emailing people who had wrote in books and in keynote speakers, and they were like, yeah, sure. I'll talk to you. Cause it was for academic research. And they said, why not? And I asked each of them, do you talk about the past in coaching? Every single one of them said, yes. Every single one of them said yes.
Saba: So I'm like, so what is broken here? So we're teaching coaches don't go in the past. And then anyone who's been coaching for more than five minutes knows that you have [00:46:00] the past is in the room, whether you want it to be or not. And nobody anywhere is really training coaches on how to do this. And so then that was what the doctor doctorate was, what is the first empirical coaching based model.
Saba: For exploring the past and coaching. And so that is what this program is. So through a lot of research, through a lot of working with giants who are so much more brilliant and insightful than I am. With working with a bunch of coaches who've been doing this for 20 years. 30 years learning around where they go, what they do, why they look at that, looking at the research in psychology to understand, like, how does this work, looking at the research in neuroscience to understand why would these things be relevant, and then giving the first empirical based model for coaches to understand how do I do this complex work of going into a person's history, ethically, With integrity and with holding the client's needs and [00:47:00] resourcing at the heart of the work that we do.
Saba: And so that's what this program is all about.
Ellie: So give us the practicalities. Like what do you, what do you cover in the program? Because I. I can't think of many coaches who wouldn't want to do this work, right? I think we all have that sense that, that there's something there. Like you said, it's present in the room, whether we want it to be or not.
Ellie: And we want to work with it. And we want to show up for our clients in the way that is most effective. And I I'm with you that if we are ignoring the past, then we can't do that. So tell us a little bit about your
Saba: program. So the program is designed to be kind of multi modular in the sense that I wanted to give theory, but I also really wanted to have time for coaches to use themselves as the subject and do the work on themselves so they could understand how to do this work with others.
Saba: So it is a combination of live online learning and group supervision and individual [00:48:00] supervision. So that's the first thing because it was all about like how do we use ourself as subject and then apply. I think the other things that I do and the, the most fundamental grounding that I give and the easiest way I describe this work is that I, I asked people to think about how old were you when you had your first boss?
Saba: And most people will start at like, oh, 16, if they worked part time jobs or like when they were in adulthood, maybe 22, 23. It's like, no, your parents were your first bosses and your family was the first organization you belong to. This is when our models of leadership started. And we didn't call it leadership, obviously.
Saba: And we don't look at it like that, but that's how we started structuring authority. So now it's like, how do I look at authority and the changing landscape of authority? How do I look at identity and my story? I'm going to be talking about the story of who I am and how I kind of self protect when I'm feeling unsafe.
Saba: What do I do when I feel strong and powerful. So the exploration of identity, the exploration of our context, you and I have really diverse upbringings and really interesting histories. [00:49:00] That are so much a part of why we see the world the way that we do. So it's about helping create a really definable model and framework for people to say, here are the places you want to go and explore and, and why we want to look at those places and how that correlates to the goals that clients come in with.
Saba: Because again, for me, it's like, we are not doing this for therapeutic purposes, right? We are not trying to heal, but we are trying to help people identify how the challenges I'm facing currently as a leader What is the source code of those challenges? How far back do our patterns around why we do what we do go?
Saba: And most of the time it goes all the way back to family of origin.
Ellie: Yeah. No, I love it. And what I love is that, that combination of let me look at myself in order to figure out how I can play with this in my coaching practice. And, and you know, I'm, I'm also looking at it in saying, well, How do those stories impact how I am as a business owner of coaches of a coaching practice?
Ellie: Right? Because so many of those [00:50:00] stories, like I'm, I'm just thinking for myself of some of those stories about what I heard about, you know, women being successful, what examples. a child of women in entrepreneurship and there was none. Right. And so what does it mean for me to be putting myself in that position?
Ellie: And what messages have I, have I retained that I'm not even currently aware of because I reckon there's a few. So there's always more work for us to do in that. I think it's amazing. Absolutely. So, when is your program running?
Saba: So we have a cohort that's starting in April and we have just opened another cohort that is starting in September.
Saba: So I think you will have the relevant links and whatever for people to sign up. And then we're looking at the schedule for next year as well, but we're trying to offer it in different time zones so that we can hit as many different. Modalities and time zones as we possibly can, and again, it is all online, and [00:51:00] so we're trying to make it agnostic of location so that you can be anywhere in the world, and most of our programs will have the last program we had, we had eight different countries represented, which was pretty awesome, and so hopefully people will find it's just a really interesting and rich learning environment.
Ellie: Yeah, brilliant. We will absolutely I'll put that link in the show notes so that anyone who wants to find out more can do that. Other than that how can people find out more about you and what you do?
Saba: Well, certainly you can. So we've got a new website that is going to be launched in a few short weeks.
Saba: So. www.globalosc.com is the website. So please go there right now. There's a temporary holding page, but we will have the full threshold there. We will have all of our programs there. So that's one place. You can go to forbes.com. I've got a lot of articles there that if people are interested in reading some of the perspectives.
Saba: Things, you know, my viewpoints around leadership. I've got about 25 articles there that people can kind of see and just connect with me on LinkedIn too. Like, please, you know, if you, [00:52:00] if anything I'm saying is remotely interesting I love working with coaches. I love supporting coaches. That's why I believe so much in the work you're doing Ellie.
Saba: So like just ping me. And connect with me and I'd love to have a chat.
Ellie: Perfect. Oh yeah. Well, I'll put all of those things in the show notes so that people can get in touch with you. So I think on that basis, I better let you go because I believe you're about to run a speech for international women's day.
Ellie: So I don't want to. Get in the way of women being empowered by your brilliance. So I will let you go and thank you again for being with us. I feel like we're going to have to have a follow up, so that's going to happen at some point, but yeah, thank you very much. And talk to you soon.
Saba: Thank you, LA.
Saba: It's a pleasure to be with you as always.
Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode of the business of executive coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would [00:53:00] be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us.
This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics, and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses, and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found at elliescarf.com . Have a brilliant week, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
