Kyle Wood

Strategic Coach

Kyle

The hidden cost of needing to look competent

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The first time I built a personal training business, I bought sales scripts. I read blog posts. I even ordered a set of CDs from a guy called the ‘Super Trainer’. I tried all kinds of things.

This time, I told myself I shouldn’t have to.

I’ve built businesses before. So when I decided to move into coaching, I expected that I could dive into it with some good momentum.

I think when you’ve already built something successful there is this pressure that the next thing you do has to be bigger and better than before. You feel like everyone who saw you do your last thing is watching and waiting and you owe it to them to do an amazing thing.

Every Monday I’d sit at my desk, staring at an email draft to a potential client, while a voice in my head whispered, “Who do you think you are?”. Or I’d find myself procrastinating hanging up the washing instead of choosing a date to run my next workshop.

The cost of needing the next thing to be bigger, better and… let’s just say it… perfect from day 1, is that it stifles experimentation. Instead of just trying things out and learning from others, you get stuck in analysis paralysis.

Then it hit me that the thing that had allowed me to build successful careers and businesses in the past, was the very thing I was missing now, a Beginner’s Mindset.

A Beginner’s Mindset is choosing to see something as if there’s still more to learn.

It requires a big dose of vulnerability because it often looks like:

  • asking for help or feedback
  • trying something out knowing it might not work
  • being open to different ways of doing things

My brain tricked me into thinking that if I did those things, I would be a failure because I needed to look like the guy who still had everything worked out.

But instead, the opposite was true. I was taking the slow but safe feeling route, instead of the faster but messier route. Not reckless. Not careless. Just willing to learn in public instead of trying to look polished in private.

And it’s uncomfortable at times, but it’s working.

2025 Annual Review – A New Direction

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This year has been huge for me.

Not in the having a new child or moving home kind of way or even outward business success way. More so in the deep personal realisation type of way.

Doing these annual reviews have always been insightful, but often I find myself looking back at all the things I’d planned at the start of the previous year and realising I’d done very little of it. I guess one thing these reviews have revealed is that I’m pretty terrible at predicting my own future.

Another thing I’ve noticed from the last few years is that I’ve mostly been rattling around inside of my comfort zone.

Sure I’ve done some new things, but they’ve often come from a sense of pressure or urgency rather than intention. One example is the months I spent setting up a new, convoluted marketing funnel at the end of 2023. I was sure that was going to be the thing that would save me and I pushed myself to finish it. It didn’t save me and I just ended up exhausted.

But this year has been different.

I’m excited to share with you what happened.

Part 1 – What Mattered

When I think about this year these are the things at the forefront of my mind. It’s the stuff that went well and led to many of the surprises in the next section.

Joining a Coaching Program

At the end of 2024 an old acquaintance from way back in my Portland, OR days announced he was running a group coaching program for mid-level creator-types (people with established audiences and income). I jumped on the application eager to connect with some other online entrepreneurs who were a bit ahead of me. I find many of the circles and communities I join people are just starting out, however I’m wielding a 15 year old business and that brings with it unique challenges that only others who’ve been in the game for a while understand.

So, that was my plan going into the group coaching. Connect with the other people in the group. Make some friends. Learn how to get Bootcamp Ideas back on the right track.

That was not what happened.

It was a classic case of me getting the thing that I needed, not the thing I wanted.

Yes, I did connect with the others. They were a fantastic group of entrepreneurs and creatives. But it when more like this:

Months 1-2: Total imposter syndrome. So many cool, successful business while mine was a slowly sinking ship. Months 3-4: I committed to just continuing to show up and discovered a bunch of stories I’d made up about business in the past few years. Months 5-6: Total upheaval of my business as I committed to sitting with uncertainty and rewriting old beliefs.

And as I practiced my courage it made me realise that what I really needed wasn’t to ‘fix’ Bootcamp Ideas, but to have the courage to step into the murk and explore what I wanted to do next. I’ll share more about what that is in this review.

Connecting with Local Business Owners

One of the things joining the coaching group brought into focus was that I really didn’t have many business owner friends here where I live. This is a piece of advice I’ve given many other business owners over the years, and yet I wasn’t putting it into action myself.

When I first moved here, around 7.5 years ago, I attempted to get a group of business owners to meet regularly but struggled to get traction. So I gave up.

At the time this was a healthy thing to do and opened me up to many new friendships I still have today.

But it’s so important to have those people who know what you’re going through work wise. So this year I started reaching out to those I knew worked for themselves to have coffee or lunch and have deepened existing relationships and made some fantastic new friends.

Chairperson at the School

At the end of last year I joined the board at the school my eldest goes to. After a few months I was asked if I could step into the Chairperson position.

I wasn’t 100% sure if I could do it, but I was also going through a period of stepping into a bigger version of myself (see months 5-6 of coaching above) so I said yes. While there have been some challenging moments, overall I’m really enjoying leading the board and having a say in the direction of the school

Also school related: This year I helped out directing the school play which was a very fun way to tap back into my theatre roots.

Workshop Series

Frustrated with my marketing efforts for Bootcamp Ideas towards the end of the year I asked myself a question: ‘I’ve been doing this a long time. What if I threw caution to the wind, forgot everything you’re ‘meant’ to do in marketing, and just trusted my instinct? What would I do?’

The answer that came back very clearly was to just run some workshops.

So I put together a series of 6 free workshops (so far I’ve delivered 5) and started inviting my list to attend. I covered a lot of the problems trainers face, from planning to running classes to marketing.

I’ve learned so much doing these (like less is more in terms of content) and gained the confidence I needed to really lean into sharing what I see working and trusting that is how I’m most valuable. So not teaching ‘best practices’ but actual practical examples and tools.

Part 2 – What Surprised Me

This section is about the sneaky, surprising insights that I couldn’t have predicted.

3-Month Break

Towards the end of my time with the coaching group I stumbled across a problem. I was trying to explore what work and business might look like next for me but I was finding the week to week of running my current business was really distracting. I had just launched a program for Bootcamp Ideas and I didn’t get the sign ups I was hoping for leading to cancelling it.

So I decided I’d do something I’ve only ever given myself permission to do after each of my children were born. Take an extend period of time off. I started with 30 days with the option to continue for 90 days if I was finding it helpful and my business hadn’t burned down.

For the first 30 days I mostly rested, weirdly I was exhausted. I slept a lot. And was fairly aimless. I realised I would need the full 90 days.

This lead to a bit of a chain reaction of events:

  • The workshop series I shared above. Returning to just writing a newsletter each week was lacking the real-time feedback I was craving.
  • A friend recommended The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I requested a copy for Father’s Day and WOW! Just doing the Morning Pages and Artist’s Dates was like returning to myself, the real goofy sometimes, serious sometimes me. I didn’t realise how distracted I kept myself all of the time.
  • I cut out coffee for 2 weeks. My coffee intake was at it’s highest ever but the thought of even cutting back had felt just too hard to bear. Yet a few week’s into The Artist’s Way is suddenly felt doable, so I cut back with full permission to myself to go back to daily drinking at the end, but also with the goal of not drinking coffee everyday. I’m happy to report that months later I only have 2-4 coffees each week and feel completely different and less stressed.
  • I allowed myself to come back to playing games with friends. Board games, video games, table top RPGs. Essentially, allowing myself to play again. I still struggle sometimes with guilt, but when I just allow it to be play I always feel better afterwards.

Sharing More About Human Design

One of the things that came out of coaching was realising how much I use Human Design as a useful tool in my life and business (I even trained as a Human Design Guide in 2021), but that I feel funny sharing it with others. I would really worry that people wouldn’t take me seriously if I talked about this system rooted in Astrology.

My coach pointed out that regardless of Human Design’s roots, this feeling of being afraid people won’t take you seriously if you take your business in a certain direction is really common to all business owners. What if I just tried sharing more about it?

So I did.

And it felt very awkward at first but every time I would share something someone would email me, message me or mention on a workshop how helpful and insightful it was. This has given me the confidence to share more and more and while I don’t want to be defined by Human Design as I like to use lots of tools and resources, it feels pretty cool to be able to share this one more.

I loved it! I knew my human design type already, but didn’t really know how it impacted my group fitness/bootcamp business. I am a mani-gen 4/1, so it was great that he was on the call had the same profile numbers in his chart and you discussed them further, but super interesting about the arrows – all of mine point to the right which now makes a lot of sense!

Bootcamp Ideas: The Slowly Sinking Ship

I guess this is not really a surprise. Or even a realisation. But really an… acceptance.

During coaching I worked out that I could make Bootcamp Ideas continue working as a business if I 5X’d it. My coach then asked me if now I knew that I was excited about doing that.

My answer: No.

I’ve been trying my little heart out for 4 years now to turn my income from tracking downwards to going up again. Doing something like that for so long really effects your mindset. Like I feel defeated before I even try something.

It’s hard. So many community and paying members have been with me for years. I felt like if I changed direction I was letting them down. And new people are still finding me and emailing to say how much they love my material. That keeps me going but the reality I’ve been denying for so long is that it’s just not enough new people.

I always hoped if I just kept showing up that in time the business would turn back around again.

I’d been bailing water out of the boat without really letting myself entertain the idea of just stepping off onto a new boat. Because the boat was surrounded by fog and I couldn’t see any other boats. I was going to have to jump off the boat and paddle around a bit in the deep water to see what boats were out there.

And that was fucking terrifying.

But I did it and now I’ve found a boat and I want to see where it’s headed but that means there’s no one left to bail the other boat (am I pushing the boat/ship metaphor too far? I hope you’ve followed me.).

And that’s what this year has been about for me, giving myself permission to explore other things which might result in me letting go of a 15 year project that’s very dear to my heart.

A New Relationship with the Fire Brigade

I’m going to bullet my thoughts on this as it’s a bit easier for my brain:

  • For 7 years I’ve volunteered with our local Fire Brigade.
  • It’s been a fantastic way to make friends and do things completely different to the day-to-day of running an online business.
  • It’s a big time commitment between call outs (which can happen at any moment), weekly training, truck and vehicle maintenance and additional training to upskill in different areas (eg. one rather large training we did this year was to become a Fire Medical Response brigade meaning we now also respond to some medical incidents like cardiac arrests.)
  • This year my wife’s business has gone from strength to strength which has been amazing. It also means I’m less available to respond to emergencies when she’s working because our kids are still little.
  • One of my insights from my time off was that I wasn’t connecting with others as much because I often leaned towards work that was more flexible (eg. content creation) so I could be available for call outs instead of the important connection work I need to do (eg. calls, interviews, catch ups). I’ve put more boundaries around my work time and sleep now.

I’ve learned a volunteer organisation will often take all the time you can give it and still ask for more. Towards the end of this year I’ve had to let go of being one of the regular responders in our brigade and look at a more sustainable relationship. One that I can continue for many years while still making space for doing the work I love.

Part 3 – What’s Emerging

In this section I’ll share with you what’s on the horizon for next year and where I can feel my energy is heading.

My New Boat: Coaching

I’ve wanted to be a full-time coach for years and years.

I’ve dabbled in coaching a lot over the years. I was a coach when I was running bootcamps. Then about 10 years ago I started one-to-one coaching and running business coaching programs for fitness trainers. I’ve written hundreds of newsletters, run workshops, made videos, all of it dancing around using my innate coaching gifts.

But coaching was never the main thing.

This coming year I want it to start being the main thing. I’ve already begun developing my listening and question skills. I’m revisiting useful tools and exercises I’ve done over the years.

There are lots of different types of coaches. I don’t want to be a business coach, focused on systems and strategies. I want to be the type of coach that’s often called executive coach or leadership coach where the focus is on the person not the business. It’s all about helping the person grow into the fullest expression of themselves so that they can tackle and navigate the problems they face. This is the work I’m interested in. Helping people be more independent, more empowered and looking less to others to solve their problems for them.

I didn’t cut drastically back on coffee this year because I listened to a podcast about how bad caffeine is. I cut back on it because I created the space to get back in touch with who I am on a deeper level, and when I did that letting go of coffee felt like an obvious thing to do.

Another example: My coach (or anyone else in the group) didn’t tell me to take 3 months off from Bootcamp Ideas this year, but by holding the space for me to feel the discomfort I was feeling around work I came to that idea myself.

Helping Partnerships and Collaborations

Another area I’m particularly excited to explore is around helping create more effective partnerships, where 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, it equals 10.

This naturally extends to one-off collaborations too as business owners are often teaming up with brands and other similar businesses for cross-promotion and other marketing efforts.

I can see how my own experience over the years of marketing and product collabs (both ongoing and one-off) and using tools like Human Design that highlight how we work differently could be really helpful to others trying to navigate this.

I’m not 100% sure where that’s going yet, but I have put together some reflection questions that I’ll share in my newsletter in the next few weeks.

Wrapping Up 2025

For years I sat passively waiting to see what was next for me.

It felt like the next thing always just came along at the right time. But that’s not true. Looking back there was always a period of reconnecting with myself before the next thing arrived.

The other thing that’s held me back has been perfectionism. My logic has been that because I built one business that lasted over a decade, the next thing needs to be even better. And I need to be 100% sure before I start.

But that’s just not how I operate. I work best through learning by trying things out with people. That’s where my success has come from and I haven’t been allowing that to happen in my new coaching venture.

But here’s to sharing more imperfect things in 2026.

If you’d like to keep in touch you can join my weekly-ish newsletter.

You can also reach out if you’re interested in hiring me as your coach.

What Happens When You Stop Saying Yes?

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Welcome to my new newsletter, Right On Time. A newsletter about syncing up with your own timing and letting go of the pressure to “should” your way forward.

If you’re receiving this, it’s because you signed up to my Substack, Rhythm & Recognition.

Each edition of Right On Time shares stories and lessons from real coaching sessions with clients and deep conversations with my peers. Hopefully these lead to your own insights and moments of clarity.

As the world speeds up, we need more places to pause. I hope this becomes one of those places for you.

The Trainer Who Was Doing It All

A few months back, I worked with a trainer who came to me because her fitness business felt stuck.

She’d been running bootcamps for a couple of years and had a few loyal clients who kept coming, but the classes weren’t growing.

I had a hunch about what might be the problem, but we started with talking about what she was currently trying to do to grow her classes.

She shared that she wasn’t doing a lot so the other members of the group (this was group coaching) chimed in with some helpful things that had worked for them.

Her response:

“I’m too busy.”

And she was.

In fact, her schedule was packed:

She was doing all the bookkeeping for the family business, volunteering at her kids sporting clubs, helping to run the school committee, helping wherever she was asked.

From the moment she got up in the morning until about an hour before she went to bed, she was doing something for someone else.

The Block

Straight away I knew that her sheer busy-ness was what was causing her lack of growth, but she was resistant to hearing that.

After all… all of these things she was doing were important. Someone had asked her to help.

And then we discovered that she’s a Projector in Human Design. Projectors love being asked to help, but they don’t have infinite energy and so it’s important they’re discerning in what they say yes to.

When I described being a Projector to her she brushed it off, she resonated much more with what I’d said about Manifesting Generators.

“Yes, that’s me! The Manifesting thingo, not the Projector. I have lot’s of things going on.”

A couple weeks passed by and it was time for our next session. She appeared on the group Zoom looking serious. She said she’d had a realisation: while the Manifesting Generators in the group talked about being busy and feeling energised, she shared that her schedule left her busy and exhausted.

Not just physically tired, but carrying a deep fatigue that comes from saying yes to too many things that don’t give you energy.

The Human Design Insight

Projectors are often recognised for their ability to get things done because they can be very efficient.

She’d built a whole life around being dependable, capable, the one who would always say Yes. The problem was, she was being valued for her output, whereas Projectors are best valued for their insight.

Once she saw that, things started to shift.

She began saying no to the commitments that drained her and made more room for the work that genuinely energised her. She blew me away actually at how quickly she let go of things that were draining her.

It wasn’t easy. Saying no meant disappointing people who had come to rely on her. But in doing so she created space for what was next for her.

Reflection For You

Spend some time journaling or mulling over these questions.

  • Generators/MGs: Where are you saying yes just because it feels nice to be asked, but otherwise doesn’t light you up?
  • Projectors: Where are you being recognised for what you do rather than what you see?
  • Everyone: Is there something in your work that’s not growing simply because you’re too full to nurture it?
  • And what might you need to let go of you give yourself a little more space?

Feel free to reply to these emails, I love hearing how these reflections have helped.

The reason it's so dang hard to increase your prices

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And an exercise to help

Welcome, dearest reader, to the latest edition of Rhythm & Recognition. Each week (usually) I share an insight or lesson from inspired by a coaching session with a client or my own journey on running a more sustainable, aligned business. All in service of helping you find your own rhythm in this modern life and more effortless recognition for your unique gifts. -Kyle

I’m guilty.

In fact, I’ve been taken to the Supreme Court of Business-Mistakes-You-Didn’t-Even-Realise-You-Were-Making many times for this.

I’m guilty of the crime of not charging my worth.

Okay, maybe crime is a bit harsh, after all the only person who was impacted was me.

Or was it?

Can not charging what you’re worth impact those around you? Your family. Your clients. Your community.

Surely being affordable is important, right?

If you run a service based business, especially in the health, fitness and wellness space, I’ll hazard an educated guess in saying that you love what you do. You love seeing your clients transform. You love opening people’s eyes to a new way of living.

You love it so much, and find the work so meaningful, that you’d do it for free.

In fact, maybe you are doing it or parts of it for free right now.

A great example of this is charging for an hour of your time, then heaping on free bonuses, check-ins, etc. because you want your client to feel they got their value for money.

It’s totally understandable. And I’m not calling you out, like I said, I’ve been there before.

But it is worth understanding what’s going on and how this might be making things harder for yourself (and possibly worse your clients) in ways you haven’t realised.

The Problem With Working For Free

On the surface, working for free seems noble.

And in some ways it is.

One example that comes to mind is that you can help people who can’t afford to pay you. And that means you can help more people, right?

Let’s look at this very newsletter. This edition of Rhythm & Recognition might help a bunch of people. It’s free so anyone with an internet connection can read it. And it costs me nothing except an hour to write it down.

But imagine if instead of writing this in a newsletter I only taught this to people face to face, one at a time.

For free.

Would it make sense to do it that way? Remember, I love helping people with this kind of thing. It fills my cup.

I’ll imagine that what you’re telling me is, no.

(After all, it’s much easier to tell someone else they’re undervaluing themselves than looking at yourself.)

My costs for teaching people one by one would go through the roof:

  • Time spent away from other things I enjoy and my family

  • Cost of fuel driving around (even flying as some of you are overseas)

  • Added stress of more things in my day

  • Not enough time for my healthy habits like eating well and exercising

  • Maybe I need to pay for a space to teach people too, so I’m out of pocket too

Now, in this example it seems obvious that unless I’m financially backed, doing this for free won’t work out long term.

It’s a very unsustainable business model.

Well, here’s the thing.

If you’re charging too little for what you do, you’ll find yourself in a similar situation. Your costs (not just financial, but energetic too) will end up outweighing what you’re bringing in. You’ll find yourself busy but just kind of breaking even.

So this is the part where I say, just increase your prices and then you’ll be saved.

Ha!

As you know, it’s not that simple.

So, what’s going on here? Let’s look at it in the next section and then I’ve got an exercise you can try.

Why is it so hard to charge what we’re really worth?

We are often the sum of our experiences.

And that includes our experiences around money.

Throughout our lives we’ve seen or heard things around the topic of money which we’ve then internalized as beliefs.

Sometimes it’s that money always felt scarce growing up. Sometimes it’s an offhand comment from a friend who says ‘I wouldn’t pay that much, what a rip off!’.

So then when it comes to picking a price to charge for what you do, all of these stories show up, often without you even realising, and weigh in on what that price should be.

So when someone tells you to simple ‘increase your prices’, while that seems easy, it often feels hard because you’re coming up against these hidden beliefs.

Now there are lots of ways to deal with these money stories from therapy to IFT (to just putting your head in the sand) but they all start with actually identifying what they are.

Sometimes simply identifying them is enough to move on from them.

In the exercise below, I want to share a simple way you can discover your stories that only takes a few minutes.

Exercise: Uncover your money stories

Okay, grab a piece of paper and a pen.

Now, before we even get into the exercise, there might be some stories rattling around your head already just from reading this newsletter (eg. ‘my current clients will leave if I increase my prices’ or ‘people are doing it tough right now’).

Let’s clear them out of the way by writing them down first. Don’t judge them. Simply right them down and move onto the next one.

Now, let’s dive in.

  1. Write down your current price for your main service. Now cross that out and double it. That’s the new price for your service. Imagine announcing that to the world.

  2. Great! Now, what’s coming up for you? Write down all the money stories as they come up. Even if they seem insignificant.

  3. You’re doing great! Now cross out the last price and write down a number that’s half way between those two (eg. $100 normally, $200 doubled, $150 half-way). Now imagine that’s your new price and that you’re announcing it to the world.

  4. Write down what comes up now. Often some new memories or beliefs will arrive. (Sometimes that number will feel good and nothing will come up, if that’s the case just notice that as a bit of a clue of how much more you could be charging.)

Bonus: Pick a number between that half-way mark and your normal price (eg. between $150 and $100) that feels just on the edge of your comfort zone. That’s a clue of what you could change your price to right now and still feel safe.

Now, scan back through your list and ask yourself:

  • Which of these stories are actually my business?

  • Which one’s am I carrying around for someone else?

  • Which do I know to be true and which are assumptions?

  • And for any sticky ones: Why is this so important to me?

If you’ve never done something like this before, it can be really eye opening, and if you have, maybe it’s time to do it again?

Feel free to reach out or leave a comment if anything resonated with you.

Community Mini-Reading

I received a comment on last week’s newsletter from a reader who was curious about creating an energetically sustainable business like my wife has. She also mentioned she’d checked out her Human Design briefly and it had resonated with her but she wasn’t sure what to do with that info.

That’s very understandable. Human Design is a bit of a beast with many layers. So I asked for her type (she’s an Emotional Generator) and from that I simplified things into just two things she could experiment with to align more with her Human Design and grow a sustainable business.

If you have an Emotional authority or are a Generator, you might find this helpful too.

Here’s what I wrote:

If you’re looking for some ways to make use of it [Human Design] here are a couple of practical ways you can experiment with aligning more with your type of Emotional Generator:

1. Fall in love with the phrase ‘Let me get back to you on that.’ As an emotional authority its wise for you to take your time making decisions. Clarity usually comes with time, not always in the moment.

2. For a week spend some time at the end of each day noting which activities and people made you feel really satisfied and which left you feeling frustrated. Satisfaction is a signpost that you’re heading in the right direction where as frustration is a sign it might be time to let go of something.

Let me know how that resonates or not. This is the kind of thing I talk about with clients when I do Human Design sessions with them. I try to always bring it back to practical actions because it can be pretty overwhelming.

If you’ve got any Q’s about using Human Design with your business, drop me a note in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

-Kyle

Results from my wife's 2 year business experiment

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Hypothesis: What if you grew a business by just being more you?

When my wife started her business 24 months ago, we decided to toss out a lot of what we’d learned about business from decades of making our living as self-employed people, and instead try something completely new.

The old ways weren’t gonna work this time

Zoe’s previous business (as an artist [painter]) and my business were both remnants of a time before kids.

Now, with a newborn and another pre-school aged child, neither of us had the energy to go all out into a new business.

Zoe was pretty clear for her new business that she didn’t want to:

  • Work 40+ hours per week

  • Spend a ton of time on social media

  • Work both mornings AND evenings

What she did want for her business was to:

  • Be flexible around our family schedule

  • Allow her to work as many or as little hours as she desired

  • Pay for continued study

  • Make enough to contribute meaningfully to the household

This might just work…

With our previous businesses we’d always had plenty of time and energy to get some momentum going at the start. To say yes to every client. To work at strange hours. To spend hours doing overly repetitive tasks.

But Zoe didn’t have that luxury this time.

She needed to be efficient with her energy. She needed another way.

So, as an experiment we had the idea to try building her business by letting go of noise out there around how to build a business these days and instead focusing on trusting herself and what makes her unique.

She used Human Design as a lens to help identify her strengths and not compare herself to others.

It did work!

Now, 2 years later, the results are in. And they’re impressive.

Perhaps not impressive in the way you might be used to from people writing about business these days. No, she’s not making 7-figures per month. But in an industry were most professionals last less than 12-months, her business continues to grow consistently each quarter, while only working a handful of hours per week.

Here are some of the decisions she made and how they panned out:

Allowing time for momentum and recognition to build

With her limited available hours of work and being a Projector (her energy comes and goes) we knew that growing her business wasn’t going to be a sprint to the finish line. She needed a sustainable way to work from day one.

Because Zoe’s style of personal training is different to the status quo, we knew it would take time for people to ‘get it’. She needed sustainable ways to keep showing up in our local community until people started seeing the magic in what she does.

One way she does this is through a face-to-face workshop teaching about the pelvic floor and how to correctly activate, strengthen and use this group of muscles. Being a one-off event, this means she can promote it and run it only when she has the energy for it.

Learning new things as a productive business building activity

I’m the type of person who will read half a book about something and then just give it a go. I’ll fill in the missing gaps as I go along. And this is often my approach to business.

So naturally, when Zoe joined me in working for herself years ago, I gave her the same advice. ‘You don’t need more info, just put some stuff out there,’ I’d say.

But this was actually terrible advice for her.

With a 1 in her Profile, Zoe is meant to do her own research on things. She’s meant to dive down rabbit holes. She’s meant to absorb a LOT of information. Where as I would get overwhelmed and stuck if I tried her approach, she deepens her craft, see’s new patterns and becomes a formidable expert.

So this time around, instead of ‘winging it’ she decided that spending time learning was a form of marketing for her. The more of an expert she became, the more evident it became in her sessions, social media content and workshops.

Trusting her intuition

Zoe’s best way of making decisions is through her intuitive knowing.

She often knows what she needs to do right away, but then feels like she needs to justify it or ignore it to please those around her. That’s not how she’s meant to operate.

By practicing trusting that inner knowing, even when it didn’t make sense, she was able to avoid getting stuck in analysis paralysis when it came to the many decisions a new business owner needs to make.

A year of aligned invitations

The overall strategy for a Projector when it comes to business and relationships is to wait for recognition of your gifts and then be invited in by that person to help them.

It can be an incredibly frustrating thing for us (I’m also a Projector) because we can usually see how to help most people with their problems, but unless we’re invited for our opinion, we can just come off as annoying.

So we knew that for Zoe to get her best clients, clients who would pay what she’s worth and help spread the word, that she needed the recognition and the invitation.

But when you’re starting out, building that recognition can be a really slow process.

This year though, something clicked and she’s received aligned invitation after invitation with very little effort on her part.

Here are some of them:

  • An invitation to run her workshop which then sold out overnight (she didn’t have to sell a single ticket herself)

  • An invitation to become a paid mentor for other trainers, physios and therapists undergoing the same training she’s been through

  • And an invitation by another business owner to create a new movement space together for our local community

She didn’t hustle for these. She didn’t have to spend hours connecting on social media. Instead, she trusted in her natural gifts and Human Design was the tool that gave her permission to do so.

I’m so incredibly proud of her. It takes immense courage to start a business and to ride the highs and lows that come with it.

It’s also really cool to have this business that’s part of our lives, that really helps a lot of women and also allows us to be present parents.

Human Design continues to blow me away.

There is a part of my brain that still says ‘this shouldn’t work’ and yet even if it is just a bunch of hocus pocus, it’s been incredibly helpful hocus pocus.

I asked Zoe if, looking back, she thinks she could have gotten to this point in her business without knowing her Human Design and she said:

‘It probably would have been a lot harder and more frustrating.’

Thanks for reading! If you’re curious about Human Design and how it can make business more ease-ful and less frustrating, I do offer a 90-minute HD coaching session where we can dive into how you best work.

Also, if this resonated in some small way, please leave me a comment to let me know.

Wading into the ocean

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Self-reliance or self-sabotage?

Hey readers, Welcome to Rhythm & Rec. Each week I’m sharing a personal insight or an insight a coaching client had with me, wrapped up in a lesson you can learn from too. This week it’s a personal insight about an area of my life I didn’t realise I was keeping at arms length. I hope you get something out if it, I had a lot of fun writing it. -Kyle

I want to share with you a huge insight I had last week.

An insight into a behaviour that I think has been lurking in the back of my mind, quietly calling the shots for some time. Like a backseat driver who sounds so confident that you listen to them while they direct you the long way round.

It’s caused me a lot of confusion as I didn’t realise it was there. I kept wondering why things that should feel simple, felt like putting together a jigsaw puzzle upside down.

First, I’ll go into how it’s been showing up, then share with you it’s name, and finally, how I know what to do next.

Total Confusion

You may remember that for the past 6 weeks or so, I’ve made a commitment to explore what coaching other’s full-time might look like.

This is a very different business model to my main business, Bootcamp Ideas.

Working on Bootcamp Ideas looks like making a coffee, turning on my computer and then planning out content, creating content, making little offers to invite people to join my newsletter, writing the newsletter, making podcasts, editing videos, creating programs, etc.

It’s fairly solitary work. I used to collaborate more but there aren’t as many creators in that space as there used to be (although, that could just be ‘the voice’ as I’ll share soon).

So switching to a coaching business has been really disorienting.

Work now looks like grabbing a coffee, turning on my computer but then reaching out to people I haven’t spoken to in a while, building personal connections, having Zoom calls, messaging friends, responding to newsletters and finding ways to demonstrate my coaching skills in public.

It seems simple on the surface, but there has still been a lot of resistance:

  • Feeling like an imposter

  • Feeling hurt when someone ghosts me

  • Feeling like I don’t have anything worthwhile to share

  • Putting a lot of pressure on every interaction

  • And just generally doubting myself

At first I put this down to the all being something new in my life. A change in my identity that I’d need time to adjust to.

But then, this resistance kept sticking around.

And last week, I realised what was going on. It was an old friend of mine showing up in a new way.

The Controlling Connector

A few years ago I hired as my coach (a fantastic human btw) and one of the exercises we did together was to name some of the shadow-y parts of my personality.

One such part we dubbed ‘The Controller Connector’.

The Controlling Connector loves connecting with other people, but always on his terms. He gets peeved if someone is running late. He gets hurt and defensive when his vulnerability isn’t reciprocated. He dismisses those that don’t live up to his high standards.

He tries desperately to protect me.

But, he’s actually holding me back.

You see, the insight I had wasn’t just that old CC was showing up, the insight was that I’ve been trying to grow this coaching business while controlling every connection I make with someone else.

I’ve been standing guard instead of surrendering. I’ve been armouring up instead of being truly vulnerable. I’ve been trying to have all the answers instead of listening.

And what’s been most helpful in trying to work out what to do about this, is another area of my life that I realise I do the same thing.

Being Held By The Ocean

Nearly 8 years ago, my wife and I packed up our 2-bedroom unit in a busy area of Melbourne and moved everything 2 hours away to the coast.

But despite being surrounded by beaches, I often baulk at the idea of going for a swim.

I’ll get sandy. I’ll get salty. I’ll cool down while I’m in there but then I’ll just get hot again. The water is too cold. What about sharks? What about stingrays? What about jellyfish? I didn’t bring my bodyboard. I didn’t bring my flippers.

But then I get in the water and something magic happens:

The water holds me.

I catch waves. I hold my breath. I lay on my back eyes closed and float. I frolic like a seal. My kids hang onto my shoulders and I tow them around.

(My wife watches from the shore and rolls her eyes having just heard me complain for 15 minutes and knowing that I’d love it once I got in.)

All my fears are forgotten (except when a stray piece of seaweed brushes my calf, followed by a moment of panic and relief). And I’m just there, in the moment. At peace.

This feels exactly like what I’m going through now.

I’m still on the beach, worried if the water will be too cold or if big set will come through and dunk me or if I’ll piss off that guy surfing by being in the wrong spot.

It’s time to dive in and remember something:

I actually love it here.

5 Things I Learned From a 30-Day Business Break (Amazingly, it didn’t burn down)

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plus, the newsletter has a new name

reader! You might notice that this newsletter has a new name. It was called The Dadlift, now it’s called Rhythm & Recognition. As I get clearer with what I want to write about on here, The Dadlift felt too personal to me and like there wasn’t any space for you, the reader. Rhythm & Recognition nicely sums up what I’d like to help people with, getting recognised for their gifts and delivering them to the world in a way that’s sustainable. Let’s dive into the first issue.

New here? You can subscribe… if you like.

 
 
 

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A little over a month ago, I made the tough decision to take an intentional break from my business of 15 years, Bootcamp Ideas.

Today I want to share with you how, despite my worst fears about the whole thing crumbling, it’s been a truly helpful and nourishing experience.

But first, let’s start with why I’m doing this now:

I haven’t taken more than a week or so away from my business other than during those sleep deprived months right after my kids were born.

Looking back, I always thought of those times as breaks. But they weren’t really.

While there was plenty of walks to the cafe for latte’s and babycinos, there was also a lot of managing the household so my wife could rest. There wasn’t much in the way of sitting around and journaling going on because, as it should be, I was fully immersing myself in life with a newborn.

But other than those moments, I’ve never truly given myself permission to take a proper break from Bootcamp Ideas.

Charlie Gilkey loves to say ‘you can’t read the label from inside the jar’ and that was me. I was trying to make decisions from inside my glass walls. I need to take some time off to get proper perspective.

No space for error (or life)

This all came to a head recently. I’d had some breakthroughs in coaching and realised that I wanted to explore my own path as a coach again.

So, in classic Kyle fashion, I added to my life without taking anything away.

I was now trying to juggle two businesses. I’d mad panic work Monday and Tuesday to get all my Bootcamp Ideas stuff done, then spend Wednesday and Thursday trying to think of ways to find clients and work out exactly what kind of coaching I would like to do. (I spend Fridays with our youngest while Zoe works with clients.)

One sick kid or a busy weekend could throw the whole thing out. There was no space to let things flex as they need to when you have small children.

So I committed, and now I’m here, with you, to share how it went and then what’s next for this experiment?

(Speaking of experiments, thanks to the book Tiny Experiments by for reminding me that you don’t have to commit to things forever, you can just try stuff.)

Here’s what I learned

(You can read more about the experiment in my previous post.)

1. I was f*cking burned out

This really surprised me. I didn’t think I was burned out because I was still showing up. But the warning signs were there. I was drinking more coffee. I spent large chunks of last year sick and I never get sick (‘It’s just part of having little kids,’ I’d tell myself).

And now, I’ve spent so much of this month sleeping, and wanting to stay in bed in the morning. So unlike me. I’ve had baths, sometimes 3 times per week.

‘You do seem kind of aimless,’ Zoe said to me last week.

Without the constant pressure to be productive I found myself wanting to do… nothing. But not in a way that feels ‘lazy’, more just because that feels like the most productive thing needed right now. I’m going through a lot of change and uncertainty and the space to process it feels very nourishing.

2. Dancing with competence and excellence

Gay Hendricks’ book The Big Leap famously talks about how we want to operate from our Zone of Genius. These are the things that really only we can do. Below that zone is the Zone of Excellence and then the Zone of Competence.

In my work with Bootcamp Ideas I spend most of my time operating in my zone of Competence and then sometimes Excellence. I think at some point in the past, when there was a little more of a community vibe to Bootcamp Ideas’ I was probably in my Zone of Genius, but now I mostly go through the motions each week. Looking for ways to eke out as much meaning as possible.

3. I really want to coach more

If there is an area I feel like I’m in my Zone of Genius, it’s coaching. Especially coaching health and wellness entrepreneurs and creators.

I’ve dabbled in coaching before, but never really gave it enough momentum to build up some credibility. The lure of the easier, yet less fulfilling, work of my business would drag me back in.

This month really forced me to sit with this and to start changing the way I view myself. As a coach, not just a business owner. I was able to sign up my first ongoing coaching client and I really enjoy the work we’re doing together.

4. Too much focus on content

Before this break I was spending a LOT of my time an energy each week creating content.

But this was all Zone of Excellence/Competence stuff and it left me with very little energy to actually connect with people. So I would double down on my content to try to get it to create the connections I wanted and would end up feeling frustrated and bitter when it didn’t.

By cutting myself off from creating content I can see that my time would be much better spent creating spaces for connection to happen and investing time in existing relationships.

And this kind of leads me to my last point.

5. Where has my heart been?

My heart is not longer in building Bootcamp Ideas.

As hard as it is to admit it publicly, I’ve known this for a while. And having taken time off I can see that this has been the source of a lot of my issues.

It’s kind of like being in a relationship where you still like the person, but you don’t love them anymore. You keep doing things to try to rekindle it. You go to therapy to talk about it. You agonise over it a lot.

And to follow that relationship metaphor even further, it’s like instead of ending the relationship I stayed in it while waiting for someone else to come along. Which if this was a real relationship, that would be silly right?

Alas, when your business supports your family, it’s a little trickier.

(Although now I’m drawing all sorts of parallels with toxic relationships where money is involved.)

So, what’s next?

Yesterday, I opened up Kit and sent the first email to my audience that I’d sent them in over a month.

I wrote them to let them know that I’d be extending my 30-day hiatus for another 60 days.

Yes, this time has been so needed that I’m firmly, audaciously claiming more of it. I’m 37 as I write this, I’ve been running Bootcamp Ideas for 15 of those. That’s over 40% of my life!

I want to continue to pursue coaching as a career by using Human Design to help health and wellness entrepreneurs and creatives and I know that needs space and time to flourish.

I’ll be sure to update you all at the end of the full 90 days with any further insights I’ve had.

—

Next week I’m running a workshop called Connection Marketing (thanks 2-Hour Workshop Blueprint by for making that easy), it’s for my Bootcamp Ideas audience but you are more than welcome too. It’s all about how you can find and connect with the people who need to hear your message. It’s a combo of smart marketing with some Human Design to help you market in a way that aligns with your strengths.

—

I’ve also updated my 1:1 coaching page, so if you’re interested in working with me, have a look and get in touch.

—

Lastly, thank you so much for being here. If anything about my 30-day break resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you!

It's okay to take your time

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The magic is in the in-between

Dear readers,

Here’s something counter-intuitive you may or may not know:

Working out (eg. going for a run, lifting weights in the gym, etc.) doesn’t actually make you fitter or stronger by itself.

Those improvements to your system actually happen in-between workouts.

It happens when you rest and allow yourself to recover.

The workout is just the stimulus. The bit that tells your body ‘hmm, maybe we need to do some upgrade around here’.

Now, what has that got to do with anything?

There is a point to why I’m sharing this, which I’ll circle back to in a moment, but first, let me tell you about my Christmas present.

Last year my wife and I gifted each other heart-rate monitors. I’m not sure if it counts as a gift if you’re buying each other the exact same thing with the money from your joint account, but hey, I enjoyed unwrapping it Christmas morning all the same.

So now, each morning, I strap the monitor around my chest for a few minutes and it will gives me my Recover Score for the day.

This score tells you how well your body is recovering which can then guide you on what type of workout you do or how intense you should go or if you should just rest for the day.

After 6 months, some of the things I’ve noticed that improve this score for me are:

  • Actually working out. My body still wants that stimulus in order to kick into recovery mode.

  • Baths. This is excellent because I love a good bath.

  • More sleep. To a point, that 8.5 hour mark is really bang on for me and allows for the odd shorter or disrupted night once a week.

The sleep thing has been a big change for me because for the last few years I’ve been an early riser (5-5:30am).

Not because I enjoy punishing myself, but simply because I find that I’m easier for other people to consume after I’ve had 30-60 minutes to myself upon waking. A less grumpy Kyle/Dad/husband makes everyone’s mornings smoother.

But it often meant I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I’d get ~7 hours most nights, but over time that would create just enough sleep debt that if one of the kids got sick kid or I had a late night, it would totally destroy me.

So I started letting myself sleep in a little, 6-6:30am, which often still had me up before the rest of the household.

I started noticing a few things:

  • My craving for sugar decreased.

  • I procrastinated less before doing my workouts.

  • And it was much easier to focus and work on the things I wanted to work on.

I’d tried willpowering myself into not raiding the kid’s lolly stash. I’d changed my workout program about a million times to try to get myself more excited. I obsessed about my work schedule, trying to optimise it in every way because ‘that must be the problem’.

But it wasn’t until I started focusing on the in-between. On recovering from my days of work, exercise and raising small children. On getting just a little more sleep. That suddenly things started falling into place.

And so, I promised that there was a point to it, and it’s this:

Recently I returned to taking on regular coaching clients. In the past when I’ve run group and one-on-one coaching programs I’ve met with the participants weekly, but this time I choose to meet just twice a month.

This was partly to help with scheduling and creating a buffer in my life for family, but was mostly because of this need to recover.

Coaching sessions are like a good workout. You’re potentially being challenged in new ways. You’re uncovering what you really want, important things you may have forgotten in your efforts to keep up with the world.

And that needs space. It needs space for you to absorb, to reflect, to transcend.

The coaching is the stimulus, but the magic happens during the in-between.

Now, as I wrap this up, I have a question: What does recovery look like for you? What are your favourite ways to give your mind or body some space? Or maybe this is something you’d like to work on too.

I’d love our little group to have a chat about it, just drop a comment on this post. Even if it’s just to let me know you read it, it would mean a lot to me to hear from you.

Also, if you’re interested in working with me 1:1, I’ve just opened up a few spots for coaching. Full details are here if that sounds supportive to you.

Chat soon and big hugs!

-Kyle

P.S. I know many of your reading this are trainers, let me know if this article inspires any changes in how you run your own classes/workouts.

Thanks for reading The Dadlift! Subscribe for free to receive new articles and insights from me.

What Does Work Look Like, Anyway?

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Still discovering what working for myself looks like after 15 years

Last week marked my second week of my audacious plan to take 30-days away from my business to give space to pursuing my dreams.

I’m noticing 2 things:

The first is, that I didn’t realise what a weight it was on my shoulders constantly showing up and creating content.

I thought I’d hacked the code for creating content that felt good to me.

Not too much social media stuff.

A newsletter, a podcast and some video on topics I care about.

But after 2 weeks away from it I can see how draining it was to my brain.

The second thing is, that without the pressure of the 7-day content cycle wearing me down like some torturous hill climbing video game where every time you get to the top of the hill you instantly respawn at the bottom, I’ve been noticing a lot of guilt around working hard enough and ‘enough’ enough.

A new business needs new goal posts

I’m not sure when it happened, but over the last few years my metric for success with Bootcamp Ideas had switched from doing the minimum possible for the maximum results to simply: create as much stuff as possible.

So the last couple of weeks when I haven’t been flat out while working, it’s felt kind of odd. Uncomfortable even.

Why aren’t I doing more?

I don’t have a full roster of clients. I haven’t launched my men’s fitness group.

Shouldn’t I be doing more?

But when take a look back at the week. It’s not that I’ve done nothing, it’s that I’ve done small actions that haven’t taken a huge amount of time, but will have a big impact on my business.

Here’s a look at some of the things I did last week:

  • Took the whole day off on Monday because the weekend was huge and I knew that resting would set me up for better work the rest of the week.

  • Spoke with and signed a new coaching client.

  • Set up a new onboarding process for clients.

  • Reached out to connect with a few more people who I think would make good clients.

  • Created a list of men to reach out to for my new fitness group.

  • Stayed visible by connecting with other’s content (rather than creating my own).

  • Wrote an article for this newsletter (this by far took the longest out of anything I did this week).

  • Spent a morning with my youngest daughter. Did all of my workouts. Trained with the fire brigade. And played a new video game.

There was no grind here, just short, intentional tasks that felt very in alignment with me and my energy.

At the end of it all I asked myself…

‘Is this what work looks like now?’

And with that came a surge of excitement and a sense of peace.

It feels almost too good, that this could be ‘work’.

So what does work look like for me?

This:

Connecting with people and having space in-between.

I think these 2 things are really what it boils down to. It feels like a very human business to have.

It’s not about my output, it’s about showing up. For them and me.

As I write this, I get excited, but I also know that I’ll need to keep an eye on slipping back into habits of proving myself. Of doing more just for the sake of doing more.

I’d love to hear about your experience with this

What does ‘working’ mean to you?

Is it about how much you get done? Is it more about what you’re working on? I’ll be waiting for you in the comments below.

Through the Human Design Window

This whole thing makes a lot of sense if you look at my Human Design:

  • I’m a Projector. I’m all about efficiency because I don’t always have the energy for big, grindy work sessions.

  • My profile is 2/4. The 2 is the Hermit which is all about my need for alone time to process things. That mixes with the 4 which is all about how my opportunities often come through connecting with others.

  • I have a Splenic authority and undefined throat, so it makes sense that I should connect with others when I get the intuitive hit to reach out, rather than on a schedule. Also that I’d only reach out to a few people at a time rather than sending dozens of messages out into the world at once.

Work With Me:

If you’re getting a feeling that I’m here to help you, here are 2 ways you can work with me:

  1. Human Design Session: In this 60 minute guided session, we’ll look at your Human Design and how you can show up feel more aligned with your natural gifts.

  2. Ongoing Coaching: I have a limited number of spots for 1-on-1 coaching for high performing creators and founders.

If you’re interested in either of these, send me a message and I’ll send you through the details.