#411 Michael Back – Transcript

James Wrigley
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’m James Wrigley, I got the pleasure of speaking with Michael Back today, Michael, thank you for joining.

Michael Back
Thank you for having me. James, is nice to finally have a conversation with you. But as I said, I’ve seen so many of your videos online, I feel like I know you, which is kind of the power of video, right?

James Wrigley
Yeah. And it’s always kind of right back at you as the saying, Before we press record that, I’m just looking forward to an opportunity to to get to know you, you mentioned that you’ve done a few of the ensemble or x y podcasts in the past, but I see your face come up on different posts, different award ceremonies, in the financial planning space that you’re attending, and so forth. So yeah, I’m keen to just kind of get to know you and your business and where you’re at and how you got to here and all of those fun things. And we’ll just see where the conversation takes us. Sounds

Michael Back
great. Looking forward to James.

James Wrigley
So you’ve your business human to human let’s let’s maybe just talk about what you’re doing at the moment, and who you’re doing that for or with nobody want to save that. Raise that and and then maybe we’ll go back to how you got to where you’re at. So to talk us through human to me, what’s your business? What are you up to?

Michael Back
Yeah, so humans, humans are coaching and consulting business. Essentially, we help financial advice businesses solve people problems, which is a pretty, you know, vague, generic statement. But I have a psychological background. But I also have a business background. So I think this business is really the perfect melting pot of both of those things. And really, what we do is just help businesses better connect with the people outside their business, whether that be their market, the people inside their business, especially their team, but also their clients. And so the areas we tend to help with marketing, the client experience, and also empowering upcoming up and coming leaders within advice businesses as well.

James Wrigley
Nice, nice and how long have you been operating for

Michael Back
so human to human launched at the end of 2016? I’ve been a business coach since 2013. So didn’t realize that till now 10 year anniversary this year of working inside financial advice businesses, but I did come from financial advice land before that. So I’ve actually been in that industry since pretty much since I left university in 2007. So I’m like a career long financial advice industry. So there’s

James Wrigley
a few there’s a few people that are like that, that inadvertently find their way into financial advice. And then and then stay so. So it’s a business consultant, business consulting. Business, did you operate that is that you kind of always been in that financial advice, space? What? What’s your path like to, you know, to operating opening your own business, which was a fair while ago now. 2016? So you’ve been doing it for for a while, in your own business? But how did you get to that point of your own business? And what’s the was a few years prior like for you?

Michael Back
Yes. So I think I probably had this degree of blind optimism, like I think a lot of young people do. You know, I was in my early 20s, last year of university decided to join a grad program, which is what everyone was doing. And you know, through my, through my hat in the ring in a bunch of corporates and big banks, and I landed a spot on the grad program at Westpac. I had a bunch of kind of internal product roles, and you go through rotation, so they put you in different parts of the bank. And the idea is that you find one team that they like you and you like them, and then you go work there permanently. I really liked the three experiences. But what it made me realize is that everything was far too behind the scenes, and I really wanted to be at the coalface dealing with the people. I had a couple of weeks, which they make everyone do on the Westpac grad program, or at least they did back then where you go into a branch and they will my very favorite weeks of the program, because you’re out there with the people building relationships, having conversations. So yeah, even though I didn’t necessarily find that groove on the program, I it gave me some clues as to the types of things I wanted to do. And what that meant was at the end of the grad program, I moved into the financial advice arm of Westpac and eventually left Westpac to go do that in a small business, but I think it was at that point, you know, I decided want to be a financial advisor. So I’ve done the kind of cold calling client relationship side of things. I then went well, you know, probably need to be the technical knowledge. So I became a paraplanner. And that was actually and to all those paraplanners out there. I have such an enormous amount of respect for you. I can absolutely understand what you do, and I know what it’s like and to be honest, it just wasn’t the right fit for my skills. And that was really the moment where I went you know what, like, I I know Do exactly what I don’t want to do. But then I was at a bit of a crossroads. I didn’t really know what I did want to do. I just knew that it was in the industry, but it wasn’t necessarily the roads that I’d been down prior to that.

James Wrigley
Yeah, it’s a How did you end up either getting out of the more of the kind of the financial advice is pace, whether in advising or planning role to take more of a consulting role had antigen? How did that happen?

Michael Back
Yeah, so I suppose I, I, I knew that I loved the people side of our industry. But then there was this other like, little nagging voice, in the back of my head that was looking at the business I was working in, which was a fantastic business growing really quickly, incredible people. But I could just see all these things that they weren’t doing. And it was almost like I could see their potential. But that was just this kind of like, little voice in the back of my head, I was like, okay, I can see that this, this business can be better. But I, you know, as a paraplanner, didn’t really have the opportunity or, or permission to kind of vocalize those things that I saw, or, or be involved in solving some of those problems. But the, the actual Turning Point and, and I’ve actually returned back to this guy to thank him for this, but there was a, so we were licensed through a, it was AXA at the time, and then became a MP. And there was this dude who came into the business to run training on neuro linguistic programming. And really, the idea was how to in a very ethical and positive way, speak that the language that your clients would understand and empathize with them and build connection with them based on the type of person that they were. And I think my boss, at the time, realized that I probably wasn’t going to be a paraplanner. But he didn’t think I was going to be an advisor as as did I at the time. And he said, Oh, look, you would run in this training for the advisors. Why don’t you sit in, and the guy, his name was Neil gomersal. And it literally blew my mind. You know, I sat in there for two days. But I realized that in my limited view, I thought, Okay, well, there’s essentially four roles you can do in the financial advice industry, it could be admin paraplanner, client relationship, or advisor, I didn’t realize that there were these fringe roles in the industry, where it was all about how do advisors do what they do better? Or how do businesses, you know, reach their potential and operate at a higher level and, you know, sharpen their tools. And I think that was the real turning point for me, where I realized that if there was a problem inside a business, I had the opportunity to solve it. And did take a bit of braveness. But I just went to my boss, and I said, I’m really not happy. Being a power planner. This isn’t really what I want to do. And although I’m not 100% Sure, what I want to do, what I can tell you is that digital marketing is, you know, the way of the future, we’re not doing any marketing. And I’d love permission to not completely changed my role, but just to work on a few projects in this business to get all our advisors on LinkedIn to upgrade our website to start playing around with video. And thankfully, they gave me that opportunity. And yeah, which is, yeah, it was so cool. So it was Yeah, I was working in my free time and trying to squeeze it in between SLAs. But eventually, that that role expanded and expanded. And I was very fortunate that they they gave me the role of digital marketing manager. I worked alongside someone who you might know in the industry, Sophie firming, who now works for net wealth. The two of us were essentially the marketing team for PSK. And, yeah, we we did, we did a lot of really cool things. But that was really the turning point. For me. It was the start of, I suppose a couple of things. Firstly, me finding a groove in the industry that really fulfilled me and brought out the best of my skills and my strengths. But yeah, I think it was also the start of me seeing the opportunities that financial advice businesses had and then you know, when I helped one business with it, I just wanted to help mom businesses with

James Wrigley
it. Yeah, fantastic. And so you went and did your own and and saw a post that you put on LinkedIn A little while back that had been Nash and pivot where your first client when you when you started your own businesses, is that

Michael Back
right? Yeah, that’s exactly right. So there was actually a bit of a, there was a step between that so I was at an event in 2012. I kind of just started taking dun dun the marketing role for a few years. But I I felt a little bit restless, I could see that there was an opportunity for me to leave my comfort zone and try something new. And that was at a time when digital marketing really was entering the financial advice conversation. I saw bas Gardner present at an a&p event. And I was just blown away by what he said, I could just see that the ideas that he had for the industry at that time were not just revolutionary, but they were the exact right things for advisors to do. So I reached out to bears, we, I ended up working for him for free in my spare time. And to cut a long story short, he created an opportunity for me to come up help launch the first advisor edge event. And that became the start of the social advisor. So I moved my life from Sydney to Queensland, we had a few really cool years together growing a social advisor. And yeah, and that was 2016, when, when I moved on from the social advisor, and then started human to human

James Wrigley
error is two weeks in a row on the podcast that bears his name has come up, he keeps a little bit of a lower profile these days than than what he wants to doing this at all. Its actual advisor. But certainly, well, truly still involved in the financial advice industry they got.

Michael Back
Yeah, and I mean, I think the the bit that, you know, what, when, when I reflect on that journey, you know, the reason that I I just listened to what baz was saying, particularly around video for advisors, and just jumped on it so quickly, as I saw how advisors were feeling so yeah, eKey about video, but you know, really what what he was talking about in terms of how advisors should be using video, is exactly how they’re using it today. So I think it’ll always be as was really ahead of his time. And, you know, I see the same people who were criticizing the idea of using video as a Client Servicing tool back then and saying, Oh, we’re not bloody newsreaders, and things like that. They’re the same ones who jump on LinkedIn in in May and record a video to talk about budget announcements. So yeah, I think it was, it was a really wonderful part of my career. And it was also so fun to be part of a genuinely disruptive business that that really, you know, look at where the industry is at now. And I think a lot of the adoption of digital tools across businesses, probably wouldn’t be where it’s at, if it wasn’t for the social advisor. So it was absolutely a hell of a lot of fun being part of that, that adventure.

James Wrigley
Absolutely. So let’s maybe talk a bit more about so what you’re doing at the moment. And so when I asked you about kind of human to human, you, you listed a a range of different areas where you tend to help businesses with maybe we can spend a bit of time talking about each of those different areas, and maybe give anyone that might be listening, some some tips and things that they can maybe do in their own business. Because I, I wrote down a question for your and this idea of where do you see financial planning businesses getting stuck? And that could be in there. People could be marketing? Sure, different businesses getting stuck in different places. But maybe, could we work through those different kind of elements, or however you might describe it, of where you might engage with the business? And then where you find they’re getting stuck? And then how can how can we help them move past that?

Michael Back
Yeah. So I think you know that the idea of being stuck is really interesting, because I think sometimes business coaching or consulting Can, can come from a place of this business has no idea and we’re going to stand on a mountain and be the guru, and you’re going to listen to our ideas, and you’re going to learn from us. Yep. If you’re talking about being stuck, the main place that I see businesses, and certainly our clients being stuck, isn’t that they are sitting there scratching their head with no ideas. It’s actually that they have too many ideas. And don’t know which ones to prioritize, or they’ll go to say, you know, and ensemble or licensee PDD, or if they’re part of a licensee or license EPD. And they’ll hear a bunch of ideas. And it adds to this list of these things that we we could be doing or that we should be doing. But you know, I read a book once, and the name of the book escapes me. It’s called essentialism just came into my head. And it talks about the idea that priorities with a plural at the end, had never been a word that was documented in the English language until the 70s. So until then, that the word priority meant sole focus without competition, but all of a sudden, we decided in the 70s, that we can have more than one sole focus, which, you know, as you can tell, that really it completely contradicts the definition of priority. And so I think what I say inside financial advice businesses is this list of things that we could or should be doing go longer and longer and longer. And what they really need is a way to engage in a conversation that the right ideas rise to the surface that they have focused that they have a more specific plan for Okay, well, we could do all of these things, but right now, this is the thing that we should be doing. But a lot of the time the work We do isn’t necessarily saying, Oh, here’s all these things, you haven’t thought about it saying, Well, you’ve thought about a lot of these things, but let’s actually work out what’s most important to you. And let’s work out what’s the right idea for right now. And involve the team in that conversation as well. So, you know, in essence, what I’m describing here is something that a lot of the listeners will be very familiar with, which is goals based advice. It’s, it’s pretty much goals based consulting for financial advisors. And a lot of the time just having that conversation and giving people permission to rule a line through certain things on their Should we do that list and just decide exactly what they should be doing is the most empowering part of what we do.

James Wrigley
Yeah, it’s funny, you say that is an AI often, there’s there’s different elements of, of the of the operations of the business here that I work in. And it is, day in, day out, I’m talking to clients about, well, what is it you want to do? Okay, and then how do we? How do we line up use of time and resources and whatever else it might be to help you do the things that you want to do? Yes, but then us as financial advisors, we forget to just translate that approach to some other project that we might be doing in the business or the development plans for our staff. Yeah. Ron, Cindy, okay. Well, yeah, Mr. or Mrs. Associate advisor, or paraplanner? Or whatever role you might have, what is it you actually want to do? You might be doing that job at the moment. But what do you really want to do? Okay, well, then how do we help you get there, it’s like the finance, it is the financial planning process that most people would be following. But for some reason, we throw it out the window, or we completely forget about it when we’re trying to solve these other problems that we might be dealing with within

Michael Back
business. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And you know, it’s interesting, because, and I think every client facing professional would have this same experience, but you kind of go into business going, here’s the value that I’m going to add to your business. And then the further you go on in your career, you understand and appreciate different parts of what the value is of what you do that you never really realized. And one of those for me is, you know, we’d get to the end of a one or two day business planning process with a business and the energy level of the the the leadership team or the CEO was just off the charts. And they’d all consistently say the same thing, saying, it’s just so nice to actually sit and pause and not be distracted by the business and just to focus on what I want. And yeah, that was the bit that surprised me, I thought that the quality of strategy that came out of that day was the value. But actually just having that experience to push pause, before you even start talking is part of the value as well. And I think, you know, in every single area of our life, there’s so much value in just pushing pause and stepping outside of ourselves and reflecting on what we’re doing and trying to work out. Is this on the right track? Or do we need to improve the way we’re doing things? And yet yet, just having that genuine moment of reflection, to take it back to financial advice? A review meeting? Yep.

James Wrigley
So how do you so what is your so what is your maybe your process look like? So if you’re qualified, you’re on the website? As a Michael, we need some help here, where we’ve got this, this list of it as it is, it could be four, maybe it’s, there’s too many things that we wanted that we want to do, rather than we don’t know what to do. Yeah. How did how does the the engagement process work with you? What happens?

Michael Back
Yeah, so I suppose there’s there’s two distinct pods that we will go down when someone reaches out or when we speak to someone for the first time. One is that they know what they want. So yeah, as an example, I recently had a business engage saying, right, we are principals who’ve been doing all the, you know, advice and selling in the business. And we now want to step out of that and empower our team. And so we need your help to build a clear sales process. So that’s one particular path where it’s like, okay, we know exactly what we want. And then it’s a case of working out if we’re the right fit. Yep. There are people in the other camp though, who like our ideas, they like what we’re about, they might have spoken to a business who’ve worked with us. But yeah, as you alluded to, they really don’t know where to start or what, what they should be focusing on. The first step in that for us, sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but it’s actually not to limit the ideas too quickly. Often, we’re pretty conscious of the fact that we might be engaging with someone at the sea at a very senior level or the founder or the CEO level. Their perspective is really important. But I would say just as important and sometimes more important is the perspective of the team. So before we even get to a point of triaging what the project looks like, firstly, because we need the team support for whatever we do, but secondly, there are perspectives and ideas in the team that aren’t normally coming to the surface, and we need to create a way for them to come to the surface So before we’ll start anything in terms of working together, we’ll find out where the team sees things and try and find the trends and the commonalities. The additional voice in that as well as actually understanding how the clients feel about things, and particularly if someone is having, say, a retention issue, or potentially, you know, a conversion issue, it would be remiss of us to try and solve that problem without actually understanding things from the client’s point of view. So, to answer your question, it varies business to business, but it would be a combination of how do the team see things, how to, you know, the co founder leadership team see things, how do the clients see things, and then we put our own lens on it as well. So it would be really common for us, if we felt that there was a client experience problem. To review, every element of the client experience, we want meeting recordings, we want to read, you know, the emails that go out in between, we want to understand in in real clarity, that exact client experience so we can do a proper diagnosis.

James Wrigley
Yeah. Okay. And how, like, how long would you typically be working with a business for? Is it? Is it some type of ongoing engagement for some people? Is it more of a one off project basis for others? Like, how does that look for you? Yeah, it

Michael Back
really depends. The majority of our work would be very long term, client relationships. So you know, if you think about that, that idea of pushing pause, every, say, 90 days working out where a business is at creating a clear plan for the next 90 days, that engages the team, that work is never done. So if I’m being honest, one of the most surprising things about the how the business has transpired is a lot of our clients we’ve been working with for four or five years one in particular we’ve been working with for six years. So we do have that I suppose the core of the business is those longer term client engagements. And yeah, you know, it, a lot of that becomes new level new devil, you know, the conversations we were having, in year one or two, dramatically different than the ones we’re having today. But at the end of the day, if we believe that, that the wisdom exists within the business, and they just need a methodical process to go through to tap into that wisdom, to empower the team, to engage leaders, and to make them better, and to, to really create that alignment across the team towards a shared vision of success, and then most importantly, to execute that, that that works never done. You know, even with something like a client experience, we can take it from a good client experience to a magnificent client experience. But that then becomes the client’s expectation and a year or two later, it doesn’t feel that magnificent anymore. There’s new tools, and there’s new technology, and there’s new problems. And there’s new approaches. And yeah, there’s there is this ongoing nature to what we do that I suppose when you reflect on it, it makes sense that these are long term, you know, almost, you know, we become part of the team after a while. Absolutely. You know, there are also very specific situations where people need Yeah, I think And beyond that, that they’re feeling pretty on top of things. And yeah, we’d love to help out there as well.

James Wrigley
What what one particular area that I’m selfishly interested in, just given that the the time of year and the process that we’re going through here is around staff development plans. So so it often gets spoken about that. I support your team and have development plan, but what what is the development plan? And what what do you think, makes for a good development plan? That it’s actually helpful? Rather than just putting words on a page or whatever? Like? How should? How should I How Should anyone listening go about facilitating staff development plan? Session program him?

Michael Back
Yeah. So I mean, firstly, just the fact you’re asking that question is a really good sign. Because I think that can become a bit of complacency in a lot of businesses, where will I sit near you every day? I kind of know how you’re going. And yeah, it’s, it’s sometimes, you know, if you keep showing up to work, and we’re paying you, you know, we’re kind of fulfilling our obligations. So you’d be surprised how few businesses out there actually thinking along those lines. What I would say, are the ingredients for, you know, the difference between ticking the box of doing a staff development plan, or having one that actually makes a difference is the posture. So I think if this is something that you’re forcing on your team, and they just feel like they’re going along for the ride, but they’re not really bought into it, it will never work. So it needs to become the team members development plan. It can’t become yours as the leader or the boss. The other thing that I see with that, so I think firstly, what does that mean? Well, that means when you’re going into that chat, make them do a little bit of pre work, make them do a little bit of reflection. Make them sit down and pause and actually reflect on what they want and the direction that they want to head. One of the businesses that we’ve worked with over the years, verse wealth, ask a question before every teammate one on one, which is, if you were to leave our business tomorrow, what would the reason be? And I just love that question so much. And I think why I love it is it really D stigmatizes the conversation about, you know, we expect you to be here forever, or your preferences and your goals and your life changes? And rather than it becoming this big shock, when someone resigns, and you go, wow, I didn’t see that coming? It means that there is this opportunity for people to, you know, again, it’s when I said the posture, it’s like, is the posture that the business is, is driving all the momentum of this and that the teammates just going along to the meeting for the ride? Or are they owning their career and taking control of their career and deciding that this is mine, and I can do whatever I want with it. And a question like that really does force a team member to be more transparent in how they’re feeling. And if there are little issues, it’s much better to discuss them openly than to wait before it’s too late. And you know, that classic situation where someone resigns, and, and the leader going, Gosh, I just wish I had known that earlier, or Yeah.

James Wrigley
Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going through my head, as you’re saying it. We do. We do exit interviews when someone leaves and in it from time to time, there’s people that leave you like I, I really wish that person didn’t leave. But yeah, there’s some some things that come out in that, in that exit interview. If only I had have just known that that bit. We could have done something about it. beforehand. Yeah. Good questions. Fantastic.

Michael Back
Yeah. But you know, if you think about most people’s lives, like having difficult conversations would be Yeah, if you if you’re feeling nervous about like, I suppose that there is a theory that the quality of your life is dictated by the amount of difficult conversations you willing to have. But what I would say is this idea of struggling to bring up an uncomfortable truth with your boss isn’t a problem with the team member. And it’s not a problem with your culture, or you as boss, it’s just a human challenge, to actually have that moment where you tap your boss on the shoulder and say something that they may not want to hear, particularly when it’s attached to people’s livelihood and their income, and that their sense of you know, ticking the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, that the stakes feel really high. And it can be a really, really tough thing for someone to do. So I suppose when you think about a question like that, it really makes it easier for people to have these open conversations. In some respects it, it forces them to, but it does it in a really constructive way, where as the leader, if you then back up the answer to that question, and don’t just dismiss what they’re saying, but actually engage in the conversation and maybe adjust a few things, or maybe have the conversation. Okay, well, you know, like, give them what you’re saying, I don’t think there’s anything we could do to keep you but we understand that and at least we’re not, you know, thinking of you as a 10 year employee, when what you’ve answered in that question makes me think we’ll be lucky to get six months out of you. So I do think that just creating that openness, where, firstly, the team member is owning their career and realizing that no one’s going to carve their path through the business, they need to decide what that is, and be active, not passive in that process. But also having these really open conversations in the business. And at any one point in time kind of knowing exactly where someone’s that, and realizing that some people find that easier than others. But for the people who find it more challenging, just you’re doing the best you can to create that open openness in your culture where they are sharing how they feel. And you’re sharing how you feel and doing that regularly. Yeah, it definitely improves the culture within a business. But it also it usually means that that your team members have the best chance of growing as well.

James Wrigley
Yeah, fantastic. I like it, or picking up some stuff here. I’m gonna listen back to this episode, I don’t often listen back to my own episodes. But listen back to that bit there, which kind of leads me into the kind of the last bit of the conversation that I wanted to have with you, which is around this kind of creative element and so forth. So you’re going to program you could realize is that when you call so you’ve, you’ve launched a program or new service or something that’s coming up in September. So this episode will hopefully be like towards the end of August, but you got to talk us through what what you’ve got in the works.

Michael Back
Yes. So yeah, I mentioned that a lot of the businesses and you know, pivot been a great example that when we started with them, it was Ben and his wife and we were sitting in their, in their dining room doing business planning and, you know, now, now they’re there. They’re the industry leaders and tastemakers that they are. But as as a lot of the businesses we’ve worked with have evolved what we’ve done Otis is, you know, they kind of set things up right from the start or you like that they’ve, that they’re in that upper echelon of businesses who are doing things well. And as the supply of the industry has shrunk, and the demand has grown, these businesses have really grown quite quickly. And, obviously, that is a great thing. But it creates its own challenges as well. And, you know, some of the challenges that we’re seeing across the industry are, you know, system and process and the the whole back office piece, but another one that we’ve seen and been quite intimately connected with is that in in the beginning, that the CEO or the founder can just kind of shoulder all the burden for growth and improvement and making things happen. But as a business grows, you need to bring in more structure. And usually, that means either hiring or empowering people in your team to become leaders. We’ve worked really closely with a lot of people in these businesses who, you know, might have started out as part time, associate advisor, part time ops manager, and all of a sudden, they’re a general manager. Or, you know, even people who are just in that admin role, and they’re kind of similar to me, when I was in financial vice land that they go actually attend, if I want to be this, go down this advice path, I want to go down more of a leadership path. And I feel like, it’s probably a combination of, because things are so busy, the the leaders and senior people within a business aren’t able to train and mentor and empower these people as much as they’d like to. Another interesting trend we’re seeing is that you know, the people who are, you know, in the best position to mentor and to be that, that that person that someone can learn from, you know, through osmosis, because people are working remotely, they’re not getting as much direct exposure to other leaders in the business and other people who they can get out. That’s how you run that type of meeting. Or that’s how you explain that concept to the team. And so some of that natural like, I’ll just see how you do things and, and learn how to be a leader that way has disappeared as well. So we’ve seen a huge gap inside a lot of businesses we work in, in terms of this person has all the potential in the world, they have a wonderful opportunity to become a great leader, but they’re either struggling with a little bit of confidence, they’re struggling with some of the skills, particularly those interpersonal skills, those influence skills, those change management skills to be a leader. And they also need a bit of a perspective shift around how they spend their time. So I think when you’re in more of a back office, operational role, you feel like the busier you are, the better a job you’re doing. But a lot of that’s very reactive. And when you enter a leadership role, if you’re just focusing on reactive stuff, you’re actually probably not delivering on important projects, you’re probably not making the change happened in your business that you need. And you need to actually flip your your brain a little bit and, and find space to work on the business, not just in the business. And so these are challenges that we’d seen pop up time and time again. And we’re working very closely with up and coming leaders within advice businesses. And a couple of months ago, we decided, well, you know, we’re seeing this problem pop up more and more. So why don’t we actually formalize the way that we help businesses in the advice industry with this. And that’s what the realize program is it’s a 12 week program to take a small group of up and coming leaders inside advice businesses and give them the tools and support and accountability, they need to realize their potential.

James Wrigley
Nice. So what is the program? Like? What does the engagement through the program look like? Is it like a weekly thing? Is it a fortnightly thing? What would say it’s over 12 weeks, but what for anyone that might be interested or register what what type of as the program structure is, is the point that I’m trying to get to?

Michael Back
Yeah, so there’s three pillars, and each of those represents four weeks of the program. So one of the pillars is confidence. This is the bit that I think a lot of up and coming leaders think that they there’s a bit of imposter syndrome. They think that the struggle that they’re having not feeling like they have what it takes to do the role is unique. I used to have a coach who said that most people think that their talents are common and their struggles are unique. And it’s usually the opposite. And I see this in a lot of up and coming leaders that we work with. And so really focusing on people understanding the type of leader they want to be, what their strengths are, and most importantly, realizing that they do have weaknesses and that’s okay and to not pretend that they don’t exist, but to own them and feel empowered enough to vocalize those to their manager and say these are the things I need support with is the critical starting point. If you give people all the tools in the world to be a better leader, but they feel like they don’t deserve to be there, or they feel like they don’t have what it takes. None of it all work. So that’s that’s the first focus of the program. Second one is around time and space and helping the leaders think more like business owners think more strategically, create a clear plan for what they want to achieve, achieve and to take better control of their time, whether that be how they spend each week or what their focus is for a quarter. So bringing a lot more of that business planning methodology into the way that the leader thinks about their role, and also the way that they work with their team. The third pillar is momentum. So this is really about how do you engage the people around you? I think there’s, a lot of people have this default assumption that you can’t train soft skills, like you’re either born with them or you’re not. And we’ve found that that’s absolutely not the case. So we want to bring some really clear tools and process to leaders to help them realize that you can get better at positioning ideas, you can get better at getting your team excited by changing getting them to support what you’re trying to achieve, not working against you. And to just use things like having difficult conversations to realize that there’s a way that you can think about that conversation and the way you can engage that conversation where it’s not as difficult as you think. So these are the three pillars. We have fortnightly workshops, where we’re giving people the tools, and I suppose that the knowledge and the Intel to upgrade how they think about each of these things. In between that there’s going to be live q&a sessions. But the real value of the program for me is less about the things that I will be saying on a webinar. And it’s actually the fact that everyone will leave one of the workshops with a particular personal challenge that’s going to take them outside their comfort zone, and take what we’ve talked about and apply it to something that’s a very real problem in their business. So I suppose if this is a program that someone wants to come along to, and, you know, fill their notebook and get some good ideas, and then and then not change how they act, it’s probably not the right program for them. I just recently finished an experience with a with a business coach. And I can tell you like the three things that gave me the most value were moments where I actually had to leave that session and do something very specific, that was painful and challenging, and way outside my comfort zone. But that’s where all the growth happens. So people are really signing up for 12 weeks of leaving their comfort zone in the safest, most supportive environment possible. And also being surrounded by people who are just like them, I think what you know, I this is something I experienced as a paraplanner was you you can sometimes feel like you’re battling it all on your own. And it was only in those environments where say, AXA or a&p would put me with other paraplanners, that you share notes and see how they’re doing things. And you see that they’re struggling with the same things as you, which feels really empowering, because you got us, not just me. But you’re also seeing different ways of doing things and learning from people who are just like you and learning from example, rather than just theory. So being in an environment of people similar to you who are trying to achieve similar things and comparing notes and almost using them as a benchmark to for for, you know, setting the setting the barometer for where you should be in your role higher is a really, really empowering thing as well. So I think that group group environment is going to be super, super conducive to change for a lot of these clients as well. And how

James Wrigley
many people are you hoping to have along for the group for the 12 weeks? What are you

Michael Back
Where can where can. So this is our first intake kicking off in September, we’re capping the group size at 12, we think that’s the right amount of people to have a good conversation for there to be accountability. So it’s kind of Yeah, people can’t necessarily shrink into the background, but there there there is a conversation but you can start to get to know people and build connections as well. So yeah, that’s why we’re capping groups at 12

James Wrigley
Nice. So where can people find out more about the program or register if they’re interested in just generally human to human like you know, your website and stuff a bit of a plug, we’ll put some links into the to the show notes wherever you might be listening this listening to this from but yeah, where can people find out a bit more?

Michael Back
Yes. So if you want to find out about the realized program just go to human to human and that’s to spelt T O so human to human.com. Au forward slash realize if you want to connect with me, personally, very active on LinkedIn, have a lot of wonderful conversations on there. So yeah, find me on LinkedIn, Michael Beck. I think my handle is Michael J. Back. And yeah, I love I love expanding my network and getting to know people on LinkedIn.

James Wrigley
Fantastic. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate you coming along and joining me for a podcast if you’ve been on Ensombl or XY putting us a few times before appreciate you coming back again, a bit of fair bit of golden knowledge in there for me as I said, this sections of this up and I listened back to so I hopefully others get just as much from it as well thank you for joining me

Michael Back
Thanks so much James really enjoyed the chat

James Wrigley
Appreciate it. Thanks.