 Today, I'm with Eric Ben-Sousson, and I'm excited to talk with him about his new training academy for coaches and specifically what kinds of things that he's been training coaches to do. So, Eric, great to have you here. I'm great to be with you. Thank you for having me. Totally. So, I'll just kind of share your quick bio and then we'll get into the conversation. So, Eric is a certified transformational relationship coach and his first passion is to understand relationships and the mind from a psychological, emotional, spiritual, and scientific point of view. He supports individuals and couples who are experiencing emotional challenges. And his additional passion is in coaching and he's trained thousands of coaches for different companies and he's just launched his own training, which is the coaching with Passion Academy. So, you know, we can talk, there's so much we can talk about, but given that you're just launching your coaching with Passion Academy, I'm really curious, what's one of the concepts that you find that the students are really benefiting from? Just give us a taste of kind of what's in there. That's a great question. You know, George, you know me a little bit, so I'm really passionate about coaching. I'm really passionate about making a transformation in people, right? And I think a lot of people, especially those days, right? With the period that we are in this uncertain time, they want to also make a contribution. They want to transform people's lives. But, you know, if I remember myself 12 years ago when I started in this coaching business, there was this little voice telling me, hey, who do you think you are, Eric, to do that, right? But I'm so glad that I didn't hear that voice. I'm so glad that I still went to that coaching industries, right? So the thing that I'm helping people with the most is to awaken that passion, really awaken that passion for helping others and making a difference. Now, of course, we all know and you know that this is not enough, right? We can have a passion. We want to help people. But there is the downside and what I see about a lot of coaches in the world is they get their certification and after the certification, they are left high and dry. They don't know what to do. They don't know how to market themselves. You know very well the thing. So in my coaching training, I really combine the skills of teaching people how to transform people's life and how to be effective in a coaching conversation. But that being said, I also bring the practice and I also bring the authentic marketing that mostly learns from you, George. So it's been it's an ongoing program with the support because what I what I notice is most of the program that there are wonderful programs out there, right? Wonderful. But the thing is, after the certification, they leave the students completely by themselves. They have no support. And those people, they just they never learn how to do marketing. I never learn how to do marketing. I mean, I'm good with sales. I'm good with people, but I had to to to come across all the the authentic strategies that don't feel, you know, that you stay in your truth, that you can still market yourself, but still be able not to manipulate people to buy your services. So one of the great things that I love about what I'm doing right now is I combine the skills of a coach and a trainer. So I've been in their shoes before, right? So I know what it is to wait for the client to come. I know what it is. So it's a very strong foundation about having a coaching conversation. And I use a lot of NLP in that. And, you know, it's years of experimenting about training many people around the world. Plus, I add the the practice site. So every week we practice all together and I mentor them. And then I'm going to teach them and I'm going to have monthly complimentary workshop and weekly live with me to teach them how to be effective at marketing themselves and getting some clients. So, yeah, let's let's talk about this. So the maybe you could share what, yeah, because there are some new coaches or some aspiring coaches who are watching this. So give us a give us a taste of what that framework is for how a coach gets clients. Yes, you know, there's always one thing that I tell people if you want people to hire you, they will hire you mostly for two things. One is they need to trust you. So you need to build a relationship with those people and you need to build trust, right? That's why when we have a referral, for example, the trust is already there. Someone else has said, hey, you can trust this guy or you can trust this coach or you can trust this woman, go for it. So then we don't have to build the relationship, right? The second part where people will hire you is if you know that you're an expert in your field and that you can help them solve a problem that they cannot solve on their own. I think for me, that's the combination. And that's what I notice in my own private practice, right? If people trust me and if they can see that I can help them and solve a specific problem or many problems that they can't on their own, they will hire me. I mean, 90% of the time, that's what it is. So everything is about that is about first building relationship. And when people don't know you, how do they get a sense of who you are? How do they get a sense of what is your voice? What is your point of view, right? So it's slowly, slowly building. So I think one of the things is what coaches think that after the certification, they're going to have client like falling from the trees. No, it's never going to happen. You have to do something about it. And I learned that the hard way, right? And so you need to get in front of your audience or maybe your potential audience and then you need to tell them, hey, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm about. Here's my point of view. Here's my voice. Here's what you can get. So for me, it's really about coaching people, really. Give them a test. Give them 100% value, massive value. And at some point, they will hire you. And it doesn't matter if they hire you now or if they hire you in five years. But at least you're building and whatever seats you plan to those people, you never know. You never know with one video, with one article, with one quote, how you can make a transformation or how you can make an inspired someone. And then they start to follow you and they start, you know, and you know about that, having raving fans, people who love who you are. And some people will love you and some people will hate you. Doesn't matter, right? Yeah, that's what it is. That's true. I mean, you know, in fact, if you are doing a good job of being authentic, you will be turning, you're supposed to be turning some people off because it's not the right match. But some people, if you're authentic, oh my gosh, it's just the right match. So, OK, and so you talked about kind of building trust, being in front of your audience, sharing your voice, sharing your point of view. And then you also talked about how you need to make sure people feel like you could solve a problem of theirs. How do you help people to see that? Like, how do you? Yeah, you know, there is one thing that I notice is a lot for many years. A lot of people know what I do. They know that I'm a relationship call right, right, right? But they have no idea specifically about what I do. They have no idea who do I coach and what do I help people with? They have no idea about that. And very naively, I saw that they knew, right? So when you get content, authentic content about what, how you help people out there, then people start to say, oh, I didn't know, Eric, that you were doing that. Oh, you solving the problem about confidence. Oh, I can use your help with that. Oh, you help people with break up. Oh, so you know, it's so it's about experimenting and putting out there. How you can help people. So you create your content in a way that shows people what you can do for them. And I think a lot of coaches for for forget that piece of work that we have to do. And slowly, slowly, sometimes people follow me. They are friends or, you know, people that I know and they follow me for so long. And then suddenly I will post something and then suddenly they will reach out and send a message and say, well, I didn't know you were doing that. So I remember one thing that I learned from you, George, is about experimenting, but also putting out there some content, but also some offer. I remember when I started, I didn't have any offer. I thought that I could be just a good coach and that I would coach anyone, right? But by bringing offer to offer to offer to offer. So then people get us and oh, he's talking about boundaries. Oh, he's talking about communication. Oh, he's talking about divorce. Oh, he's talking about that. Oh, he's talking about parenting, right? Some people don't know that I'm talking about parenting. Sometimes I talk about mindset. So it's really about giving a taste slowly, slowly to people so that they get used to your content and to what you're about. And then at some point there will be a click and say, wow, okay, maybe this guy or maybe this coach can help me with something. How about I reach out? Yeah, yeah. And this is great. So I want to talk a little bit about backing up, you know, you, well, so who is the ideal student for the academy? Is it somebody who is thinking, obviously somebody who's thinking about coaching would like to become a coach. What if somebody is already trained? Can they still take the academy? What's your thought? Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking that question. Actually, I have very different kind of students. I have the students who don't know anything about coaching, but they love helping people. Yeah. And they say, yeah, okay. Maybe this is from me. I want to try. I want to make a difference in the world. How can I help people? That's so that's the first one. But in this category, a lot of them, it took them years or months to get to the point to allow themselves to say out loud, yes, this is what I want to do. And if I remember myself when I started thinking about becoming a coach 12 years ago, it took me probably, I'm fast, right? I'm a risk taker, but it probably took me three to six months to really allow myself to say, yes, you can do that, right? So there are a lot of people, they're thinking about it, but they make a lot of excuses, right? I need a job, I need to pay my bills, I need that, I need that, so they don't focus on that. So that's the first pool of students. The other pool of students is people who have been coaches for a while, but they haven't been successful. And when I say successful, it's relative. What is successful, one, what is successful? But they don't have consistent clients. So they feel completely hopeless. And at some point they gave up on that. Or they have one client here, one client there. So they give up. So the training is a refresher about all the strategies about how to be in a conversation, but then we'll teach them something very consistent and a structure so that they can help build or rebuild their coaching practice. And I also have a lot of counselors and psychologists, actually, I was very surprised to see that because those people, they wanna add coaching as another modality, they wanna combine the coaching modality. First, because a lot of people, when you are a counselor, when you are a psychologist, you need a licensed state, you need a specialized training, it becomes very complicated those days to do something. So coaching is a way you don't need a license to be a coach. Everyone say it can be a coach, but those people, they wanna have the integrity of delivering values to those people, but not all the hassle of the license and everything. And one thing that I tell you that I experienced myself from the age of probably 20 years old that I'm 52, right? I've tried everything, I'm a seeker, right? So I've tried every monolithies. I've been in counseling, I've been in therapy, I've been in treatment. Though all those monolithies gave me a great sense of who I am and what I can do in the world, nothing helped me like coaching. And I think those people come to realize that there are many, many, there are millions of people out there who wants to change their life, but they don't wanna go in the past. They don't wanna dig about, they don't wanna spend six years in therapy to try to solve their problem. They want tools and they want effective strategies to live their life right now and to improve their life right now. And I think also because there is a booming right now with what's happening with the COVID and all the situation in the world, people started to realize, hey, I need to change my life. And maybe it's not because I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, right? So they are the point in their life that they wanna do something now. And they wanna do, but they just don't know how to do. So they need a little bit of guidance and a little bit of help so that they can focus their attention and intention on what's so meaningful for them. Yeah, this is really, it's really good to define coaching actually. A lot of people have heard that term coach, obviously. Everyone, I use the term coach. I don't think I'm really a coach, but authentic business mentor. Some people say, George, no, you're not a coach. You're a mentor. You'd like give people this, I'm like, okay, but authentic business mentor. ABM is not as nice sounding as ABC, authentic business coach. So I kinda have kept, long time ago I started working with coaches. I call myself a coach because I didn't really know what that means. So you're defining it now and I really like it. So we've all heard of therapy, psychotherapy, counseling. So tell us again, what is the main difference between coaching and other modalities? Of course, there's many other modalities, but let's just say psychotherapy. What's the difference? Well, coaching, you don't dig into the past, right? You don't have to. I mean, if you are skilled with doing that, for example, I do some inner child work in my coaching relationship, coaching practice because, but I learn I'm skilled with that, right? But coaching is really about empowering people to start doing what they have made excuses not to do. So it's really about taking, what is your present situation? I don't really need to know how you came to that situation. But what I wanna know is now that you are stuck or you are challenged or you have something that is dissatisfying in your life. What could be meaningful and important to you right now? So we refocus people on recreating a vision aligned with their values. And once we're there, okay, what are the solutions and what are the next steps that you're gonna do and what are you gonna be, in order to move towards your goals, your desires, your dreams. So that's what's it about. So we don't give any advices. We help people uncover the resources that they already have within ourselves. And we all have resources that, when we don't know that we don't know, right? So we only function like 5% consciously. So there is a full potential within ourselves which we don't know that it's there. And we have to transcend our reality, we have to transcend our challenges to suddenly feel, oh my God, I may be courageous enough to take a leap of faith. I may be courageous to do that. Finally, oh, I have this leadership within myself. I never knew that I had that because people have so many limitation. So it's about getting out of the way what is holding them back and limiting them and say, okay, what do I do now? So it's taking massive action, massive experimenting until they find what works really well. But I think one way to describe very quickly coaching is for me, it's an alignment process. Who you are, what is your vision? What do you want to be? Why is that important for you? And then what do you need to have? What do you need to be? And what do you need to do in order to get what you want? So it's really an alignment process. And when you're aligned, we all have experienced sometimes in our life we want something and it comes easily. Why? It's because we are totally aligned. The timing is aligned, our vision is aligned, our identity, how we show up in the world is aligned with what we want. And most of the time, let's say that we are misaligned. But people take things personally. So they start to feel, oh my God, I'm not good enough, I am not blah, blah, blah, you know, all those core belief that we can have, I don't belong, I am not appreciated, I'm a failure, all those things, right? And when you get out of the way of all those limitation, then people start to feel relief and then start to see a realm of possibilities. And for me, that's what coaching is about, is inviting people to create possibilities and open up self-reflection in a way that they haven't been able to do before. I really like that. Self-reflection in a way they haven't done just by themselves, otherwise if they had reflected enough and understood their vision and their values, and the next steps that align with them, they would have done it already, right? And so- No, exactly. And so I really like this. So yeah, I mean, obviously you have a passion for coaching. I mean, this is why you're very qualified to be training people and coaching people on how to do this. So this is an important distinction that I want to just reiterate. A coach is not somebody who has all the answers, who says, oh, I know exactly, you know, the right, I have a PhD in relationships and I know exactly all the theories and no, a coach is somebody who is skilled at helping the client uncover the answers that they already know, right? And, or the resources, like you said, the inner resources, the inner strength. And I think it's so powerful because when we are able to unlock the answers and the strength within ourselves, it is much more of a sustainable process of change instead of relying on somebody to say, well, you give me everything because I don't know anything. You give me everything. But yeah, say more about that. Like, that's the promise of coaching, isn't it? Yeah, no, that's exactly it. What it is is most of the time people in their life, because we are in a society where we thrive to do things, we're in the rut, we don't have time. We feel we have no control. And we have, we probably have no control about everything, but that's okay to have no control, right? And most of the time when we get stuck in a situation, we feel powerless. And if you feel powerless, you attract more things that makes you think that you're powerless. So the thing is helping people to whatever situation they are in to stay in their personal power. So staying in my personal power is about, instead of reacting to a situation, instead of make it mean something about myself, I just become an observer about what's going on into my life. I don't make it mean anything. And I know that I have those core beliefs, so I just have to shut them down for a while and say, okay, who would I be without all those limitation? And what can I do now to improve my life? So it's really about staying in your power. So one of the things that I love doing with my students is I love them to be aligned, not only aligned, but to be in a big state of mind. Because in order to change your life, you need to change your physiology, right? That's what it is. So when you completely align and you're in a big state of mind with alignment with what you want, everything is easy and effortless. That's what it is. And you know that, George. You know, when you decided to move from your old career to say, hey, I'm gonna do like something more authentic, everything was aligned for you in that moment. And then you built a wonderful practice because everything was aligned. So of course, it took you a lot of work to get clients to get to know you, but it would have probably come whether it's one year, two years or three years because you completely aligned your authentic, you know what you're about, you know what's important for you, you know who you are, you know who you're becoming through this process. So then people come to you. And that's one of the things that is also really important is there's another piece that I teach in my training. So there is the marketing, there is the strategy, there is everything. But there is also something that I learn from the Surrender experiment from Michael Singer, right? Is being able to leave your life from a place of possibility and whatever comes your way, let's see it as a blessing. Even if sometimes it's not a blessing, right? You don't see it that way. But what if you can say, okay, let's deal with that? Oh, okay, I have an opportunity, let's take that opportunity and let's see where it leads me. So instead of trying to control everything and the human mind wants to control everything, it's saying, hey, I'm totally going to surrender and whatever comes to me, I will welcome that and see where it leads me. And I have to tell you something, George. Few years ago, I wanted to give up coaching. I remember I was in France visiting my parents and I said, you know, I was not consistent at getting clients. And I remember the moment where I told myself, you know what, Eric, maybe this is not for you. Maybe there is something else for you. And that's okay. You really have to let it go. And that was just a thought that I had. Believe me or not, the next week after that, that I have no, that don't want to control anything, the suddenly the emails came and the phone came. This year, it was probably my best year as a coach. I had so many clients coming to me. So once I suddenly say, hey, I'm not going to control anything, but I'm going to let the universe or whatever, the higher priority or your creative side to help me co-create what I'm about. Then I was aligned again and then my business took off. I so love what you're saying. I really do. I feel like you should share this message more everywhere you go. First of all, I love that book, This Render Experiment by Michael Singer. It's also one of my favorites. But I also have experienced what you're talking about. It's such an interesting paradox of reality is that when we let go of the attachment to the result and we simply align with our authentic service, something weird happens, something strange happens. It's, you can't necessarily plan exactly how that happens, but it happens. It's like some weird vibrational change. So I'm really grateful that your students and your clients get to experience your energy and your training to help them to kind of make that shift themselves. So let's kind of end by talking about, well, I have actually a quick question I wanna ask you. When your students graduate from the coaching with Passion Academy, their title, is it Life Coach? What is the title that? Yeah, it's a Life Coach certification, but we all know that Life Coach means nothing for everyone, right? If you tell people I'm a Life Coach, they may look at you and say, I have no idea what is a Life Coach. So those Life Coach will become an expert in their field. They will choose to be either a relationship coach, a business coach, a career coach, right? Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm gonna help them find what would be the best for them, right? So for me, when I started my coaching practice, I always knew that I wanted to be a relationship coach. But when I started, when I was still in France, because I was in the business and the corporate world, in order to stop not from scratch, I was a business coach and I was a sales coach. So I started my career like that to take off, to get some practice, to get confident with myself, and then it was easier for me than to start from scratch. And then when I felt, okay, I'm done with working with business coaching and everything, because this is not where my passion really lies. I really wanna do relationship coaching. Then I made the shift. So some people, if you work all your whole life in career change or maybe in HR, maybe you have an expertise in that. So maybe you only use that expertise to start to build your career around that and see how it goes. That doesn't mean that along the way, you're not gonna change your niche, or you're not gonna change who you are as a coach. And I know so many coaches have changed. Totally. Yeah, this is a really important message. The niche and identity thing can evolve and will evolve, because if we evolve, but I also like that you're saying that coaching can be added on top of your life experience. Your career experience, what experience that makes you unique to another person on the street. You have so much of that. And so anyway, I wanna make sure people know, so what is the next step? Someone is watching this, hearing this and say, I'd like to work with Eric. I want him to train me in terms of coaching, but also in terms of being able to succeed in my coaching business, what's the next step? Yeah, well, go visit my website, which is coaching www.coachingwithpassionacademy.com or send me an email, which is info at coachingwithpassionacademy.com. And then we will be in touch and we will talk what is the next step. So I don't know when this video will be live, right? But I have tomorrow I start a new training, but I start training every two months. Okay, okay, so whenever you're watching this, there will be an upcoming training. And so just reach out to Eric and make sure you find out the details. Yeah, and actually I'm thinking about doing something, experimenting something a little bit different, which could help some people. Let's say you don't wanna be retrained as a coach, right? You can take the training, admit of the training as a membership and do the business part. Okay. And the practice part with other students because I think it's also very important to connect with having a network with other coaches because this is a work that we do that we are all day by ourselves. So I think it's important to build the network. So I'm putting also that into place and probably by the time this video will be live, I will have this membership so people can jump in just for the three months part about the authentic. Yeah, building a business. Marketing, exactly. Yeah, yeah, totally, great. Eric, always a pleasure to connect with you. It's always great to be in your presence and your energy and your passion. It is just by who you are. You, I think you make the people around you better. So thank you, thank you for who you are. Thank you very much, thank you. And yeah, so folks, go and take a look at Eric's website. Of course, all the links are below and any questions you can always comment below. I'll make sure Eric sees it. And thanks again, Eric, for your great work. Thank you, thank you, Charles.