Career Coaching Secrets

Unlocking Potential: Dan Sivils on Limiting Beliefs & Executive Growth

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen Doda interviews Dan Sivils, an executive coach and former trial attorney. Dan's coaching journey began after a Peru hike, focusing on uncovering limiting beliefs and emotional blocks. He specializes in deep transformational coaching for leaders navigating complex life and career changes. A key focus is Artificial Intelligence (AI); Dan, with over 1000 hours of AI study, asserts its necessity for coaches and its power for innovation and new careers through customized AI. He notes AI is already integrated everywhere and emphasizes its ability to enhance human output.

Lead generation for Dan is challenging, relying primarily on referrals from his trusted network. He highlights the importance of coaches finding unique marketing methods to get prospective clients on calls.

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Dan Sivils:

And their AI can be partner level with them. But that requires it to be set up and customized properly. For example, if you just use AI and you ask a legal question, it's not going to give you the same answer that my AI will. My AI knows that I'm an expert in the law. My AI is very familiar with the areas that I work in. Welcome

Davis Nguyen:

to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. Before Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or just building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets. Today's guest is Dan Sivels, an executive coach, educator, and lifelong guide. through some of life's most transformative terrain, Dan began his professional journey as a trial attorney, mastering complex litigation and high-stakes strategy. But it was a 19-day solo hike through the Peruvian Andes that sparked a new path, one that led him from law to deep transformational coaching. Now with over 30 years of experience, Dan blends sharp analytical insights with emotional depth to help clients navigate everything from executive leadership to narrow divergence, law school pressure, divorce, and even the fast evolving world of AI. He's known for bridging structure to chaos, clarity to confusion, and to those standing at the major life crossroads. Whether you're a CEO, a law student, or someone finding their way after a seismic life change. Dan is the kind of coach who meets you where you are, then walks with you towards where you're meant to be. Dan, we're so honored to have you here. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to be here. Dan, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become an executive coach.

Dan Sivils:

So when I went on that trip to Peru, I was really looking for just something that would kind of give me a reset to my life. And it was an extraordinary adventure. And when I returned, I also ended up going to this course and the gentleman who created it is no longer alive, but I ended up participating in that course. I ultimately became an instructor for that course. And I also taught the instructors for that course. And I also taught instructors as well as just non-instructors, people that wanted to be coaches. So I would be one of the instructors that would lead them towards certification. in it. I found that I just loved that. And, you know, when I returned from my first course for a few months, I really had just a much higher level of awareness and understood just and saw a lot more of what I wanted and needed to see. And so that was kind of my introduction. And the training I went through, which you don't necessarily have to go through training, especially for executive coaching and other kinds of niche coaching. But for what I was doing, it was really about the unknown emotional and mental factors that get in your way. We would call them limiting beliefs, which is exactly what they are. We all kind of have limiting beliefs. And a lot of them develop when we're young and we don't realize they're even there. And part of life's journey is you have a lot of opportunity to deal with issues and sometimes voluntary. And so I really loved that. And I continue to practice law until I gave that up. And I really waited until my son was 18 so I could just take a financial risk. And I had his college and handled it. And so it was a good time to do that. And over time, the way I ended up coaching executives was really people that came to my course. There were a lot of different kinds of people. I taught a lot in San Diego. I taught a lot in New York and Connecticut and Florida and Oregon. So I had a lot of different people. And the people that would come to this, this was just a really reputable weekend for people to come to. So I've taught an admiral. I've taught people in law enforcement, you know, and I would also teach a teen or, you know, a And, you know, from that, I really became more interested in executive coaching, probably because of my legal background. You know, as an attorney, one thing I'm good at is figuring out what expertise is needed. And so, you know, when I practice law and I'm, you know, representing someone and whatever their niche, whatever their profession is, I became an expert. And I'm very good at knowing where my expertise stops and another start. And so I'm a perfect person, you know, in that way to kind of help people handle complex problems, especially when it relates to money or anything around career. I used to tell my executive coaching people before they hired me that I'm the kind of executive coach that you're probably going to cry And, you know, if you want... to improve your structure of your business and you want to improve communications and things like that. I know some people that are executive coaches. They specialize in that. And so there's areas where, you know, I will delegate some of what I may be doing to someone who's got more experience than me. I've spent corporations. I've never worked for one. And, you know, within that, the thing I'm often doing is helping the executive see what's in their way and you know if you've got two or three more circumstances kind of repeat themselves as a leader you know it's really good to look at yourself before you decide to try to change anything structurally I just find that really interesting and you know when I'm coaching people are often going to discover something that They weren't aware of, but what I'm looking for is something that resonates with them. And so I don't look at myself as someone that's teaching them. I'm really exploring how can I discover what is true for them. And as we go through life and we discover those things, it really is an ignition to passion and action. And so my coaching is not a formula. I don't have an outline. I never had my training, which was about two years long, was harder than law school. And its sole focus was we went deep working with ourselves. And from that experience, I learned how to take other people just as deep. And so I the level at which i can handle challenges it's just very deep one as an attorney and then this training i went through there just isn't a situation i've ever faced as a lawyer or a coach that was over my head or over my area of expertise with executive coaching i think You know, especially in today's world, when AI came out, I think it was in late 2022, out of curiosity, I started exploring that. And, you know, I really... would tell my friends, I've got a lot of peers who are coaches, executive coaches, and people that are business coaches, and if they don't know AI, they're no longer qualified to be a business coach. Took me, I mean, I've got over a thousand hours of learning AI on my own. And I, of course, taken, gotten some certificates and stuff like that. But really, AI was just something that I was learning, not from the view of a coder who wants to build software with AI, but more as someone who's going to use it in their work. And so I really have started to emphasize career coaching and executive coaching because anyone that wants to improve or discover a new path, you know, AI is an amazing part of that. And I've done a ton of research and I love doing that. You know, I'm a nerd in that way for sure. But people that... Resist AI, and that's the majority of people. It's unlike other things. Their resistance to it is emotional and mentally based because it solves problems in a different way than our brain does. And we don't have a reference point. for that. And so there's an emotional resistance that pops up our brain. People think, well, it's just a glorified or a more complex Google search. And it's like, well, they're apples and oranges. And one of the challenges to teaching and coaching people is to get through that In my experience, having really worked on the emotional blocks and mental blocks and raising awareness and that kind of thing, it really is effective in getting people to kind of flip that switch and understand AI and how they want to use it in their profession. For me now, like when I am talking to young professionals, especially they're in college or they're in law school, they're not going to get an offer like a law student's not going to get an offer unless they are familiar with AI. That would be like showing up and not using a computer, a mobile phone. And, you know, you just can't function professionally without an understanding of that technology. And AI is something that everyone first looked at it like, how can I save time? How can I save money? Of course they did. But that's not really its purpose. And we haven't yet seen that. It's happening this year. But what will occur for everyone is they're going to have to innovate. Things that could not have been done before will become a new product, a new service, or even a new career. And that's really where the game changing is. And so that just falls right into any coach. And whether or not you coach AI or not, just being able to understand that if you're coaching people on their profession and they want to improve their leadership, learning about AI, whether that's from you or another path, like that's just essential. And it has created, at least in my lifetime, and I think really In the last hundred years, there's more opportunity now for new careers than people have any idea about. Now, a lot of people do know. It's just that the barrier to learning it is real because of the emotional resistance. You just need those neural pathways before it'll become something that you begin to be able to understand and utilize. But... You know, I think that the opportunities, it reminds me of when I was young and we had, and I know you have not experienced this, but we started with eight track tapes. Then we had cassette tapes. Then we had DVDs when we got a Walkman with a DVD. Then we got an MP3. And all of that happened very slowly. But this is something that's happening literally from day to day. Things advance so much. And so that kind of integration into everything, it's almost like anything with electricity is capable of having AI in it. And so unlike the internet, which was basically an incredible resource for everything, right? Think of it as a library. I can go to the library and find that information, whereas AI is very different because AI can do things that will literally create a new surface. There's no AI geek squad yet. And even what I do, which is I coach one-on-one, I'm not trying to scale on a national basis, but a lot of the executives that I work with or anyone wanting a career transition, that's what they want. They want to go big. And it's like, ideally, that's lovely. It's just that for most people, they do not yet recognize that the value of it is at every level, whatever level you're at, and scaling from that place, as opposed to trying to create something that everyone knows about and wants. The people that do that usually have money. or a backer, investors, or they are already a company that's doing that. And so I will even coach the executives in those enterprise companies because if they don't personally know it, they cannot make good decisions because it's kind of like Microsoft Outlook, probably know 5% of it. And there's 95% of it that other people may use in complex ways every day, but I don't know how to use it. But in order for me to be an expert, I'd need to use it all the time. And so, you know, when you're wanting to integrate AI, chances are you need about 5% of what you might be thinking of integrating. And so my focus is really on the individual, just like it was with all of my coaching, was really the individual. I incorporate still what I call life coaching. That's still a part of everything I do, but I look at it from the perspective of I want to be able to identify what resonates with people. I want them to be able to see some of the things in their way and get out of the way. And I want to be able to influence them on the direction that resonates with them. So that influence issue, and I think every coach has, you know, that bar, you know, I need to be able to influence who I'm talking to. And that is really life coaching. You know, that's understanding tone of voice and resistance and limiting belief they may have about themselves. And so I find that if you rely on, you know, what makes you someone that your friends will ask for advice, because most coaches, you know, their friends growing up or people at work, you know, they found their input helpful. And that's really, you know, the fundamental thing I think even career coaches need, just that natural ability. And then to strengthen that through, you know, education and most importantly, experience. I still talk too much, so I'll stop. Make sure that you're not ready for another question or you want to steer me.

Rexhen Doda:

No, no, I'm ready. I was actually just thinking, as you were talking about AI and also from your experience as a lawyer as well, I wanted to ask you, since you've been spending quite some time on it, do you see AI yet in a level that could be used in a day-to-day, and this is like even outside the questions I wanted to ask you, on a day-to-day as a lawyer, like is it on a level that can actually, let's say American law?

Dan Sivils:

Yes. So, you know, here's the caveat for that. And I think it's a real important one because it's both logical as well as gives people a sense of security. So a lawyer, And really use AI. And their AI can be partner level with them. but that requires it to be set up and customized properly. For example, if you just use AI and you ask a legal question, it's not going to give you the same answer that my AI will. My AI knows that I'm an expert in the law. My AI is very familiar with the areas that I work in. And so I've trained it through customization to give me results. Being an attorney, and this is true with financial advisors and a lot of professionals, they have regulatory compliance requirements. And regulatory agencies are notoriously slow. And even state bars for attorneys, they are still grappling with it. But the reality is there isn't a compliance issue other than, like, for example, financial advisors. A lot of them work underneath an RIA, which kind of governs their compliance. And there are a lot of these organizations, they are building their own AI and then requiring their members to use it. And that's not going to last because their AIs are all based on chat GPT. There's nothing new about that technology. They take ChatGPT, and then they basically make it into a desktop like on your Microsoft desktop. It's just easy to navigate, but it actually is a limited version of ChatGPT, and you get charged for it. And you're too young to remember rotary dial phones, but my parents– rented a phone from Southwestern Bell for 60 years. And that's kind of what companies are coming out with. And I think of it kind of like AOL was or low hanging fruit, because when you're buying a product that someone has created to make it easier for you, the question is, is it easier for you? Because it's not. It just requires an understanding. Of AI. And then, for example, if I wanted to build a product that I would use, there's a point where my expertise isn't sophisticated enough. Freelancers. There aren't AI degrees yet. Of course, we have machine learning, but a lot of that is focused on coding. And so freelancers are extremely inexpensive, and they can build whatever these other companies are building with AI in a day. And so there's this real disconnect. I think people think, oh, AI will become easy to use. Well, yeah, it is already easy to use. But when you buy a product that kind of just stands in front of AI, you don't really learn how to use it and you don't understand how Issues like, where is my data? All of compliance agencies are freaked out because they think, oh, my gosh, your data is going to get trained on. That's inaccurate. It's really easy to prevent that. And in terms of like AI security, the standard for cybersecurity requires AI. If you don't have AI and you're a big company, you already got liability exposure because AI is the only thing that can really effectively secure your computer system from AI hacks. Everybody's already using AI. So lawyers don't think they're using it yet. Well, if they use Google or Microsoft or Mac, everything that is stored on a server that is outside of their server, that's an AI server. Google's code, I think sometime last year, 25% of it was AI made. And at the end of 2025, that could be 100%. And so when you Google search, AI is built into Google search. Now the algorithm's still there and I know they have their own AI, which is Gemini. It's just that everyone is building AI into their products. If you go on to Morningstar, you want to do some mathematical calculations, you've got a subscription to Morningstar, those are all AI now. And so we're all using it and the companies have to Because it's a higher standard of security, and it also eliminates a lot of time and effort that they have. Short-sighted companies get rid of people. I don't think that's going to last very long because I think what you begin to see is, oh my gosh, as an attorney, I could set up my receptionist computer to have AI and it would be a copy of mine and they can do things for me. But just like any time I've ever had anybody doing it for me, I'm going to edit it and create the final draft. And you can set AI up, for example, all of my requests when it gets responded to, it gives me a source to either the official document, the original document, or what we call in the law, the best evidence rule. And so it just requires really understanding it in order to go forward. The thing that, gosh, this is just revolutionary for people is the value of time and effort like that's how we've always kind of seen and measured others value like okay i went to law school that's three years of my time every day studying you know knowledge is free now what isn't is education because education still matters and experience still matters. So if I wanted to answer, let's say a patent question, I'm not gonna do that as well as a patent attorney. They have a different form of education and they got a different additional license. And if they practice law in it, They can use an AI that I understand what they need, but they're still going to be better than me at it. But as a business people, most successful people that start a business, I call them originators because that's a different mindset. And originators, you know, I'm not an originator, actually. I want to know all the rules before I begin. And a lot of originators, thankfully, are like, screw the rules. I want to create this, and I want to begin it. And they often don't hire experts to kind of set them up and go. They just go. But AI... can do a lot of things for them that otherwise they would never have done. But even if they're not an expert in something, they understand AI, they can get correct answers. And so starting a business has never been easier. to get to point A idea to the last point of success and failure with selling something, like you can do that very quickly. And sometimes, you know, for the $20 a month you spend on whatever AI, that's kind of what they're charging people now. And That's something that originators will love, but it does open the door for people like myself who are much more conservative and rule following. That's why I'm a lawyer. They can still do things better than they could do before. Because as long as they understand how to use AI and particularly set it up properly, they're going to get an answer that they would normally pay a top expert a lot of money to get. And even if I'm doing divorce coaching, for example, and I do that for people in different states, and so I'm not representing them. I'm basically going to educate them on the law. Well, it's just extremely easy for me to know exactly what rules apply. And I can even use my skills as a life coach, but also my skills to make them be able to understand big picture and small picture, which is a big deal in terms of moving forward through a divorce and especially after. And with executives, you know, and the owners or the executives, decision makers are normally who I coach, and they do not have the time to to start using AI. They don't have the time to stop and spend, you know, 40 hours or 100 hours. Even IT people, AI is not IT. And if you're in the IT department, a big company, you really still have to go learn. And so my focus is you lead the executive to one thing that they're going to take the extra time with. If they have an understanding of it, and it really is about the neural pathways being built, then they're at a much better ability to choose what else they may do with it. And, you know, often what they do with it, they're going to discover, okay, the things I delegate to people in my office, you're not going to get rid of those people. You're going to want them to have AI so you can delegate, but you understand what you're delegating and what's coming back to you. And then it's just very easy to eliminate hallucinations, wrong answers. You know, I follow the media, of course, and a lot of times the headlines, if you look at all technology coming up, even indoor plumbing, by the way, took like 20 or 30 years for people to adopt. AI is just not the same. And there are studies on this already, but the media is treating that way. You know, you just hear a lot, has it peaked? Have we seen how, you know, it may not be as great as everyone thinks? You know, they're talking about a lot of different things. You know, if you want an AI to build an airplane, like you can't do that today, but you will be able to. So if you want to use AFI for that, I guess AI sucks. But if you want to use AI as a doctor, you will know more and diagnose better. And a lot of in medicine, there's a lot of big organizations that are incorporating AI in. And there's research on AI that hasn't even come out that in terms of medical research, it outperforms A lot of the top experts. So, you know, for myself, if I am working with a financial advisor, for example, I don't need to know the top experts. People that have written the books about behavioral science in investing, like I just make sure my AI knows that. And so that's something that even though I am not an expert on, most of my financial advisor clients, like they're an expert on 5%. But they then can become an expert on whatever they need, because it's kind of like if you go to college for four years and you take all of your syllabuses and you upload them to AI, like it will remember everything you've ever learned. Whereas my brain stores everything I've ever learned, but I don't have access to it. you know, I can do on some things, but so AI is, you know, really going to be seen as kind of something I delegate knowledge to, to hold it for me. So I, even in life coaching, like I've set up a few clients with AI that will do coaching and they work with it in between times of talking to me. And at some point, they can move on from me. And if they find that works for them, well, and then I'm innovating. You know, so the key, I think, for coaches is to recognize that this isn't just about the parameters of saying, how can I help this person be more of a leader in this area? It's now a new ceiling. And you want to be familiar with, there are methods and ways that I can teach people that I don't yet know, but are going to be really attractive to potential clients out there. So I'm excited about AI, but I want to just back up a little and say, the thing that makes me the greatest at what I do, whether that's practicing law or Coaching is my brain I was born with. I think people have always kind of looked at time and effort being necessary to have value, whereas with AI, you begin to learn, oh, the value is not in time and effort. It's in the quality of what you produce, which now can be better. And so it does give people an opportunity to kind of give up thinking, oh, I'm going to learn a structure. And then if I employ this structure, people are going to do great. And first identify, okay, what is it that is valuable about me that has nothing to do with time and effort? You know, that's the part of you that's going to influence people. And so I think even for coaches, I know I went through this when I first was looking at it. I thought, I'm going to go get a degree in counseling or become a psychologist and all these things because you get a degree and then you're qualified. Well, that's never been more untrue. Really, your qualification is what problems can I solve? And how you solve them is going to be a lot less important than it used to be. No, I don't solve a problem because I spent 10 years in school. But if I am going to perform surgery, yeah, I don't get to use a shortcut. If I'm going to practice law, I still need a degree. I still need that education. But if I'm a business person and I don't have counsel, I can't afford to go to a lawyer. Like you can do things to find accurate information better than you ever have before. Like it will read a contract as well. My son is not a trial. attorney. He's a mergers acquisition, corporate deal making kind of attorney. And he has not yet learned it because he's busy. And his firm, which is, you know, probably the top 200 firms in the country, they're learning it this year. But his contracts that he reads, like he's It'll be hard for him to recognize that AI can do it as good or better, but my AI won't because he has the ability through his education and experience to increase its value. So, you know, I could see this as an opportunity for so many coaches to really improve their output, improve their measurable results.

Rexhen Doda:

And I really like what you said that he will be able to train his AI better for what he needs compared to what your AI is trained on. And let's say a career coach will have trained his AI better uh compared to uh let's say a leadership coach or like a resume writer would have trained his ai better than someone that just um like a general career coach that doesn't focus on resume writing i wanted to ask you uh more of a marketing question and getting back to the business of coaching. I was also looking at your LinkedIn profile and it says coach and lawyer for about 27 years. Have you been coach for 27 years or have you been lawyer and then coach?

Dan Sivils:

I wanted to go to law school since I was five years old. I was one of those people that just had this ingrained sense of justice. I just thought they were heroic. And I loved law school, became a lawyer in 1992. And I started kind of coaching, you know, first as an instructor. In 2001, I really started my exploration in 1998 with the brew trip and then taking some courses. But I did that kind of as a passion. But even before I began that, in my law firm, if somebody came in and just had a horrific personal story about their case, I was the lawyer that sat with them. I could do client interactions. I can figure out juries and judges. I was just naturally better than that. I understand more of why now my brain sees patterns differently than others. But everybody has some of those skill sets. And I think mine, you know, so I just did this kind of as a, you know, something that just fed a passion. And then around 2008, I started writing. I left my law firm. I still practice law and did some things on the side. And then by 2000 and probably, I don't know, 14, 15, 16, decided, OK, I'm going to devote full time to this. But I still practice some law. You know, I've got some cases that I'm local counsel on. I don't appear in court. I don't represent a lot of people. But when I have somebody from the state that I'm licensed in, I can give them a different service. So for me, being a lawyer, coaching allows me to do is kind of focus on the legal counseling aspect. You know, you're an attorney and counselor at law, and that counselor at law probably find the most fascinating. And that's really working with people so they understand whether it's understand how to stay out of trouble or understand, you know, what a most Thank you so much. how they can get to their goal, you know, without the law impeding them and helping them like that's still essentially life coaching. I think, you know, we're mentioning like coaches that may have a resume expertise, but if you've got a client and they're They need help with the resume. Even if you don't have resume expertise, that is an area where you can still be an expert on resumes because AI, if it's properly set up, it can be an expert in anything you need it to be. And so again, coaches are going to discover, oh, I can do more things for my client that are really high quality. And I think that's... key to be able to do that. And I think that's true with every professional too. Like if you're a financial advisor and you've got clients that want to get a home in Costa Rica, well, AI can literally tell you everything about those local laws, taxes, as well as the real estate market. And so suddenly you're in a position with your client where your relationship with them is much broader because you can give them accurate answers to questions they either may not seek help or it may be really hard for them to find help.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, totally. And I wanted to ask you, from your own coaching business, how do you go about generating leads that you want to coach to? How do you potentially connect with?

Dan Sivils:

I think that is very challenging. Even though most companies, especially larger companies, they've incorporated coaching. But You know, if you're a coach that is going to be an executive coach, but you're working on leadership, but you're not really being retained to challenge the executive on an emotional level. You know, some people are extraordinarily good at that. I'm not good at that. And I'm not, it's very hard to reach an executive unless you can say, I have experience with what you do and how you do it. I, in some ways, was just lucky because when I taught these courses, by the end of the weekend, people really had a trust in me, became kind of of counsel in a lot of people's lives. And so it was close to a couple thousand people that I had. but they really aren't my source for executive coaching. And so the focus on that for me has really been referrals my network of professionals that know me the fact that i have coached many of them on life issues or i've given them legal education or even advice then i'm someone that they trust to do executive coaching but i think that people must find ways to market that are different than what they may have thought they were going to be. I think there are opportunities to do that. Some people are really good at sales. That's a skill. That's a gift for a lot of people. And some people, like for me, if I talk to someone on the phone, they... Nine times out of 10 are going to hire me. One out of 10, they may not. Another out of 10, I may refer them to someone that can do something better than me. But I need to get those people on a call where they'll listen to me. And it's very hard to direct email and email. Expect that you're going to get a phone call, you know, calling someone you don't know, like a lawyer, like you're never going to get to them. And if you do get to them, oftentimes they're a little bit condescending and they know everything better than you do. And so, you know, you really have to find a way where you can reach them. And when I say reach them, like they've got to have an open mind. You've got to be able to influence them in that setting. So for me, I find... marketing is my biggest challenge, but only one aspect, and that is I just need to have a free consultation where somebody wants to talk to me or is at least willing to hear me talk. Getting that is like my hardest area. For some people, like when they're marketing, I think their hardest area is they wonder whether or not they're an expert. Like, can I hold myself out this way? Can I say these things about myself? That's a different challenge. And I think for people that are just great at networking and great at getting people basically to say yes, the marketing challenge is actually to have a product themselves that is exceptionally good. That's a different marketing challenge. So I struggle with marketing, and it's something that I'm always looking to focus on, but especially now that I'm really focusing on executives and weaving in AI mastery into the things that I do, I'm having to take a fresh look because I am seeking people that may have never met me or heard of me. And that's very different than, you know, the majority of my business coming to me because somebody else in the chain has mentioned. And, you know, let me just add this after practicing law and coaching for decades, like, yeah, that's great for referrals, but it, does not make you a great living. You've still got to find a way to either get your network to market for you or you to find a way to reach people that don't know you.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely, yeah. I think that's a challenge that's been for most coaches that I've interviewed when it comes to constantly generating qualified leads, people who are ready to work with you. I wanted to ask you, do you have any goals you're working towards for the next one to three years with your coaching business? Yeah.

Dan Sivils:

It's really all for me. I'm just fascinated by AI. I love it. I'm curious. And because I just happen to be so curious and learn about it, I feel like I know the basics. But I will talk to, like I've talked to the heads of compliance departments and some enterprise companies. I'm amazed at what people don't know about it. And so... I just happen to be in this position where I've got this ability to understand and see things about AI that it would take someone else a thousand hours to do. And so, yeah, my next three years are really, I want to coach the same way I have. Ultimately, I just like to help people kind of reach out. a goal that is more of a breakthrough that blows their mind, that changes their life. I enjoy the, but AI is a part of all of that. And so just think for me, my goal in the next three years, my only challenge is getting people on the phone to talk to me. That's it. Everything else, it's kind of naturally just my coaching is just evolving. You know, I started life coaching and, you know, I'm executive coaching. I did that throughout, but now I'm really focused on that. I think it will continue to evolve, but I'm on the direction I want to be on. I'm certain about that.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, that's a really good goal to have. And I could tell like from the beginning of this call that you're very excited about AI and very much into AI. And for sure, I think not a lot of coaches are embracing it yet. And I like that you are. So do you have like a final advice you would give to other career executive coaches?

Dan Sivils:

Yeah, so I think that First of all, you don't need to pay anybody to learn it, but you just need to accurately assess and measure yourself. Because just learning it, because you're reading about it or you're watching a video, that challenge of actually then turning that into execution of something, if you're struggling with that, that's a time to figure out, okay, how is it best for me to learn it? Learn it. Because If I, for example, somebody wants me to teach a weekend course, my AI, like I just in five seconds can input a prompt and I don't have to, you know, I don't even, my AI will build the prompt for me. And so prompting is handled and it will produce from all of my data, my knowledge base, it'll produce a beautiful course. Instantly. So I then can, you know, edit, look at it, but that used to be, you know, 20 hours of work. And so in terms of the things that are valuable, those things can be done instantly. And so then you start to realize, okay, I can afford the time to increase my value by acquiring a skill that will change results for people. The way I do it is I'm one-on-one. I'm going to build their knowledge database, and I'm going to customize it for them. Then I'm going to teach them how to use it because we're going to actually use it. So I find for my people that works really well. But if I'm too expensive or people just don't want to work with someone, you can ask AI, like just the very basic, have it create a course for you to learn it. And it will. And so I think that learning this is as important as as a computer and you know before covid a lot of people needed to coach in person i don't have anybody that wants to coach in person now and when it comes to ai if you're spending four hours developing something that ai can do as well or better than you then that four hours you want to be taking that and putting it towards scaling towards something that you don't like, you know, that you need to do. And then, you know, basically, it's a time where coaches need to level up their abilities. And AI is something that, yeah, that levels it up. But whether or not you ever say AI, it can take you to a level where your focus is on being creative and innovating. Not a level of, okay, I've got to prove to people I'm qualified. I've got to write a great bio. I've got to write a great resume. I've got to build my marketing plan. Those things can be done and I think every coach needs to understand how time and value is evolving for everybody who's a professional. Anybody that AI is going to affect what they do, they're going to have to understand their value is going to change. Just because a graphic artist can do what they used to do in an hour, what used to take them 40, that doesn't mean they should charge their client less. It means they should be innovating with their education experience to do something that they never would have thought of before.

Rexhen Doda:

So

Dan Sivils:

our coaches should learn that for sure. And I think coaches also, whatever they lack in marketing, you know they're either going to have to learn it on their own or they're going to have to delegate it but marketing is i think the hardest thing that coaches have to do once they kind of know how they coach.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Dan. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I think we discussed quite a few interesting topics, especially when it comes to AI and how AI can be used for coaches. So I really like that. It's been a fresh perspective that we haven't had on the podcast with the guests before. So I really appreciate your time.

Dan Sivils:

Thank you very much. It was great. I love talking. Not what I do.

Rexhen Doda:

And for anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can find you on Dan Civils on LinkedIn. And they can also find you on your website, dancivilscoaching.com for anyone who wants to connect with you in the future and maybe discuss AI. So thank you so much, Dan.

Dan Sivils:

I appreciate it. Thank you as well.

Davis Nguyen:

Thank you. Thank you.