Activating your true potential: A conversation with Heroic’s CEO

In this episode of Your Life Simplified, hosts Whitney and Dan sit down with Michael Balchan, CEO and head coach of Heroic, to explore how coaching can help us activate our truest potential. Michael shares his fascinating journey from derivatives trader in Chicago to professional coach, and explains the three pillars of a good life: energy, work and love.

The conversation covers the power of peer accountability and mastermind groups, how ancient wisdom and modern science can guide personal growth, and why the future of financial advising looks more like coaching. Michael also discusses overcoming challenges through meaning, hope and anti-fragility, and shares his thoughts on AI’s role in reshaping how we work and live.

Whether you’re a financial advisor, a leader or someone looking to close the gap between who you are and who you’re capable of being, this episode offers practical frameworks for showing up as your best self.

Transcript

Daniel Sharkey: On today’s show we have an extra special guest talking about how we can activate our truest potential.

Whitney Reagan: Welcome, welcome. We’re back with another episode of Your Life Simplified, and I’m super jazzed about today’s episode. It’s not just the dynamic duo of Dan and myself; it’s the dynamic trio today. We’re joined by a very special guest. His name is Michael Balchan. He is the CEO and head coach of Heroic. And I’m really thrilled because, today I think the topic is so valuable and so important, and it’s more about growth and coaching.

And what is so exciting about this is we’ve been talking a lot about the future of advising and how I think it’s changing to more of a coaching role. And so, I just really am so excited to get into the weeds of what coaching really is and more from Michael.

So, with all of that preamble, I wanted to welcome you, Michael. Thanks for joining us. How are you today?

Michael Balchan: I am feeling great. It is an honor to be here, Whitney and Dan. I know you guys have done so much and just looking forward to connecting, to sharing some insights, talking a little bit about how coaching can help us as individuals. And then I just got back from a Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, and one of the things was talking about with one of the participants there who’s in wealth management and also in coaching, is that we have lots of different kinds of wealth.

Right? And there’s the financial capital we want to grow. And there’s also our energy and how we’re showing up in our relationship. But how do we grow wealth in general and just live more abundant lives on a day-to-day basis? So, I’m really looking forward to it.

Whitney: I love it. Is there anything you want to touch on before we jump in, Dan?

Daniel: No, we’ve been looking forward to this for a long time and we’re going to get into the details.

We’re also both coaches through Heroic. So, it’s something that we’ve lived personally, and I’m just really excited to share with everyone through Michael’s perspective, and the benefits that it can provide.

Whitney: I really want to just start with, Michael, we’ve been talking about Heroic, so I feel like we should probably explain what that is.

And then we can dig a little bit into your background, because I feel like you have such a fascinating background in how you got to where you are.

Michael: Yeah. And in many ways, you know, Dan, your story is also my story. And it’s been so impactful for me. So, I’ll get to the personal background, but Heroic, we are a continuous learning and personal development platform.

We’ve got content, we’ve got coach training, we’ve got certification programs, we’ve got a lot of things that we offer. But it comes down to, can we help you show up and be a little bit better in your energy, in your work and in your love? Not with new frameworks, but with the best ideas from books—I’ve got a lot of books back there on the desk.

Dan, I know you’ve got books. Whitney’s got some books in the back, but I haven’t read them all because who has time to read all the books? And yet we know how important continuous learning is. So, we make it easy. We make it simplified. Almost all the content has been produced by either Brian Johnson or in collaboration with me for some of our training programs.

But he’s read thousands of books, distilled 800 of them down into what we call philosophers notes. We’ve got on leadership and productivity and habits and conquering depression and conquering anxiety and peak performance and mental toughness and stoicism and positive psychology.

So, these domains that if we want to live well and perform well, let’s just do what people have been recommending they do for thousands of years. And let’s learn those things. Let’s apply those things. And so that platform really exists to help individual people show up more fully. I’ve got a tattoo—areté.

A lot of folks in the community have the tattoo. It’s a title of the book, the first book from Brian, but it means to express the best version of yourself, moment to moment to moment. And we talk a lot about this gap. There is a version of yourself that’s showing up fully, right? Loving, connected, energized, productive, all those things.

And most of us are not living up to that potential most of the time. So there’s a gap between who are capable being and who are actually being. And we want to help you close that gap a little bit. It’s never going to be completely closed, ever. And it’s a really important point because we are never going to get there.

And if you’re like, okay, we’re good. And advisors probably know when they’re doing wealth planning, is people will set a goal that sounds exciting. And then you get to the goal and they’re not like, okay, we’re good. It’s like, okay, what’s the next goal? The goal is always moving. There’s always going to be more.

And we just try and give people the tools, their frameworks, their practices to continue to make progress, continue to show up a little bit better. Day in and day out.

Whitney: I mentioned that your background, I find, is fascinating, but it’s also very relatable because you have this finance to coaching evolution.

Michael: Yeah.

Whitney: And you started out as a derivatives trader in Chicago, right?

Michael: Yep.

Whitney: Let’s unpack that a little bit, kind of give us your backstory and how you found your way to coaching.

Michael: Yeah. So, Harvard undergrad degree in economics and psychology and went out of school into derivatives trading. Started in the metals, well I started clerking in the S&P pit, which was wild for a kid who grew up in small town Ohio, to see, the exchanges and lots of yelling and energy like, wow, this is where the sausage gets made.

And then be like, oh my gosh, what’s going on here?

Whitney: I think that’d be really intimidating.

Michael: Oh, yeah, but it was so beautiful and fun to see. And then I started trading metals and eventually into energies. But I spent almost a better part of a decade as a trader. And pretty early on in that I realized if I’m going to excel in this industry, I’ve got a lot to learn both about how to perform in general—what do the facets of performance look like, not just in the markets, but in general?

I’ve got to get much better at managing my stress and my physical energy. It is a high work, high play environment. And there’s a lot of stress that you’re carrying and you’re watching the performance of different kind of things.

And I wanted a resource and guidance to help me actually do those things and not carry it home, not carry the stress home and project it or throw it on to my girlfriend at the time, wife now.

Whitney: There’s probably a lot of competition too, right? In this role as a trader. And your comp is tied to your activity and all those types of things that make it super high, intense and stressful.

Michael: Yeah. And an identity. Who I was, was very strongly influenced by my performance of the portfolio, of the trades of the day, or of a series of weeks and months, and how I stacked up to others in the office. Right? And there’s a degree of me as a human being, that being a core driver of it.

So, the competitiveness, the performance was absolutely part of it. And then, I found these philosophers notes and I thought if I want to perform well, it’s going to take years, decades to learn all the things that helped me show up. And here’s this teacher who’s put together this framework for helping me learn all of that in less time.

And I started reading it, learning it, living it. I actually bought a whole bunch of them at first and didn’t read them until I asked some buddies who I knew were in similar types of positions—different industries, but young leaders, young professionals—and I said, hey, I found this thing.

I want it to help me get better. Would you be open to creating a small mastermind where we read a couple of notes a week? We sent a text message to say, this is what I got.

This is how I’m going to actually try to apply it, and then consumed every single note in the library. And use that to just show up a little bit better at work, in relationship with my energy, started installing a lot of healthy habits.

And eventually people are like, dude, what are you doing? You’re dialed in, you’re showing up, you’re crushing in the office. Your energy is great. You’re always happy. What are you doing? And I’m like, it’s, you know, these frameworks are amazing.

Whitney: You had this think tank. You basically created your own little think tank of people.

Michael: Yeah, the power of relationship.

I’ve looked at a lot of places. I’ve trained in a lot of different domains, studied a lot of stuff. We’ve got something that’s amazing and yet it can sit there unused without relationship, but you just get one other person or two other people who are who are in it together. And look, Whitney, if I’m like, hey, let’s see who can read X number of philosopher’s notes on her own.

It’s like, okay, cool enough for like, hey, listen, I’m going to do it and I’m going to need you to hold me accountable to it, and I’m gonna hold you accountable to it too. You show up a little bit different. It’s like, hey, listen, you’re talking to a client and they’re struggling with XYZ, ABC.

There’s a book out there that’s got ideas for how to approach that. And so, to create that combination of content and training with relationship. We like to say wisdom can transform you from the inside out. You read a good idea, you apply it. That’s inside out transformation.

But community can transform you from the outside in. And it may be the fastest way to grow is that little thought pod, that mastermind, that small group, that’s the thing that took this from being great in theory to absolutely transformative.

Whitney: And how’d you quit your trading job to. How did that happen?

Michael: Two facets. I had no idea that coaching was a profession. And I was like just built for it. Love it. And also, I knew that there were coaches, and I was also like, I don’t need a coach. I’m learning and growing so much from these philosophers notes, from the peer group. I’m like, why would I want a coach? That’s ridiculous. And there was an ego, right?

In the sense of I’m good. I’m just cruising. I’m crushing. And eventually I had the insight that if I’m able to do this on my own and achieve these sorts of results on my own, what might I be capable of if I had someone else who’s on my team helping me to accelerate even further?

And I went from being a, I don’t need a coach, I’m good, Brian’s my coach, we’re good, into having some folks supporting me and experiencing that one plus one equals way more than two or three or 10 or, you know, you put multiple people together. Mastermind to hold the accountability. The coach who is who has helped me observe different patterns and put together plans and in some ways is like a financial advisor for my life and for my development.

Right? Like, you have those assets, you put people together and you can achieve so much more. And then I was hooked. I’m like, wow, I’m accelerating my growth. I’m accelerating my performance. I’m feeling even better. Learned eventually that professional coaching was a a field that one could go into.

I felt more aligned and excited about coaching than finance and kind of jumped in with two feet. So, I made that journey.

Whitney: So that wasn’t a scary thing? Did you worry about, I don’t know, failing?

Michael: Yeah. That’s terrifying.

Whitney: It sounds like you were very successful as a trader. So, moving from being a trader and then maybe not knowing if you were going to be a successful coach.

Michael: Yeah. So, I believe a couple of things about coaching. Number one, I think everyone should be their own coach. And that’s part of what philosophers notes gave for me, is I was coaching myself with this content. Right? And that’s in that small group as well. But I think everyone should coach themselves.

I think everyone should coach others, whether it’s mentorship or guidance or whatever or coaching in more of it’s pure form. And then everyone should have a coach. I bring that up in the context of could I be successful? Because I was coaching, I was getting coached before I chose to make it a professional career.

And whether or not you are a professional coach, being more coach-like will make you a better leader or will make you a better colleague, will make you a better partner. It’s a skill set that that is an important skill set to show up in relationship. Because we don’t do anything alone.

Nobody performs well alone, we all do better together, and the best things are done in community. And coaching is really about how to be in relationship towards a shared goal. And how do you learn to collaborate and understand different people’s perspectives and bring human beings together in pursuit of something.

So, it was this skill set and this toolkit that I was using to succeed as a trader. And I trained the younger, new traders and led a desk and all sorts of things. But coaching as a skill set was so valuable. Choosing to make it a profession was the okay, now this is where I’m going to create income. And of course, anytime you start a new business, it’s like, is this going to work? I don’t know, I hope so.

Whitney: Yeah.

Michael: We set some set some pretty early targets of like, okay, what do I need to do revenue wise? And that first target was how much revenue do I need to produce in order to continue to be able to do this? And not trying to recreate my trading income in month one or month two. Eventually I got there.

But just okay, what’s the next step? What’s the next step? What’s the next step? And again, you take these big goals, you take these things and you break them down. And you do the next step and the next step, the next step. And that aggregates and compounds over time and really creates meaningful change.

So yes, I was terrified. And it was a big leap right from finance into entrepreneurship really. But that skill and the frameworks of coaching itself, that had been there the entire time. Now the frameworks around business building and sales, that was a different skill set that I had to learn. But it’s been so applicable across domains.

So, coaches—three pillars for us when we’re training coaches. You got mastery of Heroic performance, which is really about those tools for showing up individually.

You got fundamentals of coaching excellence. How to coach excellence in others and how to practice the craft of coaching with excellence.

And then coaching prosperity, how to how to build a business.

You meet people, you add value to their lives. You’re doing it with genuine enthusiasm to make their life better. And for those of whom there’s a professional opportunity, they’re going to be excited about it. So, I had to learn that skill set to build the coaching business. And now that’s one of the things that we help our coaches with, who are excited to build a business and or build a relationship business, whether coaching is a product or financial services is a product or, you know, whatever it is, the same kind of principles apply.

Whitney: I love that phrase, genuine enthusiasm, because I feel like you seem super jazzed and you also seem happy all the time. And I feel like it’s definitely authentic to you. So, it feels like it’s working.

Michael: It is.

Look, I love people. I love this shared experience that we’re having. And I think that’s part of wanting people’s lives to be better.

And sometimes there’s a professional relationship and transaction and sometimes let’s just help people. So that’s part of what drives me.

Daniel: Michael, going through to something you said earlier, which I know is a core pillar to what Heroic is and really what drives the success of the program and those people that go through it. But energy, work and love. Can you talk about why those three pillars are at the core of what Heroic is and why they matter and how they interact together?

I think a lot of times when people think about self-improvement, they get very isolated on one particular area. I’m going to go to the gym. I’m going to go to marriage counseling. I’m going to study for this new license that will get me ahead at work. But your platform really encompasses all three of those.

And just talk a little bit about why that’s so important and how foundational it is for everyone who may not fully grasp what it is that you’re offering.

Michael: Yeah. So we’ve got what’s called the big three origin story. And folks may have heard Brian go through this. Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins and Freud. Freud’s got this line that a good human life comes down to work and love. We say, well, that’s true, but you’re going to have a hard time showing up fully in your work and your love if your energy is low.

But I think maybe a more practical way is like, look at your calendar. And if I only gave you three labels to put on all of your things that are in your calendar. Energy, work and love are going to cover most of the buckets. Now we want to take love and transcend and include the intimate partnership to be friends and family and that sort of thing.

But energy stuff, work stuff, love stuff is most of the stuff on your calendar is going to fill one of those buckets. I said, you’re going to have a hard time showing up fully in your work and your love if you’re not energized.

Our physical bodies are the foundation of how we show up in this world. And if you don’t have energy, you’re just not going to be able to show up fully. Zest is the virtue most highly correlated with well-being. Zest is a fancy word for energy. So if you want to be happy, focused on increasing your energy, if you want it to be productive, focus on increasing your energy. If you want to have good relationships. Focus on increasing your energy.

I can guarantee you, if you went back and looked at all the fights you had with your spouse or your kids or your colleagues.

Whitney: Because I’m completely sleep deprived. Is that what it was?

Michael: You were tired. You were hungry. And the correlation is so strong. It’s like, okay, perfect. If I want to fight less, let me sleep more. Let me work out. You literally do not want to be around me if it’s 3:00 and I have not worked out that day and I’ve just had back to backs. I’m just cranky.

And so movement is my number one self-care.

And we talk about the fundamentals and we teach and train the fundamentals. Fundamentals comes from a couple different sources. John Wooden, UCLA winningest basketball coach. Commitment to the fundamentals.

He would take the best recruits in the country. And before they even touched a basketball, stepped on the court, he taught them how to put on their socks. That’s ridiculous. Why? Well, you put on your socks wrong, you might get a blister. You get a blister, you can’t practice. You can’t practice, you’re going to play worse in the games. Worse games, we’re not going to the championship.

So, let’s go back to these little things. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing. There’s an art and science of breathing properly. Focusing. Right? Can you train your mind through meditation? And doing those things well creates this foundation for you to show up fully. So we really start with energy.

I don’t know about you, but I will often face a challenge or a problem comes in the inbox, whatever it is, late in the day and this is the worst thing ever. Oh my gosh, how are we going to get through this?

And I wake up the next morning and I look at that thing again, and it just seems completely different. And my energy towards it is like, wow, that’s actually cool. Like, we can handle this. So that energy is so important.

Love before work. Not necessarily that that’s the order they should be in. But I want to touch love first, which is how often does a professional lack of performance, whether that’s for yourself, with a colleague, with a client, how much is a situation that doesn’t go well often actually the result of getting into an argument with a spouse. Or feeling lonely. Or parents going through something. Or these relational pieces. We’re relational beings.

And when something is struggling in relationship, it can show up and have a negative impact. And so, we want to help people to recognize that relationships are important. The Harvard Longitudinal Study measured these individuals over a long period of time and strong community, strong relationships was one of the top predictors of someone’s well-being over time.

So, we want to teach them frameworks for how do you think about being in relationship. How do you communicate? How do you recognize different states that folks are in and be able to have a conversation that’s honoring them for who they are? See more than just that intimate partnership is important.

We love Barbara Fredrickson’s work on Love 2.0, which is extending that perspective of love to include all micro moments of positivity, resonance. The bus driver, the barista, the janitor, these folks, you just you come across in your life. Can you recognize the humanity in them and appreciate the opportunity to have a shared exchange of life?

And so we have some frameworks for thinking about love a little bit more expansively and deliberately and number one tip there. You guys know it. Put the phone away when you’re with someone that’s important.

Daniel: Even it being on the counter, the studies that show if you’re at dinner and you put it actually on the table and no one’s actually looking at it, that the level of distraction or lack of interaction decreases by some unbelievable percentage.

Michael: It can be someone else’s phone. And the place where it shows up most for me is my kids. Right? And I feel pretty dialed in about it. I’m not on it as much as maybe other folks are, but they know that the phone’s going to get my attention sometimes instead of them.

And they’re perceptive to it. And all of us have been in a conversation where the other person does something on their phone and we’re like, what? I’m here. Are you not with me? And yet we also do the same things ourselves. So having that willingness to put the distractions aside and the phone being culprit kind of number one, but there’s a whole host of tools to help relationally.

So, energy is a foundation. Relationships are a foundation. And they contribute to showing up well in work. And then work’s got purpose as a facet, productivity as a facet, peak performance as a facet. Fast learning cycles. Right? Growth mindset 101. None of us are going to show up ready, just fully formed. Like I’m crushing this thing.

We show up with an intention and if we can celebrate our wins, learn from our losses, win or learn, continuously show up and do what needs done and then spiral up with that growth mindset, work becomes this beautiful sense of contribution.

So those are the three pillars for us. We think that that’s the essence of a good life, right? Where most of us are spending our time and can bucket our time. And so, we want to help people to increase their energy, increase their productivity, increase their relationships.

Daniel: One of the amazing things when you first get into the material is this combination of ancient wisdom and modern science. And it’s not reliant on, what we say a lot of times in the advisory world, is that real people don’t live by spreadsheets, and that the reality of your environment around you often collide with numbers on a page and that’s probably very similar to what you experienced back in your trading days.

Is that what the board is telling you, and what’s happening around you may not always align. But this idea of combining those two ideas, of the value of wisdom that has been passed down for centuries with a supportable science, is really interesting and I think provides an interesting framework. And I’ll just say for me, and I’m curious what it is for you, the moment that it all clicked in my life was the ability when I could connect that not doing something. And for me, energy is also the same core pillar or the most prominent pillar that I could feel the next morning if I didn’t get enough rest, exactly the difference in my mood and my interactions with others. You could actually make the connection very vividly.

I’m curious, as you’ve gone through both your personal experience and as you’ve coached others, can you just talk about how these frameworks are not really rules. That everyone’s going to gravitate to different things differently, but they’re more so ways that you can begin to think about moving in the right direction, as opposed to a diet which is can’t do this, can’t do that, can’t do this.

Michael: Yeah. And one of the common misconceptions, not just with, you know, what we’re offering, but in general, there is a checklist of things to do. And this is exactly what. And if you’re not doing this, if you’re not eating fully organic all the time, and if you drink any alcohol or caffeine, if you’re not getting eight hours of sleep, you’re somehow failing.

And it can prevent people from wanting to show up and it’s like, well, that sounds nice, but kind of boring.

Whitney: You can’t have any fun?

Daniel: Right? No fun at all. I’ll just give you a—and this is going to sound so stupid—I love ice cream. Like to a really not good level.

Whitney: That’s probably like me with donuts.

Daniel: And it’s like I don’t really want to give up ice cream. But you begin to realize that once you get active in the program, that we’re not talking about the banishment of all these things.

But how can we begin to improve all the other pillars that we have? So anyway, that’s not really important, but it’s a fascinating thing because it’s not restrictive. It’s just about how can I take these fundamental lessons and apply them to the environment that I currently find myself in.

Michael: To be clear, I like ice cream too.

Daniel: Who doesn’t?

Michael: I’ll offer a couple of pieces. Number one, in the coaching space, one of the things that I think is a valuable frame to put on any question that someone asks you when you’re about to work with them. And I know this isn’t necessarily coaching per se, but it’s like, can you help me?

Right? Can you help me? Can this help? Ancient wisdom. Can this be helpful? Modern science. Can this be helpful? Yeah, all of it can be helpful and make a make a positive contribution, but it’s got to be relevant to you. One of the recent books we really, really love, “What to Make of a Life” by Jim Collins.

Jim Collins wrote “Good to Great” and “Great by Choice”. Study the most successful companies from a returns perspective and then apply that same framework to human beings. So, what to make of a life. And one of his core takeaways is the only way to do life wrong is to try and do it someone else’s way, and to try and live outside of your own innate encodings.

And as long as you are trying to find your encodings, live in your encodings, which is for him as a mix of strengths and purpose and all those kinds of facets. The point is like it’s not that checklist, right? It’s find what’s resonate for you and make that commitment to getting a little bit better. Right?

And making that connection as you said, Dan, of ice cream is great, but if I eat a whole pint at 10:00 in the evening.

Daniel: Right.

Michael: I’m going to feel it.

Daniel: Yep.

Michael: And make that connection between what are the choices that you’re making and the impact on your behavior, on your energy, on your relationships. When you show up prepared for a meeting, how do you perform? Awesome. When you don’t? How you perform awesome? There’s no right or wrong. And some people are great at just showing up and crushing it. And some people have a lot of preparation.

But can you run a lot of experiments in your life? And what we offer in the ancient wisdom, in the modern science, is a series of experiments that have worked for a lot of folks, and general guidelines that tend to be more positive and impactful than not.

And we would also want to help make that connection where ultimately—and same for us, for you guys—the client’s making the choice. Right? They’re the ones who are in control. And if they’re making choices that are not creating the outcomes that they’re looking for, we want to make that clear, right?

If you are choosing the same behavior and it is having a negative impact on your life, maybe make a different choice and see if it can have a positive.

And if there’s no change, awesome, keep doing it. But if you’re making a choice that’s having a negative impact and you can make that connection and then say, okay, well, if I want this more than I want this, maybe let me change how I’m choosing to show up in this way.

Again, throwing some analogies that may or may not make sense. If I’m not making a contribution to my account on a consistent basis and see that thing grow over time and it’s not growing, and I want to see the account growing over time. The advisor is like, hey, by the way, you haven’t been making that contribution, let’s set up an auto deposit or whatever. It’s the same thing.

Make that connection, offer a different potential choice. If weight and metabolism is a challenge, it is not an exercise issue. It’s a sleep and a nutrition issue. What we eat turns into our bodies, start to make different choices. Doesn’t mean have to overhaul the whole thing. There’s a simple set of guidelines, and they don’t have to be followed 100% of the time for most people, but just start to make different choices.

If you’re tired in the morning, prioritize your own actualization performance life more than whatever entertainment might be popping up at night. Because for most of us, if we’re not sleeping, it’s because of Netflix, it’s because of the doom scrolling it. And 80, 85, 90% of folks who listen to that and they struggle with sleep, that’s probably going to be the well, shoot. If I stopped scrolling on my phone tonight. Okay. Perfect. Leave the phone in the kitchen. Right? See what that does.

Daniel: But what you’re saying in terms of the connection to the advisory world is so poignant because we can measure impact. Right? Vanguard has had that study for 30 years about just how much benefit advisors provide. But I just want to emphasize for those who are listening, is that when you’re talking about some of the core fundamentals that are Heroic highlights, you very quickly begin to put those pieces together.

And I’m by nature somewhat of a night owl, but as soon as I got it into my brain, and the best thing that Brian, through his sessions that we’ve gone through, is that the next day starts the night before. And intuitively that’s such an obvious thing to say, but no one had ever presented it that way.

That was really the fundamental shift and others that you’ve gone through, whether they have different priorities, but you can measure that connection between those two ideas and really feel the output. And that’s what’s made the biggest difference.

Michael: Yeah. And again, the power of working with the coach too. And a great coach—and our coaches are trained to do this—they’re going to help you make the connections. And they’re also going to identify when you’ve got a mindset of like oh, it has to be this way. And oh my gosh, you know, I can never go partying, and I love a night owl on whatever.

Just be intentional about it. If you like doing that, let’s build a container in which you can do that in a way that you still feel proud of, you feel great about. And make those choices in alignment with what your goals are.

And starting with that, what do you actually want? What matters to you? Why are you saving? Whatever the different framework is, starting with that. What do you want? And if given that’s what you want, what are you going to do? What are the actions that you’re going to take? And how do we make positive actions and learn from the ones that aren’t giving us the outcomes that we’re looking for?

But it’s this personal approach to achieving people’s goals, which again, I know as the advisor is a let me understand your goals, right? Because people are like, oh, I just want more money, right? They’re not going to—you can put money in the account and see it grow over time just because they want the dollar to go up. That represents something. A dream, a future state, an ideal that they want the wealth to be in service of.

And so, identifying that goal. Energy, work, love, relationship, that’s all in service of something. What do you actually want and how can we together help you get that. And so that’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about the advisor as coach and building that wealth overall is helping people get more of what they want, helping them experience more of the life that lights them up, that makes them feel whole and complete and just that genuine enthusiasm. Right?

Whitney: Exactly. I was just going to say that because I feel like when I’m talking to clients, I’m genuinely enthusiastic about, I want to help them become the best version of themselves. And trying, gaining that trust and then them knowing that I am genuinely interested and authentically excited about what their future holds.

I think that’s when it builds that trust. And it goes back to what you said about relationships. It’s all about relationships and it builds that trust. And then you are, at least in the advisor client relationship, we’re holding each other accountable too. So, it all kind of aligns with what you’re talking about.

And I’m going to ask this question, and it sounds silly now because we’ve been talking for so long. But what if people are listening and they’re like, what kind of a coach is he? I don’t understand, like, is this a professional coach? Do I have to have a career to actually hire a coach like you, or is this like a soccer coach? What kind of a coach are you, Michael? And is there a methodology that you’ve always had kind of going back to your trading, then new coach, then Heroic coach? Has there always been a methodology that you fall back on?

Michael: Yeah. So what kind of a coach? I’ll answer that from like me and then our Heroic coaches. And methodology. And I also wanted to touch on that relationship too and you mentioned help the clients achieve their goals.

And connecting that to what kind of coach are you? Coaching is a nebulous term, and you’ll find executive coach, leadership coach, business coach, life coach, a whole bunch of different labels for this thing called coaching. I find the label is less important and is most often connected to what the goal that the person has.

So, there’s a difference between a consultant and a coach. And a consultant is someone you might come in to solve a specific problem. Right? And they know exactly the frameworks that they’re using because they’ve seen it before. Rinse, repeat, etc.. One of the things that a coach does is to help the client solve their own problems.

Now, it doesn’t mean you’re not offering frameworks and having those frameworks. Don’t hire a success coach who is not successful. Don’t hire a leadership coach who has not been a leader. There’s something about the lived experience of it that makes them great at helping other people do the same thing. The frameworks that we use are all based on the decades of work that Brian has done.

All these books, ancient wisdom, modern science, what works, what doesn’t work. And there are simple things. Look, the question. What do I want? And then, if that’s what I want then how am I going to go about getting it?

That’s a simple question. Did what I just—how did it go? What went well? What didn’t go well? How do I learn from that? That simple framework. Those two things. Before you do something, figure out what you want. Come up with a plan. Think about what’s going to get in the way. After you do something, learn from it.

Like that’s a really simple—all coaching can come back to those two things.

Whitney: What if you don’t know what you want. What if we have an audience member, they’re thinking, what if I don’t know what I want? Could a coach help me figure out what I want?

Michael: Absolutely, yes. And it’s also, it’s okay. Very few of us—I won’t put a number on it—but you are not alone if you don’t know what you want, because so much of what we think we want is impacted by maybe what our parents wanted for us, or what society is telling us that we want. And it takes a lot of courage and practice to slow down, to connect with ourselves.

What do I actually want? And the first thing that pops up may or may not be the right answer.

Daniel: You mean you weren’t a little kid in Ohio dreaming of becoming a derivative trader one day?

Michael: No, no. Or a coach. Right? And I think one of the things that I’ve seen time and time again, is so often, we think we know what we want. We both don’t and what we get is so far beyond what we might have hoped for. And the lives that we’re able to create, they live outside of what we see possible for ourselves.

Daniel: Absolutely.

Michael: If we want to show up and take the first step. But what kind of a coach? All of those things. Right? We say that a coach is empowering and encouraging others to achieve their goal, activate their potential, and that can show up on a soccer field. That can show up in a leadership context. That can show up in an advisor context.

I want to know what you care about, and I want to help you get it. I don’t want to get it for you. Right? You want to fish? I’m not going to go fish. Right? I’m going to teach you to fish. But I want you to get it. And that coach is someone that’s on your team who’s helping you get that. And again, having a coach, being a coach to somebody else, having other folks who are with you, we like to talk about that in terms of almost like a plus one and equals and a minus one.

So, someone who’s ahead of you, who can be your mentor, who can coach you, they’ve been there, done that. Someone who’s at your level that you can train with. Right?

That’s that equals that’s that peer group mastermind back in the day. I know businesses might have a class of folks come in, a kind of a new hire cohort.

They go through it together, they’re learning things together or leadership development program that folks are going through together. And then someone to mentor, someone to coach, someone that you can teach and train and support and give back. So, I don’t know if I answer your question, Whitney.

Whitney: You did. I also want to—I don’t want to discount the work that goes into it, because I think that it is really hard work. You have to do the work to get to a level that you are capable of, or that you want to be capable of, or your best version of yourself. So, I think there’s a lot of work that goes into it.

There’s consistency and showing up. But we’ve talked a lot about optimistic and very positive things. Can you give us an example, Michael, of a time that was maybe just not so great for you or something that you had to overcome and you feel like this whole protocol or practice really helped you get through it.

Michael: Yeah. Before I give this specific example, I’ll frame it up in a couple of frameworks and philosophies. So, Viktor Frankl, wrote one of the ten most impactful books, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Incredible story. Wife, unborn child, killed. He went through the concentration camps, came out, wrote this book and created logotherapy.

He said despair equals suffering minus meaning. So, it’s not suffering itself that is challenging for us. It’s suffering without meaning. If your body were to experience the stresses of a marathon, but you were sitting on your couch, you’d think you were dying. Like this is the worst thing ever.

This is just. But if you’re running the marathon, you experience it differently. Same suffering, different meaning.

Gallup just released a bunch of research, latest data on how folks are showing up in the workplace, etc. and they asked folks who was their most inspiring leader, who was the leader that they benefitted the most from. And what did they need from that leader in order to show up fully? And they gave four answers. Stability, trust, safety and hope.

What do you think was number one?

Daniel: If I had to guess, I would say hope, but that’s just thinking about it for one second.

Michael: What do you think, Whitney?

Whitney: Trust.

Michael: Hope. Hope is right.

You can add the other three up. And hope is still number one.

They’ve done other studies where how engaged—and workforce engagement is so important. But for a leader who inspires hope, well, for a leader who does not inspire hope, 1% engagement. For a leader who does inspire hope, 69% engagement. That is a massive jump. So, I framed that up with Frankl. Despair equals suffering minus meaning. That hope is what we need as individuals, and hope is the capacity to see a better future and see our place in it.

So, these challenges that I’ve gone through and all of us have gone through challenges, whether it’s an acute challenge, it could be an illness, it could be the loss of a job, it could be a relationship ending. It could be any number of things that are inside or outside of our control.

None of us are not going to face challenges. Going back to Jim Collins, he studied these individuals. Every single person went through what he called a cliff. Some sort of big, life altering experience. Right? It’s not experiencing those things. It’s how do we show up to those things?

And can I see a sense of meaning in it? Can I see that this isn’t going to last forever? That I will get through this? And when I do, I’m going to be stronger as a result. One of our core facets is antifragility. Obstacles make us stronger. One of my coaches, a guy named Phil Stutz.

A Netflix documentary, “Stutz”. You can check him out, it’s by Jonah Hill. I’ll bring Phil a problem. A challenge that I’m going through—and I’ve have had my fair share of them. And Phil loves it. He literally gets excited and not as a ploy. Not as like a coaching tactic. He literally is like, this is amazing because he knows he knows that when I get through, it and I am going to get through it, that I will be better as a result of having gone through that.

I will use that experience to learn, to grow. And he knows that if that’s the case, then experiencing this challenge now is actually a good thing for me. Now it’s still not fun.

Whitney: And he’s genuinely enthusiastic.

Michael: He loves it. So we’ve gone through, organizationally, some things like figuring out how do we best serve and what’s the right roles and ways to fit into stuff. And it’s been a challenge for us in many ways as we’re going through that process. And it has been so beneficial to go through that challenge and that experience.

And I think about I love my wife. We celebrated 15 years. So, beautiful relationship. And we are closer after conflict than we are before. It’s by experiencing frictions, by experiencing not seeing things in the same way, but being willing to stick with it and emerge on the other side that the relationship feels closer.

So, no I’m not positive and optimistic all the time. I try and maintain that sense of optimism. I talked about energy being the number one highest correlated with well-being virtue. Number two is an arm wrestle. It’s either gratitude or hope, depending on who you talk to. But that sense of being able to see that whatever I’m going through now, is not going to last forever.

I can create a future that’s better, and I don’t know when it’s going to come to fruition. We have to have—it’s called the Stockdale paradox, but belief that things will work out in the end with an acknowledgment that I don’t know when that’s going to be and I don’t know how long this is going to take.

And look, there are folks who, they’ve lost a child. Right? Or significant—I just had a conversation with two family deaths in the last week. When something like that happens and there’s that type of gut wrenching—no one is not impacted by that. Experiencing that or knowing someone experienced that.

But when we know that folks are using these frameworks to navigate through that. Something that no one would wish on anybody but to do so with what they have in that moment, and to be able to show up and for their families, for themselves, to navigate through. It’s really powerful powerful.

Whitney: That’s powerful. Yeah.

Daniel: Michael, we want to be super respectful of your time. And we genuinely feel privileged that you’ve spent this much time with us.

But for everyone listening, how can how can they find Heroic? And then just to kind of get you out on this question, so how can they find Heroic, where should they go look?

And I know there’s an app and there’s a website and other things, but where can they find Heroic? And then what are you most excited for? And you could frame that question however you’d like.

Michael: For everybody that’s just out in the world, www.heroic.us is the the home page. You can learn more about all the offers that we have, etc.

And then you said, what am I excited about?

Daniel: Yeah, that could be an upcoming trip. That could be something that that you’re working on. You know, you can fill in the blank on how you want to interpret that question. But I always, we collectively, always like to hear, what gets them excited and what they’re looking forward to.

Michael: Yeah, I’m really excited about AI. And I know that AI is a lot of talking points and a lot of different things. But my excitement for it comes because I’m excited to see how we collectively choose to navigate through. And there is a non-zero slash significantly probability of like not navigating through, well. Right? Like, oh my.

And I love “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist”. But I also think that it’s giving us an opportunity to reevaluate how do we want to do this collective thing that we’re doing here, and how do we want to relate to one another, and how do we want to spend our time? And there’s a lot of suffering and sadness and depression and despair and diseases that are on the rise, that have been on the rise for the last couple of decades.

And so for me, the excitement with AI is this forced, like it or not, it’s here and it’s giving us an opportunity to reevaluate. How do we want to show up, what do we want collectively? And I’m genuinely on that spectrum of could be amazing, could be terrible, right? Anyone who doesn’t hold both, I think isn’t aware of the challenges that we face.

But I do get excited about the positive possibilities and just the fact that we’re maybe being forced to slow down and ask those questions, hopefully in a broader way. So, who knows what will what will happen. But it’s certainly an exciting time to be alive.

Whitney: I love that answer, too, because it really ties back to when we had the episode with Marty Bicknell. I asked him about the future of advice and what the future advisor will look like. And I think with all of these advancements in technology and AI, the true future of advising is really the advisor as coach and being there and being that trusted person. And that human life coach for the client, because the technology is going to do a lot of the other stuff.

Michael: And the most valuable resource that we have is that capacity to experience this. And so, I think the, the collective coming together to ask how do we want to do this, right? Not just create on a wealth perspective but or financial wealth perspective, but all wealth perspective and that live life fully.

Yeah, I’m excited about that. And to have this tool that in the advisory capacity that’s removing a lot of the work that maybe the advisor was a high value contribution previously, that now these tools are able to do and yet unlocking new opportunities to add even greater value.

Whitney: Michael, we could talk to you for hours. We really, really appreciate your time. We appreciate you sharing your wisdom and your story. And we also want to thank the audience.

Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard today with Michael, myself and Dan, please like, subscribe or follow wherever you listen to your podcast

Mariner has a commercial relationship with Heroic and pays Heroic to provide coaching and development services to Mariner employees. Daniel Sharkey and Whitney Reagan participate in Heroic’s coaching program. Michael Balchan and Heroic were not separately compensated for participation in this podcast.

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