 Hi, I'm George Cowan. I'm really excited today to be with Gary Schleifer. Gary and I go back about ten years something like that. We've known each other for a long time and Gary is amazing. He has he founded a magazine called Choice Magazine and it is the premier magazine for professional coaches and Gary show us Yes, and that's the current issue. The current issue. Yeah, and so if you're a professional coach You probably have heard of Choice Magazine, but you haven't you should definitely check it out. It is articles from expert Experts in the coaching industry to help you become a better coach And I would say just if you are in the transformational field if you're working to help people Transform themselves to become the vision that they want to be to become a better self I think the magazine is relevant So do of course, I'll put the link it's choice dash online.com. Is that right Gary? Correct Yeah, choice dash online.com. I'll put it put a link and they have a Facebook page and etc And Gary is also himself a certified professional coach and he does He's he still works as a coach which is important if you are going to talk about it you got to be doing the work and Gary is certified by the Probably the largest certifying body of coaches in the world which is ICF in the national coach federation and Gary lives in Toronto and Thank you Gary for for joining me today and I'm you know, I'm just here to pick your brain about Anything yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me and thank you too for the acknowledgement that it's one thing to Publish a magazine about it, but I actually started publishing it after I became a coach because there wasn't a magazine So the balance between the my entrepreneurial heart and my coaching heart Said okay, I was challenged to start a magazine and no publishing experience don't tell anybody and I've been doing now you do Now I do yeah over 17 years. So and I use I use a coach approach in publishing and creating and talking to people about choice magazine totally and That's also I think really important to highlight here is 17 years You know and I mean I have seen Not just magazines, but many kinds of businesses come and go within a few years But you have stuck with it and I'm sure there have been hard times You know, uh, it's been tough You know my heart is time and I know a lot of your audience who are Entrepreneurs business people have had partners I am not a partner person. I've tried and failed so Well, there's a reason why I'm a solopreneur as well. Exactly, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so You know and and You know the not having a Ongoing close business partner. It doesn't mean you don't do partnerships. You do a lot of partnerships Yeah, and you also have a team That work who work with you. So You are really like a bona fide solopreneur where you run a successful business Where you do have collaborative and productive relationships with lots of people But not necessarily legally You know, not legally binding To be honest the the whole concept that I work with now is Like almost like a gentleman's handshake. I know that's a you know, an old term not pc days But but before I go on I'd like to acknowledge you george Because you Those many years ago when we first met you introduced me to the concept of joint venture partnerships And I had no idea what that was And through your Learning and it well, I don't even think it was a course then it was just what you did and I had heard about it That represents over a third of my revenue per year now joint venture partnerships I've got it down to a system where I have a joint and you were talking about people working for me I have a an affiliate manager And uh, what they do is they handle all the kind of the back end Communicating with my joint venture partners getting updates getting marketing copy things like that But it's been a and we do Two to three per quarter we promote two to three people per quarter and like I say it's a it's over a third of my revenue So I just want to say thank you. Yeah, because you're the one that Woke me up to that showed me that opportunity. So and I hear now that you're doing Doing a course right now on joint venture. Yes for people to learn From an experienced wise person about all this So tell me about um, what you have I mean, there's so many things you've learned as you've grown A successful business and also your own coaching business, right? But what do you think is something where a lot of people especially Imagine the person who? You know has has a skill to really offer The world whether it's a coaching skill or whether it's a mentoring or healing type of skill And they know that they can really make a difference if people knew about them Maybe some of them are having some issues like well, you know making sure that their offering is well communicated Others are saying okay. I know how to communicate this but now how do how do I get discovered by people? What what's your advice for for for those? Yeah, for those in that space I mean, there's so many things. I mean we talked When we were getting ready to have this call and About i'm doing a free time boot camp course Yes. Yes talk about that. So well, and I don't want to talk too much about that because it's just that's just what i'm doing right now You do courses. I do courses and What I what I what i'm doing is just like what you're doing You're taking your own experience your heartfelt wisdom and so to those people that you're referring to I find that one of the biggest things that helped me is to keep Remembering what it is that not just what i'm good at because i'm good at organizing and I shouldn't be organizing all the time i'm good at teaching people how to do things creating Creating and showing people how to use systems And I think that the number one thing is probably a mindset where you need to keep reminding yourself That your core competency is a healer for example, and you want to deliver So what are those things that are not a core competency that you need to give away? And find somebody part time slowly work into it So that you can spend all your time delivering your Service or your product and you have other people in the background that are doing these other things for you that are They're basically though. They're not just anybody. They're raving fans or people that truly Understand who you are Right and that's kind of the way I've been operating it. I've been operating that way. I'm working at being free of Time free location free and financially free for over two decades Yeah And it I couldn't do it without a team of people not a partner as we discussed but a team of people That helped me and they got my back and they know their stuff better than I do It's like I can hack away and spend like how many hours geeking out on a landing page And somebody else can get it done in like, you know 20 minutes and charge being way less than I my bunny's worth So there's a bunch of stuff in there and I I I hope your audience can filter Yeah What I'm trying to say and see what suits them. Yeah, I love it You know one thing you said earlier you said you love to organize But you have to watch how much time you spend doing it Yeah, I think is really interesting because I know probably a lot of people in my audience also enjoy Organizing or let me say this a lot of people feel Kind of some low-level stress that they're not organized enough And so they feel like okay, therefore I'm not ready to really go Because I'm not as fully organized as I want to be Oh, here's a little secret. You never will be Yes, and I was gonna say the same thing It's like your inbox on the day you leave this planet there will still be emails and junk in your inbox Yeah, yeah, you can't you can't clear your inbox forever Yeah I have a goal that at least if I can keep a below 20 on any given day. I'm a happy camper. Yeah, and that's Some people are like below 2,000, you know, yeah That's where a little bit organizing wouldn't be a bad idea But you can't stop yourself By being a perfectionist or waiting for the right time the right place the right moon And I get there are some of those like there are there are sometimes when I think I should be following that All of that stuff myself like, you know astrology and things like that, but I'm not in tune with that That's not my thing, but no disrespect to the people that do work with that And you got to you got to step on the gas pedal once in a while Okay, you can't be I've been noticing when I'm talking to a lot of people It's like they're playing with the gas and the brake at the same time it's like a little bit of gas but then they get afraid and it's slam on the brake and I'm not saying go full tilt on the gas but put it on cruise control and see what happens and just Take one a friend of my a fellow. I was working with last year Ryan Elias And he said one imperfect action at a time one imperfect step at a time And that's what I do. I'm like I'm launching this course full on the promo period actually started yesterday and it's fall it's Happily falling apart But that's a good thing because then I get to save it and fix and organize and figure out I learn from my mistakes right like and they're not my mistakes But if I didn't try I'd never know if it was working or not And sometimes you can spend all that time like you're saying organizing And it's still not going to work. So Kick start it get it going Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. Um, and yes, you don't know What you don't know Until you get going and realize. Oh, you know, I thought that the system was supposed to go like this but every situation Presents something different for for every personality every person's circumstances You have to just get going and learn so so tell me gary like you you as a as a coach yourself um A lot of questions ask you but I'll just let me start with this one as a coach yourself And what do you find yourself working with your clients a lot on like what's what's one issue that's uh Come up for you recently with clients You know what a primary one that I Keep getting into before the end of a conversation with the client is And how's your personal life? Because when you're when I'm coaching I'm a I'm a business coach so people come to me to be coached on their business and That's great because that's the marketing. I call it the marketing facade. Sorry, no disrespect but People buy what they what they see that applies to them And if I sell myself as a business coach using my 30 plus years of experience in business Running multi-million dollar companies while creating and running them. They were mine I That's what they hired me for so that's like what I call the marketing facade the marketing stuff But behind each one of those is a person and I it's it's funny because I mean just the other day I was coaching a client and I hit them with something on that and they got and He literally nicely swore at me and goes You know all kind of paraphrasing Damn, I hate it when you do that to me when I ask that particular question that gets into the side that They don't want to talk about which is their personal life and I'm not asking for details I'm just saying, you know, I mean I'm thinking of one client in particular married with a child and it's like so How much time are you spending with your daughter? Right, and I always think of that song cat Stevens cats in the cradle with the silver spoon I think that or yeah one of those guys from way back in the 70s And it's like do you want to be on your deathbed saying I wish I'd done more work So that's that's the main thing that comes up for for me. Well for them through me in coaching Yeah, that's that's awesome. Yeah, it's really worth In fact, I was I was talking with with a with a client today and You know, she has a really nice lifestyle right now And she and I said well, um, you know You know You know, how much money do you really need to make from your business to Sustain the lifestyle and it doesn't have to be a lot, you know, and it's like well then I said well Maybe you don't have to give yourself so much pressure To have to do, you know 20 things Let's talk about the one or two things that Will really, you know Sustain your business You know and and allow you to fully enjoy this lifestyle that you have It's like right. It's like, you don't you don't not everybody has to do everything I do Or everything you do, right? Yeah Well, and that's the thing when you're working with clients It's not what is what works for you works for them You know when I talk about being organized doing organized means different things to different people Being organized might be somebody who's to has don't get me wrong I have 11,000 emails sorted somewhere in my system, but they're not ones I have to act on they've been replied filtered and they're there if I need to look them up, right? That's fine. And but ever everybody runs differently my version of of freedom Is I love doing what I'm doing. I love being here with you Um, I love connecting with people going to conferences. I'm a I exhibit a lot for choice magazine And I just I can't see not doing this. I'm you know creating this course A friend of mine a coaching friend of mine kicked my butt and said you need to get and I've known her for over 15 years She and I started our respective business coach Affiliate business. She's coaching toys. It's Marcy Nelson Garrison and then there's me with choice and we started in the same year So we're both now 17 years old in that business And she said to me you got to get you got to speak your voice. You got to get you got to Let people know what you're up to you're a systems guy You got to share that with people and so finally this year I Whatever got up on started to work on building a course And now I'm talking to somebody you who's an expert in doing it and uh, and I'm I'm I'm just honored to be interviewed No, I I love it. So the other thing I want to ask you is um choice magazine. So um There's an issue. What's the how often do it in new issues come out choice the magazine of professional coaching comes out quarterly. Yes, and And what what what kinds of topics are our covered? Like yeah, well, we have We have uh, we cover like we have a news section where we cover what's been going on where people are gathering around the world as coaches So, you know post coaching conferences and leadership conferences and things like that We also have one of the favorite columns is coaching tools And I've chosen to be the co-writer of that starting in the next issue And I'll be featuring electronic gizmos that make your life easier And that's making giving you some free times you can have more me time And marci does more physical things like games cards things that You know, you would put into a space when you're having a group Or you're working with a client one on one and you you know, you pull a card and describe what that image is and Become something a conversation piece when your client's stuck and then there's coaching games and assessments and things like that and another favorite We have a feature section. So for example, this one here is how coaching impacts all areas of life and we have You know a mom coach Um, you know just different aspects of where coaching shows up in the world the ripple effect Oh, and just as a historical aside So that was the cover this part here was the cover of our very first issue And so we expanded on it and just kind of you know It's just a little thing, you know, but we spend a lot of time thinking about design and that and it comes out in print Or digital so you can have it either way But um, it it's really Taking a look at what's up and coming in the coaching world Um, we have columns also about what's the impact the art of coaching. So how people are Using coaching in different ways Um, sometimes you have stuff that's really leading edge like we had a one about a hospital coaching in health care Issue last year that was promoted was supported by a friend of mine. She was one She's in that industry big time as a company that just deals not with only with health care coaching Which I think is kind of cool. So yeah, there's lots of great articles in there sticky situations There's another favorite where we're presented with a problem and a panel of experts I call them Which is their mccs and much which it means master certified coach so bigger and better than me I guess and uh, they espouse their wisdom on how they would handle a particular client situation And I think that those are really interesting to see how There's more than one way to coach a client and help a client Hmm. That's amazing. Yeah, and uh, so To to get the magazine people go to choice-online.com and there's a box that says subscribe Or just do forward slash catalog and you'll get all the options with the prices Um, if you want a free issue, you just go to our homepage and get a digital issue by providing us with your name and email and agreeing to uh, Usual marketing and yeah, we tell you about people like george who we're working with um, and we work with george and And also upcoming issues and just events that are going on around the world Yeah, and that's what I think that's one of the actually value ads of being part of the choice magazine community is That you guys are you guys are well resourced and well connected in in the coaching transformational space So you are introducing new resources to people on a regular basis and that's that's great And a little uh side we just uh updated our website this year and you can now The our content is searchable. So if you go under the issue library, you can look at, um, Sorry, you can key in a word like, uh transformational And you'll get all the articles and or issues that have an article about or mention about Transformation and then you can decide whether that's something you want You can click on the table of contents to read what the articles are of that issue So there's a number of changes that just make it easier if you're doing research or you just you know Want a good read. There is choice magazine. Awesome. Awesome. And um, and I want to let your audience know if they decide to do this. Um, if they want Maybe they want a discount. Is that all right to mention? That would be fine Yes, that would be great. So if you use the coupon code friends of choice all run together caps lowercase Doesn't matter and click apply at the checkout. It'll take five dollars off your order. Cool. Great friends of choice. Yeah Magazine subscription. It's not expensive. It's 39 95 us a year and five dollars off is you know for the first year Yeah, that's great. All right a little gift to you to friends of choice like you nice Yeah, and to stay on the kind of the leading edge of of the coaching world I think it's uh, it's very good very good deal. And I want to lead on to something else. George Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I know that you're also big on content and on writing. Yes It is so easy to write for choice and you don't have to be a coach Oh, great. All the instructions are on the website. It's three steps No choice magazine and how the articles are presented or written And uh, what our audience expects number two Write the article From your heart using your head. So don't worry about the feature We look for feature and non-feature articles and then finally it's the logistics. You submit it in a word doc I mean, it's really tough, you know, so I don't know what other publications do but we just make it super easy and There's about a 97.5 32 chance. I made that up Of being published in an international magazine and when you are published We send you a pdf of your article and we want you to market the heck out of it Like it's a marketing tool and a lot of people don't realize that and the ones that do I love it because I see them on linkedin. I see the article on their facebook page And they're mentioning me. So same thing You can send it off to your friends and say, hey, look what george wrote and you know And it just it's that organic Heartfelt way of promoting and supporting each other. This is really cool. So essentially Yeah, you're making it very Easy for people to submit articles to be like a guest guest blogger Essentially kind of like that except it's also in the print edition And it's yeah, and it builds credibility for the writer and it also of course spreads the word about choice So that's kind of a win-win. I really like that. So this is great So I hope those who are watching will consider, you know, if you love to write and Yeah, you might consider and and in terms of the In terms of the copyright or The exclusive status of that tell us about that that part. Well, so okay, you hit on two words One of them first of all is when you write for choice. We want it to be a first run article comes right, okay? That makes sense. Oh, well, you'd be surprised how many people want to take a chapter from their book and Do uh, whatever. No, that's not us. You can do that afterwards And publish it somewhere else. Sure. And um, what we do once you submit, we'll send you an agreement And a writer's agreement has some details about how you want to be presented in the magazine and the contribute section logistics again And we'll request a photo and the agreement is a very basic one that says, you know You're giving us permission to use the article as we see fit And we're giving you permission to use the article as you see fit So again, it's a win-win and why that works is recently. Well over 17 years, but more so recently for some reason I've been asked by schools and course leaders If they can use an article from choice And because we have the writer's agreement and by the way, we won't publish unless we receive that signed agreement Um, we uh, we have full autonomy to send them that article now I know I don't have to but I always go back to the writer and say hey so-and-so. I'd like to use your uh, Your article in this in their course. Is that okay? And the last person that was somebody who I've only met this year and she's like gary. Don't worry. I trust you Go for it Right. So yeah, it's it's kind of sweet it's I call it free marketing and anybody that doesn't If they're writing if they don't think of doing that sort of thing, especially with someone like us who Maintains a good level of trust and integrity. Yeah, and you guys have how many uh, how many readers? Oh over 3 000 readers. Yeah, we have over 16 000 people on our database and we're um, Also sharing the content of articles ourselves on linkedin using link publisher Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and the cool thing about these 3 000 readers is that They are well, many of them are coaches or leaders of some kind and you know I would say kind of referral sources for for other providers. So it's kind of a cool audience to reach Yeah, yeah, we all have so many, um things going on, you know, we're speakers We're a course Leaders or coaches and nobody does just one thing anymore. So yes that whole circle of influences is Very relevant in the in the industry and the people that I work with Awesome. Awesome. Great. I will be sure to put the Special link actually to to write for choice in the notes of the video as well. Um, anything else gary You want to share before we close this interview? I again, I want to say thank you for being you. You really set me on a pace With joint venture partnerships. That was like a blessing from him and you are my best joint venture partner You know, so thank you. It was it was a win-win for sure. Exactly. Yeah, we did great And uh, and I just want to let people know that if they're interested in choice again, it's choice-online.com forward slash catalog use the coupon code friends of choice all run together for five dollars off And also if you're interested in my free time bootcamp, I'll uh, george will be Providing a link. I'm doing a webinar Next week and the course starts in uh, october runs for six weeks And if you want to create more free time so you can have more me time and that freedom like your client is experiencing I know it sounds a little odd to take a course about how to take free time But it works and I've got some some students have taken the course that are uh, great testimonials to that So awesome, and it's really about systems putting the systems in your business, right? Well, it's not just that It's about systems. It's also about mindset because it's one thing to say you want more free time But what are you gonna do with it? So we have one of the week uh, week modules Is just about Visualizing what it is you're gonna do with your free time And that's very powerful because if you don't have the destination in mind You can't can get lost along the path you get to a fork in the road and where do you go? Well, if you've already set the destination, it's easy. It's like a gps, right? Oh, let me add that to my program. It's like It's like a gps free. It is. I'm gonna call that module gps. There we go. There we go. Awesome Cool. Thanks again, George. Yeah, thanks Gary for doing the interview