Career Coaching Secrets

Mastering Company Culture & Remote Leadership with Chris Dyer

• Davis Nguyen

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In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Chris Dyer, a globally recognized company culture and future-of-work expert named Inc. Magazine’s #1 leadership speaker on culture and founder of multiple award-winning companies recognized as “Best Places to Work” and “Fastest-Growing Companies”. Chris has authored bestselling books such as The Power of Company Culture and Remote Work and is celebrated for his actionable “7 Pillar Strategy” that transforms workplaces into thriving, high-performance environments. He’s also a sought-after keynote speaker, consultant, and podcast host who helps leaders create truly human-centric organizations. Discover his insights on leading with culture, empowering introverts, mastering tough conversations, and embracing the future of work

You can find him on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdyer7
https://chrisdyer.com/
https://www.tiktok.com/@chrisdyer.com
https://www.instagram.com/chrispdyer7/


You can also watch this podcast on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/@CareerCoachingSecrets

If you are a career coach looking to grow your business you can find out more about Purple Circle at http://joinpurplecircle.com

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Chris Dyer:

I do think for coaching ad is really difficult because the ROI is hard to figure out. Because how much are you going to charge from a coaching perspective? And how many clients do you have to get in order to be able to do that, right? It's about being really smart in a really in the right way. So for coaches, what I've seen sometimes work is maybe not a Google ad, but maybe it is boosting a particular post or a particular type of post on TikTok or on Instagram reels, right? So if you have a real really solid message and a really good, you know, reel or whatever it is that is attracting people. So you definitely don't go and just make a video for an ad. I'm saying go make great content. And if one of those goes viral and one of those does really well and that's getting you attention, then that might be one that you

Davis Nguyen:

do want to blast. Welcome 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 $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business. business.

Kevin Yee:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Chris Dyer. He's been a coach for 12 to 13 years, which is a really long time, and I'm so excited to have him. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Chris Dyer:

Hey, thanks for having me, man.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah, dude, like 12 to 13 years is quite a long time. I would love to hear the origin story, the lore. Tell me, how did you begin all this coaching? And yeah, what made you decide to turn it into a business, I guess?

Chris Dyer:

You know, it just seems like when you go out and you're doing something, when you're kind of pushing the envelope or you're kind of pushing where you think an organization can go. And that's really what I did for 20 plus years is we really tried change and push on traditional thought processes or agreed upon, you know, leadership capabilities and all of that. And when I did that and we sometimes broke things and sometimes found new ways to get things done, inevitably I had people come into me and say, hey, can you help me do that? Or can you? And so it's sort of been this natural thing where I've had people come into me and saying, you know, my organization is struggling. Will you help me? Can you coach me? You know, and it's always been this kind of bizarre podgy group of people. Some people are on their trajectory up and sometimes at CEOs and sometimes now later on, I've done quite a bit of coaching around keynote speaking because I've been speaking for many years. And that has kind of really taken off for me since selling my large business. And so I think it's just a matter of like, if you're out there enough and you're banging on enough ceilings and floors and windows, like, I don't know. And then people kind of want you to tell them like how to do it too. And I've always enjoyed that process of being able to walk through that with somebody and help them, you know, sort of a giving back in some ways, but like help them reach their goals too.

Kevin Yee:

Who are you finding is like asking for your help or the type of people you're helping out right now in terms of the coaching side?

Chris Dyer:

I think it's people who are frustrated with where they are right now. That could be a CEO that is frustrated with where their company is and that they want to, they have finally admitted to themselves that maybe their culture isn't what they thought it was. Maybe they're not retaining those people that they know they need to retain. And then on the keynote speaking side, it's certainly people who have a message that have a great background, but maybe they just, they don't know what they don't know about the whole landscape of becoming a speaker. And they're trying to fast forward. They're trying to, you know, what's that shortcut? You can go to ChatGPT and find out a lot of shortcuts, but there are, I find certain things that you can read it, but like that's different than talking to someone who's done and working through those problems in real time with somebody.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. Even with the whole AI advanced mode, it's just not the same talking to ChatGPT.

Chris Dyer:

And then like sometimes the delay, right? Like go deep, think about this and you'll come back. You know, you want to talk, come back. back in 30 minutes and it's finally done, right? And it's like, your brain's already moved on from that.

Kevin Yee:

You mentioned keynote speaking a few times. How did you get involved with that, by the way?

Chris Dyer:

Total accident. Again, it was, we were doing a lot of things in my company and getting attention. We are the fastest growing company, five years in a row, your best places to work, I don't know, like 15 years in a row. And so I had people asking me like, hey, will you come and speak and tell us about your company and what you're doing and how you're being successful? And I wanted to kind of go to a safe audience first to really develop my content. I didn't want to be invited to some larger stages but like i didn't have a speech ready and i was smart enough to know like that would be a really bad idea to go up in front of a thousand people and just being it and so instead i declined those invitations and i went and sat in front of six hr people in the back of a best western and delivered them my talk and tried to figure out you know what was working what did they resonate with and i kept working on that until every one of those people in that room wanted to do business with me and was asking me to come speak at their company and then i knew i had that message right i didn't like sit and journal one day and say i'm gonna be a speaker like it was that someone wanted me to come you know like they asked me and i kept being asked and i had so i went and figured it out and then then i figured out i loved it and then i was doing it all the time because i loved it and then i figured out people will pay you a lot of money if you're really good at doing this and it's like it just the path was sort of i guess an evolution but also a bit accidental

Kevin Yee:

you know what it kind of sounds like it sounds like stand-up comics are working their sets and stuff like that and i can just imagine you in the back of the best western just like just practicing your set That's very cool. Exactly. I

Chris Dyer:

mean, it's a great example, right? Because just because you're funny to your friends doesn't mean you should go do standup tomorrow, right? You need to work on your stuff. That's

Kevin Yee:

right. Yeah. When you're doing the, and so like, it sounds like you help coach people. You're talking about your example with the CEOs, right? Like with coaching on culture, but then it sounds like there's another side of the business where you're coaching on how to get keynote engagements. Is that right? Or did I misunderstand?

Chris Dyer:

Sometimes it's how to help them figure out how to get them. But I would say more than not it's helping them develop their clear message understanding who are the people that they want to actually speak to very typical mistake and we see this in business too right is that you're too broad you're trying to service too many people you're trying you know you have a shoestring budget but you want to be McDonald's and have 9,000 things on your menu or like maybe not everyone will know this reference but like you go to Cheesecake Factory and they have 9 million things on their menu now they can do that because they're big and they have the infrastructure and they have figure But if you were starting a restaurant, the worst thing you could do was to try to be a Cheesecake Factory. Best thing you could do would be to be like In-N-Out or Five Guys or Shake Shack or like, I serve this one thing. I'm really good at this one thing. And people will think of you for that one thing. So it's about being more narrow and highly focused to a particular group of people in order for you to do well.

Kevin Yee:

I've used that actually. I forgot where I used those two analogies of Cheesecake Factory and In-N-Out, but those are great examples, by the way, because I think we can all relate going Cheesecake Factory and just getting handed this like huge textbook and then try and figure out what we want. Whereas like In-N-Out, anything you get, it's really, really solid. But yes, great example. I'm so curious, like your marketing, I guess, right? Like how do people typically find you? I see that you have a book and stuff. I obviously do keynote speaking, but what does your marketing look like at this season of your business?

Chris Dyer:

Third of it is me reaching out. Third of it is me, you know, doing targeted ads where my clients will be. And the third of it is specifically meaning people see me speak and they go, hey, you're pretty good. I'd like you to come speak over here, right? That's about a third of that business. And anyone, I mean, those are pretty loose numbers. Sometimes it's 50% is a spin and sometimes it's 50% is my marketing, right? But when I look back through the year, I mean, like last year, it was pretty evenly a third, a third, a third.

Kevin Yee:

You know, I've spoken to a lot of coaches on this podcast too, and not a lot of them like have kind of figured out the ads part. I'm kind of curious about like your journey with like tracking the ads for your coaching business?

Chris Dyer:

I do think for coaching ad is really difficult because the ROI is hard to figure out because how much are you going to charge from a coaching perspective and how many clients do you have to get in order to be able to do that, right? It's about being really smart in a really in the right way. So for coaches, what I've seen sometimes work is maybe not a Google ad, but maybe it is boosting a particular post or a particular type of post on TikTok or on Instagram reels right so if you have a really solid message and a really good you know reel or whatever it is that is attracting people so you definitely don't go and just make a video for an ad i'm saying go make great content and if one of those goes viral and one of those does really well and that's getting you attention then that might be one that you do want to blast a lot farther and extend its reach because you've already proven that that video is working really well for you and so that i have seen work well for coaches i have a friend in She's a storyteller coach and she does, she freaking kills on TikTok, right? But she's like giving away great content. She has great videos and she's really, I mean, she is delivering high value. She's giving you all the answers to the test. There is no guarding any of that, but you hear it and you're like, she's amazing. But we still know we need her help. We still know we need to like sit with her and we need her to coach us to really do it. Even though she's given us the answers, that's different. Like I might know the answer to the test, but it doesn't mean I can write an essay. You know what I mean? Like I still need that help to do that final product. So I think if you're being really generous with your content, you're being really good, there are great ways coaches to kind of use some of that monetization to help them.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. Cause like, you know, what's really interesting. I've been fortunate to be friends with a lot of YouTubers and some of them were my clients as their head of sales. And so I had access to a lot of these numbers, but a lot of times doing a direct to offer ad was not never profitable ever, but these people like Christo or Ali Abdaal and all these other YouTubers that I know, most of their lead gen was based off of really great content. So I think you bring up a really great point on that as well. Something I'm really curious about too, for on your end, are you doing a lot of content marketing as well? Like posting on different platforms? I'm kind of curious about your content strategy.

Chris Dyer:

Yeah, I've done a lot of different stuff. So I have TikTok, but I have found for me like TikTok, I wasn't getting, getting a lot of views and a lot of comments and a lot of likes, but I wasn't getting necessarily people going, Hey, hey, come be a speaker for me or hey, come coach me. But it was, I think TikTok and Instagram itself are more social validators. So when someone does learn about me, they're going to TikTok and they're going to Instagram and they're going, oh, okay, I can watch some of his stuff. I can see how he thinks. I can see he has a following. He's not a fraud, right? He's not going to come in here and be a terrible speaker. However, LinkedIn is the opposite. Well, it's both actually. So on LinkedIn, I see the most engagement and I get the most business out of that, right? Because that's where the people who are going to hire me are sitting.

Kevin Yee:

Now, do you have a content team or do you have a content team helping you post and be omnipresent right now?

Chris Dyer:

No, it's all me. All me and ChatGPT. If anyone hasn't tried this, go to ChatGPT and start training it. You want it to write a viral post. Don't say, help me write a post. Help me write a viral post and give it examples of viral posts that you like. It's crazy. It'll come up with great stuff. I think I've been able to not have to go to that dream of having a whole outside content team or person, because I go in there, I post three times a week on LinkedIn and I go in the night before and I'm like, let's do this, come up with a viral post today. And then I go in and schedule it and off we go. Right. And it does pretty well most of the time. Taylor Swift does the best of all my posts, things about Taylor Swift.

Kevin Yee:

The Swifties, man.

Chris Dyer:

The Swifties are all over it.

Kevin Yee:

You also mentioned another side that you like reach out to a lot. What does that kind of look like for your marketing?

Chris Dyer:

Yeah. I mean, it's just a matter of going to the right people. I mean, I'm a speaker, so event planners and associations and people like that are hiring speakers on a regular basis. So I just try to go to them and say, hey, you know, are you the one who hires speakers? If you are, I'd love to chat, you know, and maybe they need somebody or maybe they don't. It's amazing when you just kind of go to them with a very simple, you know, hey, you're looking for me. I'm looking for you. Like if this is the right time, let's, you know, I'm happy to send you something or we can chat. And if not, then cool, I'll leave you alone. Because if they're like, we don't need anybody for another year. Okay, cool. I'll swing back in a year. As opposed to here's a nine page email with all of my crap and that you haven't asked for. Do you know what I mean? Like that just doesn't work.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. What I like about your strategy too, there's obviously your content is out there and you're doing ads, you're doing content. So people are coming in, but you're also doing like direct outreach too, which is really amazing. Are you using different tools or are you kind of doing it all yourself too? Like, cause I've seen both people, like I've seen coaches and business owners in general take that like either super personalized approach or they go like shotgun, like mass, mass, mass message. What, Yeah.

Chris Dyer:

If you're a coach only, I mean, I would highly suggest the highly personal, very targeted, using your network first approach. When I'm kind of doing a larger at scale, it's more for my speaking, right? I wouldn't do that for coaching because people want to trust and know a coach. And so that's why I think you're better off putting great content on social or on LinkedIn or wherever, and then go to your network or go to specific people you've already connected with to find out if they know any or whatever like that makes more sense and to be highly targeted if i wanted to go and like all i wanted to do was coach if i was going to stop being a speaker and so i want to go get five more people i would just go to my network i would target the people that know me best and say hey i'm done with speaking i'm just want to be a coach you know i'm looking for five people this is what i'm really good at this is what i do who do you think i should talk to right i could get five this month i have no doubt in my mind i could find people like that that need are looking for someone like or i could just start posting on TikTok and Instagram every single day, right? With content that my potential client needs. So that's the more targeted, highly personalized way. I would say that would be the right approach. As a coach, shotgunning doesn't feel right.

Kevin Yee:

Thank you for making that differentiation, by the way. I really appreciate that subtle nuance. One of the other things I'm very curious, right? So people are finding you. Let's say they want to work with you too. In terms of coaching, what kind of coaching modalities do you have? Because I've seen people do one-on-one. I've seen people do There's other modalities out there, but which ones do you find that are most effective for your clients?

Chris Dyer:

Mostly what I do is one-on-ones. I do have a couple of people like that are keynote speakers and we get together maybe as a group once a month and I'll do that, but they're kind of a little farther along. So I do have a philosophy and this is probably stupid, but my philosophy about coaching is, and I think this is the same thing for if you have a therapist, this should be their therapist philosophy too. We should have a beginning and an end. I should be trying to help you reach a finish line. The goal is not for me as a coach to keep you as my client forever. If I'm keeping you forever, then I'm going to stop your growth because I'm just trying to keep a paycheck coming in. I'm trying to keep the dollars coming in. So my goal is always to figure out with my people I'm coaching, where do they want to go? What's their finish line? And do we agree on that finish line? And then can I get you there? And I'm willing to go as fast as you are willing to go. And there's a lot of other variables that we don't control that are part of that. But it is not my role and I don't think it's a good role to be like I'm gonna be your coach forever and we're just gonna keep chit-chatting all the time like if you're if you're working with a therapist and your therapist is like gonna wants to be your therapist for the rest of your life I think you need to run out the door and go find another one because the goal should be to get you to a point right of growth and then you might need a new therapist or a new coach or a new a new you know person in your life to spark the next thing I noticed in my business the people who are helping me the people that were really important in my business now weren't always the right people later as we We grew as we got bigger, as things changed. I needed different people in that process. Some of them stayed. I had employees that were there for 20 plus years, but like some of my key strategic people or key senior leaders, like they came in and they did an amazing job for two or three years. And then they were no longer the right person. They went and did something else and we brought in somebody else, right? And that's how we grew and got better. So I think of it the same way when I'm coaching people.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah, it's really interesting because I've heard like the therapist example is so interesting too, because like I find that some of the therapists I worked with in the back of the day they created this like almost this codependent relationship and sometimes it just felt like we were just repeating the same patterns over and over again it was driving me freaking crazy so so that's a really great analogy what i'm really curious about too is obviously you don't have to give any like hard numbers or anything like that or specific numbers but i'm curious about your pricing strategies too especially as you've developed as a coach because i know like i've spoken to some coaches they start off like hourly and then some do like a subscription based model. And then some do like a value based model. And so how do you go about pricing? Do you have any pricing strategies that you like that come

Chris Dyer:

to mind? Yeah, I probably use three different strategies. One is if they don't know what they want, and they need help figuring it out, and we're not really there yet, then I encourage them to just book time with me book an hour, you know, and I have a little link, I'm on a calendar thing, like just to go book an hour as they need. And that way, they're not jumping into something they're not ready for. So I can help them in the time and the place they need. If I'm working with a very busy CEO, I find it to be better that I just put them on a subscription and I give them a block of hours that they get per month and it's up to them to use it. And I find that if I put them on that block and I'm not chasing them, I'm like, listen, you're paying for a block. I'm here for this, that amount of hours. I will try to arrange the next call. But like, if you get too busy and you don't want to use me this month, like that's on you. And if next month you need me a little bit more than you needed me before, that's fine. I'm not going to like charge you more. Like we're going to kind of figure it out in the end but I find that if I'm the one having to like chase that senior person it just drives me nuts so I'm just like it's almost like a retainer you get your hours it's up to you to like you're a grown adult you know what you need like let's come in and get it for other people where we've identified a very clear finish line then I might say listen I think this is let's do a three month agreement let's do a one month agreement let's do a six month agreement let's meet this many times and here's the price and then there's a block because again keynote speaker is a great example like they come in and they need help with their messaging and they need help getting to a certain place. I know how long that's going to take. I know how many meetings that's probably going to take. And I would say it's better for them to say, listen, it's X dollars. You're going to get X, you know, Y meetings over Z period. And do you want that? Or you can just keep booking with me as one-offs, but like you're getting a better deal and you're getting a clear finish line with me if you do the other thing. So I kind of use those three strategies as my most common.

Kevin Yee:

One thing I noticed about you and I kind of like about you is that you're very clear about, their boundaries, very clear about the containers that you have as well. And I'm kind of curious, how did you kind of get to the point where you are so clear with the pricing strategies and stuff? Like, it sounds like you've had this really dialed in and maybe it's through trial and error. Maybe it's through some like mentors. I'm kind of curious about that journey, about your

Chris Dyer:

clarity. I think it's two things. One, I've screwed it up a bunch of times. And so you learn like what doesn't work. That'd be very clear, right? I was like, oh, well, that didn't work. Like here I'm chasing the CEO for six months. trying to get the next appointment and i'm like and i'm frustrated like that didn't work so what could i do different the second thing is is like you should always be very curious and highly focused and really dive into what does work for you and so if you have a great relationship as a coach with somebody why was that a great relationship why did that work so well and for me i kind of find those three compartments one of those three that was one of the reasons why it works so well like that person needed the freedom to just book when they needed to cool give them that up this person just needed me to be available when they needed me to be available. They didn't really want to be tied down to a specific time and a specific date. So I'll just give you a certain amount of hours per month. You take it as you need it, right? So again, it was like that worked for that person. And then this other person over here worked really well that they knew they were going to get from A to B and this was going to cost them. So by being really curious about what was working with past clients, that allowed me to set up a better framing for the next client that came in the door. I see. If

Kevin Yee:

you were to estimate, how many clients do you think you've had through the coaching?

Chris Dyer:

150 175 something like that maybe that's a

Kevin Yee:

lot of iterations yeah that's a lot of iterations

Chris Dyer:

right and that's everything from long-term people to someone who came in and just did a couple dates right i mean that's just all all over the road and because i will tell people too like i had someone the other day who booked with me and i told him listen you are totally 100 not ready please don't book another call with me until you've done these 50 things because like you are not ready and i feel horrific taking any more of your money like do not you have to have those sometimes for me like i had to be very very honest with them if like they're not ready and I'll tell them what they got to do to be ready but how did

Kevin Yee:

you react

Chris Dyer:

they were very appreciative right because I think they had talked to a few people and a few other people told them you know let's do this here's a contract I'll take your money and I'm like you are not ready you you know it was like you're working a full-time job and you want to do all this other stuff and you have any of this figured out like at least go get these 10 things figured out and then call me back

Kevin Yee:

No, that's great. I mean, you're playing that trusted advisor role too and putting the client's best interest in front of yours. So I really do appreciate that. In this season of your career, I guess, where do you want kind of your coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any secret dreams, big ambitions no one knows about? I'm very curious.

Chris Dyer:

I would love to continue to work with some more, you know, speakers that are kind of up and coming. I do really enjoy working with CEOs that are trying to figure out how to really shift their culture so that they can really reach their goals from a productivity performance and that next level for their people and else with profits right they want higher profits they want higher performance they want higher productivity like how do they do that and i have always found success in getting the culture to be right right really like not good culture but how do you have great culture that's when we see things really humming for companies and often they think it's like well i just need to like fire these people or i need to root out these other people or we need to bring in this consultancy like nine 99% of the time, it's like your culture is not right. And you get that right and the wrong people go away and the right people find their way into your business. And so I really enjoy that work with those CEOs or business owners. I think that's an area that really gets me excited.

Kevin Yee:

I'm a pharmacist by trade, by the way. So I'm always thinking about like symptoms and stuff like that. Like, oh, someone's sick with a cold and all that. Or someone has like this disease state. What are the symptoms for it? And you mentioned you're looking for business owners and CEOs that need a shift in culture. What are signs or symptoms of like a bad culture? I don't know. I wish I had a better word for it, but like a culture that needs improving, I guess.

Chris Dyer:

Yeah, because there's a difference, right? There's kind of three buckets. There's a bad culture. Bad culture is the boss is terrible. It's toxic. And you can still be doing really well. Your business can be succeeding and your culture is bad because maybe you have a really great product or maybe you're the only plumber in the whole freaking county. Like, you know, there are variables that will allow you to continue to exist. A good culture culture, but maybe that still needs to improve. You can't attract, you're just not landing those really great people that are going to help you get to the next level. Maybe you have higher turnover. Maybe you're seeing engagement scores are lower. Maybe you're not even surveying anybody. You don't even know what your engagement scores are, right? Like that's a big red flag, right? Maybe you don't have the profit that you think you should be having. Maybe you're not having the sales growth that you think you should be having. And maybe when you kind of compare yourself to your competitors, there's no clear differentiator, right? Because we all say we have the best customer service we have the best product blah blah blah but like deep in your heart when you look you're like yeah i'm just like all the other providers in this space there's nothing really different about us and that's actually when you figure out how to have a great culture the differentiators start to occur you start to figure those things out one of my pillars in my book is uniqueness you have to really think deeply about what makes you unique i mean you brought a pharmacy right like what's the difference between the cvs on that corner versus the cvs over on the other corner and most people will tell you there is And I will tell you that I go to one CVS that's a mile farther because the pharmacist there is nice. All the people there are nice. They talk to you and they're interested in you. The other CVS, that pharmacist is a jerk and he rolls his eyes at people and he's frustrated and he's like, you couldn't tell that place is dark. And so I'll drive an extra mile not to deal with that guy. He's not kidding. Maybe giant CVS juggernaut doesn't care. But if those two were not, if that was pharmacy A and pharmacy B and they weren't the same brand, let's just say that was a Walgreens. Like I was going to a different, because I can sense the difference there in how people react. There's a difference. That's what we have to kind of think about helping people get to Greece.

Kevin Yee:

Any companies that come to mind that have like great culture, like inspiration, your inspirations for like great culture companies?

Chris Dyer:

You know, I've had the privilege of working with you. Definitely work on this and they think about it and it's a part of like their day ethos. VaynerMedia, Gary Vanderchuk's company, I did a case study with them. Their chief heart officer, Claude Silver, is really great, and they do a fantastic job at culture and having this, like, she's chief heart officer, and yet at the same time, Gary's freaking cutthroat, right? Like, if you're not a good person, if you're not working your butt off, like, you're on the street. And yet at the same time, they are literally giving a hug and a kumbaya to their people. And so there's this weird balance. They're great, and if, like, that kind of culture attracts you, like, that's a great place to go. NASA, I did another case study with them. I mean, they're really, really interesting. So they're the number one rated government agency to work for. They're employees, and they didn't used to be. They were number 10, and they spent a lot of time figuring out how they could become number one. Because how is NASA not the number one? How is that not the number one place you want to work at any government agency? You know what I mean? And like 100 people out of the 10,000 people that work at NASA are astronauts. Everyone else is a regular schmuck like you and I, right? Like or maybe you have engineers and people like that, but like there's everyday people. Most people are everyday people working and they were number 10. What they had to figure out was, is they really needed to look at their employee surveys. They do this giant survey once per year and they had to take that survey and just work and work and work at that data and work and spend an entire year making things better based on that survey. Not just the one or two big things, but like all the way down as far as they could go. And they went from 10 to three and then from three to two and two to one, like it was just a few years and suddenly and they've been the number one ever since. Right. And so I think they're a great culture. Great. Very different than Gary Vaynerchuk's company. Right. It's very different. Yeah. Yeah, completely. But yes, there are great cultures out there. Google's has been traditionally a great culture. I don't have a good pulse on where they are like this very moment. There's a lot of change happening with AI and things with them. Is it still great? I would assume so, but I don't know for sure. There's a lot of disruption happening in a lot of organizations. I would have never called Meta great, but I certainly would be cautious of them because there's a lot of chaos going on over there as well. You know, we can think of some great examples that are not good as well. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good cultures out there and even not lower like GitHub and Zapier. And, you know, there's been some good smaller tech companies that are good examples.

Kevin Yee:

And thank you for that, because I was just like in the back of my head as you're talking about culture. I was like, I actually don't know what good culture is. Like, I actually don't know what a great culture is. And those examples were perfect. Some One thing I'm also very curious about in your business is like, what are some challenges or bottlenecks that you're kind of noticing right now in your business that most people wouldn't kind of know about on the surface?

Chris Dyer:

Well, bottleneck is always, especially for coaches, is you're selling your time for money. And so there's only so many hours in the day that you can do the coaching, do the selling and all of that. I have a VA, you know, that I use, try to offload as many useless tasks as I can. My second VA is now GCHAT GPT agents. So I've got that running and doing tasks and doing things for me when i'm not able to do them so try to take advantage of as many of those things to offload tasks that i don't need to be doing i don't want to do and i certainly aren't making me money right so that's always a bottleneck for a coach you can grow your business and then bring on another coach and drive more money but like you know then that adds into the layer of management and all of that so that's always a natural

Kevin Yee:

bottleneck i think have you ever considered that for your own business

Chris Dyer:

no only because if i'm being asked to come in and do something that's going to be larger I need to work with several people. I have great people in my network that I can pull in temporarily and say, hey, I need to go coach these five executives. I'm going to work with a CEO. Can you all go work with one of the executives right for this temporary thing? And so I don't need to hire someone on a team on a regular basis. I'll just pull them in on a one-off.

Kevin Yee:

On this podcast, I have this kind of segment. It's called Good Investment, Bad Investment. And so I'm very curious on the best thing that you spent money on for your coaching business and the worst thing that you spent money on that I kind of wish you got your money back from. What is your best investment, worst investment?

Chris Dyer:

Best investment, buying the highest tier of ChatGPT that you can get. ChatGPT,

Kevin Yee:

you got the 200.

Chris Dyer:

Right, like you just have the full access to everything. Probably the best investment right now. I'm thinking if I go a little farther back, certainly really having a really good website with good messaging and very clear about who you are and what you do, I think is super important. You know, bad investment, certainly have people that said they could go and they could find you clients. Like people that second, they could go do, this was years ago, but I tested people that said, we'll do all these calls. We'll outbound all these calls. We'll find people that could be potential clients for you. You know, we'll fill up your sales calendar. Like we'll do the outbound, right? And so I did some testing and experimenting with those and they always sucked. I mean, I even did them with like people that were on the Inc. 5000 list that were like fastest growing company. And like, they were just really good at selling themselves and really bad at delivering. Those never worked out. Like those were always bad. Having someone who doesn't know your product or service out there trying to book people for a phone call like it just didn't work for this maybe if you're selling like i don't know telephones or cars or something that would work but like when it's a service and it's a person like it just does never seem to work

Kevin Yee:

you know what's really interesting about you you've experimented with a lot of different things like that's something i'm noticing about you you never totally shut down an idea that's really interesting

Chris Dyer:

you have to experiment right i mean you don't have to i guess if you find one thing that works you just want to keep doing that maybe that maybe you're smarter than me and that's the better way to go but i'm always thinking there's some other little thing i could do out there that might be better

Kevin Yee:

with that experience though final advice knock on wood i hope this never happens to you but let's say your coaching business goes under you don't have any relational capital that you built over the years you're starting with zero followers zero clients but you have all the wisdom that you have right now what would your first 90 days kind of look like if you had to rebuild this coaching business

Chris Dyer:

you know this is actually i'm gonna take a page out of a dating book so there's this famous dating book i'm blanking on the name but it was like basically if you want to marry someone successful and you want to marry somebody rich which i think is a little bit shallow, but this was the advice of the book. Don't go hang out at the Starbucks down by the street. Go hang out at Starbucks in Beverly Hills. Go hang out at Starbucks. Where are these rich, well-to-do people that you want to marry hanging out? You can't go hang out in, if you live in a poor neighborhood and you're going to the Starbucks in the poor neighborhood, you're more likely to meet someone who's in that space. I think that's a bit shallow, again, for dating advice. However, when I heard that, I said, that is amazing business advice. Because if you want to go and build up a business, well, go hang out and be in the where your potential clients are. That's not shallow because I'm trying to find people who do want to work with me. And so I would go to leadership conferences and go to conferences where CEOs are. I would, you know, maybe go hang out at the country clubs and golf clubs and like where I would need to like think about it. But where are these people who are, let's just say I want to target CEOs as my potential client. Where do these CEOs hang out where I can be around them and build relationships with them to where it's a natural fit where they might want to think about me being a coach or maybe they know someone who needs a coach that's certainly something i can do relatively for like especially if you say i have no money i have no budget like i'm starting from nothing there's a lot of places i can go for free and hang out and meet people and develop right because you said i have no social capital i have no network i can't call up my friends and say no like i have to go make new friends and i have to go make new relationships and so that's where i'm going to start that's number one i could do some outreach i could open up the i'm in orange county so i could open up the orange county business journal and look up who are the top ceos and all these different categories and then like how do i start to develop relationships with them how do i figure out how to do that do i start looking at like do they have events but how do i go and find those people right that would be my first take at it and i probably would also at the same time be developing a plan b and a plan c if that didn't work

Kevin Yee:

i really like that too because it reminds me of every single coaching program i've gone through they have that ideal client worksheet and we just throw

Chris Dyer:

like half the time

Kevin Yee:

as a beginner we just throw it away because that's the boring part we don't want to go through that but what you said about that dating book advice of going to where your ideal clients are and all that really sound advice because i actually interviewed this like coach on this podcast and he works with ultra high network individuals and he had very very similar advice as well and i also found it really interesting that you like dating books as much as i do because i find so much business advice through dating books through the sales aspect through the communication aspect too so quite nice chris how How can people find you and connect with you?

Chris Dyer:

Well, you're welcome to connect with me. My website's Chris Dyer, D-E-Y-E-R.com. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on TikTok, Instagram Reels. I am not the Peruvian Canadian psychedelic artist. That is the wrong Chris Dyer. I'm the other one. He's a nice guy. He lives in Florida. Chatted with him, but that's not me. If you see dreads, it's the wrong Chris. And then happy to, if you want some takeaways, stuff for culture, happy to send you a little PDF of some cool things that I always advise people to do. And you can, if you're in the United States, I don't think it works outside of of the United States or outside. You don't have a US number, but 33777 and just put my name Chris as the message and it will get you that PDF.

Kevin Yee:

Oh, how generous. Chris, I just want to say I really appreciate you just sharing so much about your business. Openly, you literally shared your marketing strategies, how you view pricing and all that. And most importantly, your experiences and stories. So I really do appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on to the show.

Chris Dyer:

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Kevin. Yeah,

Kevin Yee:

my pleasure.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe Bye. Bye. Bye.