Dan Tocchini Shares the Coaching Secrets of ESPN, Disney, and Tesla Teams

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Kevin sits down with Dan Tocchini, a pioneer in transformative strategic recovery, to unveil his proprietary framework: The Revenant Process. Dan works with high-achievers who have attained success but feel disconnected, or who are navigating the deep waters of burnout or strategic failure. This episode is not about minor career adjustments; it is about resurrecting core professional identity and unlocking massive, sustainable growth, consistent with the podcast’s focus on turning expertise into impact.1   

Dan Tocchini explores how to convert professional stagnation or strategic loss into the foundation for global coaching impact. He provides critical discussion on the systematic steps of The Revenant Process, which delivers actionable strategic blueprints for listeners, ensuring the advice is focused on practice, not just passion.   

Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantocchini/
Website: https://mca.takenewground.com/mca/

Transcript

Dan Tocchini: 0:00

But we don't spend a lot of time on what to do. We spend our time on who you're being. Are you aware the way you're relating to things and its impact on your client? Its impact on your ability to see possibility. One of the prime feedbacks we got is that one of the things we teach is that possibility always presents itself. New possibility always shows up like a threat. When you first see it, it looks like a threat because it's calling you out of what you're comfortable with. We want to work with people to be able to calibrate their reactions and learn what they're telling them. We go into survival quite quickly. And if I can catch that signal, I can see is this something I ought to be afraid of, or is this a new possibility?

Davis Nguyen : 0:43

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 Wayne, 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 businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million 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.

Kevin: 1:14

Okay. We have to pick off from last time. But one of the things we were last talking about were your crazy engagements with like SpaceX, Baloop, uh, and all that as well. And so one of the things I'm really curious about is like, okay, people are finding about finding out about your services and all that. Kind of curious. What does what does an coaching engagement look like? Is it one-on-one? You mentioned a little bit about it earlier, but would love to hear more about that.

Dan Tocchini: 1:47

Yeah, we initially coaching is part of a larger offering. Usually we do strategic implementations. People have some kind of new program or they want to make a change, or there's a needs to be a reorientation with a leadership team and there's a strategic offering, you know, some kind of plan. We'll come in and work with them to make sure it goes well. In that process, we offer, we basically consult, which is business strategy, etc. And then we coach. We coach the executives that are going to be, you know, that they'll line out a certain exec. We usually do a a we have a very sophisticated way of doing a culture report. And the coaching usually lines up with what they want to accomplish and what way of being it's going to take. What kind of re what ways of relating does the team really need to open up? What kinds of conversations need to be had that aren't being had uh that would begin to align the team or synergize the talent at the table. And and then from there there there might be some training elements, but that those are all determined based on after we scope a team. Rarely do I just take on coaching clients, although I have um I have one just came on who's an executive who wanted me to coach them before they brought me into the team. They wanted me to coach them to prepare the team because he felt like there were some gaps that he needed to clean up and clear up before he brought somebody else in. He thought there'd be too much resistance and he's right. I think he was right. So stuff if that gives you an answers your question, that's really so m mainly we're focused on strategic implementations of some sort.

Kevin: 3:23

And like this sounds like quite extensive work, and so you kind of handle it.

Dan Tocchini: 3:29

We have I have a deep I have a deep bench. So what we'll do is we'll put three executives. I have a very specific expertise, which happens to be uh coaching, culture development, conflict resolution, negotiation, mediation, that kind of thing. I have a partner who is really good at he's uh you know, he managed, he took a team, he took a business from thirty million dollar market cap to ten point six billion in five years, and he was the number one and number two, and then eventually the number one, the CEO in that company. And so he he's very in depth at scaling, and I'm very adept at integrating the plans that we have. He's also great at governance and finance. I think together we've raised over a billion dollars for different companies. So we'll fill in where they need or work with them. I have another client. We have a number of partners that are good at different things that we'll plug in depending on what's wanted and needed.

Kevin: 4:28

How did you find your partners? Did you just like stumble upon them or like like I thought like we connected with your with Hendre, you know, he was on your podcast.

Dan Tocchini: 4:37

I connect with them. We have a s we have a public leadership training called the Revenant Process. And we have a public leadership academy called the Intrepid Academy for Effective Leadership, which carries with it a coaching certificate in the particular approach that we use. And so it's in one of those two public and public by what I mean is they'll people will send their friends, their family, you know, executives who will send their family. Use almost every time we go into a company, they'll go, hey man, can my I get my wife involved or my husband? Can I my kids would my older kids would love this? Do you have something that like that? And and we offer these two leadership trainings. One's a four-day intensive, the revenant process. The other one is the Intrepid, which is a 60-day leadership program where we coach people, coaching their people and working with them on what it means to lead something into being, how to create agreement and alignment and collaboration with the team at a deeper level than they're normally used to, which is our specialty. So that's how I find uh that's how we usually get connected. Like I said, I got into ESPN because their VP in charge of HR had come through one of our the Revenant, it was called something different then, but sh immediately she said, I'd like you to come on board, and she sent me the next RFP, and I I won this contract to restructure their finance department back in the early 90s, mid-90s, and it went really well, and then they kept me on and I was there for eight years and they introduced me to Disney and and it just went from there. I was at Disney for six, seven years like that.

Kevin: 6:11

You know what strikes me? I was at a mastermind not that long ago, probably like a year ago, and one of the people at the mastermind, there was a bunch of coaches, but one of the people said, like, Kevin, you actually don't have to be the best in your industry. A lot of times, a lot of the wins actually is just like sticking through it. And what I'm really fascinated about your story is that you really stuck with this coaching and you didn't really it's not like you were like, Oh, I'm gonna do e-commerce or anything like that and switch business models altogether. You really stuck with coaching, and it's really interesting to see the compound effect of uh your coaching business over the years.

Dan Tocchini: 6:47

Yeah, that that's that's so interesting. It's a big issue. It's a big it's a big there's momentum. You know, the thing is most we find that we can deepen our relationship with clients when we have a breakdown. If there's a breakdown with a client, we want to get closer. And that's what we work with in our leadership program is that you want to, you know, the obstacle is the way. We've heard that, you know, Ryan Holliday wrote that book, but I've been reading, you know, the Stoics for years. And when something breaks down, the natural throneness where people get thrown is to defend or blame, shame, credit, that kind of thing. And instead, we get curious and say, I wonder what is it we need to learn here? What's wanted and needed? Can we provide it? If we can't provide it, can we help the client find it? And by doing that, we create a deeper sense of trust because we didn't blame them. We're not blaming ourselves, we're not shaming ourselves. We want to learn from the breakdown, and we have a very specific model, a way of breaking a breakdown down that will open up possibility.

Kevin: 7:47

You know, this prompted a question, and I I wrote it down with my really bad uh doctor handwriting. But, you know, your approach to coaching, like, what do you feel like, if anything, do you feel like your approach to coaching is different than how majority of the coaching industry like coaches, I guess?

Dan Tocchini: 8:04

You know, I I know that we are distinct because everybody who's I've had multiple people come through our programs who have uh you know gotten different certifications and they they say, wow, this is so distinct from what we've learned. It includes what we've learned in these other projects, but we don't spend a lot of time on what to do. We spend our time on who you're being. Are you aware of the way you're relating to things and its impact on your client and its impact on your ability to see possibility? One of the prime feedbacks we got is that we one of the things we teach is that possibility always presents itself. New possibility always shows up like a threat. When you first see it, it looks like a threat because it's calling you out of what you're comfortable with. So we want to work with people to be able to calibrate their reactions and learn what they're telling them. We go into survival quite quickly, and if I can catch that signal, I can see is this something I ought to be afraid of or is this a new possibility? And there's a way to vet that and to inquire. You have to get curious. You know, Harvard did a study, uh, I think the book's called Thank You for the Feedback, something like that. It's been years since I read it. But they did a 10-year study about how what feedback should we listen to. And and what they came up with is, well, you have to listen to the feedback before you know you ought to listen to it. You have to listen to it in the context of your commitment. And and it's so easy to get like somebody could give me a very valuable piece of feedback, but in a very punitive tone. And I'll find myself getting defensive. But I can feel the defense and not shut down, not shut my listening down. I just happened with my son last night. We're we're partners in a in a tech company, and he was talking about putting he he's gonna put some more money into the company by you know through sweat equity, because we we've got some things we've got to handle. And and he wanted I got upset with him because he wanted stock for it. And when I listen, I I got really upset like enough that he could pick it up and goes, What are you getting so upset about? And as he told me what he was thinking, the thinking made sense. And so while I'm defensive, I'm still listening. Right? I that's that's one of the things I've found to be valuable. So I shut up and just listened, and I said, You're right, your your logic makes sense. Please forgive me. I I I imagined something else. Something from our past kind of polluted my listening. Please forgive me. And he got no problem right off it, and we're on to what we were doing.

Kevin: 10:39

And he was actually more open. I think that's so interesting because something that I've been trying to work on myself is like this um some people call it being an observer, but almost like this neutrality, like trying to be very intentionally neutral, even though we all have biases and stuff like that too. But it's one of the hardest skills that I had to like learn about emotional regulation.

Dan Tocchini: 11:02

Yeah. Well, it yeah, it's so true because there's no such thing as when people talk about neutral listening, what that really means. It's like you're not there's no bowl, there's a bowl there, but there's something in the bowl. If I'm aware of what's in the bowl, then I can actually listen past it. I can listen for what you're talking about, what you're saying, versus just my agenda or how I'm filtering what you're saying. You know, I make this little dialogue where two people are talking, and you know, we we can actually we can process up to 450 words a minute, but we only usually speak around 100 to 125. That's fast, that's a lot. You know, usually it's lit less than that. So all that other RAM is going into three other conversations. It's going into do I like this conversation? Is it relevant? Can I use it? It's going into how am I doing in this conversation? Do I look good? Do I feel good? I am I trusting? It goes into how is who how do I think of you? Do I like this guy? Do I not like him? Do I feel he's economy? Do I feel he's trustworthy? Is it something worth listening worth is he worth getting to know? All those conversations go on at the same time. So if I can, if I'm aware of him, I don't have to it's kind of like in the movie The It's A Beautiful Life with Um Beautiful Mind, Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe, and he was schizophrenic. He was aware of the three people that weren't real, and he was able to recover by not trying to get rid of them, but just not giving them power, just being aware of them being there. And you know, we all have that going on. And if we can part that's why we talk about managing yourself first, understanding your own machinery, and then being able to listen past it.

Kevin: 12:41

Yeah, it's really interesting. Like I noticed this journey because like part of me doesn't want to be biased, like the ideal self doesn't want to be biased, it wants to be neutral, wants to be like like you know, the go-to person where I make unbiased decisions, right? But then I'm human too, right? I got emotions. I'm like some things trigger my survival stay, kick up the sympathetic nervous system, fight, fight, freeze. And what I realized fight, flight, follow, and freeze.

Dan Tocchini: 13:08

Those are the five.

Kevin: 13:09

I didn't I didn't know about the other two. That's interesting. That's interesting. But what I what I was saying was like uh I think the biggest thing I've it's kind of like that shadow work that we were talking about yesterday, where it's like rather than fighting this, just accepting it. Like, hey, I'm noticing myself get getting really angry in this situation, you know, like and it's it's just having that accusation on it as Chris Voss does in his book Numbers with the Difference.

Dan Tocchini: 13:35

So good, man. So good. One of my favorite definition of empathy is profound. He's really good.

Kevin: 13:42

One of my favorite books. Um which also leads me to this like other point too, right? Like you clearly have this process, and I'm sure it didn't happen overnight. It's not like you woke up on day one coaching, you're like, okay, we're doing this strategic implementation, right? Can you tell me a little bit about the evolution of your process and how you kind of like discovered it over time?

Dan Tocchini: 14:07

Yeah, I I went to work for a company for called Life Spring uh back in 1970, 1981. I did the tri I did their trainings in 1979. And um I was 23 when I went to work for them as a trainer as a trainer, and I started there, and I was I got involved in the marketing side where I worked with executives who would come through the trainings and they wanted to enroll their friends, and then I worked with them on on how to effectively make a difference with them whether they enrolled or not, how to stand in the possibility of what they're committed to, and then offer them some something that could be valuable. In that process, I got to learn a lot of what worked and what didn't work, what was missing for me. We I was constantly in the process of connecting with my impact, managing my impact on them, and and getting them to talk to me about that impact in a way that I could have it be useful for connecting to them. I remember I had this one lady, she was a nun, and had gone into business, and you know, she had a pretty high level of integrity and to but to the point where it was she'd moralize everything which was unnecessary. And I'll never forget that it took me almost two, three weeks to have that conversation effectively. Every time I approached it, she'd hang up on me. And so I I remember I started the third call where I broke through, I said, Look, give me feedback. What makes you want to hang up on me? What do I do that make you say, you know what, whatever you make up about it, it turns you off. I want to know so I don't get that in the way. And she said, Well, you're just so certain. You know, you're you think you know everything, which I've heard my wife say, so it was not something and I remember thinking to myself, right on, right on. Well, and then I asked her, I said, Well, how she goes, I know you have something to say, and I wouldn't be this upset, but it's hard for me to engage it because you it's not like you're wondering, it's like you're telling me. And I thought, okay, good. So now I started, I just kept asking questions, and I inquired my way deep into the conversation, and she got what I had to say with no resistance. But I'll never forget that process because at first my mind said, Oh, you're full of shit, you're just trying to avoid the conversation. I got all this bravado come up. But instead of engaging that, I let that go and just kept following her coaching and just asked her questions, and and it really made a difference. I turned a lot of my what I wanted to say is statements into questions that I I could learn about how much of that was true of my statement, how much wasn't, where did it where where could I deepen it with her rather than be right about it? There's a underlying need to be right. You know, the saying, I have you heard this saying? You know, the instructions of the box that life comes into is in the outside of the box. And the box I discovered is looking good, feeling good, being right, and being in control. And that the instructions to break out of the box are on the outside of that. So it was the experience that really drove that saying home to me.

Kevin: 17:03

You know what's really interesting? Like you mentioned something like what's not being said, and this actually stuck out to me from my interview with Hendre too, right? You guys both said the same thing, right? And so how do you kind of create a safe environment where you know, where you can talk about these things? Because sure, it's uncomfortable, but I'm sure that you there's ways to make it safer.

Dan Tocchini: 17:27

I whenever I start a training or a coaching relationship, what I do is I first off, I ask them to be open to what I have to say. They don't have to believe it. That I what I'm inviting them to do is use what I say to them as a platform to look out from. And then if they find themselves getting upset or defensive or shutting down, let me know and let's talk about what's there. Let's talk about what's blocking or intervening, what's the static about. The other thing is there are four basic principles that I'm operating from. The first one is that people never make a stupid decision. They always make the best decision they see available to them. In other words, you don't get up in the morning and go, I'm gonna make the second or third best decision I see in my life. No, you're always making biologically the best decision you you see possible. Now that doesn't mean it's the best decision available, it's the one you see possible. So if I if you look up and you see somebody doing something that you see is really hurtful based on what they w in the context of what they want to have happen, you gotta remember that something's they're seeing makes sense that that's the best choice. And that leads to the second principle, which is people always act congruently with the way the world occurs to them. So something in that action is congruent with the way I wonder what makes that the best choice. That's the question I ask. Like, why would they choose that given these other options? They must not see those other options. In fact, those other options might be a threat. I wonder what way of seeing the world in this situation would make that the best choice, and those these other choices not available blind to or def or feeling like they're threats. And the third principle is the world occurs for people in language. Now this this is this is a real like you said when we got on about language. You know, I I used the word and you say, Yeah, we could connect over it. Language is the software of being, or as Martin Heidegger says, language is the house of being. And language being uses language to become, to become something. So if somebody's saying something, there's a pat there's usually patterns in the way we talk. So I what I do is I listen for some very specific things. First off, I listen for what are you committed to? So I have a context. What is it this person wants to get done? Who do they want to become? What do they want to see happen? Now that gives me a context to live in it. To listen through. Then I listen for patterns in that context. What how do they position themselves? Do they position themselves as open? Do they position themselves as the hero? Do they position themselves as a victim? Do they position themselves as a villain? When and and what is how do they interchange in those predicates? And that patterning helps me notice what they emphasize or w and what they omit. And what they emphasize is what they want me to see. What they omit is what they don't want to see and they don't want me to see. So if I want to get the that gives me an idea of what's not being said. The patterns against the emphasis give me an idea of what's omitted, and then I can direct my inquiry into what they're omitting, which brings to the surface what they don't want to talk about. That's where transformation occurs. If they can then talk about it and see possibility in it, when people see possibility in what they don't think is possible, they get excited and they want to go again. It brings people to the surface. It brings their passion, they begin to dream again, their creativity comes to the surface, and they're ready to go again. So that that's a that's a that work with that in our in our leadership academy. We train people to listen that way. We put them on camera and we have them notice what they emphasize, what they what patterns are there, what they emphasize, what they omit based on the context of whatever the conversation is. And a lot of times you, me, I, we say, I'm committed to this, and then we act differently. Well, that's because we aren't aiming at that. We think we are, but our aim, the minute our aim changes, the hierarchy of concerns in your language changes.

Kevin: 21:35

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 21:35

Like what you're if I'm really concerned about that, then there'll be a congruency in my language that that leads me to whatever that commitment is. But if you say you're committed to that, but your language leads me to another horizon, that's where that delta is what I'm now going to inquire into to get them aligned, to see what's wanted and needed, to understand what's missing, and then see what's wanted and needed.

Kevin: 22:00

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And are there memorable stories that come to mind of having these conversations of talking about that delta that you're talking about, like that come to mind?

Dan Tocchini: 22:09

Yes. I mean it's a personal most powerful ones are personal. I you know, I I told you I had a pretty dark past, right, many years ago. And my wife found out basically I was living a double life, and we had just had a baby, my boy my son, who's now forty-two. And I had just come out of, you know, I've been dealing drugs and doing crazy stuff. And I ironically, during that period, I'm reading like I always do, reading the stuff I'm talking about here. And um at one point I ask her to forgive me, and I talk to her about what's going on, and she immediately gets curious and wants to understand what I'm talking about. Like who was who are the women I went out with? What have I been doing behind her back? And as she starts to get specific in the rec in the in the inquiry, I start getting very defensive, and I stand up and I'm full of contempt and rage, and I'm gonna storm out of the room. And right as I stand up to leave, she says, Oh, I see, so who are you confessing for? Are you using me one more time so you can feel better? And that stopped me in my tracks, and I realized she's on it. So I turned around, it humbled me tremendously, sat down and asked, Ask whatever you want, I'll tell you anything. And in that process, what I realized is I didn't want to see the man I had become. I felt shame, and the contempt was to drive her and myself from seeing that. And the more I faced into it, the more empathy and love I had for her, even though I knew that she may not want to stay with me. So from that time, we decided we'd sleep in separate bedrooms. She said she forgave me, but she didn't know if she wanted to stay with me. During that time, I would go to work in the morning, and we would my son was a young kid, so in the morning we'd talk, and then I'd come home at night and we'd we'd play with Danny and we wouldn't talk about the things in our marriage too deeply, and you know, go to bed. Well, at one point I get up in the morning, I'm talking to her, and I'm asking her, I say, Look, man, we're eating away at our nut, at our at our s our egg, because we just bought a home and I wasn't quite covering it. I'm working 80 hours, 60, 70 hours a week at the training company at Life Spring. And you know, we'd get in an argument and she'd say, Well, I want to help, and I'd say, No, you don't, and I'd get pissed off and I'd storm out. That happened two days in a row. And at night I wouldn't we wouldn't talk about it because we would play with Danny. So so the third day I come to breakfast and she's got a tape recorder on the table, and she goes, Look, we're missing each other. Why don't we just turn this on and talk? And you know, I'm kind of pissy, and I'm like, okay, go ahead. You know, and I'm not in a good mood. She turns it on, we start talking, we get in the argument, and then she before I storm out, she turns off the recorder and she says, Look, let's listen to what happened. Because I'm saying you don't want to help, and she's saying, I do want to help, and I'm saying you're lying. And she goes, Let's see what happens. So she gets records it back, and the recording goes like this. I'll go, I you know, you don't want to help, I can tell. She goes, No, I want to help, Danny. I Dan, I just don't want to leave Danny at a babysitter's. And I said, Oh, so you don't want to help, right? So, you know, and so I punch the taper corner and go, okay, good. You said that, but you didn't mean it. And then she starts to cry. And I think in my mind, she's trying to con me. So I think, you know, because I think kind of streetwise, and I think, okay, well, she wants to help. I wonder what she wants, what she'd do. If she if she was really wanting to help, she she wouldn't have thought about what she would do. So I go, okay, what would you want to do? And she she reaches over, grabs her purse, and pulls out a business plan, two-page business plan for a daycare at the house. I'm staggered. I look at it, it's well thought out. I'm now convicted. You know, here I am storming out two or three days before this to go teach people how to listen. And I'm going through this, and I'm staggered. And I realize I had projected onto her my own dark side. Like that what I was afraid she was doing is something I would probably do at that point in my life. And I ask her to forgive me. And we have we we some of the best conversations we've ever had started then. And for the next two, three weeks we explored, and I realized in the process, something I it gives me goosebumps still. The I had had a number of basically one night stands, and it always would happen in September. That's one of the patterns I noticed. And we were exploring that, and it occurred to me one night in bed that it was in that month that my mother first went to the hospital for you know, I was like twelve. And I remember saying to myself, I'll never trust women. I won't trust women, women can't be trusted. And I realized at that moment that these flings were almost like me assuring myself that I didn't have to put all my eggs in this basket and I was still good on the market, like there was some kind of corrupted thought of security in it, and the very thing I was doing was driving me from my family, the very thing I wanted, the scar of losing my family. Well, I was trying to protect myself from ever feeling that again. And I realized if I was going to have a family, I was gonna have to walk into that. I was gonna have to risk being abandoned again and and uh really early, you know, without seeing it coming. And it really opened up a set of conversations that drew us so close that from that time on I never did, you know, sure I was attracted to women, but I never thought about, never wanted to imagine and go through all this craziness. In fact, it's just way too much. But I, you know, it was interesting because it disappeared. And I told her, I'll tell you if at any moment I find myself attracted to another woman. And it was about three years later I remember we were in this church and I was we were asked to be in leadership, and there was somebody on leadership I was attracted to, and I I told her, I said, Yeah, you know, I'm attracted to this gal. And she said, Good, okay, let's go talk to her and her husband. Her husband's an ex-marine. I'm thinking, no, we don't have to do that. Immediately the attraction's gone. I'm not attracted anymore. But we sat down and talked to them, which drew us close to them, and then we ended up training them to deliver our marriage workshop, and we became best friends. So those are the kinds of things that, you know, if I if you can get in touch with your machinery, the idea is to integrate it, to use it, not to let it determine you, not to let it, if you will, own you. You can own it. And so, you know, I've found that in multiple different levels. I've done that with executives, but that's a that's a personal transformation that occurred for me that was profound and really deepened uh, you know, put set a foundation in our relationship that we've relied on for almost 50 years now, 40 years now. We've been married, we've been together 50 years, married 40, this will be our 46th year.

Kevin: 28:46

That's so beautiful. Because like the part that really got me was like uh the part where you're talking about the shift in the being. You said this earlier, right? Like you said something about like the shift in being and stuff. And in that story, near the end, the part where you realize you really wanted a family, but you're pushing them away. And I could just feel the shift of that new person that you want to become too.

Dan Tocchini: 29:08

Well, and you know, the she noticed what when I was emphasizing when I got angry, I was emphasizing my feelings, not hers. And she was just inquiring into something like she could see that what I was ow like and her willingness to she's always been very she loves me, I know that, because I don't deserve her here. Uh I d you know, w if I got what I deserved, we wouldn't be together. But she made space and we found each other. You know, we've we've been that way for each other. She's been through some stuff and we've been able to walk through it with very I would say without really torturing each other, which is what I think destroys a relationship. You know, minor tortures. Like even now when we get in a argument, we'll end up laughing halfway through the argument because we can really we start to see how stupid we look. And literally, I'm not kidding you, belly laughs multiple times. And uh there's just something beautiful about that that you know you can connect with the other person even in their darkness.

Kevin: 30:08

Something that strikes me about your work, it is so deep and profound. And inside we know that this is like really meaningful work and this is like the transformation. But then the thing I've noticed about coaches is that a lot of people struggle with like patching packaging this into price. It's almost like money kind of corrupts like the wholesomeness of these transformations. And so obviously, you are a coaching business, and obviously you don't have to give any hard numbers, but how do you think about pricing these like your services and all that or any coaching engagements?

Dan Tocchini: 30:41

It's not money that corrupts it, it's the relationship people have to money. Okay. Um I have a I have a client that I used to work with, and they wanted to learn what we do, what I do. They wanted to learn to train and consult the way we do. And so I I set up a partnership with them, and in the partnership, I started to notice that they were suspecting me. And here I'm thinking I'm giving them a deal. They're feeling like I'm doing this for the money. So I actually stopped the relationship. I said, My sense is you suspect me based on this language and what you omitted here and what you're emphasizing here, and kind of opened it up, and they go, Yeah, well, it seems like you're just in it for you know, like this is just a this what you're asking me to do is just another opportunity to make money. And I and I said to them, you know what? Best I don't work with you anymore. Why would you want to continue to work with somebody you don't trust? And I don't want to do that. And I just I've dropped a I let the relationship go. And they they try to, you know, like, oh come on, no, I no. You need this is not something that's okay with me. Uh not that I hold it against you. I would be compromising myself because I know internally it hurt it hurt me that you said that. I I've been very straightforward with you. And I told you I was giving you a break here, and and that when I offered you this, I was giving you a break. I would have charged a lot more. And I told you that how much I get daily, if I go on site, I get at least ten thousand a day, right? I'm doing it for you for for four thousand a day. And now if you want to learn this at a deeper level, I'm offering you a what I would consider an incentive, but you feel like it's not. So I I I want you to know that I don't I'm not interested in trying to get you over that. If you that's something that keeps haunting you, you ought to go find someone you you trust.

Kevin: 32:28

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 32:29

I it's just not worth my time. And I love you. God bless you. I think you'll much actually do better without me.

Kevin: 32:36

Yeah, it's really interesting because I could see like if you continue that conversation or that coaching engagement, it would be a relationship of uh resentment. Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 32:46

Well there's you know, you know, it's interesting. So there's a there's there's there's so think of there there's entitlement is a very dangerous mindset. And that's what I experienced was when somebody gets resentful, they feel entitled to something. Like I have something they feel entitled to. And if I d and I've seen and I help, by the way, I see how I've contributed to the relationships where this occurs. Like if I make somebody a special case and I haven't really connected, they haven't connected with the value of what I'm doing, which I felt happened with this guy and his partner, then they'll feel entitled to what I'm they'll like, oh you know, he's you know, this is I should be getting this all the time at what the level I want it at, not the level it's like my point is the value of this, if you can't see the value of it. And I told them, you'll learn this. You can learn what I'm doing over a period of time. You make enough mistakes and pick yourself up, no problem. I can just I can save you 10 or 15 years, maybe 20. Yeah. And if you if that's not worth it to you, I understand. I but I want to be I've been very I told them, and they they agreed, I mean, to their credit. I was very clear from the beginning. They just didn't like it. And they didn't like it from the beginning, and so I missed that signal. And I'm sure it was there and in in the hem-hawing around what we were doing, how long it took them to get the money, to sign the contracts, to look at the information I sent them. It took two months to look at some of the content I sent them. If I would have been on my game, I'd have noticed those omissions and inquired into them. Like so I I kind of went back, where did I miss this? Right. So the big key here, and and I'll tell you, you asked what the difference is in coaches. I think one of our big differentiators is we work it on ourselves, and that makes it easier to invite people into the dance. If I can't, like I'll ask somebody, tell me the last time you thought you were really right. I mean, you were on it and you discovered you were completely off. You were wrong. You didn't you missed it completely. If they can't give me one or two examples, I know I got trouble.

Kevin: 34:55

You know, even as you said that, I was like trying to search for the last few times in my mind and nothing like came to mind too. And I can give you shit.

Dan Tocchini: 35:03

I can list, I mean, I can list from today back. It's crazy. That think that conversation I talked about with my son happened last night. And the idea is not to like no shame. Shame and credit are 180 degrees from being responsible.

Kevin: 35:20

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 35:20

Shame, blame, and credit are all about the past, justifying, rationalizing, etc. And what they do is they condemn me to repeat the past. If I take credit for something, like make sure that's important, like if somebody gives me credit, sure I'm going to receive it. Thank you very much. But I'm not going to let it go to my identity because the next moment isn't the last moment. And shame and blame are about beating myself up as shame for what happened and what I missed, which just signifies me, which is what caused me to miss it in the first place. And then blame is blaming somebody else, which is out of my control because I can't control them. So I'm still helpless. So both ways, I end up repeating the pattern until I can just own, not blame myself or another. What this is what I missed. I wonder what I can learn from that. And then I can move into the power to move. I take my power back, and I now have it to use in the correction. It's a huge jump. You know, Jung talks about this. You know, he said, uh, I'll tell you, he there's a quote that he I use. It's uh it goes like this You will become a bearer of light forged in darkness, embodying a depth of compassion that does not confuse itself with martyrdom. Walk among others as a reminder that suffering, when faced, can become transformation. Because most people are afraid of suffering. That's what survival is about. I'm trying to avoid the suffering. And anytime you may I make a commitment, that commitment is usually outs a promise. It's outside my comfort zone. I can't predict it, I can't control it. So now I'm going to be called into a vulnerability that I'm trying with most of my alm almost my whole life's about making myself invulnerable, which is an inauthentic state because I the very fact that I'm human means I'm constantly vulnerable. And if I try if I don't if I try to reduce that sense of vulnerability, then I lose the power to create. If that makes sense, it's a leap, but I can't.

Kevin: 37:21

No, it does. It does. It makes a lot of sense, actually.

Dan Tocchini: 37:24

Because the you know, the necessity, right? The necessity, the vulnerability to necessity calls creativity to the surface. And when people are unwilling to face the necessity, they suffer from the despair of possibility. So then I swing back into the what's called the despair of necessity, which is I'll just settle for what I can get. But then that reminds me of what I did uh what I really long for. It's not what I want. Now I have the despair of necessity because I I lose meaning. Possibility is what brings meaning. And if I take responsibility for the possibility, the meaning of the future exists now in the face of whatever I get to handle. That whatever I get to handle is the opportunity to presence the future. So if I resist the moment, I have no power. And I resist the moment because I'm afraid of the vulnerability I'm being called into, and that starts the whole cycle.

Kevin: 38:30

And then I could see the resentment coming in too, like of you Yes. Oh man.

Dan Tocchini: 38:36

You know, resentment is the precursor to envy, right? So if you say you and I are working together, and I'm I'm not willing to be vulnerable, and you are to what you long for, and you're out there failing your way into these big successes. But all I can see is their successes. And jealousy is I want what you have, so I want it, but I can't seem to get it. And there's a philosopher named Helmut Schuck who talks about this dynamic. And if I long enough, you know, jealousy can be healthy, I can model you. I I can do like I model Henry over a number of different things. It works so well for me, right? But if I model you for a while and it doesn't, I can't make it my own, I could and I keep going after it because I think I have to have it the way you do, then that becomes envy. And envy is jealousy is I want what you have. Envy is I don't want you to have what you have. And the minute I make that transition into that delusion, you'll notice my language. I will undermine you. Even though I praise you, I will make sure sure people know something about your faults.

Kevin: 39:37

I see.

Dan Tocchini: 39:38

I'll try to keep you from having what you deserve from other people, and it ultimately results in murder of some sort, whether reputation or right down to taking someone's life. And I've done a lot of work with criminals, and if you talk to somebody who's murdered, you'll know that that it stems out of envy. They don't want that person to have what they have, and they take their life. That's a dark path. Wow. That's the integration of the dark side, yeah. If I integrate in if I integrate my dark side, I can spot other things in people quicker, which enables me to open up a possibility for them to see what future's coming if they continue to remain loyal to that what that line of thought. Because thoughts have futures attached to them. And so if you can identify the thought, you can project the future that's coming. And if people can see the future that's coming, they can they can weigh the short-term gain for the long-term pain, and they can make a new choice. That's so interesting. Welcome to my craziness.

Kevin: 40:37

No, it's a very it's very deep, and like I I think about I I actually have a lot of these thoughts a lot of times, right? And one of the things I'm trying to get better with personally is something called I'm pretty sure you're familiar with this term, emotional granularity, where I can pinpoint these things, right? And one of the things that someone uh pointed out recently was like, Kevin, what you're not feeling is jealous, is you're not feeling jealousy. You're actually feeling a bit of envy. I was like, huh, I never really used that word at all or whatnot, right?

Dan Tocchini: 41:08

Well, and the culture tends to confuse that word. So it's envy when you don't like if you can't rejoice in someone's victory, that's envy.

Kevin: 41:17

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 41:18

Because you you don't want to give them the joy that people feel when you know I you ever see somebody win, like you watch one of those voice shows, you know, when they win the big prize and you feel so good, you might even go into tears because they got something they dreamed of. If if somebody gets what they dream of or they hope for, and you get resentful, that's envy. The French word is resentiment. And it's it connected means bitterness, which means unfulfilled revenge. You feel violated because of their victory, even though they did nothing to you. It's it's of the seven deadlies, Aquinas says it's the one that makes no sense at all. That's why we hide it. Because there's we can't see what anybody gets out of it. If I'm a glutton, you know what I get out of it. If if I'm a if I'm a womanizer, you know, an adulterer, you know what I got out of it, right? Anything like that. You can see what that's the one that you don't understand what they get out of it.

Kevin: 42:14

Let's talk about this, but in a different context, right? Sure, sure. I think I think earlier we were talking about pricing, and something I've always like kind of wondered is like, how do I not like one, how do I price my services, right? But how do I price it from a place where I don't feel like super bitter or resentful about it?

Dan Tocchini: 42:34

I price, I price, I cost fifty thousand a year.

Kevin: 42:38

How did you come up with that?

Dan Tocchini: 42:40

I just I figured I'm worth it. I'm worth probably more. Henry says I'm worth a lot more. I just I 50 grand a year, worth 30,000 for six months. And uh I know if you spend a year with me, I'm you're gonna get more than your money's worth. And I've never I have clients that have gone on for five years, four years, three years, and come back or send people to me. I don't have any problem with that. They and the ones who don't want to do that, I get it, I understand, no problem. I have other coaches that might that may charge less and they're on they're on the path, they may be very well. I turn them to them. Or you know, I've been interviewed amongst other coaches. I tend to win 95, 96% of the time. I figured it out. But you know, the I think a lot of it is being okay with not it's okay if it doesn't fit, no big deal. Better we I did a service.

Kevin: 43:27

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 43:28

Because maybe what they're going af maybe after what they're going after isn't worth what you're asking to them. That's why I spend a lot of time really understanding what happened if this if when you accomplish this, what shifts in your life? I had a young gal, this is no bullshit. She was working, she's probably making 40 grand a year. And she calls me up and she says, I want to hire you as a coach. I go, honey, okay. I immediately go, You're in the wrong league here. How much you make a year, 40 grand. But I want to double my income in the next year. Okay, good. Do you know how much I cost? She goes, Yeah, I I heard. I said, What makes you think you can do it? Oh, I can get the money, I'll raise it. I said, Listen to me. I don't want you to raise it if you're not serious, because I don't want to take money from a young woman who wants to find a spouse, get married, have kids, and have a career on top of that. If she's not serious. So I turned her down. She sent me three letters, finally took her on. She doubled her income the first year, she found a spouse the second year, and now she's married with two kids, three kids. And she writes me, we we stay in touch, and she I was with her for three years, and she was awesome. She every year renewed. And then her brother came on board. She referred her brother, and her brother referred three other people. In fact, her brother's referred five different clients. So, you know, I I believe in what I do. I love people. I know that I stay up bothered about my clients. So I'll lay up at night and think about what they're up against, and it'll bother me if I can't see new possibility. I, you know, I I don't I I I'm not j I'm doing this, that's why I only take four or five clients max. Because I have my other consulting work and I my clients stay in my head. I have this one guy, just brilliant business kid. This kid's young, and he's his company does about 20 million a year, and he is an animal, and his wife left him, surprised him. He hired me to help him through that. Now he's got me working in his business. He's got me coming out doing an off-site with his team. He calls me all the time. I mean, and I've this is only seven months into the contract.

Kevin: 45:27

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 45:27

And I that's all I know. Because I charge that. They talk two or three times a month, but I'm on call if they need me more. And this guy has called a couple of times I've talked to him two or three times a week as he's working through like his custody battle. He got what he wanted, you know, uh the the being able to he wants to stay supple towards her and not be bitter because she committed adultery and he's trying to work through it. Like, like we're working through all that stuff, and then he's got his team. And his you know, they took his business, he's a smart guy, he took his business from 10, 20 million in two years. And now he wants to go to thirty million. Yeah. He's brilliant. He's very good. I did a I have a really powerful assessment. He's the most balanced executive I think I've ever worked with. Really great exec. And very open, wants to learn, is not afraid to make a mistake, but but you know, very logical. He will he uses his analytical powers very well.

Kevin: 46:20

Do you prefer these long longer-term engagements like continuous renewals, or do you prefer the novelty of new clients all the time?

Dan Tocchini: 46:28

I like the long term. I like to get to know people. Most of my clients go at least three years. But if they don't, I've had a few not, that's fine. But they come back. I've had multiple people do a year and come back and do another year, and one guy came back did one year, then he skipped a year, then he came back and did two years, or skipped a year, and he did, I think, a year after that too. What do you feel like happens at that three-year mark if like most of the clients Well normally, you know, at the end of a year, unless I can find a new project or we we're taking a new level that they're up for, I'll let them go too. You know, it's gotta have some teeth in it. I don't want to get on the phone and just have a conversation. They're not paying for a friend, and although I like being friendly, they're paying to get results.

Kevin: 47:09

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 47:09

And I have all kinds of frameworks and those are not as valuable as they're valuable when you plug them into a a way of being, a way of being together that's active, that's vibrant, that's alive, that's mutual. It's not like shoulder to shoulder, not head to head or top down or shoulder to shoulder.

Kevin: 47:28

I'm also really curious about this because obviously you know a lot about coaching. You have all this experience and wisdom and working with cli oh like so many clients. And you've been in this game for like 47 years or 43 years. I guess where do you want this coaching business to take in the next few years, like in the next season of your life?

Dan Tocchini: 47:47

I never think you know, I'm not a big guy like that. I I I do this because I love it. And I love people, and I love to get to know them, and I love to get to know their families and their businesses. And so, you know, for me, if I can continue to be in deep fellowship with my with my clients and discover their lives together, and my vision is to stand to see them win. And everything and when they do, I get a great joy out of that. I love it. Like this young gal gal I talked about, I just love that and you have no idea what she struggled with before. She thought she might be gay, all these things. Then I you know, I have whatever, let's talk about what's there. And she eventually just moved, like she moved, and to see that is and to be part of that to me, it's holy. So I told I told my wife, I'll work till I I drop. There's no retirement. My grandfather used to say, only those who don't like their work retire. All we do is take vacations.

Kevin: 48:45

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 48:46

Recreation. You know, you gotta recreate.

Kevin: 48:48

Yeah, I feel like something happens when you just like start like retiring. Yeah. Like people people just like their energy shifts or something weird happens, right, when there's no sense of purpose anymore. Yeah. You know, I feel like people die a lot quicker. I've heard that study.

Dan Tocchini: 49:04

That's true.

Kevin: 49:05

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 49:06

I told my wife, if I didn't do this, I'd be a chaplain or I do something where I'm deeply involved with people. You know, I was a chaplain for eight years, a law enforcement chaplain, and I loved it. I didn't know that.

Kevin: 49:18

Yeah. What was it about it that you really enjoyed?

Dan Tocchini: 49:20

When people like I I'll never forget the first call I went out was one of the one of the most powerful calls I had in my eight years. Is these two boys were playing on this bridge eight and six, and they were paying like jumping off they were jumping in and out of the of the bridge. It's in a little town called Rio Monterio on the Russian River. And uh in California. And what happened is this plumber was driving in a big truck, he couldn't see them, and he r he hit them. And um when I pulled up to to be there, because I I'm there to help to basically stay with the victims or their family while the police do their work. I got there really early and I saw the kids they got knocked out of their tennis shoes, were in the street. And the the power of this was I first I I helped the cop pull the one boy from under the wheel well, and the other boy would put him on the Medevac, and they took off. And then I sat with the cop to help him kind of recover his shaking and weeping and just kind of was with him for a bit. He left, and I looked to the end of the bridge, and there was some man down at the end of the bridge with his head in his hands. So I walked down and talked to him, and it was the father of one of the boys. And so I got connected to him, him and his wife, and the idea of being just a presence there. You can't make it better. It just w helped him think through yeah, I helped him, I know where he's being lifted to. If you want, I'll drive you there. So I drove him down to Oakland, and the boys lived and they they were fine, they didn't have any brain damage. And I still I haven't gotten a letter for a couple years, but for many years afterwards, I'd get a letter thanking me on that birth on that date for being there for them. And their words were thank you for the presence. It made the suffering w you know something that was worth it rather than destroying us. And that's really what if you read that the quote from Jung, that's I I lost my grandson about three years ago, two and a half years old. My boy's old my boy's youngest boy uh got was crushed by a redwood. And immediately what I did is and he called me the day the night it happened, and uh we were there the next day. We couldn't get out of Idaho, it was a big storm until the next day, and I rented an Airbnb and brought all our families together for two months because I knew that the things that people do in suffering is they isolate. So we kept people in community and and helped us process the grief and connect and mourn and celebrate Eon. That's was his name. We still talk now. We because the worst thing in the world is not is to try to put that away instead of live Eon still with us, you know, and to be able to appreciate his life and not have to stow it away because we're afraid of the pain it brings.

Kevin: 51:52

Well, that's one thing I've never understood about like my own culture sometimes. In Chinese culture, people are taught to isolate because of bad uh bad like luck and stuff like that.

Dan Tocchini: 52:02

And it's pretty c pretty common. Pretty common.

Kevin: 52:05

Yeah. Yeah. Just really, really interesting.

Dan Tocchini: 52:08

It's a way to pretend to be invulnerable or not feel the vulnerability of existence.

Kevin: 52:15

It's an existential it's an existential Yeah, it's interesting because as a recipient on that side too, like I felt like it was super, super isolating. It was actually one of the worst experiences ever.

Dan Tocchini: 52:26

Yeah, yeah. It's very low there's a difference between being alone and being lonely, and it produces loneliness because you're woo you're the only one with your pain. And that's where we bond. Humans bond. It's interesting, you have to teach the brain to mourn. Most people don't realize that. And you know, having lost my mother at an early age, I learned a lot of this from the guys I that helped me through some particularly in my addiction when I recovered from that too, was the a lot of addiction is just trauma that needs to be mourned or grieved or you know, to come to the surface. The minute you do that, when the amygdala lets go of it, the neocortex can put time on it. And that makes it possible to look at it, and that's where wisdom comes from. Wisdom comes from suffering neurologically.

Kevin: 53:10

Damn. That means like a lot of people are really suffering right now in this modern time. God, you kidding me? That's and all that sort of thing. Yeah, we're about to launch crazy.

Dan Tocchini: 53:19

We're about to launch a new community for executives. I'm not quite ready yet to talk about it, but we're gonna make all kinds of resources available just because of what's going on.

Kevin: 53:28

One thing that strikes me about you is like you clearly love your work the work that you do. But one one interesting uh quote I heard, I can't remember where I heard it. It was something like everybody's fighting a battle that no one else can see. Mm-hmm. And I'm kind of curious, like, what are some of the challenges that you go through with the coaching business right now, too?

Dan Tocchini: 53:48

That's a good question. That's a great question. One of them is is uh making sure I have time for me. Uh you know, to eat, I'll eat too much or I'll stress out and, you know, hide, or you know, want to withdraw or get edgy with my wife because, you know, I'm all taken up and I don't have time for her. Or I don't I have time for her. I don't want to presence myself, I'm stingy. So I fight with that, the resentment of over over like what making sure I'm taken care of and my f so I can be there for my family as well as my clients. That's one of the bigger challenges through the 40 years. And because what happens is I get resentful and then I take licenses, license, like I don't drink, but I'll start drinking. You know, I'll do things that are unhealthy, right? Because I feel like I deserve it. I've been there for them, I've done it for and then I'm, you know, I'll go have a f you know, a couple drinks, a few drinks, smoke a joint. Do do sh anything to numb myself out because I deserve it. I call it going on vacation, but it's not a real vacation because I'm not really getting recreated. I'm just avoiding whatever would recreate me if I went into it. So I watched that, I pay attention to those. If I start the other day I noticed I was really angry, edgy, and I had come up I had just come back from four days on the river, and I was angry because I didn't I wanted to stay on the river. And it felt like imposition. And I had you know, it was like my entitlement was coming up, and so I c once I noticed that I could get off it, and then I every I seemed to get back in the saddle well. I just noticing that machinery. And I I made my wife pay, you know, I was mean to her and sat down and talked to her, asked her to forgive me, did the dishes, did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't doing that I normally do. You know, stuff like that. If I can catch it when it's small, then the consequences aren't as hairy as if I let it go. So selfishness is your selfishness.

Kevin: 55:42

As you're like uh talking about your struggles and stuff and the signs, it makes me wonder about the signs for myself. I think one of the things for me is just like uh because I'm also like that. Like I I think it's so easy for me to care for others than care for myself a lot of times. And one of the signs that where I I feel like I neglect myself a lot is like when I'm having early morning insomnia. That's like always a characteristic, like a prime characteristic of when I'm extending myself.

Dan Tocchini: 56:11

Right on, right on. Because the cortisol stays in your system, wakes you up.

Kevin: 56:15

Yep. I get the the 2 a.m. cortisol dump, which is insane. Which isn't it's not really good for uh weight loss or anything like that either. No, I'm not sure. And the stress and all that is really violent.

Dan Tocchini: 56:28

Yeah, so that's what I struggle with when I was a kid. I noticed when I when I was womanizing, I was just just unauthentically dealing with my own stress. That was a way to do that too. So I stay on top of my wife is very much very helpful. We kind of help each other that way. We work, you know. Hey, you alright? You seem a little edgy or you know, you're may what are you beaten on me for? What do you when do you why are you doing that? She gets what I do is I get I get edgy. She gets over controlling, like she wants to make sure everything I'm everything is okay and she's got her hands and everything. I'm I know something's up.

Kevin: 57:02

I'll never forget when my my Isn't the beautiful No, go ahead. Well yes, please tell the story.

Dan Tocchini: 57:07

Well my mom my my when my mother my wife's mother died, we were all very close to her, particularly my daughter. And she had died in she was before just after her funeral, after her memorial. And I was watching my daughter. I was in the living room at the kitchen, looking in the living room. My daughter was walking around, turning the TV off, turning it on, putting a record on, taking it off, and I could tell she's suffering. There's something up. I remember saying to her, she was about eight, and I said, Hey honey, why don't we go into Nani's room because she lived with us before she died, and let's just go in there and sit and smell her clothes. And she's we did it and she started to weep, and pretty soon she fell asleep on my chest. But I could identify in her what I do when I'm avoiding pain, when I don't want to deal with the suffering that's coming. And she was so much better after that.

Kevin: 57:54

I love that story. And it's really interesting to see how far you come with your family. You know, you talk about your uh double life back in the day and how your partnership with your wife and you've created this kind of family and stuff. It's just really, really interesting how that evolves and how we think how we think our life is probably gonna go in one direction can drastically change.

Dan Tocchini: 58:15

Yeah, I having a faith experience did a lot for me. Um I'm a C. S. Lewis freak and I love you know, I'm a Christian and I follow you know, I'm deeply devoted to not the dogma, but to the man. And I've encountered him in my own death. And I've I've I believe that and I've I've been in some really hairy situations and I've was hit and had on a car accident, died three times and found found peace in it. Peace by surrendering to it's amazing how much suffering you you can put up with if you're really re li if you surrender into it. And that happened to me early in my life when I was first married, first year of our marriage. And and it took me about four years before I completely got clean, but the ability to surrender into the suffering made a huge difference. I learned a lot from it. And I resist going in, but once I'm in there. I'm good once I get in. So it's just getting in.

Kevin: 59:10

Surrenders. Surrender is such a beautiful word that you used. I love that. Kind of curious too, right? I usually play a game with people. We're coming near the end of podcast, but I usually play a game with people. Alright. Just to lighten it up a little bit. Let's do it. You've had uh you've been in the coaching business for a while, and so I'm sure you have had good investments, bad investments, and somewhere in between. This is a storytelling game, one of my favorite storytelling games. But I'm gonna ask you four prompts about business investments because a lot of coaches, business owners in general, they invest into uh team members, marketing, training, a lot of different things, right? So I'm just gonna prompt a phrase and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind, okay?

Dan Tocchini: 59:51

Okay.

Kevin: 59:51

Okay. First business investment you remember making a Lorenzo theater. Tell me about that.

Dan Tocchini: 59:57

I had bought a theater before this. That's where I met my wife. My My dad really put me into that, so I didn't see it as really an investment for me. But I did I learned, I failed. But the Lorenzo Theater I went and got on my own after I had some transformations, some breakthrough. And it's in San Lorenzo, and it was a it was a and it would mean we changed film every day or every other day and classic shows and put out a poster and distributed it. But I brought my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, on as a partner. I got to know people in the community. George Thorogood used to come practice in my theater at night. I I made friends with all kinds of people and it was one of the first times where I felt like this is mine. This is I'm making a difference here. And my partner was a guy I grew up with who was the best man at my wedding. We had a paper route together when I was seven. And we ended up being partners and it worked really well. We built another theater down in Gilroy from that theater. And I met the guy who built the theater. I went to work with him selling movie theaters as cash flow and tax shelter and bet uh investments. So like a whole world opened to me from just that investment. And I I remember at 23 years old, I was making uh 250 grand a year, selling movie theaters three hundred grand a year, and that started a whole new level of understanding. I didn't handle money well. I I got involved in crazy shit, but but I learned. But that's that whole thing was just a huge opening for me in my life.

Kevin: 1:01:23

Back then that was a lot of money too. A lot of money.

Dan Tocchini: 1:01:27

It almost killed me.

Kevin: 1:01:28

Yeah.

Dan Tocchini: 1:01:29

Yeah. How I related to that money almost killed me.

Kevin: 1:01:32

Okay. Last business investment you made?

Dan Tocchini: 1:01:35

The it's called uh um Flora and Company. And it's a it's a um it's a probiotic bar that we're producing. We bought a small business that it was called well, we were working with a small business called Beneficial Bakery, and it turned out it wasn't they couldn't do what they said they were gonna do, but we liked the vision and we went on and did it ourselves. And I got we got connected to Jenny of Jenny's blended ice creams. We launched the product in January and uh we're partners with a company called FNS Foods, who does all the pre-packaging of food for Whole Foods and Sprouts and Trader Joe's. They're a partner. We take all their we upcycle all their apple cores and watermelon rinds into this prebiotic bar. And this thing's doing so well. We're we're we're the kind of problems we're looking at a ten million dollar run rate by the end of this year. And it's it's just been fun. And I love my partners are all involved and I get to be a part of it and own a nice piece of it. And I love Jenny and I love the work that we're doing together, and it's meaningful. Yeah, I met a lot of cool people, got to go to New York, you know, and we launched it there and pop-up groceries, and then we had the celebration dinner at uh Gary V's club. His partner is is uh uh my partner's girlfriend's brother. It just was cool, kind of networking like that. It was a glass you know, it's like small boy. Small town boy gets to go play in New York for a while. It was a blast.

Kevin: 1:03:02

These might overlap, but best business investment you made.

Dan Tocchini: 1:03:06

Best business investment. My son, and we haven't made money yet. We are on the verge, he's done something. We've got a product that it defies what AI is. AI is kind of sloppy, doesn't really work. My son's broken that barrier, and now we've got the c we have come against the skepticism, but he's actually created a digital employee that's a hundred percent accurate, and it can do malt up to thirty, forty, fifty s uh step workflows. And so the way we're proving it is we're actually getting the agent higher. My son and his partner are going out and getting hired and then putting the agent to work, and they can they can take four or five two hundred and fifty thousand dollar jobs. That's how we're gonna show how effective this is. And it's the most exciting investment I've ever made. We we lost forty million dollars fifteen years ago. We launched a product called the grid, and it couldn't do everything we said it did. We needed LLMs. We had a my son courageously in my book came to me and said, We've got to take these websites down because it could do it it could generate really nice sales sites, we think, and he didn't want to get stuck in the technical debt. So he took down a million sites, took a $40 million loss, not one lawsuit went to every investment, and we've taken that that those investors and put them in ten percent of this new company. And I just love the creativity and I love working with my boy and the people he he's very, very he's brilliant, and the people he surrounds himself are. And it's a real fun, it's just fun to be in that in that vibe. You know, it keeps me young. But I think that's the best investment I made.

Kevin: 1:04:37

Okay. This one's a little cheeky. Worst business investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from.

Dan Tocchini: 1:04:43

Huh. Well, let's see. Worst business investment I wish I got my money back from. God, that's good. I got I I never I've never wished I got my money back, but I I I can see that maybe because I'm in denial. What? The shipping company. That's right. My wife's in the background. Yes. I went into a shipping company. I I was a ship broker for a while. Trading vessel. I love the work. I love the guy I worked with. I got to go to get educated in England, graduated top of my class. I ended up becoming the ship broker for Alcoa, uh, the product the plant in Saint Louis, Brazil. Anyway, we were killing it. And we ended up opening a series of s sports stores with some of the money we were making. And this guy got really weird. He had some kind of he had a a faith experience and got involved in a cult and went upside down. And and, you know, it was just hard, hard getting through that. He isolated himself, was willing to wreck the business because he didn't want me in it. And I was willing to get out. So I got out for nothing almost. Just because I just don't want the it's not worth spending the time on something like that. But that's that's the worst one. Thanks. Thanks, Eileen.

Kevin: 1:05:48

I I thought your wife was going to be your best investment, but I was just my business investment.

Dan Tocchini: 1:05:53

She's my best investment, and she is very involved in my business, but I never look at her as a business investment too small. She's she's a life, she is my life lover.

Kevin: 1:06:02

As you're sharing these stories, I'm sure memories are coming up for you. And I'm I'm just really curious, how has your decision-making process changed? If if it has, right? In what to invest in and what not to invest in?

Dan Tocchini: 1:06:13

About well, my daughter was about 13, and she's given me permission to tell this story. This changed all how I made decisions. I was working, I was had I was living in Hawaii, I'd planted a church there, and I hadn't I was coaching and consulting. I moved to Michigan to help a guy start a trading company, a drug trading company, a legitimate over-the-counter, McKesson type deal. He was doing really well. And I helped him do that when I'm I remember the first year I saved him $350,000 a year because I reduced his payroll and up in increased production. But during that time, my daughter was going through some changes. One of the changes was she was starting to experiment with drugs and boys, etc. And I caught my mu my wife long story short, my w my wife caught her we had a big party for my son's friend. My son and her have mutual friends. Anyway, my son had left after dinner. His best friend's father was there, we celebrated his fifty birthday. My wife had some premonition that his son was on top of my w daughter. When upstairs they had their clothes on, of course, that kind of thing. And very embarrassing. My wife comes down the stairs with this guy by the you know his ear, and we very awkwardly sh escort them out. I go back to my daughter and she's like, fuck you. You know, I I say, look, we gotta talk, and she's just shut down, dark, no, won't talk to me. And I got I told her, okay, well, until you talk about this, I gotta I'm gonna do what it takes. You're not you know, I'll take you to school, you come home, you don't go any, you don't do any socializing, I take you where you go and come back to. We have to have a talk. I have to understand before I bestow trust upon you again, I have to understand what what's missing. And this goes on for three months. I take her to dance, I take her home. Finally, on the third month, make the story short, I'm driving her to a dance class, snowing. I'm in this big SUV and she's sitting in the chair. She said she was four foot eleven. She should have been in a child seat at fourteen. And um I pull over and I just say to her, Look, I know I'm failing as a father. I can see it. I see it in your face, your attitude toward me. I just start to weep and I said, But I want you to know something, honey. I've never given up. I will qu leave my work, I will pursue you, I will be the one that races you, I will never leave you. I'm sorry, please forgive me. And I just wept. And all of a sudden, because I mean she is cold as ice for three months. She leaps out of the chair, buries her head in my chest, and tells me how much she loves the way I love her, thoroughly confused, and assures me that and then she's feeling bad because Derek, the boy that was we caught, it wasn't his fault she started it, didn't know how to stop it, and she felt so bad for him and so you know, for and just wept, and then she brought me her her diaries so I could see w what was going on for her. You never want to read your daughter's diaries, let me tell you that. But it opened up it changed our relationship and it prioritized it made me clear about what was the most important thing in my life, which is God and then my family. And I saw God work in that moment, in that place where I was completely helpless, but I was just gonna tell her I don't know what to do, but I've never given up. And that was a big turning point for me. And us, we're best friends. In fact, she lives next door to me with her kids. She took us on her honeymoon. She and her husband wanted to take us and her husband's parents, who are very dear friends. I mean, I told her you improved the gene pool, honey. Good job. They live on the same property. We have a between uh be they have like they have like 500 acres right behind where we live, and and my daughter's building up on the hill there, and we live next door to each other. It's great. I mean, we we get along well, we see each other every day. I play with my grandkids, but that that became a huge breakthrough for me. Changed, reordered what I was really aiming at.

Kevin: 1:09:57

Such a beautiful story. You know, something that strikes me throughout this conversation, and we're gonna start to wrap up, but actually, I won't play one last game with you, but this last segment is called Overrated, Underrated. And as an entrepreneur, as a coach, as a business owner, you've probably gotten a lot of advice. Some of it good, some of it bad, some of it is solicited, probably a lot of it unsolicited. Yeah. So what's the most overrated piece of advice that you've gotten so far? And what's the most underrated piece of advice?

Dan Tocchini: 1:10:26

The most overrated piece of advice I've ever gotten is best practices. They're b it's bullshit. Go learn the best practices all you want till you can relate in a way that makes those things seem like the best option. They won't mean anything. Most underrated, I think, is mindset. Master your mindset. Master a growth mindset, a transformational mindset. Um, and because I work with so many executives, I've heard people talk about it, but when we get into it, they don't want to pay the price to understand the way they think and the impact it has both on them and the people they work with.

Kevin: 1:10:56

Sometimes with mindset, and I think you were a little bit more specific, but sometimes when people say mindset, right? Again, it's one of those things that we know deep down inside that is very meaningful and the important stuff that we need to do. But sometimes I find that mindset means different things to everyone.

Dan Tocchini: 1:11:13

And so you mentioned growth mindset, but if it's It means the the conversation, it's the conversation you have in your head that you give you give credence to, the one you believe, that's your mindset. It's you the fault where it's where it needs work is where you are afraid to go. That's where you need to go to continue to develop it. You gotta find you gotta go into that cave, that dark cave, and fight the dragon you're afraid to fight. And there's ways to do that. There's ways to identify that. So that's the mindset. The mindset is that conversation in your mind that you you default to, that you lean on, that you believe is gonna get you through whatever you're up to.

Kevin: 1:11:51

Thank you for clarifying that. I've been trying to work on drawing the book Art of Learning. It talks about drawing smaller circles, and I've been trying to work on that, like defining things in its granularity and the smallest circles. Oh man, oh man, yeah. I'm a nerd.

Dan Tocchini: 1:12:04

I'm a nerd. I'm a w I mean I'm an etym I'm into etymology, you know. What is the basis of the word? How does the culture listen to it? What part of it needs to be revised? You should look up the word promise, commitment, and request. And go to go get get online and look it up, look those words up in the Noah Webster 1828 dictionary. Tell me what you think. Like those are you know, and then understanding language.

Kevin: 1:12:28

What will you find?

Dan Tocchini: 1:12:29

You'll find that promise is a declaration made from one person to another that binds the person and either honor conscience or law to do or forbear a certain act. And it gives the right to the person who it's made to expect or claim the performance of the act, whether it's you know, whatever it is to do or not do it. That's what a promise is. It binds you. And it gives it it's a transformational act. It transforms a duty, a right you have to yourself into a duty you have to somebody else. It's the only thing that binds, except for bitterness. Bitterness is what happens when a promise gets broken and isn't reconciled, then you're bound to that past. And that's why you recreate the same problem over and over again till you forgive. And how many times you forgive is seven, you know, as many times as it takes to move into the future to get vulnerable again like that. So if you and then like if you think the word promise, commitment, and forgiveness have a common root. Promise means to send forth in the future. It that's its root. It promitare to send forth in the future. Commitment is to send with. So if I said, hey, hey, Kevin, I'll be on your podcast next Wednesday. I'll be there if I feel like it. You probably wouldn't take that commitment or that request because that what I sent with it, right? So promise, commitment, and forgiveness is to send from. So when I'm offensed or hurt, I send myself from the offense, the need to get revenge, to send from. And they're all acts of the will. To send forth, to send with, to send from. They're all choices, acts of the will that require a mustering of the mind and the body, the senses, to bring oneself into the moment. That's at the heart of our work.

Kevin: 1:14:11

Last question for you. How can f people find you and connect with you, Dan?

Dan Tocchini: 1:14:15

You can connect with me on LinkedIn or at my website. Our website is takenewground.com, and you can contact us that way, or you can contact me on LinkedIn, Dan Tacini. I have an Instagram account too, but I don't pay much attention to it. I don't I just don't I don't pay much attention to it. There's a lot of stuff on there, but I I'm probably gonna revamp all that.

Kevin: 1:14:37

Dan, this is definitely the longest podcast I've ever done. It's one of the most interesting podcasts. And I think you're a master storyteller. I just get drawn into all your stories of vulnerability, life experiences, and all that. But all your stories, I see this common theme. Um, everything from your daughter to uh your story about your wife earlier to uh even your coaching, like when you're coaching executives, right? It all starts with like what's not being said, and it kind of uh goes into what we were talking about, the dark side that you're talking about too. And there's so much on that dark side that, yeah, we don't want to talk about. And what's really beautiful is like the common theme I see in all your stories is like if we do this work, it's really inspiring to see what's possible on the other side. And throughout all your stories, I've just been so captivated and amazed by that. And I think sometimes when we are doing the shadow work or the dark work, it's hard to kind of see the long term of this, like of this per this growth, right? Because you're in the thick of it, you had the fog of war sometimes or whatever, right? You can't see the outcome. And just listening to this podcast is very, very inspiring for me and probably a lot of our listeners. So I just want to say, uh, Dan, thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for coming on to podcasts and sharing all your experiences. You are definitely also fun fact, I think you are the you you take the cake for the coach with the most experience on this podcast, too. So congratulations there, man. Bless you, man. Bless you, thank you. Thank you so much, man.

Davis Nguyen : 1:16:12

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit join purplecircle.com.